Sunday, February 08, 2009
Oh Champs Élysées.. Oh Champs Élysées.. au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi, ou à minuit, il y tout ce que vous voulez au Champs Élysées.
One of the singular events--singular in the sense that it was tied to nothing else--that happened in grade nine was when a frenchish group came to the school. They were young kids, possibly from Québec, and it was the single pathetic attempt to give us something fun to do; it must have been thought that we would relate to this. The music was a mainly new québecois pop punk. At one point, some of the girls who seemed to be part of the group but served no heretofore realisable purpose came down onto the gym floor (as all events, they were on the stage, we sitting on the floor--and 'we' were sitting apart from the rest of the kids). The one who wanted to dance with me (and Carr) couldn't have been older than 16, and looked québecois: she had that nose, that ass, and that long brown hair. We were timid, embarrased, horny, too cool or a combination of all of the above, whatever, and we didn't (couldn't?) get up. As with all assemblies (I use the term in a loose sense here to remind myself what it really was; just as team building inservices go at work, but I digress) we were better than everyone else and our choice of position with respect to the rest of the kids had to be accompanied by the appropriate attitude. We were fools however, since getting up to grind that girl--which was what we both wanted, you only had to look us up and down once to find that out--would have caused more mayhem, panic, and general unpunishable dissaproval than any other extravagant plan that failed to get off the ground. Again, I digress.
The one song that has always stuck in my mind is, although I didn't know it at the time, a cover of Joe Dassin's Champs Élysées. It was, as noted, done in as a loud, punkish cover. Ben concluded that the guy who was singing (he did the whole "set") must have been crazy. In fact, he was entirely crazy, but only in the sense that we could wholly appreciate.
The singularity theory fails when I tell the rest of the story, but in true grade 9 contradictory fashion, it is also made by what follows. I had to stay after school that day to have a meeting with the assistant principal. It was felt that, as president, I wasn't doing my part to communicate clearly with the admin. I remember being upset at how stupid this was: I was going to go in, lie, and it would be a waste of an hour, and nothing else was new. When I was collecting my thoughts (see: lies) outside after everyone else had left, the pop punk outfit was wheeling their gear out the gym's side door. I stood, watching from shouting distance, probably thinking about how it might still be possible to contact the girl. When the guy came out wheeling nothing, instead packing a tin, what Ben had said became factual.
Today, like all great music, the lyrics still resonate at innapropriate times inside my head. There is still some great irony in hearing sung the simple idea of having everything you want, when at a time in my life we had none.
One of the singular events--singular in the sense that it was tied to nothing else--that happened in grade nine was when a frenchish group came to the school. They were young kids, possibly from Québec, and it was the single pathetic attempt to give us something fun to do; it must have been thought that we would relate to this. The music was a mainly new québecois pop punk. At one point, some of the girls who seemed to be part of the group but served no heretofore realisable purpose came down onto the gym floor (as all events, they were on the stage, we sitting on the floor--and 'we' were sitting apart from the rest of the kids). The one who wanted to dance with me (and Carr) couldn't have been older than 16, and looked québecois: she had that nose, that ass, and that long brown hair. We were timid, embarrased, horny, too cool or a combination of all of the above, whatever, and we didn't (couldn't?) get up. As with all assemblies (I use the term in a loose sense here to remind myself what it really was; just as team building inservices go at work, but I digress) we were better than everyone else and our choice of position with respect to the rest of the kids had to be accompanied by the appropriate attitude. We were fools however, since getting up to grind that girl--which was what we both wanted, you only had to look us up and down once to find that out--would have caused more mayhem, panic, and general unpunishable dissaproval than any other extravagant plan that failed to get off the ground. Again, I digress.
The one song that has always stuck in my mind is, although I didn't know it at the time, a cover of Joe Dassin's Champs Élysées. It was, as noted, done in as a loud, punkish cover. Ben concluded that the guy who was singing (he did the whole "set") must have been crazy. In fact, he was entirely crazy, but only in the sense that we could wholly appreciate.
The singularity theory fails when I tell the rest of the story, but in true grade 9 contradictory fashion, it is also made by what follows. I had to stay after school that day to have a meeting with the assistant principal. It was felt that, as president, I wasn't doing my part to communicate clearly with the admin. I remember being upset at how stupid this was: I was going to go in, lie, and it would be a waste of an hour, and nothing else was new. When I was collecting my thoughts (see: lies) outside after everyone else had left, the pop punk outfit was wheeling their gear out the gym's side door. I stood, watching from shouting distance, probably thinking about how it might still be possible to contact the girl. When the guy came out wheeling nothing, instead packing a tin, what Ben had said became factual.
Today, like all great music, the lyrics still resonate at innapropriate times inside my head. There is still some great irony in hearing sung the simple idea of having everything you want, when at a time in my life we had none.
