new site!!

Hello one and all!! I am pleased and proud to introduce to you....(insert drumroll here)

thebarettes.com

At long last, our business cards will no longer read: myspace.com/thebarettes

we have a WEBSITE!! so faites un tour, cliquez, écoutez, commentez yadda yadda yadda

The Cord

He had maps around his room

On the walls and on the ceiling

Of the places that he would have liked to know.

There was a moat around his heart

And sometimes he got to feeling that he’d know when it was time to stay or go.

Cause watching windows, making plans

Telling time by tiny hands

On a clock whose hour is set by only you;

That just won’t do.

(So) you’ve got to:

Fly out the window

Run for the door

These places that you knew

They don’t know you anymore.

Get out those wings that you’ve kept hidden

Gonna need them when you’re sittin’

On the edge of that cliff n’ scared to jump…

(When your heart goes thump)

On a wooded path of brown

On a cold September Sunday

He stopped to look around among the trees.

There was a cord that kept him tethered

It was long and it was weathered

Bound to places that he thought he’d never leave.

Now his heart is whisperin’ to him

From the hollows of his chest

“Listen to me please” (I know you best)

It’s times like these

You need to:

Fly out the window

Run for the door

These places that you knew

They don’t know you anymore.

Get out those wings that you’ve kept hidden

Gonna need them when you’re sittin’

On the edge of that cliff and scared to jump…

(When your heart goes thump)

But if you’re in the mood for fleein’

While it’s dry, before the puddles start to form,

Don’t you ever stop believing

That those puddles weight you down

Your reflection always shakes before the storm

The air is rushing in now from that open windowpane

And the maps have started whirlin’ round the room

Everything’s the same now, only one thing’s missing

It’s those wings and a certain sense of doom

They left this room

When you:

Flew out the window

Ran for the door

These places that you knew

Didn’t know you anymore.

Got out those wings that you kept hidden

Needed them when you were sittin’

On the edge of that cliff and scared to jump…

(When your heart went thump)

"....with the brightest sounds..."

My grandmother had a toy record player that played 'The Blue Danube Waltz' and she used to sing along to it while it tinked and dragged over the little metal bumps that made sounds when the needle passed over them, like a giant music box. I can still remember sitting on her living room floor in the warm yellow sunlight of an Indiana afternoon, closing my eyes and imagining standing on the banks of that river.

"Hey Gran" I asked, with my eyes squeezed shut, spires and bridges and cathedrals beginning to form behind their lids, "....do you think it's really blue?"

"I don't know," she answered, "I've never been...but you should go find out and come back and tell me..."

"I'd like to..."I think to myself now, twenty years later,

though now I'm going to find out more than just the color of the Danube...but I guess she already knows that.

this time of year...

always makes me want a big old east coast house with white columns and a chair on the porch and two ears of corn tied to the outside light on a wide wide street with trees and trees and red and yellow trees where a little car could drive up and let my family out. they could climb the two stairs to the front yard and the three stairs to the front door. i could take their coats and put them in the guest bedroom. bustle bustle bustle...wine and juice and jazz and "did you get your hair cut?" and "would you like a cracker to tide you over? the turkey is going to be another twenty minutes at least (i know how you get when you're hungry)" and "how is school?" and "do you like your new job, apartment, assignment...", "how was the trip?", "do not eat all of the pickles", and "what are you reading, making, listening to?"

and in this sweet house people listen to the answers...

it makes me want a big long table and old dishes to serve things in, and an oven for roasting and windows for fogging and a fireplace for poking and a rug to play jenga on, chairs to tell jokes on and guitars in the corner for anyone who wants to play. floppy place cards and just the right silverware and kids mixed in with grownups. and if you looked under the table you could see feet moving and restless at different speeds, to different degrees, some swinging and some swaying and some still, and their hands, the same...

gold and green and burgundy and mustard yellow. tweeds and tartans and wool. stockings and corduroys and brown leather, warm rosy-cheeked conversation. laughter and the scraping of knives and forks on china...a long walk after dinner and a nice chat on the porch for everyone else...

maybe not next year, but some year.

and this morning i stalked through the wet leaves and thought of these things and was just thankful for the trees and the river and brown leather and corduroy.

o garance!

well garance,

now you've done it. thank you very much. i keep toggling between this extremely long and boring court document that i am supposed to be translating and your blog:

which i didn't know about.

