Charlotte G.
January 16th, 2024, Manhattan.
I was wearing a pair of navy blue Moon Boots with a navy blue coat to match. I had attached to the collar a faded pink button that read “I’m a Quiet Girl”. If there had ever been any accounts recorded of my disposition “quiet” wouldn’t have been one of the first descriptors found. If I was true, I was found to be quiet it would’ve been better put as “observant”. Either way, I enjoyed the button immensely for I looked like a girl and even felt like one much of the time, but I reveled in how “girl” could never hope to encapsulate even an eighth of my Self. One Eyed Jack, a dear friend of mine, walked stoically beside me, dressed in what, I determined, was too light of a jacket. We were making our way East towards third ave in search of a “pub” where we intended to bring our faces back from the brink of falling off our tireless bodies. We were New Yorkers, so this wasn’t something we admitted in those terms, it sounded much more like: “fuck this café, I need a beer.” Unfortunately for us it was the Upper East Side, so beer or rolling papers were in low supply. We had just enough time to digest the intensely affected interior of the “pub” and drink a pint each before we had to trudge back over to Park ave through that biting bitch of a winter evening. Jack had just seen “Je T’aime Moi Non Plus” (1976) for the first time, the second time for myself, now we were going to watch “Jane par Charlotte” (2021). L’Alliance was hosting a series of Jane Birkin’s films in their Florence Gould Theatre on the opposite side of the block from their classrooms where I suffered through a year of French classes, not on the part of my teacher (Odin, you shall never leave my mind or heart!), but for the stifling Upper East Siders that filled the classes with their endless vexing. Feeling no residual buzz from the pint or the joint that had smoked away in my hand much too quickly despite our taking refuge in an abandoned portico of one of the many meaningless companies that populate the “serious” world. Nevertheless, we settled into our seats, grateful for the central heat and reprieve of that a movie theater was always guarantied to bestow upon its patrons.
The next moment felt like one of those “and then” moments so:
And then the lights grew yet more dim as Charlotte Gainsbourg appeared on the floor of the theater, introduced by some so and so from the institution. The artist seemed to be dressed in her usual garb of jeans, button up and leather jacket, she perched herself delicately behind a podium placed there for this apparent occasion, many rows below Jack and I. She introduced the film she had made with her mother, Jane Birkin, who had left all of us so swiftly, it felt, the previous July. I don’t remember a word Charlotte said, but I remember my cheeks soppy wet with tears and my stomach being in the most sublime knot of love and sorrow. Jane B. was so strong and audacious for all of us, to have Charlotte share her mother all over again with us, and on that particular night in such an intimate way, overwhelmed me completely. I will never forget the feeling, at least, of intense gratitude and mystification; for the experience of art and artists is never without those things.
