Today, a friend of mine showed me how to add videos to my postings, so now, finally, I can make ample use of this newly learned technology.
Joe Dassin's music is one of the major soundtracks of my childhood. More precisely, it is the soundtrack of our day long drives from Austria to the South of France. Every summer, my mom would fill up our car with suitcases, Austrian food and my brother and me to go visit her family in Marseille, where we would spend the summer. I have a vivid but somewhat condensed memory of those drives: the preparations beforehand (most important: we were allowed to choose our picknick food ourselves; always cookies, as you can imagine), the continuously growing heat during the drive, the stops at my parent's friends in Vevey and Grenoble along the way, the white rocks and dry bushes slowly emerging along the highway as we approached Marseille. I remember my mother's hands on the steering wheel and the look of her face in a quarter profile (I always used to sit behind the passenger seat). I remember the fights with my brother and my mother's hand reaching behind her into the air as she was trying to separate us without loosing sight of the road. And I remember Joe Dassin tapes played for hours and hours (and us singing along, of course, with our children's voices).
I guess picturing Southern French families outside around dinner tables for hours on end is sort of a cliché, yet, it is that what I most vividly remember about my summers in France: in my memory, they have all blurred into one, long, dinner with all my aunts, uncles and cousins and their various friends. Days passed on the beach; the obligatory burglary of the radio in our car. Excursions to the big shopping mall (Les Nouvelles Galeries) where my mom would buy clothes for us to last for the whole year (especially pyjamas! Now that I think of it: maybe that is why I like to wear them so much...).
It was the time when I used to tell people my second name because I was annoyed by the strangeness of my real name and people's weird reactions when they heard it. (Although I very distinctly recall an afternoon at the beach when I told a little French girl who I played with my real name; and also revealed the well kept secret that in my head, my name was associated with clouds [although I didn't even know the word for cloud in French].) It was a time when I used to think my brother had completely different and altogether unconnected faces, depending on his mood; it took me a while to put together in my head that he was actually the same person but with different facial expressions. It was a time when I didn't understand that the TV would play programms even when it was turned off and I didn't watch; and that the TV programmes in France weren't different to the ones in Austria because they were different TV sets.
One day struck out of the rest: my birthday, and every year I would get some - strongly wished for - equipment for my Barbie collection from my godmother (once being very disappointed because I got the Barbie camping car, which seemed like the most boring thing to me, but I knew that I shouldn't let my aunt know so I diligently played with it for as long as I was in France). It was a time when being separated from my mother for just one night was a catastrophe for me; I was struck with fear - nay: utmost certainty! - that I would never see her again (once I was so courageous to stay with my cousin for the night; I kept her awake until I don't know what time in the morning, until she finally pretended she was asleep to escape from my constant whining). It was a time when I learned to tell left from right with the help of the birthmark in the middle of my right arm. I had no sense of time; no sense of the future or plans - our departure always arrived as some sort of a shock for me.
I can't remember who said that childhood is the only paradise we can't be expelled from because it is always already lost, existing only in the past, in retrospect.
Joe Dassin's music is one of the major soundtracks of my childhood. More precisely, it is the soundtrack of our day long drives from Austria to the South of France. Every summer, my mom would fill up our car with suitcases, Austrian food and my brother and me to go visit her family in Marseille, where we would spend the summer. I have a vivid but somewhat condensed memory of those drives: the preparations beforehand (most important: we were allowed to choose our picknick food ourselves; always cookies, as you can imagine), the continuously growing heat during the drive, the stops at my parent's friends in Vevey and Grenoble along the way, the white rocks and dry bushes slowly emerging along the highway as we approached Marseille. I remember my mother's hands on the steering wheel and the look of her face in a quarter profile (I always used to sit behind the passenger seat). I remember the fights with my brother and my mother's hand reaching behind her into the air as she was trying to separate us without loosing sight of the road. And I remember Joe Dassin tapes played for hours and hours (and us singing along, of course, with our children's voices).
I guess picturing Southern French families outside around dinner tables for hours on end is sort of a cliché, yet, it is that what I most vividly remember about my summers in France: in my memory, they have all blurred into one, long, dinner with all my aunts, uncles and cousins and their various friends. Days passed on the beach; the obligatory burglary of the radio in our car. Excursions to the big shopping mall (Les Nouvelles Galeries) where my mom would buy clothes for us to last for the whole year (especially pyjamas! Now that I think of it: maybe that is why I like to wear them so much...).
It was the time when I used to tell people my second name because I was annoyed by the strangeness of my real name and people's weird reactions when they heard it. (Although I very distinctly recall an afternoon at the beach when I told a little French girl who I played with my real name; and also revealed the well kept secret that in my head, my name was associated with clouds [although I didn't even know the word for cloud in French].) It was a time when I used to think my brother had completely different and altogether unconnected faces, depending on his mood; it took me a while to put together in my head that he was actually the same person but with different facial expressions. It was a time when I didn't understand that the TV would play programms even when it was turned off and I didn't watch; and that the TV programmes in France weren't different to the ones in Austria because they were different TV sets.
One day struck out of the rest: my birthday, and every year I would get some - strongly wished for - equipment for my Barbie collection from my godmother (once being very disappointed because I got the Barbie camping car, which seemed like the most boring thing to me, but I knew that I shouldn't let my aunt know so I diligently played with it for as long as I was in France). It was a time when being separated from my mother for just one night was a catastrophe for me; I was struck with fear - nay: utmost certainty! - that I would never see her again (once I was so courageous to stay with my cousin for the night; I kept her awake until I don't know what time in the morning, until she finally pretended she was asleep to escape from my constant whining). It was a time when I learned to tell left from right with the help of the birthmark in the middle of my right arm. I had no sense of time; no sense of the future or plans - our departure always arrived as some sort of a shock for me.
I can't remember who said that childhood is the only paradise we can't be expelled from because it is always already lost, existing only in the past, in retrospect.
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