Paris/Change

These days have a unique quality to them. In a similar way to the days following diagnosis, but without the crushing sadness, everything glitters. This time round with the possibility of reprieve rather than the urgency of an imminent ending. The lenses of shifting circumstance through which we view the world change our reality. And yet that reality has not really changed. The external factors remain the same but your experience of that reality changes dramatically with your internal universe. Heaven and hell are the same place. Only your heart changes. And yet you, dear Reader, and me – we are all on borrowed time. So we can all live with the Wonder Filter. You just have to select it.

Needless to say my three day jaunt to Paris was experienced through rose tinted spectacles. I have travelled a fair bit in my life and, I hope, always appreciate the privileges it offers but this time was an extraordinarily visceral appreciation of the city’s beauty. Given the choice I would usually head to a mountain or a forest but Paris with my best friend to see art and sit about in cafes was just about the best plan I could possibly make to celebrate being alive. I have been in agreement with my husband for a few years that Paris comes with the pressure of romance for couples. This time he had to work and I needed to go somewhere and celebrate. I have barely left London since my diagnosis because of the intense volume of hospital appointments and the need to stay nearby.

I’ve probably been half a dozen times in my life and driven past it or through it 50. All memorable. I’ve been here at 18, 21, 30, 50 with girlfriends and boyfriends and even my mum. Received my finals results under the Eiffel Tower (too nervous to call from the top!) at 21, passed Johnny Depp on Pont Neuf, been whisked off to dodgy nightclubs by amorous Frenchmen, been assaulted on NYE at the Arc de Triomphe, danced the night away at every age. We went to Paris as a family a few years ago and the kids adored it. Mainly because they got to eat a lot of crepes. Paris at 19 with a childhood friend I’d travelled round the world with was also unforgettable. Lotte and I were optimistic and poor. We travelled by coach for new year’s eve with a driver who would only stop to let you pee once in six hours and we arrived at dawn without a plan or accommodation. Happily we found a rather run down but cheap hotel in Place Dauphine with shared bathrooms and a dubious lift and we danced the night away at the Caveau de la Huchette in the latin quarter and fought off amorous Tunisians at midnight on NYE at the Eiffel Tower. Thank you again Lotte for your kickboxing training and your badass attitude. It came in handy a few times on our travels and saved us from being stupid and expecting the world to always be benign to women. We had a good time anyway.

Fast forward 34 years, summer 2025 with Sophie, one my oldest friends from school. We survived our teenage years together and now have enough money to do Paris properly…for a fancy hotel on a little street on the Rive Gauche near Pont Neuf, stacked elegantly with expensive boutiques, cafes and small galleries. Paris with the privilege of not monitoring your spending too closely for few days is something else. A beautiful spa hotel with long pool and a white and gold sauna. A cool courtyard full of plants and a garden room. Unexpectedly, the hotel is also an early evening jazz venue that a French bassist has directed me to on his jazz itinerary. I could not be happier. It’s called Hotel D’Aubusson for anyone interested but closing for quite unnecessary refurbishment in November. I chatted to the staff and discover that they are being paid full wages for eight months while it closes and that the hotel kept them on full pay throughout covid. Ethical too! I had mentioned I had cancer in the booking to blag an early check in and by the evening we have a bottle of champagne sent to our room. A lovely surprise and no, I am not averse to playing the cancer card. A blind friend calls this his ‘blind tax’ for all you have to put up with in everyday life. I’m all about that. Why not? I’ve earned the excuse for a small blag and I’ll kick anyone out of the disabled seats on the tube in an instant so I can sit down.

My only barrier to joy in Paris was that I am not really supposed to drink on my forever drugs as they are hard on the liver and alcohol tends to stress the body out and break the delicate balance of feeling well. But the prospect of a cold rosé in a small cavernous bistro with red checked tablecloths was too much and I instantly failed the test over our first long lunch. And then I failed again in the evening. A hopeless hedonist. This was delightful for the first day but by day two I was painfully reminded thar I am not 18 anymore and hangovers on chemo hit harder, especially in the heat. This hedonist can hardly refrain from the finer things in life but my tolerance is limited and the trade offs are hard. I am also reminded that I am still not that well and a long walk to the next arrondissement and dehydration can take me out. Mild invisible disability, illness, and just being a little later in life, means tempering my exuberance but I will forever be 18 in my head and slow to learn.

