Arrive Singing at Les Folies Bergère

Chère Kellie La Merveille, 

I stopped singing the dirty Delta blues. I hope that I have found some resolution between the sheets. I am tired of chasing dreams. I want to put a spell on him because he is mine, didn't Nina once soulfully moan all that jazz? He is mine for now. I am his always. I stopped stabbing the keys, just a gentle tap, a léger tinkle.

The lady on your postcard holds a letter close to her heart, the caption reads, ‘La Lettre Brûlée. Elle est brûlée. Ah c’était fou!’ Translated it says, ‘The Burnt Letter.’ She is burned. Oh it’s madness! I hope you have not burnt all my raving mad postcards.

I can hear the joyous laughter, cackling and youthful uplifting singing of girls leaving Les Folies Bergère théâtre.

This man of mine seems to be always singing Gainsbourg and his song and tune he hums is, ‘Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais’ (I just came to tell you that I am leaving). Alone I sing like Gainsbourg and Boris Vain's song, ‘Je Bois,’ (I Drink). Like the blithering-blind-drunk young man from the night before. It took him a half hour to navigate my street hardly 500 metres in length. In his drunken stupor people turned on their lights from all floors of these eight storey Haussmannien apartment buildings. Asking him to be quiet, as if that could contain him, I guess it was nearing midnight. I felt sorry for his girl, who could not quieten him or hasten him. I laughed to myself as he sang in his slurred French vocal stylings.

Perhaps I am singing more the likes of darling Ella (Fitzgerald), her and me together, ‘Sippin’ Black Coffee’. Love’s hand me down brew, and from one o’clock to four all we do is talk to the shadows then pour. Never knowing a Sunday in this weekday room.

Without your voice, I suppose nothing is possible, and you are bound nowhere. The lesson from the imbibed gentleman from the night before and his noted appearance on my street, late night on Rue de la Boule Rouge, the only sound to make is to arrive singing.

We must all sing if just for ourselves, to ourselves as we all hold a song in our heart of hearts. Let it be it the low down blues or a hypnotic schizoid scatting number to hopefully sing the world back into vivid being. A choir of solemn songs creating a soundscape that gives the universe a soul that has a rhythm, that beats like an animal skin drum in line with our own heartbeat.

This city can show itself to be beautiful in the sun but oh what the sunlight masks. However I am just a bleeding-open-wound-paper-cut in this postcard town, I rang this city it answered the telephone and called me here. Although it can be mean spirited and however how cruel it is, I am still keen.

I draw open the curtains leaving them wide apart on the fifth floor so all of the ninth arrondissement can see that I have company tonight; so all of Opéra and the people of Les Grandes Boulevards know that I do not sleep alone tonight.

Love,

Fayroze.