63 Juliette Aubin: Paris & Berlin

Paris & Berlin

Juliette Aubin

“Your photos are now on display on the wall of art and love.” How intimate those words sounded together. Photos I had thoughtfully snapped outside; to be displayed in someone else’s home. This was a few months after I had just moved to Paris. Locked into a shabby but homely apartment for months on end, it was the best prison I could have hoped for. Completely free from others’ eyes, the overwhelming pressure to exist faded. On an eerily warm November day, I trespassed the threshold between my private world and the public world. My plan was to wander the city’s wide streets and its underground web of trains to take pictures. On my screen, I scrolled through a list of some landmarks with the firm intention to connect the dots in whichever order I wanted. Creating something out of nothing is daunting, but giants have already walked there. Stepping into their steps felt warm and comforting. Yet something about it was vertiginously overwhelming. How does one deal with the weight of crushing tradition? The artist – however confined their circle may be – always keeps an audience in a room of their head. And as a matter of fact, I couldn’t shake my ‘audience’ out of my head. I was desperately trying to think of the photos rather than the person I needed to send them to. I felt the need to launch digital flare alerts for that close, yet distant person. I don’t think I felt particularly lonely – I was more than glad to be alone; but there was that deep-seated feeling of wanting to share my impressions with someone else. Someone who also wanted to share their impressions. Months before our respective return home, we attended the same English university, and we had only bumped into each other a couple of times, without ever daring to talk to each other. Our connection was recent. Its creation had not been planned, but I had seen them everywhere I went. So many times, that it did not feel coincidental anymore. Eventually, I saw a friendship request pop up in my Facebook feed. It somehow felt long overdue. I decided to invite him to do those things that we normally did separately, together.

There was a longing to talk to him. I thought it must have been some sort of intellectual or artistic infatuation. He spoke with great eloquence, wrote lovely poems which I had found online ‘by chance’ – and he was actually so well-versed that one could feel something deeply intimidating about him. What was sometimes mistaken by others as arrogance was also what imbued him with a sense of fragility. I think that is what made his work particularly striking. He reminded me of multiple artists at once. So many, in fact, that I felt my imagination making a collage out of them. He reminded me of Woolf because of his usual roaming of city streets; of Tolstoy because of his inner world and occasional pessimism; of Wilde because of his clever remarks and comebacks. I felt ripples of the past move to the present, and I saw in himself an image of the artist I wanted to be. Unfortunately, global issues made it so that we missed the opportunity to concretise our plans. But we started texting each other. I enjoyed seeing the coloured squares of texts move through my screen. We talked about our childhood. We talked about our psychological issues. We talked about the writers and poets we loved. He shared his thesis on Victorian London, which I happily read. Snap and shake. I was holding onto my polaroid camera and my newly developed photo. I sat on the stairs for a while, crossing my legs. I had chosen to sit a little below where the picture was taken, in an attempt to avoid any form of contact with my fellow urban dwellers. I wondered why I craved this isolation so much, as I waited for the shapes and the colours to emerge on the white paper. When I was satisfied with the result, I took another photo of it - this time with my phone. An angled shot of Palais Garnier’s eastern-side of the front façade, a statue reaching outward with its hands. As I guided him through my lens, he guided me in another way. We very naturally moved to writing letters. The first I received from him had been written on photocopied pages of Macbeth, with which he had included a Shakespearean parody of “Bring Me to Life” that was so well-written it was ironically to die for. My response included cards of animals and flowers I had enjoyed drawing, and I shared with him the songs that I had listened to while writing – perhaps hoping to inspire him. One day, a package arrived in front of my door. The Passion by Jeannette Winterson. I devoured it in barely 3 hours. A very emotional read, the words on the pages could have very well reflected his inner world. Still emotional to a pulp, I decided to bring part of Shakespeare & Co. to him by sending him a poetry collection from the famed place. Plath’s Ariel. It was a very personal collection to me. I now considered them to be a great friend on top of being a great artist. Having received a book from someone I cared about on a day which had started out like any other had touched me beyond words. Perhaps my friendship with him made me consider his art with more detail and more insight. But I lacked introspection to know this for certain.

Snap and shake. This time, I gently let my polaroid fall to my left side. I hid the photo in my pocket to shelter it from the sun’s invasive and burning rays. I took a picture of it with my phone, as I had done a couple of kilometres away. Empty Luxembourg Gardens. The presence of people could still be felt because of how the plants were tended to. Returning home, I felt giddy. Our epistolary collaboration felt enough on its own. Knowing someone out there is out and about – living and creating – is comforting. Knowing someone took the time to curve letters on paper or run their fingers on their screen is comforting. Talking about art is comforting too. The silence and lack of physicality have no effect on the possibility of building upon what is already there, and on creation. There is still much to look forward to, and my next stop might still be Berlin. But until then, I shall continue to send snippets of the city I had moved to for closure. I do suppose there is passion when two people share what they hold most dear with one another.