Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: You are listening to Right on radio on KFAI 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at KFAI.org I'm Josh Weber. On tonight's program, I talk with Scott Dominic Carpenter about his recently released work, Paris Lost and Found in Memoir of Love. With a unique blend of wit, insight and wistfulness, Carpenter charts a path through a labyrinth of challenges only to emerge on the other side, squinting into the bright light of hope and new beginnings. Then, the last part of the hour, we will dive into the archives to play an interview from the past. All this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Okay, Scott, whenever you're ready, you can do your first reading.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: While trudging home with groceries, cutting through an empty side street toward the Rue Beau B, I asked myself what I should do with my life. It was one of those gray days in the capital when you feel a lid has been clamped over the top of the city, leaving you to stew. What nagged at me was the futility of it all. When I was younger, I kicked the can of meaningfulness down the road, figuring it was all going to make sense later, and every time I caught up with the can, I just give it another whack. But at this point, verging on retirement, my family unmoored and still no cat in my life, I found it unnerving to see that empty road still stretching out in front of me. Wasn't it supposed to lead somewhere, eventually leaving me with the sense that I'd arrived? Or should I be trying a different direction? I'd made it halfway down the street when I looked up and saw the man floating in front of a high brick wall. Dressed all in blue, the guy was sinking quickly through the air, though not as fast as gravity would ordinarily demand. And he didn't tumble or thrash the way I would have if I were falling from the sky. Young and slender, with a bit of beard, he stood erect during the descent with one hand calmly raised. He was still about 40ft up when I realized that the wall behind him was the backside of the perennially crumbling local church. That's when the penny dropped that pose this place a descent. It was the Second Coming.
Probably at Sunday school or in sermons they prepare people for this sort of thing. But as a lifelong miscreant, I was caught off guard. What are you supposed to do in this situation? Avert your gaze or get out your phone and snap a selfie?
At first I was surprised he'd choose this street, barely more than an alley, really, for his return. The other side of the church would have been better, where he could descend onto the front steps before a cheering and awestruck crowd, or at least in front of the guys who usually recline on those steps while sipping cans of beer. Or how about right in the center of town, where there's a honking big cathedral that's pretty much designed for stuff like this.
But upon reflection, it seemed right he'd choose a humble neighborhood like mine, with practically no one to witness him.
The hard hat struck me as excessively cautious, though I guess he hadn't had a lot of practice. By my calculation, this was just his second time. Twenty feet away, he touched down on the asphalt, arms splayed for balance, bending to absorb the impact, since even the godhead is at risk of knee trouble later in life.
Then I saw the harness, and my new faith flickered. He unbuckled himself from the cable. On the ground before him lay a few hammers in different sizes. He picked up a silver lunch box. Turns out the guy was one of those acrobats the construction crews call a cordiste, a fellow who swings from the rooftops to inspect the hard to reach nooks rappelling down the walls. They were doing repairs on the church, and while this savior of masonry dug into a sandwich, I resumed the trek home, a new spring in my step. You go through the years hoping to unwrap the gift of life, to find out what's inside. But maybe it's an empty box. The surprise is simply that there is no surprise, and while that isn't much, it's better than no surprise at all.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Very good. That was Scott Dominic Carpenter reading from his book Paris Lost and A Memoir of Love. From bizarre encounters on the metro to comical clashes with authority figures, Paris Lost and Found unveils sides of the great city that are as quirky as they are authentic. Scott welcome to Right on Radio.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: At the beginning of your book, you recount your time accompanying a tour group through the Dordogne Valley. You mentioned that a seemingly authentic French experience turned out to be largely a performance for tourists. Could you share your thoughts on the intersection of authenticity and tourism and how this experience shaped your view of travel as a way of consuming culture?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd be happy to. Yeah. This was an experience from several years ago when I was sort of co leading a group and I was really more of a hanger on giving a couple of lectures and was following along as the tour guide was traipsing through various ancient buildings and churches and what I discovered, bit by bit, was that they were feeding us a bunch of cliches. And that's when I started to realize that there was something up with the way that people were representing France in general. And then later on Paris, that was an experience that ended bizarrely well, because toward the end of the trip, the hotel that we were in was burglarized, and people lost wallets and jewelry. The safes had been ripped out of the walls. And what that did was tear asunder the postcard of our experience. And we had a real experience at that point and something really memorable.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: You explore the idea that memory and souvenirs are deeply intertwined, where even mundane objects can become imbued with profound meaning. How did your personal connection to souvenirs, like your prize miniature Eiffel Tower, evolve throughout your time spent in Paris? And I was wondering what your thoughts are or what do you think this says about people and how they hold onto the past?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting.
