ACB in Paris 1994
Angela here. Thanks so much for visiting!
My entrée into the world of art was a genuinely mystical one. I'm a writer and musician primarily, and the very first song I ever wrote, "The Slow Club," which ultimately became the title cut of my debut jazz CD, is about a jazz club in Paris. At the time I wrote it, a very young thing I was, I'd never been to the city of lights. A few years after writing it and performing it around town, I was singing it at an L.A. supper club one evening, and a woman with a French accent came up to me afterwards. This was the exchange:
"I enjoyed your song very much. It makes me think back with the fondest of memories to my days at the Slow Club."
"I'm sorry, I think you're thinking of a different club ... this song is fiction. But thank you for the compliment."
"Oh, no. The Slow Club in Paris, France, oui?"
"I ... really don't mean to press, but I swear to you I made the club up. I got the name from "Blue Velvet," a movie that takes place in the Midwest. I'm just a storyteller, and I guess I have this romantic fixation for Paris."
"And I am telling YOU, mademoiselle, that I have many times been to this place you sing about. On Rue du Rivoli, right down the way from the Louvre. I would say that is some pretty powerful fixation."
My jaw was officially dropped, as I continued singing my song around town, telling this story, and relishing in my, and my song's, spooky allure, even if I wasn't completely convinced this total stranger wasn't merely having her fun with me. Until I finally made it to the city of my dreams for the first time ever, and looked up the Slow Club in my tourist guide book (this was before the internet was at everyone's fingertips for instant information). And there it was, with a Rue du Rivoli address, as promised.
The first chance I got, I went to this place I thought had been conjured in my head. But the mind-freak did not stop there. As I walked in, every single detail I describe in the song was personified before my eyes, from the winding staircase that takes one down into it below street level, to the smoking blue ambiance that invited secret rendezvous on those stairs.
Today the Slow Club no longer exists. It's now an electronica club for Millennials. And that's all right, as for everything there is a season. But how blessed I was to have been able to experience this portal of magic before it went the way of old memories. I simply stood there, grinning from ear to ecstatic ear at the marvels of life, the marvels of my life, and decided I must've been that Slow Club chanteuse in another lifetime, simply recalling pockets of memory from a long-dormant nether-plane.
Thus began my journey as an artist, and carrying with me at all times the mysterious wonders that art simply begets.
XO et merci,
Angela