Samuél Lopez-Barrantes's Blog, page 2

Viktor Frankl Taught Me How to Exist

Next week, I’m headed to Vienna, the birthplace of Viktor Frankl, an existential psychoanalyst who managed to practice therapy as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Despite losing most of his family to mass murder, Frankl survived multiple concentration camps and went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning, the most optimistic humanistic book I’ve ever read.

Frankl’s Logotherapy can be translated as “meaning” (logos in Greek) therapy, and given the times we’re living in told we’re living in (the endless death-screen is very real), it feels fitting to reconsider some of Frankl’s theory before I head off for an adventure in Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Munich.

preamble

Over the past months during a busy Paris walking tour season, a whole lot of Americans United Statesians have expressed a renewed interest in learning about the Nazi Occupation of Paris fascism.1

Often, when I speak to clients about the history of Nazism,2 I’m asked, “What surprises you most about what’s happening today?” and my answer is always the same: “What surprises me most is that we’re still surprised.”

Alas, since we as a species can’t seem to stop voting violent bigots with inferiority complexes into power,

it feels pertinent to reflect upon how Viktor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, believed we can be better … but lest this become a treatise on how obviously idiotic, infuriating, and all-too-human animalistic the autocrats all over the world are behaving, here are a few concise bullet points about what I think, because at a certain point we all of us have to define our lines in the sand:

The deliberate, systematic, and repetitive bombing of the world’s largest and longest-lasting ghetto the occupied Palestinian people is, at best, a contemporary definition of ethnic cleansing, which is a more academic term for what it really means: genocide.3

The state of Israel exists, and of course I believe in its right to exist, but the question, “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” is idiotic. Nobody aside from religious extremists on the other side says that Israel should disappear from the map. On the contrary, Israel’s current administration does believe in the erasure of the Palestinian people.

The state-sponsored perpetuation of fundamentalist ethno-nationalist ideologies peddled by the likes of Netanyahu Trump Hamas Modi Putin has led to the mass death of human beings since time immemorial.

Donald Trump is an uneducated, bigoted kleptomaniac a doofus who I’m unsure is intelligent enough to understand he is actually a white supremacist, and the Republican Party’s cowardice and many United Statesians’ veneration for chauvinist billionaires will go down in history as the reason why the US empire is crumbling.

When governments begin to use words like “mass deportation,” “paramilitary,” “plain clothed,” “holy war,” “chosen people,” “black site,” “deportation center,” “illegals,” “invasion,” “pacification,” “eradicate terrorism” and a long list of other dehumanizing words that pit “us” versus “them,” they are exhibiting textbook signs of fascism.

With these points in mind, according to Viktor Frankl, we still have a choice a responsibility in how we respond, which brings me to Part I of this three-part essay.

Part I: The “Freedom of the Will”

There are three tenets to Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy:

The freedom of the will

The will to meaning

The meaning of life

“To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” Viktor Frankl4

The “freedom of the will” is based on the notion that human beings are not free from life’s conditions, but we are free in how we respond. Unlike the two other major Viennese schools of psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler), Frankl does not believe that psychological, environmental, and biological conditioning processes solely determine the human condition.

Sigmund Freud spent most of his life peddling the idea of the “pleasure principle,” suggesting that most people seek pleasure and avoid pain. In his later years, he argued for a different kind of binary, suggesting a simmering psychic tension between good Eros (love) and evil Thanatos (violence). Alfred Adler came next, rejecting Freud’s theory of the “will to pleasure” and proposing what he deemed the “will to power,” i.e., the human need to sublimate our inferiority complex by pursuing power within the context of what he deemed “the social feeling.”

But historical context is important, and while Freud, Adler, and Frankl all lived through one of the most violent eras in human history,

only Viktor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

After witnessing the brutality of World War One (20+ million dead), Freud watched his daughter die during the Spanish Flu (alongside some other 50+ million human beings) and witnessed the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany before he he was diagnosed with jaw cancer in 1923 (no wonder he spent so much time theorizing about pain).

Similarly, Alfred Adler grew up during the rise of nation states, and thus was convinced humans need to overcome a deeply ingrained inferiority complex. One need only look at Alfred Adler’s childhood, however, to understand why he believed humans feel so weak: he got run over by a car twice when he was a boy, watched his brother die next to him when he was three years old, and spent much of his childhood in bed with rickets and pneumonia (woof).