The word souvenir in French means memory. But, of course, it also is the label that we have for these little tchotchkes and objects that we pick up that are produced by the thousands or the millions. And it's unusual in that respect, right, that we can each have individual experiences, but then the token that we collect that helps us to remember them is the same token that so many other people have. So the miniature Eiffel Tower that you refer to is something that I picked up on my very first trip to Paris when I was 10 years old. And I still have that thing. And when I look at it, even though it's identical to all of the other Eiffel Towers produced, well, the ones that are in that particular size, I have personal memories attached to it. So I think there is a way in which personal memories get attached to objects and places. And as I've been going to Paris for years now, decades, I have favorite street corners, I have favorite window displays, favorite views. And just by dint of going again and again and again, you develop more touchstones. And the city ends up really being comprised largely of touchstones for personal memories as well as, you know, big collective memories for all of the huge historical events that have taken place in Paris.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: I've heard people who have. I feel like there's a residual energy off the objects they collect for souvenirs. Somehow it pulls them back to their memories and their past. Is it like that for you with your miniature Eiffel Tower?
[00:08:15] Speaker B: A little bit. I mean, it's almost as if certain objects have an aura to them. That's almost more true with things like photographs, where you might have recognizable people in the photographs, but certainly in these more impersonal objects as well, since they are in some way connected through this long concatenation of events. And having been in particular locations, been in your hands at various times, I think there is something really quite almost magical about them.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: There's a humorous episode in your memoir involving a human waste discovery in your building's garbage area. This incident sparks a large reflection on community dynamics and privacy in Parisian apartment living. How did this discovery challenge your perception of life in Paris?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so I should mention that I have a condo in a condo building in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It's not a very touristy place, and for rather bizarre reasons, I joined the condo board. Most people hate serving that.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Well, talk about that, how did you.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Get on the board? Well, I was at the annual meeting, and they were looking for volunteers, and everybody else stepped backward, and I wasn't fast enough, like, thrust into this role along with six other people. And I have to say, it's just been fascinating. Life is more private in France in general than it is in the US and in Paris, perhaps more particularly. And serving on a counterboard means that you get to crack that building open and you discover all of the small dramas that are taking place within it. So the episode that you referred to where, let's say, a kind of a body is discovered in the building and that we need to discover who left it there and what the particular conditions were, it turns into a situation where the bat signal goes out and the condo board has to come together, and I get to work with these other wonderful people in the building, and we start tracking down the culprit.
And then in the course of that, we do discover that there are different senses for sort of cultural differences, I guess, for how individuals will look at issues such as privacy. So in one major cultural clash, I, who thought that I was, like, so fully immersed in the French way of thinking, I suggest that I have the perfect solution for figuring this out. And I suggest that we need a surveillance camera. And the room went dead quiet.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: That was too invasive.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: That was too invasive. So in France, there are different sorts of guidelines for what privacy means and how that needs to be respected. So I learned that that was an area where I needed to back off.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: There's a technique you call fake it and wait as a way of navigating unfamiliar linguistic and cultural territories.
How did using this approach influence your broader experience of adapting to life in France, especially in blending into the Parisian milieu.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Fake it and wait is a wonderful technique. And I don't just use it in France. I use it everywhere. I use it in my everyday life. In Eng, it basically means bluffing your way through. And if somebody tells me something and I'm not sure that I've understood, but I think maybe I should have, there's a way in which you can sometimes delay a little bit and hope that whatever they said kind of comes around again and you get another bite at that apple.
And it's a little risky, right, that you think, if I give it another minute, probably I'll pick up on this. But a minute goes by and then 2 minutes and 3 minutes, and you're still not quite sure. And pretty soon you've dug yourself into this deep hole where you're 15 minutes into a conversation. You have no idea what's going on.
So I think that Fake it in wait is a pretty useful technique that people use in foreign language, maybe more than they do in their native tongue. But it's risky. You need to be cautious about how you use such a powerful weapon.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Have you ever been caught trying to use this weapon?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: What's happened?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Well, you just. You suddenly you just lose face. Right. Because you've been pretending that you really understand what's going on first.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Recognize this is a fake conversation we've been having.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: In the chapter grand finale, you discuss endings and transitions, both personally and in the context of living abroad. Can you elaborate on how you approached the idea of endings in Paris and how they reflected the larger shifts happening in your life at the time?