The only plans we made were for art. I booked the Hockney retrospective at the gorgeous Louis Vuitton Foundation on my cousin’s enthusiastic recommendation. An outrageous creation of a building by Frank Gehry and a palace for art out by the Bois de Boulogne. Not an area I’ve visited before but a garden district is welcome in the heat. Now, I’ve never been a massive fan of Hockney and it felt a bit counterintuitive to see a British artist in Paris but I was willing to try and understand his appeal. Clearly the French have claimed him as their own and embraced his adoration of Normandy as his home in later life. It was so stunningly curated I set aside my annoyance at his little yellow glasses and the deliberate underachievement of his recent Harry Styles portrait. The gallery proved it is deliberate. Like many formally trained modern artists there is the occasional line drawing or formal portrait in the collection that says ‘see I can do it properly if I want’. I was hoping that the expressive line and crap hands gave me an excuse to take up low skill portrait painting but when you see them en masse you begin to appreciate the brilliance and economy of being able to paint gesture. A tilt of the jaw or pose that defines someone’s spirit. The iPad drawings over lockdown are printed large on aluminium so they glow and in one moonlight room they are side by side with the acrylics and you have to peer hard in the darkness to tell the difference. As a painter I love being able to get close up these days and satisfy my painter’s curiosity about what type of brush was used, the direction of the strokes, whether the painter was happy to leave rogue brush hair in the paint, if they tolerate a messy side of the canvas, whether you can see overpainting and detect how their hand moves to make the strokes etc etc. The advantage of the iPad drawings, as any parent who has let their kid draw on a device will tell you, is that they allow you to see the artist at work stroke by stroke and play it back to you. People were fascinated to see the faces and landscapes emerge on large time-lapse screens. I could watch Hockney’s invisible hand build up a portrait all day long as you see him making active spontaneous choices. The Normandy room full of paintings made on lockdown at his home and garden really moved me as an appreciation of every small thing in every light and every season. He would send these pictures to friends to cheer them up with the words. ‘Remember, they can’t cancel the spring.’ In his later less formal work there is hope and appreciation of small things. As we entered the gallery and descended to the start I said to my friend ‘When I come somewhere like this I can breathe.’ And it is so true. Technology and life lived at speed makes us forget to breathe but when we enter an art or a nature space we slow down and we breathe deeply. We respond to a different timeline. The Picasso Museum, the little galleries all gave me this back. A reminder to breathe.

I suppose Paris was about making time slow down. For a day I was in a rush to fit everything in but even for a busy city you can be slow in Paris. The buzz of youth on a balmy summer evening by the Seine and spontaneous homemade DJ sets made me want to be young again. Place Dauphine this time was transformed from the stark leafless trees of a winter morning in 1992 and filled with diverse groups of friends playing boules with tables of wine and charcuterie waiting. I recorded the sound of happy chatter, glasses clinking and boules clattering. I wanted to listen to it again if I ever have a dark day. I have a series of these one minute sound mediations on my phone. A secret collector of atmospheres. Of ordinary life sound scenes.

On the first evening we were too tired for the fiercely ambitious jazz itinerary my friend had outlined but by the second when evening we were organised and made it to the intimate setting of Les Duc des Lombards. An artist called Ludovic Louis was playing. A hugely talented band with him on flugelhorn and vocals. I love that you can step into some jazz rooms and it doesn’t matter what age you are or how musical or good looking you are. It’s a leveller. You can tell that everyone in the room feels pleased with themselves for finding the experience and being part of it. Being not just observers but active participants in the creation of the atmosphere. The best artists take you with them, involve you and make eye contact. When I am in this intimate collective experience I imagine all our cells vibrating at the same frequency and dancing together.

Returning to my theme, I truly believe creativity can save us. Art can transport us as individuals, as society. I am not naive. Drugs and modern medicine have stopped me dying but this art and music is what has made me live. Exploring deeply our human connection, connection to the core of my humanity through mediums of paint, writing, music, sound have made me want to live. Fiercely. If you can find a way, any way, not necessarily an accomplished way but ANY WAY to express your desire and your appreciation of life and RECOMMIT to that…I guarantee you will live better. I do not worship in a church – this works for some lucky people – but I find the act of creation or communication…worshipful. A full exuberant expression of my joy at being alive. Of my or all of our common desire to live. This can be hard to find in these times. We will need to dig deep to continue to find our common humanity in these testing times. Friends in the US fighting fascism, friends who are aid workers or peace negotiator, artists, musicians, academics, friends in climate justice and EDI, friends with cancer, those experiencing inequality, financial and health difficulties… we all need to look hard to find hope. Art isn’t a fix but it is a way to stay in touch with our hearts and raise our vibration. Culture reminds us who we are. Not animals or brutes following our basest instincts but glorious and capable of amazing collective acts. I love nature the most and can commune with my maker on a mountain but as cities go, Paris reminded of the best we can be. The most appreciative. The most glorious. The most alive. Thank you Sophie. Thank you Paris.