The beating of the Sacre Coeur

Coins drop into hats, booze is thrown back, cigarettes sparked, photographs taken, children do imitations, Iranian men make propositions, couples share an ice-cream, bottle caps are discards, the sun beats down, the music beats harder, art is created, videos recorded, footballs are thrown, cigarettes stubbed-out, jokes made, views captured, jokes passed on, crepes chewed on, laughter choked on and applause rolls in waves through the occupied air. This is the Sacre Coeur on a Monday afternoon.

The pastiche of lovers, friends and families gather from their corners of the world. Swimming through the thick aura and enveloping beauty of Montmartre and it's greatest monument.
The performers do their tricks, make their moves or stand still beneath white paint whilst the out-dated music plays on and on. They are mini-celebrities in this microcosm of festivity - people want their pictures, their conversation or even just a glance their direction. Yet anywhere else in Paris they are the degenerates. Earning their living through prostituting their only unqualified skills, they must make a killing.

The place is littered with vespas, video cameras and exhibitionists. In fact one man walks past me stark-bollock naked. The English laugh - if it ain't made out of marble or seen on a boozy saturday night, we don't like it.

Then it's Monday night. A man brings his guitar and sings to the auditorium on the cold stairs, the city is alight from street-lamps behind him. They are his props, his band, his outfit. 'Hello, is it me you're looking for', Lionel Richie will never know he was reenacted right here infront of all of Paris to see.

I sit in the mist of the evening darkness. The scene pours into me, and each moments drips from my skin into my leather-bound notebook, which I'm huddled over. But it will never translate.

I want to press it like a rose, between the waxed pages of an old book.