THE CLEVER SEED, Winter Edition, 2024
Paris, Before Midnight
Welcome to the second edition of THE CLEVER SEED, a quarterly newsletter where I explore inspiration and creativity in everyday life. As a writer and illustrator of children’s books and former design researcher—I’m fascinated by why humans tell stories and what makes creative minds tick.
With a busy book launch season and a multi-city tour (SF/Seattle/NYC? tbd) planned for SOY SAUCE! only weeks away, I decided to steer away from covering my writing and illustration work (I am a bit social media and marketing fatigued) to dive into a more intimate, self-reflective topic for this winter issue.
PARIS, BEFORE MIDNIGHT, 2024
In this issue, I decided to unpack one of my favorite film trilogies, Richard Linklater’s “Before” films, which I recently re-discovered en route to our winter holiday in Paris. After many years grounded in the US since the birth of my daughter in 2020, COVID, and the subsequent baby years, not much motivated us to travel as a family internationally. But the stress of the recent US election coupled with an opportunity to escape across the Atlantic presented itself, so we packed our bags, brushed off our passports and took off!
On the long flight from California crossing land and sea (once everyone fell asleep), I stayed up to indulge in Richard Linklater’s “Before” film trilogy. For those who do not know it, the “Before” films- Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight- were three films shot over two actual decades of two characters’ lives. Celine, played by French actress Julie Delpy, and Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, meet in their 20s on a train in Vienna in Before Sunrise (1995), meet again in their 30s in Paris in Before Sunset (2004), and finally reconcile in Greece in 2013’s Before Midnight.
Linklater, who is known for casting actors as characters over time, (check out his gorgeous film Boyhood, shot between 2002-2013 also starring Hawke and Patricia Arquette), creates movies that span actual lifetimes, using the grit of time and age to add depth and authenticity to his works. No other filmmaker has quite taken on this conceptual twist, and it has always drawn me in. It almost seems like Hawke and Delpy are Jesse and Celine, as we watch them love and age twenty years together on screen.
(Scene from Before Sunrise, Vienna)
In Before Sunrise, the first film in the trilogy, a young Celine and Jesse meet on a train in Vienna and decide to spend a day together. I first watched this film as a teenager in the 1990s, and rewatching it evoked that youthful promise of exploring the world and ease of meeting someone new. As Jesse and Celine wander through Vienna and converse in real time, we share their intimate moments and conversations, as if we are also on their journey. Resonant with every teenage romantic I knew, I too had been attracted to the notion of connecting in this way- on route to places I had not yet been.
[scene from Before Sunset, Paris]
Linklater’s second film, Before Sunset (2004) takes us to Paris where Jesse and Celine, now ten years older in their 30s, meet again after their lives have gone separate directions. Hawke returns as a thinner, somewhat haggard Jesse (in real life, Hawke was in the midst of a divorce with Uma Thurman which finalized the year after Before Sunset released) and Delpy returns as a more worldly, but romantically conflicted Celine. Both are wiser in their age, but are battered by decisions they’ve made and paths taken. Before Sunset, which I watched in my late 20s, was both heartbreaking and redeeming, showing how choices we make can shift our life trajectory to or from the things we need or love.
[scene from Before Midnight, Greece]
By the third film, Jesse and Celine are at last together, but going through the travails of parenting and middle age while clinging to the seeds of their relationship. In Before Midnight, the least liberating of the films, Celine encapsulates her relationship with Jesse in a scene where she describes a setting sun. As the orange globe descends into the silvery Peloponnese sea, Celine is still hopeful, “Going, going…” then turning to Jesse, her face shifts into sadness, acknowledging the loss of their young, idealistic selves, “Gone.” When I watched this movie in 2013, I related more to 30-year old Celine and found the evolution of their love profoundly depressing.
But rewatching Before Midnight now in my late 40s- married, with children of my own- I can understand the nuances of the third movie with a greater degree of empathy. As we age and build our lives and (sometimes) create humans of our own, we become layered and complex, a blend of past and present. Our identities are often in conflict because of this- every day we glance at the mirror recalibrating who we once were, and who we might yet be.
The pleasure of watching Linklater’s trilogy transcends the story of Jesse and Celine. For Gen Xers, it was the experience of watching the characters’ lives unfold in tandem to our own.
(MY) PARIS THROUGH THE YEARS
As I sat on the plane contemplating Linklater’s time-spanning films, I began to think about my own time in Paris over the years. I’ve traveled to Paris five times, once for nearly every decade of my life. Here is a brief recap.
1980s
My first trip to Paris in the 1980s was with my family when I was ten. Jet lagged and dozing on a sea of luggage, my sister and I watched as an unbelievable amount of people crammed in to take the ferry across the English Channel. (There was no high-speed Eurostar rail at the time.) We were far away from our hometown of Charleston, West Virginia.