Viktor Frankl’s simple point is that the traumas we experience do not dictate the entirety of our psyches. As is symptomatic of any fully developed human brain, rather than outright rejecting the ideas which preceded him, Frankl synthesized Freud’s and Adler’s theories to suggest that while “the will to pleasure” and “the will to power” are aspects of the human condition, these drives reside in the animal, not human, dimension—Frankl’s “will to meaning” thus completes the triptych.

In Frankl’s view, the evolved human being doesn’t simply want to have pleasure or be powerful, but rather to have reasons to experience joy and feel accomplished. To this end, regardless of personal circumstance, Frankl suggests human beings have the unique potential (not guarantee) to be self-determining. Unlike animals, which are entirely subject to their biochemical makeup and environments, what makes us distinctly human is our ability to transcend our animal nature by assigning a multitude of meanings to our existence.

“The uniqueness of man, his humanness, does not contradict the fact that in the psychological and biological dimensions he is still an animal […] being human [is more] than being a pawn and plaything of conditioning processes or drives and instincts.”

While Frankl’s predecessors reduced the human psyche to a “nothing-but-ness,” pathologizing patients instead of treating human beings, Frankl acknowledged the reality of the psychic, chemical, biological, and environmental dimensions, but never accepted them as an exhaustive explanation for existential malaise what makes us human.

This is the crux of the “freedom of the will”:

the human animal, Homo sapiens, may very well be concerned with power > weakness and pleasure > pain, but Homo patiens, the suffering human, is concerned with fulfillment over despair.

While we are capable of transcending our conditioning processes and environments, there is no guarantee (as we’ve seen throughout the world today since The Beginning). The human animal is pushed by the Freudian “pleasure principle” and an Adlerian “will to power,” but we also can choose to be pulled by the “will to meaning,” which will be discussed more deeply in Part II of this essay.

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PS: If you’re curious how all of this relates to the current political moment, you can either read The Requisitions or check out my 4-part essay on “The Origins of Fascism,” which analyzes Freud, Adler, and Frankl’s theories in the context of Italian fascism in the 1920s.

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One anecdote I’d be remiss not to mention: a Nazi Occupation tour client who openly stated she voted for Trump told me at one point: “I have an illegal working for me. She’s very nice.” I politely smiled and corrected her obtuse language, “So you mean you have someone working for you who doesn’t have papers? So what happens if ICE comes to your door?” “Oh, I wouldn’t let her go! I love her. She’s so nice.” My smile widened. “Well, m’am, whether you like it or not, you are now officially part of The Resistance.”

2

I went through an MA studying the psychology of genocide and an MFA studying historiographic metafiction, both of which ultimately resulted in my latest novel, The Requisitions, which is set in 2024 and Nazi-occupied Poland.

3

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s definition of genocide: “Certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

4

All quotes in this piece were taken from Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006)

The Paris Writers' Salon No. 9

“The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living. Life is tradition and human nature […] England has the disadvantage of believing in progress, and progress has really nothing t…

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Au Revoir, 11 Rue de la Roquette

Invitation

You are cordially invited to the last house party at 11 Rue de La Roquette. Door Code 5555, 1st stairwell in the corridor, top floor to the left.

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The passage of time has always been a slow one for me. Many people are convinced that time moves too fast, but I’m inclined to believe the opposite: time moves at an alarmingly acceptably slow pace.

For reasons that escape me, I’ve never felt that life speeds by at a fever pitch. I don’t feel like time is ever slipping through my fingers, which is why proverbial phrases like it feels like just yesterday don’t make sense to me, because even yesterday feels like long ago.

Suffice it to say, it feels like multiple lifetimes since most of my life has happened, which is why only a stream-of-consciousness style written while sitting in this now-empty apartment can hope to preserve the most memorable, fleeting, and disparate memories of Rue de la Roquette.

2

I met the owner of this apartment, a generous and jovial Irishman named Damien, through a mutual friend on a Parisian terrace in 2013. Damien and I laughed a lot on that fateful night, which is why, after the dinner, I invited him to a Parisian apartment party across the river.

