It might’ve all started one day when my flatmate wondered whether someone had walked all the streets of Paris. We concluded it was unlikely, and judging from the responses I got when I presented this idea (“You’ll never make it all the way!” — duh), I doubt I will be proving anyone wrong.

It might’ve developed during a 4-month internship at one of the city’s social service administrations, attempting to devise what our hierarchy had called “social portraits” for each urban division, and struggling to make cartographic sense of the myriad statistics we had compiled.
Where I realized how little one knows of the surrounding city, ‘scapes and streets, let alone of the people who inhabit them.

It probably solidified when I recently asked myself why I had become frustrated with writing about music. One of the hypotheses was that I had become too aware of the repetitions, the codes, the habits it entails, when so much time and energy is dedicated only to actualizing one’s taste.

This outlet, then — whatever the blog turns out to be — is more than anything a half-baked idea and a personal challenge. Though one of its objectives is to reintroduce a bit of randomness and play in the infinite gap between music, everyday life and the words that talk about both, it’s based on a set of questions rather than established goals: how does music work with our quotidian and concrete existence (more humbly, with a simple walk outside)? Is it merely a distraction? (Most likely!) How to deal with the inevitable subjectivity that colors every single one of our musical experiences?

Probably most entertaining, for me: what’s there, around the corner, above the curb?

No doubt the project’s severe limitations will quickly become apparent, given that I know little about Paris’ social, architectural and urban history. In all probability, this will end up being closer to a (very) half-assed travel guide.

Thankfully, fun and curiosity take many shapes…