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So I should mention that this book, the thrust of it is that it has to do with how one rebuilds one's life after suffering a loss. So toward the beginning of the book, I. I am dealing with my wife, who is on the road of early onset Alzheimer's disease, a road that leads to only one place.
And once she reaches the end of that road, I'm left with the big question of what to do now, how to rebuild myself. So that chapter that you referred to has to do with the last trip that I took with her to Paris, thinking that it would be a great idea, that this would help to anchor things. It was, of course, like, the worst possible idea.
And at the same time that it was tragic, it was also sort of tragically funny at various times, the kinds of mistakes that I made in the course of this.
It does mark an ending. And in fact, the first Part of the book is called the End. The book is in three parts. The end, the middle, and then the third part is the beginning.
So that marks the end of that particular time of my life. It also marks the end of a particular experience of Paris that had been a joint shared experience for some decades.
And it also marked, although I didn't know it at that point, the end of my ability to return to Paris for some time. Because in the interim, Covid struck, and at the beginning of the next part, I have to return to Paris under that more blighted kind of environment and try to rebuild, start rebuilding my life at a time that the city was trying to rebuild itself. Yeah.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: If you're just joining us on the program, I'm talking to Scott Dominic Carpenter about his new book, Lost and Memoir of Love.
The experience of being in quarantine brings its own set of challenges and revelations. How did the COVID lockdown change your relationship with Paris? Did isolation provide new insights into the city as it happens for you?
[00:15:15] Speaker B: It changed so many things. One of the things that it changed was that people that I'd known for years picked up and left. So Paris was a very difficult place to be during the lockdowns that they had.
Paris is a very densely populated city. People live in very tight quarters, and it was difficult just to get out and circulate. Even to walk your dog, you had to fill out a kind of an affidavit. So some friends whom I'd known, and I still know, of course, for I've known them for decades, picked up and left, moved out of the city permanently.
Lots of shops and restaurants closed.
And what happened was that I found a kind of vacancy in the city that I'd never seen before. Really reminded me of a ghost town. Bit by bit, it started coming back to life, but it changed the way that people interact in terms of space. Like French people tend to stay stand close together when they're speaking, closer than Americans. They couldn't do that. Famous ways of greeting one another, such as the bees, the quick sort of kisses, the pecks on the cheek, that kind of thing became verboten. And it was really fascinating, but also troubling to see how people were adapting to this. It was a challenge for everyone.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: A ghost town evokes imagery of emptiness and absence. How did your experience of walking through the deserted streets of Paris alter your perception of the city? Did it make you feel more connected to it? Did it make you more acutely aware of the passage of time?
[00:16:57] Speaker B: So the experience of seeing empty streets In Paris is highly unusual. People don't understand how densely populated Paris is. It's more densely populated than New York, than London, than Shanghai. It's very densely populated in normal times. And that means that what you see outside your window, I mean, my condo looks out on a little square and I see people passing by. There are all sorts of small little dramas. You feel that you've got this view into the lives of passersby.
And in some way I find that fascinating. It's food for the imagination.
You intersect with the stories that they are in the process of living. And to find the city empty, void of that in certain parts of the city and at certain times was stunning. The people often speak of the beauty of Paris architecturally. Right. It is quite an attractive city. But for me, it's always been about the people. And to lose the people and lose some of the small, charming, rather anonymous little encounters that you have in everyday situations was a great difficulty.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: You draw parallels in one chapter between cinematic portrayals of Paris and your own lived experience. Personally, my earliest exposure to Paris was from watching Amelie. And as a result, part of me still believes in a city full of whimsical imagination, like the main character. How did the gap between the idealized Paris of films and your real life Paris affect your relationship to the city? Did you ever find yourself playing a role to fit in these cinematic imaginings?
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Well, I suppose we're all playing roles at various times, but it is striking. I mean, this notion of the representation of Paris in film is peculiar.
I think Paris stands alone as the city that everybody knows before they've ever gone there, more than any other city. And it's almost entirely attributable to what they've seen in the movies. So many movies are set there, so many places are representing it. And they're not just representing Paris. They're representing a picture, particular idea of Paris that is idealized, romanticized.
And a film like Amelie is an interesting example because at the same time that it is an idealization of the city, it's also. It sort of playfully undercuts that a little bit.