The party was at Henry’s, a filmmaker whom I haven’t seen in years. He lived in a shabby building next to Saint Michel on the sixth floor, a chambre de bonne, and in the bathroom on the landing, there was a circular porthole looking out onto Notre Dame. I remember peering out at the Parisian night and the glowing twelfth-century cathedral and feeling so damn lucky to be alive in Paris, and just a few hours later, at the party, I met a gorgeous Parisian artist (let’s call her Céleste) who liked the way I played harmonica and asked for my number.

That night, Céleste slow danced coyly with my statuesque Greek friend, Loretta, and although it didn’t take place in Roquette, it remains one of the most sensual memories of my early Parisian life. Céleste would soon become the second Frenchwoman I’ve ever loved, but immediately another Roquette Memory is rushing back to me, and this one is of a far less romantic tone.

3 Roquette’s Formerly Red Hue

During my early years in Paris, when I was poor, I often lugged my dirty laundry fifteen minutes from my 13m2 apartment in Place du Marché Saint Chatherine over to Roquette to use Damien’s washing machine (avoiding paying the 2.50 Euros at the laundromat meant I could afford 2.5 more coffees each week). The memory comes from the fall of 2014, when I was waiting for my laundry, sitting on the sofa with Céleste, having just received an email confirming that I was going to become a published author (Slim and The Beast, Inkshares, 2015).

At the time, Céleste was unsure of where her life was leading, and I remember her face when I told her that my dream of being published was going to happen, and that I might even get to go to New York City to do a reading. Céleste broke down in tears, apologizing profusely, insisting that I should go—but you can come with me, I said; no, I can’t afford it—and she knew this would happen, she knew sooner or later she’d just become a burden and would prevent me from achieving my dreams. Consoling her there on the sofa at Roquette, holding back tears instead of popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate the theretofore most important moment in my writing life, what I remember most about that moment is the way the sunlight burned red through the burgundy curtains, spilling a blood orange onto the hardwood floor.

4 Aaron and I are Twins.

A happier memory now: during the early Roquette years, when Damien still spent time in Paris, he often had a small group of men over to drink cheap beer and play board games (usually interminable games of Risk, which allowed us to fight over insignificant borders and conquer small worlds). Once we were sauced enough to venture out into the debaucherous streets of Roquette, we ventured into the dive bars of Rue de Lappe and Rue Daval, usually ending our alcohol-infused debates about literature and post-colonialism and language at a bar called Objectif Lune.

Later, in 2019, my twin brother moved to Paris to join our indie rock band, Slim and The Beast, which at the time had enough momentum (and motivation) to begin touring in Europe. The fastest way to summarize that artistic chapter is to say I reached the zenith of my musical career at Paris’ Zenith Arena, where we played a 5,000-person show the day before the world shut down. Without a home to call his own, and after six weeks sleeping in my 18 m2 apartment up in Belleville, moved into 11 Rue de La Roquette, which would be his home for the next year.

5

What I will remember most about 11 Rue de La Roquette is the life my wife partner Augusta and I built in that glorious duplex apartment.

We moved in on March 29, 2021, thirteen months after we met on Leap Day, 2020. I almost remember the first steak meal we made together, but I’ll certainly remember Augusta’s eyes and the way she smiled at me at our new life in Paris:

I’ll remember the countless parties we threw in the 29m2 apartment, many of which had no business being as big as they were (you didn’t hear it from me, Damien), and I’ll remember our first Christmas Tree, and the late-night glasses of wine to lubricate the impromptu piano recitals, and the many, many beautiful artists who passed through our home between March 2021-April 2025, and the many people who slept on our couch and enjoyed more illicit activities on it, too.

I’ll remember sleeping beneath the slanted, foam-insulated roof of the loft upstairs, particularly those sweaty summer nights when we had to sleep downstairs because it was too hot to make love beneath the ceiling.

I’ll also remember that winter weekend Augusta and I got food poisoning after buying a bounty of fresh vegetables at the market, and how we splayed out on the L-shaped sofa, which we covered with tan, soft linen sheets, and how we recuperated for days playing Hogwarts Legacy and ordering a lava lamp for comfort because Augusta also had one when she was a kid.

