Go to Paris
Paris will make your knees buckle. Especially if your flat is on the sixth floor with no elevator.
“The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.” – T.S. Eliot
I just got home from a most transformational trip. Paris cannot be overestimated. Everyone is out breathing in life (also a bit of secondhand smoke) and it felt like I didn’t need to sleep.
Yes… the flowers are fake. But the visceral energy on these streets is oh so real.
Have you ever indulged in fantasy for so long that the reality could only be a disappointment? That was the risk I felt I was taking when I booked our trip to France. I’ve traveled a lot, and every time I travel I come away refreshed with a new perspective. But Paris loomed big on my bucket list. All of my heroes walked the streets of Paris. Their paintings live in Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou, and the Louvre… I wasn’t sure if I was ready to meet them firsthand. It felt safer to hold them securely in my mind without risking the disillusionment that so often accompanies Hero worship.
But instead of falling from grace, my heroes delivered in a way that I could never have imagined. They became real to me for the first time. Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Lautrec weren’t just derelicts revered by art history for trying something new and pushing the boundaries of what were the cultural norms. They were alive, they walked the earth, and they were human. It was that humanity that I saw in their work when I stood in front of it. I saw the brushstrokes and realized that they were searching just like I do. What made them heroic wasn’t the “masterpieces“ that they created. It was their willingness to take a risk. Not every one of their paintings landed, but at this point, no one cares. We give them the credit for showing up, and that has secured their place in our history.
What I came away with was an inspiration. All of us have dreams and many of us disregard those dreams as fantasies. Fantasy can never be undone because it never exists, but the reality is so much sweeter. I felt the most alive in Paris when I had my sketchbook out, when my Easel was set up, when I was kissing Naomi in the rain after a late-night glass of bordeax. When I was doing my thing. The best artists in the world stumbled through life just like you and me. They just continued to paint their way through. We don’t need to measure up, we just need to do our thing.
What thing have you been afraid to do?
What’s the worst thing that could happen if you did it?
What can you do to make your work real for you?
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