I passed September 2008 to July 2009 in Lyon, France, studying the language and the culture. The year passed me by, and though I failed to record it as it happened, I've decided to remember it through photos. One photograph conjures up one hundred memories and at least ten narratives. This is a backwards-looking diary, driven by visual prompts, which more often than not are blurry photographs.
On the left is my apartment by night. It was located in Vieux Lyon (the medieval quarter), on Quai Romain Rolland, facing the Saône. My window is the farthest-right of the three above the sign. Those glowing letters, whose light is hot, and makes a buzzing noise, conjure up in my memory an infernal smell of brimstone, mixed drinks, and vodka sweat. The sign is that of the Menestrel, a nightclub that the Petit Paumé—the annual guide to the hotspots of Lyon—described as being "where Mom and Dad go for their night on the town." I peeked inside once, and here are the fleeting sensations that remained in my mind when I removed my head from the doorway:
1) A vinyl couch.
2) One (1) disco ball.
3) Air heavy with the traces of thumping subwoofers.
4) Gilded mirrors.
4) A checkered dance floor.
Living above the Menestrel was a blessing because it reduced the monthly rent by at least 50 euros, possibly more. In everything else, it was a freakish thing. A friend of mine referred to it alternately as "ta boîte pourrie" and "ta boîte de merde." I have no doubt that they varied the songs in their repertoire, but from the second floor you would not have been able to tell, because the beat was always the same. If you were in the kitchen the forks would actually dance, which was a neat party trick. If you ever forget where your internal organs are all located, having them vibrate at the same frequency as the bass of an 80s house track will remind you handily. I once noticed that the club's WiFi was open, and their entire music library was actually shared. I got about five seconds into something from the "electro breakbeat trancecore" folder (or some such) before one of my flatmates ordered me to shut it off.
The music took about a week to get used to. After that, you could sleep. The music was not the problem.
No, the problem was the clientele.
Seeing as my window was right above the door of the club, all of the comings and goings, all of the loudness, all of the dregs of a night of clubbing, all of the things the bouncer refused to let happen inside the club—all of that was distilled into a party that rocked all night, and that was what was under my window. Usually the fights, mewlings, hyena laughter, caterwauling, and primal bellows were in French, but occasionally you'd get an American tourist, which was very jarring, because after a long time of having the fine screen of a language barrier interposed in between people's speech and your understanding, having someone holler something in English felt like the insult was being beamed telepathically into your skull. It was especially surreal when the drunken American speech act was this:
"Fuck you and your nasty-ass, tuna-fish smelling cunt!"
How do you even say that in French? "Je t'emmerde et j'emmerde ta chatte dégueu qui sent le thon!"? It makes no sense. It makes no sense. I'm sure there's a way of conveying the sentiment in French, though. I'd stake my life on it.
Possibly the height of tragicomic horror-hilarity was when my French flatmate and I returned home around 1 (not that late, especially for the clubbers, who are Level 2 nocturnal, operating after the bars have closed) to find two mecs, drunk as skunks, in the hallway of the apartment. We managed to pass them, and no sooner had we gotten into our apartment and locked the door than the guys followed us up and began ringing the bell. My flatmate reacted in a lepine way, freezing and telling me to be quiet. I don't know why she didn't just call out, "Nobody's here!" Hasn't she every seen any cartoons? The next morning we were aghast to find that the two jagoffs had not only left a pile of garbage in the hall, but had smashed up a whole row of mailboxes too. A hell of a thing.
The apartment itself was wonderful, a medieval building situated on one end of a traboule, which is a stone passageway a bit like an alley, except that it goes through buildings instead of between them. The other end of the traboule opened up on the small cobblestoned street Les Trois Maries, which was nested in between Romain Rolland and the main thoroughfare of Vieux Lyon, Rue Saint Jean. The traboule was excellent for getting from the Rue des Trois Maries to the quay and vice versa, except that at night the Trois Maries end was sometimes policed by a Very Serious Apartment Guardian who, like a geriatric French Billy Goats Gruff, would deny you access to the traboule, telling you in no uncertain terms to Go Around. "But I live here," I'd tell him. "17 Quai Romain Rolland. I live on the other end, in this apartment complex. This is my traboule too!" "Faites le tour," he'd insist. So I'd bide my time and come back when he was gone, even though it might have taken less time to go around, because, God damn it, I wanted to go through. It was quite excited. The two ends were linked by a large oblong court, open to the sky, with dusty stone and a defunct fountain and sometimes a bicycle.
Pretend you're walking on the red footbridge. You're heading east, leaving Vieux Lyon and entering the presqu'île, the peninsula (literally: "almost island") that juts narrowly down from the north, lying in between the Rhône and the Saône and coming to a head at the Confluence, where the two rivers converge. The presqu'île is very narrow, so much so that if you stand on one of their wide boulevards (say, Rue Grenette, the thoroughfare you hit immediately if you cross Pont Maréchal Juin, the broad white bridge just north of the passerelle. My apartment, by the way, was located in between these two bridges) halfway in between the two rivers, you can see both—and straight on to the other side—Vieux Lyon and Fourvière to the west, easily recognizable by its glowing 2/3 Eiffel Tower (known as the Tour Métallique, but more on that later) and basilica, and the Plaine to the east, easily recognizable by its sprawling and, frankly, unprepossessing commercial district, the Part-Dieu, home to what is easily the ugliest skyscraper I have ever seen (more on that later, too). So you're heading to the presqu'île (someone had such a keen love for the geography and logistics of the passerelle that they spraypainted "VOUS ENTREZ EN PRESKIL" on the right-hand passerelle railing, oriented towards the other bank, in large red gauzy letters). The first photo is what you see. The second is what you see when you turn left, to the north—the hills of the Croix-Rousse. The third is what you see when you turn right, to the south—the stony Pont Bonaparte, with the unseen Confluence somewhere off in the distance, beyond Pont Kitchener, beyond the Autoroute du Soleil, beyond the maze- and UFO-like Perrache train station/bus station/metro station/auto thoroughfare. Perrache is an eyesore and more or less unnavigable. An untended, long-abandoned rooftop garden remains on top.