By the time we reached Paris, everything was bustling and grandiose. From our hotel window, we could look out and see the Palais Garnier, and everywhere we looked there was something beautiful to take in- gothic cathedrals, elaborate carvings on windows, art nouveau sculptures sprouting out of buildings. Young and unseen, I remember posing to have my profile cut into a black silhouette by a scissor artist, near the glistening dome of Sacre Coeur.
1990s
My last year of college visiting friends in London, we frolicked to Paris by Eurostar for the weekend. Nearly done with our four years at Brown, my literary friends who idolized the Romantics, daydreamed to Brit pop and spent copious amounts of time in witty banter joyously boarded the train to Paris. It was a fun, carefree time with no concern (yet) for the future. My most salient memory was snapping black and white photographs of my friends posing in a then-empty plaza of the Louvre after a night of revelries. (I didn't have a single shot of myself.)
2000s (En route to Cannes)
After graduating, I went to volunteer for the Independent Feature Project, (now known as The Gotham Film Institute) an organization that supported American independent filmmakers at Cannes Film Festival. On my way to what would become three months living in the French Riviera, I spent a day in Paris after arriving on a flight from New York. While waiting in line for the catacombs, I met a girl from Kenya and a girl from Brussels. After spending an hour or two navigating piles of bones and skulls beneath the streets of Paris together, we rejoiced in a cheap but satisfying meal sharing stories of where we were from. I no longer remember the girl from Kenya’s name, but I remember her description of Carnivore, a bustling open air grill in Nairobi filled with all kinds of delicious grilled meats that still remains on my bucket list.
2010s
Paris was our first stop after a whirlwind wedding in Carmel. Though the wedding was amazing, it was exhausting, and my husband and I couldn’t wait to relax and eat our way through Europe. By my 30s, I had settled into life in California in a job as a product designer at a tech company (life took a turn, indeed!) and after putting in time a couple years in Silicon Valley, we looked forward to decompressing together in Europe. Without kids yet in tow, we ate our way through Paris, and had one memorable meal after another with a favorite meal at Le Chateaubriand. We skipped the Eiffel Tower, didn’t set foot in a single museum, and walked and walked till hunger hit us.
2020s
It is difficult to navigate large cities with children. We returned to Paris this month with our four-year old daughter and ten-year old son in tow. While they are generally angelic children, over 27 hours on planes, trains, and a daily 5-story Parisian apartment walk-up wore on them. Still, it was a great pleasure to check into 'our Paris home' in the center of town near Pompidou and settled in for the holidays.
The View from our Parisian balcony
Like my parents, we dutifully visited the Eiffel Tower, Musee D’Orsay, and the reopened Notre Dame Cathedral, but we skipped the Louvre (too crowded) and managed to escape to Lyon for a few days. I discovered my favorite cathedral in all of France in Lyon, Notre Dame de Fourviere with its large mosaic paintings by Charles Lameire and George Décote. And for Christmas, we got a tiny tree and placed a single gift for each child beneath alongside makeshift cards we illustrated on Christmas Eve. We encouraged the children to eat bravely, and they happily tried oysters, escargot, quenelles (in Lyon), and fish seasoned with Pastis.
Our extra small Christmas tree, and cards made from brown bag paper
As we wandered through Paris as a family of four, I saw flashes of my former self: standing with my sister at Le Grand Cafe Capucines where my father gave me a beautiful pink and gold art nouveau postcard, walking in a rain coat towards a sign for the catacombs, kneeling at the Pyramid of the Louvre to take a photograph.
As I reflect upon this trip, and the episodic beauty of Linklater’s films, I wonder what will resonate in my own children’s memories of Paris. Will my son remember the relief he had escaping his little sister to take a rainy walk with me in the Marais? Will they recall the brutally cold wind atop the Eiffel Tower? Will my daughter remember how much she loved Paris, or the narrow staircase we climbed together every day? And if they return someday on their own, what will they discover?
Our five story walk up in Paris
Our last night in Paris, wandering around the Latin Quarter
On our last day in France, weary of our travels, my daughter turned to me and said with complete sincerity, “Mama, when we go home to California, I will appreciate our home more.” Time away, time in between- both make the heart grow fonder. And though she is just 4 years old, I very much want to believe her.
(Excerpt from TIME IS A FLOWER by Julie Morstad) Time is a flower. Cyclamen, marigold, poppy, violet, verbena! With petals so loud and bright, calling all bees! Until… The flower droops. Releasing its petals, one by one, or all at once.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Until next time,
Laura G. Lee
website: http://www.lauragleestudio.com
IG: @lauragleestudio