Conversations: When France Stops Being the Main Story

Betty Carlson has lived in France for thirty-six years. I have been here for four. Somewhere between those two points is the moment when France stops feeling like the subject of your life and becomes the place where your life is happening.

What a great conversation…

Beef: Betty Carlson has lived in France for thirty-six years; I have been here for four. We talked about language, belonging, bureaucracy, changing friendships, small-town France, and the point when France stops being the main story and is just becomes where your life happens. This is a lightly edited version of the original Live, with the technical fiddling removed.

Betty

Betty writes France in Between, where she travels through France’s small and midsized towns, follows regional histories, and pays attention to the places and details that tend to disappear from the usual picture of the country. Our work is different, but we share an attraction to the odd detail, the thing hidden in plain sight, and the story that complicates the flatter, more marketable version of France.

background

We talked about learning French and the moment ordinary conversation stops feeling like a test. We talked about the difference between admiring France and romanticizing it, what happens to friendships over decades, why clubs and associations are not an automatic route to belonging, and how a country can slowly recede from the foreground of your life without becoming any less important.

bureaucracy

We also talked about French bureaucracy, Minitel, changing social habits, climate, small-town life, and Maïté preparing a dead ragondin on television, because naturally we did.

better version

The original Live began with a stubborn technical failure and uneven audio. This version has been edited a bit to remove dead time, balance the voices, and make the conversation flow. I left the rest mostly alone. It is still loose, funny, sometimes wandering, and honest about the fact that neither arrival nor belonging happens all at once.

One of the most important moments came when Betty said that, after enough years, France becomes the backdrop for everything else that happens in your life. Work changes. Friendships change. People leave. Parents die. Communities shift.

The country is still there, shaping all of it, but it is no longer the only story.

That may be the clearest definition I have yet found for what We Live Here Now is becoming.

—k

You can read Betty Carlson at France in Between.

And you can subscribe to We Live Here Now as well!

After enough years, the country is no longer the only story. Work changes. Friendships change. People leave. Parents die. Communities shift. France remains present, shaping all of it, but daily life becomes simply daily life.

“The quality of our daily lives is really where so much of our life is actually defined.”

Not a francophile?

I am not so interested in the exported version of France where it’s all charming, beautiful and superior…? What I have developed is something slower and I hope, more durable: respect, admiration, curiosity, and the recognition that the quality of our ordinary daily life here is very good.

Betty’s bullshit meter

“People say nobody asks you about your job in France. That’s a myth. I call bullshit on that.”

She was also skeptical of the standard advice that joining clubs and associations automatically makes friendships. Associations can be useful. They can also become small political states with factions, petty grudges, rivalries and an awkward end-of-year dinner. I skipped the one at a place I had volunteered at all year.

Musical coda

Comme d’habitude - Claude François live in 1975

Just because it came up and because it has just wonderful period lighting effects and a fantastic light funk march with updated orchestration for the era. You can bask in the ego, but Cloclo could belt.

I miss the starburst filter…

My way - Claude François, live 1977

And yes, Cloclo also covered the English version of the song - and My Way & Comme d’habitude could not be more different, lyrically.

That is a man in a velvet suit sitting on a velvet sofa with satin cushions and a polyester tie. I am sweating just looking at his performance.