Paris
I don't know how to write this to you

All the times I thought of you
All the times I wanted that life
The night, the room, the stairwell in September
The view of the rooftops

There was this song, blue like you
I had the impression that it spoke of summer nights, the deserted city
That it was like in that advertisement from the eighties
The boy leaves his room on the top floor through the rooftops
He meets a girl before nightfall and I wanted that life

I thought about it in the summer, in the house in Tarn-et-Garonne
We came back from the pool, there was chlorine on the bath towels
And I thought of Paris, blue like you

I don't know why you had that effect on me
Maybe because of all those movies
Talking in a car, late at night
With Mireille Perrier like in A World Without Pity

Love in the Afternoon, The Disenchanted, The Discreet
End of August, beginning of September
Love stories in the fog
End credits on the boulevards

François Merlin types a book on his typewriter
It's the afternoon
The rain drips down the windows
Later, I found the address of the apartment from The Magnificent
Seventeen rue des Tournelles
I waited for someone to open the door
And I photographed the stairwell
Without Jacqueline Bisset

I found all the addresses
The courtyard of Domicile Conjugal
The café from The Lonely Girl on rue d'Amsterdam
Haussman Boulevard at 5 o'clock
The songs of Yves Simon, the pages of Simenon
You contained all of that

You also contained someone, Solange, my grandmother
She had kept the apartment on rue Marcadet
Above Square Carpeaux, where my mother spent her childhood
Sometimes, we came to see her on Sundays
We had lunch, I watched cartoons
I played a little in my mother's childhood room
And then we left

Once, my cousin Thomas told me
That he had set off fireworks for her
By spending the night over the gates of the square
And I never knew if it was true
I don't talk to him about it, I'm too afraid it didn't exist

My father had written a song
That talks about the beginning of my parents' love story
The song is called Paris Elsewhere
It evokes their first dates in the eighteenth district
The Pont Caulaincourt
There were expressions in the song that affected me
"Dark green square and gray boulevard, at Guy Môquet the blue of the evening"

We lived far from Paris, a hundred and twenty kilometers away
Near a forest and I loved it
And I loved hearing them talk about Paris, in the evening, living elsewhere
As if it was a wonderful amusement park
A strange and impossible party

In the entrance hallway, there was a poster
For an exhibition at the Orangerie Museum, January 23 to June 17
One day my mother told me
"If you want to know what my adolescence was like
You can watch Diabolo Menthe
I was from the same generation as Diane Kurys at Jules Ferry High School
All the teachers we see in the movie, I had them"

On Sunday evenings, at the end of the 7 on 7 show
We saw cars on the ring road in transparency
Parisians returning home
And I thought of my cousins who lived in the Paris suburbs
To François who was three years older than me
Who went on trips to Parly 2 with his friends
And who bought postcards of Robert Smith at Soho
The Paris suburbs, it was already Paris

I went to study in Rouen
I started writing songs
And to put something other than Rouen street names
Often, I transposed
Rue Beauvoisine became rue Saint-Séverin
Sometimes, I came to spend a day in Paris
I went to Passage Jouffroy, Passage des Panoramas
And then to the Jardin des Plantes
I watched the flamingos and the Gabon viper

In my last year of university, I did a master's degree on Truffaut
And to gain a day at the very end
The professor who supervised my thesis
Suggested I drop it in his mailbox
Rue Burq above the Abbesses
I made the trip, I climbed the slope and I dropped the envelope

When I walked down the street, I had finished my studies
I thought of François Truffaut and his collection of miniature Eiffel Towers
One day, later, I would put one on his grave
Not far from rue Burq

In Paris, there were still some song boxes
With not great digital keyboards or tired upright pianos
The Limonaire, the La Mainate theater
I sang in front of people who were eating at the same time
And I loved knowing that

I slept where I could, I also liked that
I did an internship in a publishing house
And I met a group of intimidating girls
They drank white wine
And they knew the metro map by heart
I met Hélène, I lived in the fourteenth district
I met Virginie, we lived on Boulevard Barbès
Rue André del Sarte, Rue de Bellefond, Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple
I had two children, two boys from Belleville, two Parisians

Paris
I don't know how to write this to you
All the times I thought of you
All the times I wanted that life
The night, the room, the stairwell in September
The view of the rooftops
Paris

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