Varsovie (band/music)

I love these guys. Not just because I've known one of them for longer than I can remember (Arnault), and another one of them nearly just as long (Greg), but because their music, lyrics and style are pretty much a perfect mix of everything I like most.

Art, poetry, history, décadence, tristesse, paradox, love, war, mélancolie, nostalgia...

They also bring me back to days of the past, when we used to roam the streets of Grenoble together, drinking wine, talking about everything and anything, crying and laughing, smoking endless cigarettes, dancing, thinking we had all the time in the world. I don't think any of us have really changed at all. When I listen to Varsovie, I always feel like there is a piece of myself in there somewhere.

Varsovie released their first album Etat Civil at the end of 2009.
You can listen to some songs on their Myspace page
(an order the album)
You can also find them on Facebook

And here are a few videos. They really are worth it. And now I am REALLY homesick...

Varsovie - Etat Civil


Varsovie - Mademoiselle Else

Nostalgia and my neighbours

When I get really nostalgic I often think about my last two years in France, living in the apartment on 5 Rue Crépu. I loved that place, even if the heating was bad and in the winter I tended to study wrapped in 3 sweaters and a duvet, writing with fingerless gloves on.

I had the most eclectic, interesting neighbours. People who were noisy enough not to mind our noise. No one ever gave us trouble for having late night parties with loud music (not even when I decided to give the whole street my rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni at 3am from the balcony).
Just underneath us, on the 3rd floor (European 3rd floor) there was a very old and very deaf lady who lived with her grandson. Her grandson (I cannot remember his name) would spend his days shouting at the top of his voice so that she could hear him (although I doubt she ever did). "Mémé!! NOOOON! Faut pas faire ça!!!". He was such a strange guy, in some ways like an adult child. But always really kind and friendly, even though we would spend most nights blasting loud music and having at least 3 friends, all clad in black with long hair over.
Across from the guy and his grandmother was the "Nosey Italian Woman". She would stand at her door and just grumble about "people of today" and if you got caught up in conversation with her you could never get away. She was such a gossip though - she was the one who gave away all of Mr 5th Floor's secrets to me just before I moved out.

Ahhh... Mr 5th Floor... He was the best. Every single night between the hours of midnight and 3am he would move his furniture around his apartment. Consistently every single night. In high heeled shoes. I could only imagine the scene. This guy was about 5'5", shaped like a cube, with a red face and big nose, dressed in high heels and rearranging his apartment. I don't think he ever uttered more than "Hello" to me in the two years I lived there!
Nosey Italian Woman let me in on his deepest (ha ha ha) secret one day: he supposedly dressed up in women's clothes at the weekend and hung out in Parc Paul Mistral at night (I will leave your imaginations to conjure up what happened there during the night...). I suppose all of the high-heeled wearing furniture antics were just him practicing how to prance around in heels.

My neighbours are all boring, predictable, annoying hipsters here. I don't remember any of them and would not recognise any of them if I bumped into them on the street. But I remember my neighbours from 5 Rue Crépu to this day. Eight years later.

Ahh... April...

My favourite journal is the one that dates from June 19th 2000 until December 23rd 2003. There is something so heartbreaking, poignant and real about all of the entries in it. Living in my real first apartment without my family, breaking down while writing my thesis, being so afraid, but living without fear, drinking coffee and smoking in the university corridors... Wine from the bottles hidden in my backpack, poetry and music, dancing all night long. I miss Aymeric playing 100 Years every Saturday night for me at the Mark XIII. Caramel vodka shots! We were all so smart and ready to make something happen. We could all sit around a table in a bar and talk for hours and hours and hours. You can't talk in bars here... You can only drink and watch people make fools out of themselves. I just need more than this - playing dumb is just plain boring.

It scares me a little that the July 12th 2002 entry describes exactly how I feel right now. It's too personal to even copy bits out of, but it just makes me wonder if I keep running away from those feelings, and that they will always catch up with me wherever I am...



Luna and me, 5 Rue Crepu, 38000 Grenoble, France, June 2001

Nostalgia (2005)

I remember this post from my old Livejournal. I like to reread it when I'm feeling disjointed.

18/09/2005
"Sometimes our emotions take us by surprise
The afternoon is ending, and it feels like a beautiful end-of-summer day, like those I remember back in Grenoble at the beginning of school years. The nights turn in earlier, the air is fresher, the smells are different and it makes me nostalgic.
Remember running through the rain, a bottle of Listel Gris in one hand, a cigarette in the other, singing "Je je suis libertine" at the tops of our voices? Sitting in the St Germain drinking espresso after espresso while planning our next prank. Paradoxical decadence all around, notes left in the letter box belonging to the "Coureurs de Jupons" (Nico, Vincent and Julien, otherwise known as Little Mouse, Mephisto and Coureur de Jupons), drunkenly waltzing with Arnault in random parties we had invited ourselves to. Turning up at random concerts and spending the evening drinking bottles of wine we had smuggled in in the bathroom, trying to get rid of the "groupies" who kept hanging around because they wanted what we had; burning Voltaire over the river; roaming for hours around Paris looking for something we couldn't find. And finally watching both of our lives come tumbling down and not being able to help each other.
One day I will revisit the past and make it all right again. In the meantime, one hides behind her hair, one drinks his talents into oblivion, one still tries to find someone who will love him, one has found the woman he wanted and deserves, one lives half way across the world and the other still hasn't found himself.
There will be a day when we all find ourselves in the same room again, and it will be just the same. Because years may pass, but some things never change."