6 Photo by Augusta Sagnelli

And what of the memories beyond the white windows, looking eastwards towards the Hotel Bastille? I’ll remember the teenage girl with Down syndrome who lived in a small room with her family, and the way she would wave at us in the evenings. I’ll also remember peering out at the screaming streets below at the nexus of what was once the drunken nexus of the universe, Rue de Lappe and Rue de La Roquette, and I’ll remember the soccer hooligan chants and male screeching that on the heaviest nights lasted until four, five, six in the morning. I’ll remember promising myself that one day, I would sit at the window and become a vampire and write down everything I witnessed on Roquette, but alas, I never did.

Below, I’ll also remember the Phoenix d’Or, a quintessential Chinese restaurant run by a hard-working woman with too many children; I’ll remember the nouilles sautés and mediocre egg rolls and slippery wood ear mushrooms and cold Orangina and affordable menus and Thai beef.

One day, when I’m knock-on-wood old-and-grey, I’ll be thankful to read these words, to bask in the nostalgia memory1 of the security guards at Monoprix who shook my hand every time I entered the grocery store. Funny how the shadow of one memory reveals another’s silhouette: I’ll remember sitting at the kitchen window overlooking the Hotel Bastille, where a group of young men and at least one drug dealer without much ado about nothing often yelled at another group of young men—delivery boys—hanging out at the Monoprix on the other side of the street.

I’ll also remember the percussion-playing hands of the Dominican security guard who always smiled at us whenever we passed the épicerie, and I’ll remember the big red door at 11 Rue de La Roquette, situated next to the kebab shop where I barely ever set foot in, except for very rarely and late at night, when in our drunken stupor we’d have no choice but to imbibe in the mysterious meat, devouring our galette complète, sauce samouraï blanche in the apartment alongside a 1000mg of Doliprane, which to this day remains the best hangover cure in the city.

7

There’s probably more. There’s always more. But it’s time to go.

I’ve only been gone a few weeks, and Roquette already feels like a distant memory, though synchronicity has a way of keeping the past in the present.

If you take a left out of the Big Red Door of #11 Rue de La Roquette and walk twenty minutes up the hill, the street eventually dead ends at the main entrance to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Just a few doors down, on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, Augusta and I have found a new home overlooking the largest green space in the city. I’ve already written a few songs there. Life moves on and on.

“How easily a soul can leave a place,” my oldest friend said when I sent him this photo of the empty apartment:

“Man. What an era.”

‘Twas an era indeed. Merci, Rue de la Roquette.

ps: this week’s previously scheduled essay related to MFAs, publishing & gatekeeping will come next week. You can find a lot of fantastic op-eds about gatekeeping over at , which will also be sharing my essay in the next week(s).

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The Paris Writers' Salon No. 8

NOTE: the conversations picks up at minute 5:20. Before that, we talk about such philosophical subjects as the male skirt (I’m in the market for one if anyone has a link to send me) to lettuce in Jell-O and Jell-O shots in Paris, made by the one and only Parisian Queen of Pastries, .

Thank you to everyone who tuned this fine Sunday afternoon, and to my…

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on & on & on

Last night, and I sat down over a gin & tonic to wax & wane poetic about nostalgia. If you don’t know what The Paris Writers’ Salon is yet, well by god, here’s your chance. It’s quite simple, really: we sit down over a libation & chat about life, literature & all the rest of it.1

Birds are swooping outside my window as they sing towards the verdant canopy. I’m sitting in my our new apartment on the 6th floor of a Parisian building, overlooking the Père Lachaise cemetery. I can wave to Gertrude Stein. She’s somewhere back there, there, insisting that there’s no such thing as repetition, only insistence, and though I’ve only been properly moved into my new apartment for a few weeks, it’s already the homiest home I’ve ever known.

I moved to Paris in 2008 as a student and never truly left. The first apartment I lived in was 9m2 (96 square feet for United Statesians), and I have incrementally increased my leg-stretching space ever since.

It’s a tale as old as Parisian time: an artist trying to find their way out of existential obscurity in the City of Light, working English teaching jobs, drinking heavily, publishing a first novel only to become a glorified receptionist for four years (to this day, I haven’t a single interesting thing to say about stocks or wearing ties), struggling to finish my second novel while teaching at the Sorbonne, finally finishing the damn thing and publishing it, and so on and so forth, until here I am, back again in a new Parisian apartment neighborhood, the eighth Parisian home in 15 years, by my count, and what I suspect is already the most inspiring one I’ve ever known.

