Vincent B. Rain

American in Paris (song)

I am an American.... in Paris
And though I hardly speak the tongue
The love of my life lived here
When she was very young
You can never know how much I love this town

I want to live and die
Where a man could easily cry
For the things that touch his heart so deeply

Je t'aime
C'est la vie
Parlez-vous français?
Parlez-vous anglais
I am an American
I am an American
An American in Pahree

I'm sure you know the price of love is pain
And tragedy that kills us twice again
But did you know that love
Can never... never... never be in vain
Especially for an American in Paris

I've been living in a dream
Believing in this joie de vivre and
The sadness of walking in the rain
As if it could ever kill the pain

I feel like the hunchbach of Notre Dame
Searching for his Esmeralda
With gypsy eyes telling him
You can never be free, you're just
You're just an American
You're just an American
An American in Paris

I hear the Little Sparrow and Jacques Brel
Breaking through the walls of la Bastille
Each prison of the heart unfolded
In an old hotel
Where a broken heart remembers love

Paris.... how can.... I leave you (emphatic, crescendo)
I do... not deceive you
I love you truly
Deep in the whole of my heart

I.... am an American
I am an American
An American in Pahree

Genevieve & daughter in the
little town of Frouard near the
City of Nancy (Lorraine),
France, 1947

Genevieve was my mother. She told me that the love of her life was her father, who she lived with in Paris in the 1930s and possibly 1940s in the suburb of Perreux (presumably Le Perreux-sur-Marne) as a little girl years before the above photo. Genevieve was reportedly prisoner in a German labor camp at age 18 in Wuppertal, Germany from 1944 to Spring, 1945. But she did not discuss the matter openly. During her early years after coming to America, and after my own birth in the USA, she was still extremely French in her manners and accent. She died in April, 2010 after 63 years living in America, but still a French citizen whose medical problems kept her from returning to her beloved homeland.

I wrote American in Paris as a tribute to Genevieve and Paris and all things French and the American experience of inheriting French blood and instinctive French awareness without the language. It is also a prelude to an intended first journey to France to discover the past and present and to seek declaration of dual nationality or a measure of French acceptance by learning the language and life of France as a writer and photographer. I hope to visit France many times. Ideally I want to live there for long periods of time.

The day the Nazis rolled into Paris brought France and the city of love and light to tears..

footnote: The American in Paris song was essentially completed 2011 February 18 Friday (12:47am/night) when the latter half of it was written. Posted online 2011Fe22Tu.

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