29. Goodbye, Jane

Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Goodbye, Jane. I’m from a generation that learned about the Birkin bag before learning about Birken herself. The compilation of her best takes from the movies revolve around her eyes and those looks that implied someone had just said something idiotic and should feel deeply ashamed for breathing in the vicinity. I’m intrigued if that is actually in line with the parts she played or it is just what I projected on her. The first time I became aware of Jane Birkin, I was sixteen or seventeen. I heard her over the speakers of my father’s car, singing J’taime, J’taime, oui J’taime. I blushed, I always blush. I blushed and my imagination was set ablaze. I was in the back seat, looking out the window and she came throught the sound waves and unscrambled  a subset or category called what I’m allowed to be. Mind you, I was a young, sheltered teenager. Her breathy rendition of the song with Serge Gainsbourg was enough to propel images of what I wanted my love and sex life to look like. Of course, that was my ruin.  Over the years I would listen to a song here and there. Her rendition of ‘Harvest Moon’ never disappoints. What can we say about ‘Orang Outang’, the expression of preference for a toothless stuffed animal over a human relationships. We cannot overlook ‘Le canari est sur le balcon’, an act of preserving life while casting off her own. On the same album, we can hear ‘Les Soucettes’, we may have learned the word for lollipop in French, but my dear, that is no lollipop. 1969 was lucky to start with Jane’s voice and I was lucky to meet her, over the airwaves, when I did.  I’ve never watched her movies. I probably will. I might not ever have my own Birkin bag. Although, at this point in my life, I’m more for the woven purse she carried around, did you know her third important partner ran it over… can you believe it? I’ve never felt so passionately about a handbag, nor have I ever been with someone who would run something of mine over with their car. What a thing.  Well, Now that I know, and not that I needed it now, but, I realize that this bombshell of a woman, was publicly multidimensional, she had different causes, one we share, clearly she loved Paris, that we share too. Her voice, that once inadvertently informed a piece of my puzzle, has now revealed another part. Confirming what I have know all along, we are not just one thing. You might listen my voice but I promise there is more to me, there are eyes, and nose, and mouth, and ears, hands and arms, legs and feet, breasts and a bum, genitals, organs, cartilage, bones, blood, and saliva, pride and regret intertwined with desire, love, anger, hate, tenderness, and curiosity, and neurotransmitters and thoughts, pleasant, funny, terrifying, and educational, quizzical, all pieces that make me. The wonderful thing about Jane Birkin is that her pieces can be enjoyed on the silver screen, through her 20 albums, through the eyes of those who admired her, like me, today. We may never know the whole of her, her most important pieces, only known to her ears. I wonder if she had a narrator and what she felt the first time she crossed a bridge in Paris or felt the cold autumn wind on her cheeks. Maybe she was more for spring or summer.  I’ve enjoyed her voice, deep, breathy, sensual. A piece of my own identity puzzle. Now I enjoy knowing other things about her, the purse she preferred and her politics.  Goodbye Jane, Je t’aime… moi non plus… </