Posted by on Oct 18, 2015 in Blog, Culture |

Here’s a piece I wrote a couple of years ago for Advance’s Roaming Writers. I still agree!

http://advance.org/articles/notre-dame-bof-wheres-the-jazz-jam/

Notre Dame? Bof, where’s the jazz jam?

Ruby Boukabou Photo Sarah Bouillaud

Ruby Boukabou Photo Sarah Bouillaud

by Ruby Boukabou

I’ve never been much of a sight-seeing tourist. During my first main stint in Paris in 2005 (to complete my Masters in Theatre), before I realised that even Parisians aren’t expected to know every bump in the city, I would hide my Paris Pratique in my coat pocket, regularly stepping into random side streets to squint, scrutinise and memorise the directions. I preferred to be splattered by large drops of rain in a dubious alleyway under a flickering street lamp than to appear like a tourist on the boulevard.

I was never one for the major attractions —a jazz club in a questionable part of town rumoured to have a great blues jam, a small theatre I’d scored a review ticket to for Paris Voice, an artists’ workshop in Bastille for an interview with a puppet maker, these were more my style–but on the way I would invariably stumble across the better-known sights: the neon-lit Moulin Rouge in Pigalle, the Sacre Coeur in Montmatre, a shimmering panorama of the city and the Eiffel tower, the Pont Neuf crossing the Seine. And the view was so much the sweeter.

Each summer the tourists roll into Paris and snap and pose and eat overpriced crepes, and as I dodge them in the backstreets of St Michel, munching down a dirt cheap but terrific Vietnamese, en route for a rehearsal, I glimpse in their eyes a search for emotion and authentic experience in exotic locations. And I feel fortunate. Maybe for some it’s enough, getting a Perfect Picture with the amazing Parisian October light or buying a book in the famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop where Hemingway used to hang, but personally, I need active, creative engagement in a place to feel alive—in both work and play, travel and daily life. You could call it a condition.

Meeting an Australian writer for a soup and a sauna at the Bain de Paquis in Geneva is great, but taking a camera in to share the experience makes it more fun. And strolling home from the edit suite at 2am through the old town with the clocks echoing in the deserted cobbled streets , I can enjoy the romanticism of the moment and trip back in time because I’m creatively awake. (http://www.rubytv.net/2010/02/a-soup-and-a-sauna-at-the-bains-des-paquis-geneva/)

There are certain qualities in my travelling outlook that I have grown to appreciate as being quite Australian. I drove from Geneva to Genoa for the G8 in 2001. Well, for a seaside weekend that ended in a G8 adventure. On the first night, high on the salty air after six months in Switzerland, I was making my way down an interesting looking alley when the English guy I was with pulled me back and whispered sharply, ‘You don’t know what’s down there!’ I tried to explain that that was precisely the point.

While I loved Carrie from Sex and the City for being, despite all her neuroses, witty and curt and independent, the episode where she travels to Europe lost me. Here is this apparently funky, cultured thirty-something writer in an amazing hotel by gorgeous streets in sunny Paris who, when left alone for a couple of seconds, shrivels and calls home in a panic. Any Australian writer I know would be in a state of euphoric freedom. Why didn’t she just pick up a copy of Lylo or Pariscope and attend one of the hundreds of concerts, plays, jams, exhibitions or dance performances, lose herself in a colourful local market, wander the boutiques of Montmartre or go to a bar and talk to someone? Anyone. Supposedly, she was in love and shattered. Bof I say.

The Australians abroad I have been interviewing over the years have more often than not had a contagious sense of adventure, an openness to new experience and an expansive sense of humour. They’re up for having fun but they also work damn hard. They understand irony! They’re also spontaneous. And they’re mostly very down to earth. Whether or not they know who I am or who I am reporting for, I have found my Australian creative subjects to be generous, open and easy to work with. I feel privileged that they are so willing to open up and share their dream and fears, exploits and insights with me and my audiences. Other artists will respond to interview requests with, ‘It’s possible, can you organise it with my agent?’; Australians tend more often to shoot back with, ‘Sure, let’s meet at the Majestic for a cocktail,’ or, ‘Come backstage after the show,’ or, ‘Here’s the address and code for the party, let’s talk there.’ That’s more my style. Now …. who’s going to Cannes this year?

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Ruby Boukabou is an Australian writer, producer and performer currently based in Paris. She reports on travel and culture for various media worldwide. Ruby has produced/presented for the ABC, Ruby TV and Paris Voice and written for The Australian, The Diplomat, Limelight magazine, Screen Hub, The Geneva Times, Inside Film and many other magazines, newspapers and zines. Ruby holds a Master in Theatre, was the co-artistic director of Melbourne SynchroCity and is the founder and director of Ruby TV (www.rubytv.net)