“A woman human must have money and a room of her their own if she is they are to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf

For the first time in my adult life,

I wake up with sunrise, and I cannot tell you what it means to wake up with the warmth of sunshine on my torso, but I can tell you I might just become a morning person.

Perhaps more importantly, for the first time in my adult Parisian life (17 years),

I have a room of my own.

For the first time in my Parisian life, I don’t have to find a café which influencers egomaniacs haven’t destroyed / find a corner of a large table in a public library. The walls are thick, too, which means I can compose music without headphones, can sing without limiting my voice, and can open the windows when the creative energies get too sweaty.

that sunlight though

In the new room there’s also enough space for ’s photography desk, from which she conjures magic, and while it’s a great fortune, joy, and inspiration to share one’s home with a fellow artist, after sharing a 29m2 studio for four years on one of the liveliest streets in the city, I cannot tell you how much it makes a difference, immediately, for both of us to be able to close the proverbial literal door and work on whatever we deem fit.

Lo and behold, having a physical space dedicated to creativity engenders creativity … who knew!

In the first two weeks of life here in my favorite part of the city (the 11th/20th), I finished one song that had been dogging me for years and wrote two new songs (one co-written with Augusta) that will become part of a full-length solo album once I find the right producer/recording studio for that adventure (those of you who dig me and my twin brother’s band, Slim and The Beast, will be happy to know we’ll be playing at Rock Bottles (18ème) on Thursday, May 22 circa 8:30pm for a night of harmonies and harmonicas).

And so all this to say, I’m back home, and it feels good, and I’ll be sharing a lot more music in the next months and short fiction, too, because I can now get back to working on the most important project, a new novel (here are a lot of reviews of my latest novel, The Requisitions), but speaking about writing a new novel is an exceedingly dangerous act and I shan’t give the Muses any reason to send their messages to those novelists writing diligently without hope, despair, or fanfare.

PS

Major thanks to the Dublin-based The Murder Capital, a post-punk band, for inspiring the above video reminding me what it means to stand for something—to stand for anything—by expressing their soul on the stage in unapologetic and radically authentic fashion.

Finally, in honor of vulnerability (once you’ve put on headphones and listened to the above video), last week I performed 3 never-before-performed songs in the cellar of the only bar in Paris I’ve ever called home (I know better than to tell you where it is), and it was quite cathartic not to be precious about such personal tunes (I can neither confirm nor deny that I got choked up rehearsing each of them countless times). Here’s to leaning into vulnerability. One of these days I’ll share the full version + the story of “Drifting Away.”

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The Paris Writers' Salon No. 7

It’s been a busy walking season in Paris. I also moved apartments and my bones are creaky, but that’s always here and there.

recently received an envelope filled with letters that he wrote back in the late sixties and early seventies, when he first moved to Europe.

For our latest fortnightly chat, we sat down over a gin and tonic to discuss nostalgia—th…

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The Paris Writers’ Salon No. 6

On Sunday, and I sat down to discuss religion. John was raised Catholic and I was raised agnostic, at best. Below is a piece of flash fiction that I wrote years ago, which somehow feels appropriate given this weeks’s rendition of The Paris Writers’ Salon about religion, individual faith, and sanctified pastries.

For those of you who are new here, every fortnight on Sundays at 6pm Paris / 12pm EST, and I sit down in his Latin Quarter apartment to discuss whatever we feel like live via Substack. Generally speaking, only paying subscribers can access the recordings of these conversations, but I’m feeling generous this week and also think this conversation, in particular, might inspire some folks out in the Great Beyond.

Previous salon discussions have covered writing biographies, daily life in Paris over the centuries, and independent versus traditional publishing. The point is to be casual about it because life in Paris in the spring, especially for literary tour guides, is extremely busy.

In other news, I’ve recently—as of four days—officially moved into a new apartment and cannot wait to write something that honors the space where I wrote my first-ever Substack post1 and where I lived the past 4.5 years.