For me, what I really enjoy is the non cinematic parts of Paris, the things that are not as photogenic. And the area that I live in, in Paris is one that tourists come to. So if you look at a tourist map of Paris, they often have divisions in the 20 arrondissements with little icons for each one. And they'll say, oh, the 7th has got the Eiffel Tower, the 14th has the Tour Montparnasse. When you look at the 13th. It usually has nothing more than the date the map was published. And that's where I live. There's no reason for tourists to go there. But I have nine bakeries within five minutes of my place. I've got 11 pharmacies, I have several cinemas. It's a wonderful, wonderful place to live. And what it is steeped in is authenticity.
That's the kind of thing that I try to bring to the surface in the book.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: I want to talk more a bit about this. The chapter of French Dough touches on your interactions with Parisian commerce and the daily ritual surrounding money. How does your experience with navigating French transactions, What do you think it says about the cultural values tied to money compared to the United States?
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Well, there are two parts to it. One part is the money. The other part is just the bureaucracy. In the chapter that you're talking about, I'm simply trying to make a withdrawal from my bank and through a kind of catch 22, it turns out that I need to get a code that I can only get if I actually had the old phone number that I no longer have. This leads me into a multi day adventure of trying to be able to withdraw a little bit of money.
The.
Yeah, so I think that's more revelatory of the red tape that is just part and parcel of French life. I mean, there's a reason that bureaucracy is a French word that has been imported into English. There are of course, huge differences between the way that the French think of money and Americans think of money. But one of the things that comes to mind for me in the context especially of COVID was how money disappeared.
Almost nobody was using liquid cash anymore and everything was going onto bank cards so that even beggars in the street were struggling because nobody had coins to give them.
This was a major transformation in the city and that we all had to adapt to.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: In Scaredy Cat, you explore moments of fear and uncertainty. Can you describe how living in a foreign country has either heightened or alleviated those feelings?
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so the Scaredy Cat chapter is in some ways engaging with fear and dread in a very literal sense. Right. Because it has to do with my pilgrimage of sorts to a cemetery in Paris. But I think think you're right to signal that there's something else going on there. That there is something both exhilarating and terrifying about being in a foreign culture. You're never quite sure what's going to come around the corner.
In a way, that's a good thing. I think that Paris in particular is a Kind of machine for generating surprise.
And I. I put a high value on that. I think surprise is really a wonderful feature, sort of an aesthetic feature. But, yeah, not all of the time. There are certain surprises that are not always welcome.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: First time I went to Germany, I landed at midnight. My luggage, I had some. I luggaged that was going to be checked. Didn't retrieve it when I landed, and I was horrified. I was trying to get to where my Airbnb was, but at the same time, it was exhilarating being in the city and going into it, and it was a weird combination of feelings that came over me.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's partly because what really connects us to a place in a culture is when we have problems, right. The really smooth experience that people have, sometimes going to certain cities where everything is done for them, and all you do is get on and off the bus and you look at this and you look at that, that's one thing. But when you have a problem to solve, that really engages you off the air.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: I'll tell you a long story. When I was in Portugal and landed in Lisca, we are almost out of time here. I think I have one or two more questions here.
You focused in one chapter on the symbolic and literal signs you encountered in Paris. How did these signs, both written and unwritten, help you navigate the city? And were there any signs that particularly stood out as moments of revelations or clarity during your time in Paris?
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Yeah, Paris is full of signs. Right. It ends up being a kind of almost an allegory that you're walking through.
Signs can be delightfully misleading. I sometimes think of a statue that is in the Orsay Museum of a beautiful woman who is looking coyly, alluringly at the observer, and she's got her hand on her chin.
And as you start to turn around the statue, take a step to the left, you see that, in fact, that's not her face, it's a mask, and that her face is tipped back, her head is tipped back in a kind of wail of grief or remorse.
And I think, in a sense, that's the way that signs work in Paris, that you see one thing, but then if you step to the left or the right, you're going to see something else that suddenly shifts and that invites this further reflection, that maybe if you step further to the left, further to the right, you'll see something else again. So it's really a place of shifting signs.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: In the final chapter, you reflect on the idea of losing and finding both Paris and yourself. How did this duality shape your overall experience? And do you feel like you ultimately found the version of Paris you were seeking?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah. The great irony is that I dump on certain images of Paris, especially the highly idealized vision of Paris as a city of love, this romantic idea of Paris. And yet, toward the end of the book, I'm seeking that myself and I explore some of the sometimes humiliating experiences of dating in a foreign country. And. But it does ultimately lead to an uplifting ending. And I think that I found not just myself, but also a new vision of what the city has to offer.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: This has been my time talking to Scott Dominic Harper about his new memoir, Paris Lost and Found. Scott, once again, thanks for being on the show.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Thanks so much.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: And now this.