which i should have known about a long time ago.

and now, instead of sitting contentedly at my desk on the second floor of my office building watching the steady drizzle of november paris rain, i am considering charging down the street to colette or up the street to chanel, or around the corner to maria luisa just to slobber on the windows...i even have half a mind to take my phone to the tuileries across the street and take pictures of the passers-by and make witty comments about the way they are dressed.

not so long ago i was photographed in the street, sylvie and i were leaving a fifties brocante near bastille. i had just purchased a pair of beautiful christian dior glasses, bottle green with blue trim, no lenses, i was wearing them and i felt like a fashion star for a day (though i do still regret having finished my hot dog before she photographed me, i think it would have added a lot to the image...less precious).

anyway, every once in a while i am reminded that my life is just ever-so-slightly less glamorous than i would like it to be. when i try to block out the sound of the electric drill across the street, when i drink my senseo from my pink moomin mug every morning, when i accidently answer my cell phone: "cabinet d'avocats bonjour" or when the postman asks me if i'm "feeling sick today mademoiselle...?" these are the times when i wonder what i am doing with my life.

and then i remember that last weekend, after we finished our concert and danced until 5:30am i stayed in my little bed all day and when i awoke and threw my vintage raw silk balmain jacket with the poet collar over my pajamas to buy bread it had just stopped raining and i crossed the bridge from île st louis to île de a cité and the little man who sits at the end of the bridge was playing his accordion, calderon de la barca would have been in agreement, so would the 'row, row row your boat' guy and lewis carroll for that matter:

"life is (but) a dream",

i thought in that moment;

and it is.

I still don't quite understand how,
the door shuts.

Perhaps the human heart has only so much room for things.

Perhaps it has a breaking point, boundaries and moats and limits.

This heart might have many walls and no windows.

It may have towers and turrets and forests to hide in, walk through.

The doors to this heart may not be clean and straight.

They may be craggy and weathered, keyless and dark.

But there may be curtains too, in this heart.

Curtains that let some light pass, curtains that can be ruffled with a breeze,
a breath.

Velvet curtains with cords for raising and for lowering,
made for marking the beginnings and endings of stories
told there on the heart's stage.

There may be slides and rafts and great plains and endless expanses where
the forgotten things roam;
where the forgotten ones go.

And the heart may receive visitors every so often.

Visitors who sit and are still and who are warm and familiar and who belong.

Visitors who roam and stalk the stage and the plains, who dare adventure there,
and who go to places that you had not dared to go
visit;
inside your own heart.

Some must be shown the exit,

the door,

the curtain.

But perhaps these visitors cannot leave once they enter.
Perhaps new divides are made to hem them in,
to keep them safe;

to keep us safe from them.

Perhaps they huddle there close together in the great seabreeze that blows through this
heart's ocean, on tiny boats or on this heart's ferry which travels between the many places a
heart holds.

Like the great white ferry we took.
To come here.
To find you.
To find out what was in your heart all of these years.

looking in

we were sitting in the window of a top floor apartment in the 10th

we were watching the people, people must have been watching us

and then, from across the courtyard and three or four floors below...i saw something

something oddly timed and perfectly lit

just the light from the television at the end of the bed, a white and blue filmy light, like a Hopper painting

and then a woman, arms dangling at her sides, grey hair dangling on either side of her face.

she was dressed simply and timelessly:

a long grey skirt and a long navy cardigan over a white blouse and grey slippers

she shuffled from the doorway to the bed where she knelt and leaned forward like a teenager watching her favorite program

then, two minutes later, she rose again and left the room.

she must have done this ten times, all in a perfect and unnatural rhythmn.

and then we noticed that light was on in the next door window

a man sat naked on a bed, leaning slowly forward and backward, touching his toes

and then he began to dress, very very slowly, a perfect counterpoint to his neighbor and the two of them were playing together in harmony and totally unaware of one another

once his pajama bottoms were on, he pulled a sock from a drawer beneath the window

he stretched it carefully over his right foot and stood up and sat back down

the woman entered and exited the room again and again, back and forth

and the man pulled another sock from the drawer and put it on and stood and sat

and then he opened and shut the window three times, we were suddenly afraid he would look up

but he didn't

he twisted from side to side and touched the window lightly and sat back down to put on his night shirt

i wonder what my neighbors see...