Until then, enjoy our chinwag about religion in all of its glory and problematics, and a piece of flash fiction based on a true-if-you-can-believe-it story.

if not, Paris is a reader-supported publication. merci à toutes et tous who’ve been supporting this space since the beginning

La Religieuse“Hello? Who is it?”

“It’s me. I’m sorry I’m so late. Here are some religieuses. You won’t believe what happened. My uncle left the other pastry box on the bus. I’m distraught.”

“It’s really not a problem. There’s only two of us anyway. We don’t need more pastries.”

“No, it’s not that. Do you remember Tante Odette, the nice old lady with back problems?”

“Ninety-degree angle?”

“Yes. That’s her. She died yesterday …”

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Well, it isn’t. But, you know. That’s how it goes.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Well, that’s why I mention her. The funeral has been postponed. It was a bit complicated getting her back here because, well, she died in Belgium.”

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Is something happening in Belgium?”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing, I thought you were—sorry. Nevermind. It was complicated to bring her body back, though. We didn’t realize we had to repatriate the corpse.”

“Repatriate the corpse?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa. I didn’t know a corpse could be repatriated. I didn’t know a corpse could be de-patriated either.”

“Neither did we. They stopped us at the border.”

“Who did?”

“The border guards.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes. It’s not every day someone admits to transporting a corpse. I mean, it was embalmed—she was embalmed. It’s not like we killed her.”

“No, of course not. So what’d they say?”

“They asked if she’d been repatriated, and we didn’t know what that meant.”

“What does it mean?”

“I still don’t know. But we had to go back to Belgium. That’s why we’re so late. Thankfully, there was a crematorium open on the weekend. It was easy enough to explain.”

“Do crematoriums have walk-ins?”

“It turns out they do! The urn shop was closed though. These small European towns, well, on the weekend? Forget about it.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. There was only one place open on a Sunday, too, and it was Tante Odette’s favorite bakery.”

“Well that’s nice.”

“Yes. My uncle was beside himself, returning there without her. But we needed to transport Tante Odette.”

“You don’t mean a pastry box?”

“Yes, I do. Mind you, it was a nice box, made of wood, just like this one, and they wouldn’t let us pay for it. The baker was close with Tante Odette.”

“So what did they say when you got back to the border?”

“Nothing. The border guard recognized the pastry box and said he loved the religieuses, too.”

“What’s in that again?”

“Cream.”

“Ah, yes. I like the chocolate ones best.”

“Tante Odette preferred the custard. But after we got through, the car got a flat on the outskirts of Paris and so we had to take a bus to get back to the twentieth, and the funeral was supposed to be tomorrow but when we—”

“Don’t cry. It’ll be okay.”

“Not for Tante Odette it won’t. Given the ordeal, we ended up forgetting the wrong pastry box on the bus. The 69. Can you imagine? We called the transportation authority, but they didn’t find anything, which can only mean somebody took home an elegant wooden box of what they thought were pastries only to find—

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Come here. There, there. We’ll have a glass of red in honor of Tante Odette. She had impeccable taste. These religieuses look delicious.”

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Revisiting History

I’ve been clearing out my Bastille apartment because and I are moving up the proverbial hill (it’s also a literal hill) to a new apartment next to the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

We have views of a blooming canopy of green and the final corporeal resting places of Gertrude Stein and Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf, and for now I shan’t say more, but as I packed up the last of my books and documents into an overladen bag, I came across a handwritten message from mid-April 2019, which I wrote a few hours after the infamous Notre Dame Fire.

Below is the two-page document typed up in full, unedited, a primary source document of sorts—not only concerning my personal reaction to a historic event, but also why, for some reason, the historic fire conjured thoughts about re-writing a novel I’d begun years earlier and that I would ultimately end up rewriting in 2020 and publishing in 2024, that ole chestnut of historical metafiction called The Requisitions.

Notre Dame is Burning

I am sitting on the terrace of La Cantine de Belleville with an old friend who has returned to Paris because, among other things, she misses the city.

My phone keeps vibrating in my pocket. I do not respond. Few things in life are more important than sharing wine with an old friend.

After the fourth missed call, I answer my phone. It’s my brother, who is in my sixth-floor maid’s chamber apartment just down the hill.

“Are you seeing this?” he asks.

“Am I seeing what?”

