Think of the above video as an ode to the unfinished nature of everything. It is a rough draft. It shan’t be completed. The theme song is mine but I wish I’d recorded a different, cleaner version. Alas, sometimes art is simply meant to be shared, not completed … but there’s something comforting, isn’t there, about the never-ending dialogue that is the City of Light?
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In the winter of 2019,
and I began organizing a new business venture: the Paris Writers’ Salon. The idea way back then was to invite internationally renowned writers to John’s home, where we would gather with clients, friends, and acquaintances to discuss life, literature, and all the rest of it.The acclaimed poet Parneshia Jones, who I met while studying at Vermont College of Fine Arts, had planned to join us, but alas, a global pandemic changed the course of human history. Here is the never-used image that my twin brother
designed for what we once thought would be a real-life Paris Writers’ Salon in August 2020:
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Not to be outdone by pesky global pandemics, John and I decided to take The Paris Writers’ Salon online, and what transpired was one of the most fulfilling and edifying literary projects of my life: between December 2021 and April 2024,
and I read 40+ books related to France and connected with dozens of curious
But all things must pass. After thirteen sessions spanning three years, and due to the decidedly twenty-first century term known as “zoom fatigue,” John and I became busy with non-digital work and grew wary of maintaining a virtual salon at the expense of having our proverbial boots on the ground for a resurgent day-to-day life in Paris.
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The above video was our next idea, thanks to the vision of
: a short, episodic documentary series that began with a discussion in John’s apartment, ventured out into the city streets to cover a literary/Parisian theme, and brought it back home with future promises.But who knew! Filming, editing, producing, and sound-editing videos takes quite a bit of time, and being people who write books, John and I could no longer afford to devote so much time to yet another labor of unpaid love.
And so, as many of you know, John and I have now settled on hosting a semi-weekly Substack Live Paris Writers’ Salon, which allows us to sit down for a drink without too much preparation and delve into the impromptu magic of unplanned dialogues and topical immediacy of week-to-week life in Paris.
While Episode 1 remains free for everyone, only paying subscribers can access subsequent recordings (such as Episode 2, in which John and I discuss our processes writing fiction, flow states, and rediscovering old work), and if you have enjoyed John or my work over the past years, consider becoming a paying subscriber, because what’s sexier than being being a Parisian patron of the arts?
Episode 3 will be LIVE on Substack, this Sunday, March 23 at 6PM (CET) / 1pm (EST). All subscribers will be notified before we begin chatting.
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In next week’s post, paying subscribers will gain access to a recording of last week’s intimate piano/vocal performance at the literary salon of another Parisian Legend, Mary Duncan, whose memoir Henry Miller is Under My Bed is just as scandalous as you’d imagine.
In the shadow of Notre Dame in a small Parisian apartment across the street from where Simone de Beauvoir wrote Les Inséperables and The Mandarins, many friends, acquaintances, and new connections from all over the world gathered to hear me play some of my music, discuss Kingdom Anywhere with
, and imbibe in wine conviviality and wine.But alas, I don’t have any photos of that evening, so you’ll just have to imagine it. Here’s to the coming spring and leaning into all that literature and this city continues to offer.
For a full list of the 40+ books we read, from Guy de Maupassant to Simone de Beauvoir to Ernest Hemingway to Edmund White to James Baldwin and many, many other great authors in between, find the full list at the bottom of this page.
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