By Mike Sain't Louis ·
Paris restera gris, the getaway that stayed in the wardrobe
Paris was always going to be next year. «Paris restera gris» (Paris Will Stay Grey) is about the end of a gay relationship of many years and that trip to Paris that was planned a thousand times and never happened.
What interests me about this story is everything that didn't happen. The suitcases that never left the wardrobe. The hotels the couple looked at on the map on their phone, which ended up as imaginary ruins. The plans left floating, like an open-dated ticket. Sometimes love goes out without a slammed door or a scene, little by little, and you notice when there's nothing left to pick up.
Here Paris stops being the city of love and becomes the setting for an absence. A symbol of what could have been and wasn't, of a place that still smells of the two of them even though they no longer exist as a couple. The title, in French, says it with a very chic melancholy: Paris will stay grey.
For me it's that exact point where love stops hurting but still weighs. You look back without bitterness, with an elegant sadness. No revenge and no hatred. It's more like a letter never sent, a walk through a city that was left waiting, a way of saying goodbye without quite saying it.
The cover is in black and white. A man kneeling on the wet ground of an esplanade, in a hoodie, his tattooed hands resting on his thighs, cries in front of the Eiffel Tower under a sky heavy with clouds. The lit streetlamps and the reflection of the water heighten the loneliness. It's the tourist postcard in reverse: the photo nobody takes in Paris.
I'd dedicate it to anyone who's closed a long story and still keeps screenshots on their phone of plans they never made. And to whoever has finally learned to walk without company.
A rainy day, looking out of the window. Or, if one day you go to Paris on your own, on the first morning, to make peace with the city.