Of Vincent and St Lazare
So I was walking around the gallery with Vincent, and after a while I plucked up the courage to ask “Vincent, tell me, are you real or just a figment of my imagination?” He looked pensive for a moment before replying “well I know as much about you as anyone - that you like to ride on steam trains and take a long fast sledge ride towards fields of white that seem to go on forever. I know that you like your stout not too cold and your bourbon not too warm and of course I know about St Lazare.”
“Nobody really knows about St Lazare” I interjected. He looked a little hurt and we continued to walk. We stopped again in front of the Miro, which I didn’t much care for, but that is where we stopped.
“Tell me then, should I go back? Would it mean anything?”
Vincent smiled and fixed me with comforting eyes, “that is where everything ended and everything began, of course you should go back.”
Vincent always seems to be around when there’s alcohol involved, at least when there’s copious amounts of the stuff. Now alcohol and I go back along way and we have a weird and dangerous relationship. I know it’s weird and dangerous and I’m pretty sure alcohol knows that too, though she never really mentions it and neither does Vincent.
Alcohol offers me a different perspective, a little like those councillors I had back in ’91. I look at the angel candle and I think - well I can’t light that ‘cause the first thing to melt is gonna be her head and that’s just too scary. Alcohol explains to me that the cats understand everything and that they appreciate well constructed verse and a cool beat. Alcohol turns 4am into a magical time of buzzing creativity, bridge burning and wondrous positivity, and Vincent, always Vincent.St Lazare was where Paris and I really started our affair, after all I was really a child until that moment, and when I left that station I guess I was some kind of adult. There are no photos or recordings though that time has been recurrent in my dreams for these thirty one years and it remains vivid and tangible.
Something of London died around the same time as my dear uncle John. The beautiful black horses that pulled him on that final ride from Mornington Crescent also drew a veil over the London that was and it’s never felt quite the same since. There are still little corners I love but I don’t feel connected in the same way I did – from my childhood walks to the comic shop in Camden on a Sunday afternoon through to The Lo-Fi Louge at O’Reilley’s in Kentish Town, the poll tax protests and the lottery fuelled exuberance of the arts Council years. Being the last act to perform on the final night at Bunjies Coffee House – living history, making history – a city not only to experience counter-culture but to soundtrack it, march with it and fund it! Still, I always have Paris. It was around 1996 that I stopped off at St Lazare alone to see if she'd changed and if she'd remember me. June 21 - Fete de la Musique day, time for a little adventure! I guess I left around 6am - I had a schedule of sorts, and that began with breakfast in Calais. I sat outside a cafe somewhere in the centre of town and watched a stage being primed and members of a brass band saunter in to the
square and begin unpacking and testing their horns. I never got to see the band in full as I had to get my next connection which would bring me to Paris in time for lunch. Trains and stations you see - windows and doorways to experience, enlightenment and exotica.
In Paris I stopped at a café near Gare du Nord for a baguette fromage avec du vin rouge et jazz cool. I think I took some notes and photos that day but not as much as intended, instead deciding to simply bask in the bohemian journey – to breathe it, smell it taste it – all far more important than recording events. From there I took the bus to St Lazare. I turned the corner to greet her, and she smiled beguiling and blinked in the early afternoon sunlight – she remembered.
It was of course different, our relationship changed – a visitor rather than an inhabitant – but still so familiar, strangely welcoming. This had been a station of kindness – café owners who gave bread and coffee with no expectation of remuneration, street girls who shared their cigarettes on a slow night and Algerian peddlers fresh in town with hope in their eyes and a warming smile. Never judged for the meagre amount of remaining centimes or the developing holes in the trouser knees – just a fellow with temporary residence and nothing to give but a smile and some conversation.
It was a fleeting return as another train beckoned to take me to Coutances where I would surprise my Norman friends and bar hop through folk, rock and jazz haunts ‘til the wee hours. We talked of nights past and enterprises to come, of absent friends and of course music.Back in 1981 my stay at St Lazare had lasted about a week – my Magic Bus ticket to Athens my only possession of any worth, born again beatnik poet citizen of the world, just passing through.
Photos 1,2 & 8 - Holga 135. Photos 3 & 7 Holga 135 Pinhole. Photos 4, 7 & 9 Olympus Digital.
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