All text copyright Stephen Coates 2006 - 2015

LOVE AND DEATH IN PARIS

I will be in Paris on Valentine's Eve  - playing with the The Real Tuesday Weld at Le Comedy Club . I am looking forward to it especially as we have already released a live album 'recorded in London on Valentine's Eve 2012,  the last night before the apocalypse'  This album was beamed back to us in a dream.  Assuming the dream was metaphorical, as many are, that the Mayans or whoever it was got it wrong and that we are still all here on the 14th, I intend to spend Valentine's day in the City of Love at Pere Lachaise  - which is of course in fact a rather wonderful City of the Dead.  


I've always associated love, death and dreams together.   I guess true love is a kind of dying (une petit morte as it were) to one's ego and hence something to be both feared and desired in equal measure.  To paraphrase Mark Twain: I have always loved life so I hope I shall love death.  That is one of the reasons we made Catherine Anyango's artwork for the aforesaid album as a real life blank Last Will and Testament form.  You can complete this for the benefit of your loved ones if you haven't done one already (most of us, unable to contemplate the idea of our demise, have not). 


Personally I find spending time thinking about my own inevitable end a useful prompt to love my friends and foes rather better.

I hope to meet you at our Paris show or perhaps at one of our shows in Gent, Brussel or Alsace that proceed it  but if I don't, above is a song on the theme at hand - it is a demo and rather ragged so forgive me for that. And, so as not to get too sentimental, here is Woody Allen on the matter:

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.” 

See you on the other side then?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I wish! Alas, I am firmly stuck on my side of the Atlantic.

I do love Brussels, with its golden Belle Époque cafes (Le Metropole is a favourite.) You are fortunate to live so close.

I am also in the process of planning a 48 hour excursion to Paris - the catacombs + Pere Larchaise are already on the itenerary. Please say bonjour to Oscar for me and tell him that I'm coming for him.

Wow, that just sounded dirty.

Empress Cixi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Empress Cixi said...

Love & Death, Eros & Thanatos...
Dreams guide us as intuition does through life.
When you think about your end, what do you see ?

clerkenwell kid said...

I used to have premonitions of a car crash but I hope it will be sitting on the lawn by the river at the little house in West Wales in late summer - and with a gin and tonic in hand..

Empress Cixi said...

Haha ! with a gin tonic ! it is a very zen picture. (With a dandy touch). Then, the sun tells goodbye, and angels says hi !
(oh, and never think about your fears, or you'll make them happen)