At the very same moment, my friend, E—, responds to her vibrating phone, a slew of texts from family members who know she’s here in the City of Light. I don’t remember what she says, or what I say to my brother. Notre Dame is burning, my phone tells. Acquaintances send their condolences, send their prayers, are keeping me and Paris in their thoughts.

It’s a peculiar thing, history; and even a more peculiar thing, historical monuments.

“Sorry about your loss,” one friend tells me in a private Instagram message. I wonder what it is he thinks I’ve lost?

After watching the proverbial spire of French civilization crumble down in a fiery blaze (Michael Bay would kill for this kind of shot), E— and I put away phones and return to our meal—she to her fish filet, me to my rum steak with bearnaise, always bearnaise—and to more pressing matters like San Francisco rent prices and polyamory and the complexities and deceptions of modern love.

I recently listened to an episode of “Philosophize This” on simulation and simulacrum, The Matrix, and Jean Baudrillard, and I am thinking about the myriad places Parisians and smartphone users throughout the globe are experiencing this “horrific” event (according to the Guardian) and the “equivalent of nine-eleven” (according to a faculty member at the Sorbonne), everyone implicated by virtue of the robot in their pocket in a historical (and ahistorical) event that fell at a particularly calm moment in the global news cycle.

How else to explain the ahistorical notions of a “national tragedy” that shall (according to a pundit) “test the French resolve?”—ahistorical, as in lacking historical perspective, because watching a 1080p video of a burning Notre Dame on a smartphone doesn’t allow for some important context: mainly, nobody died; secondly, the building is still very much intact despite being 850 years old; thirdly, because the spire that has just crumble was the one that was rebuilt in the 19th century; the roof can be rebuilt; and did I mention that not a single human being died? The renovation of the 12th century roof and 19th century spire was the most likely cause of the fire, which is reassuring, in a sense, because they were planning to rebuild much of the cathedral anyway. But the symbolic meaning—ah yes, that is something different. We shan’t discount humanity and its symbols.

Many people mourning “the loss” of an old roof are the same people who choose to view it through a telephoto lens attached to a selfie-stick. The 2019 Notre Dame Fire, which will soon be translated into a Wikipedia page with a section devoted to conspiracy theories, is in reality nothing more than an anecdote in the building’s 856-year history. An important anecdote, no doubt, but I haven’t drinking my glass of wine, and me and E— are back on our phones, and we haven’t shared a meal together in six years, and so my Parisian history of mid-April, 2019 has less to do with a burnt cultural icon society that only tends to be reminded of collective solidarity when witnessing a monumental tragedy, and more to do with sharing a good meal with a dear friend.

When it comes to my own personal history, I wonder, which is more important? Responding to text messages and watching a compilation of amateur videos showing the partial burning of Notre Dame, or, despite the historical moment, putting away my phone to reconnect with an old friend over a glass of red wine?

if not, Paris is a community-supported publication

… a glass of wine. Yes. How important it can be to an individual’s history. I see it now: a glass of red on white linen. The man in a brown hat is there. I’ve seen him before. Who is he? I remember how I once tried to start this book: “When the sirens began, the professor was sitting at the Astoria Café.”

Why the Astoria? Because I know it really did exist. I don’t know this in the way I know Notre Dame is no longer burning, but I have read about the Astoria before, and I can imagine it stuck in time—or at least stuck in history—and I do not know why they’ve come to me again, Viktor, Martin, and Elsa, but now they’re here and there’s no use pretending they haven’t entered my mind for some reason.

Where did they come from? Who are their parents? Do I care? Why or why not? All I know is that Viktor has met Elsa on a Polish terrace. The year is 1939, and whether fact or fiction, their meeting holds the key to my understanding of that particular history.

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The Paris Writers’ Salon No. 5

Thanks to everyone who tuned into the live chat. Paying subscribers can enjoy the full recording … this one’s full of literary research tips and tricks. Carl Jung also makes a few appearances.

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Tomorrow, Thursday April 17, at 6pm Paris time (12 PM EST / 9 AM PST) via Substack Live, and I will be tuning out The Wicked Circus in favor of another rendition of The Paris Writers’ Salon. There won’t be any commercials or sponsors. Just a chat about life in Paris.