iv. Twins Towns
Pauly left on the Monday, the start of the residency. He would be returning about 6 weeks later, start of Easter week. He took a photograph of me in the B&B in Ashford on our journey out to Saint-Nazaire and one when he came back to pick me up. I can’t find the photos, they’re on some CD-R somewhere, in a shoebox full of crap, probably unreadable now — Windows XP, Nero Burning ROM, Kodak Gold, scratched to fuck. Anyway, the difference between the two photographs was about a stone in weight loss. I remember being mortified by the change when I saw them together. I was not and am not the most kempt person in the world but the photo post-residency had a distinct haunted Lebanon hostage release look about it.
I can’t remember the exact order of things during my stay, it’s more fragments. I got physically ill, argued incessantly with the Director of the Art School, got trapped in a flat with a load of artists on micro-dots, met a bloke who made a living climbing the walls of art galleries with mountaineering gear and had what the film director Shane Meadows neatly describes as a nervy b — trying my very best across the six weeks to hide it from everyone I was working with.
The house I was staying in, the one in the park just off the sea front was huge and I was the only resident. It was clean, basic and well looked after but massive. It had 4 or 5 rooms, dark wooden 1950s decor, huge beds, tiled floors and those wooden window shutters that they love in France and that I can never get used too. There was no TV, no internet, no phone and I didn’t have a mobile. I had a laptop, 3mb pixel digital camera, an Emagic soundcard, headphones and a CD wallet packed full of mp3s I’d downlaoded from Limewire. Harold Budd and Brian Eno were on repeat. Saint-Nazaire was a dead place and hardly anybody, even the staff at the Art School, spoke English. All the ones who did lived out of town, mostly in Nantes. My French was terrible and I couldn’t adjust to the shop opening times. All the supermarkets big and small were miles away on the outskirts.
I recall one interaction in a local chemist, I wanted to buy some bubblebath and ending up doing some kind of mad physical performance for the bemused staff — I’m repeating the words salle de bain over and over again, my hands and arms flaying about as I’m blowing imaginary foam and saying bubbles really slowly with a French accent — buuuu.billlls. I remember a young child in the queue behind me understanding what I was getting at and shouting out the winning answer.
About 2 weeks into the residency I found out I had been pronouncing beaucoup wrong, whether down to my accent or not I don’t know but every shop transaction had concluded with me saying nice arse. The inadvertant arse humour didn’t stop there. The people I got to meet through the residency, especially the ones with limited English couldn’t get to grips with my surname. Trying to pronounce McHugh to them sounded very much like Mon Cul — My Arse. I was Michael My Arse.
The language barrier was exhausting. It took me over a month once I got back to England e to stop speaking in slow broken English like I had a brain injury or something. One night in Nantes sticks in my mind, I’d met this couple who were friends of staff at the art school — Frank and Edwige. I think they felt sorry for me and I started hanging out with them. They’d take me to exhibition openings around the area and invite me to join them if they were having drinks in Saint-Nazaire. I’m not a quiet person but I didn’t want to burden them with translations every other minute. As a result I was mostly silent, they made every effort with me but it was draining. There was a music festival in Nantes this one night in particular, I could get the train and they invited me to stay at their flat. I forced myself to go as the isolation was getting too much. I didn’t heed Pauly's advice and had tried to reach out to my now ex-girlfriend. I used up countless phone cards desperataely trying to get in touch with her and as expected she would just hang up, when we did eventually speak she told me she had met someone else. I was devastated, frustrated and too emotionally unstable and immature to deal with it well
Looking back what I remember most about Saint-Nazaire was its phone booths. It had a large temporary migrant population of men who worked on the remaining shipyards and you’d notice the queues of blokes waiting in line to use them. Foreign workers ringing home or calling loved ones. Full of self pity I projected myself onto the town and it compounded the grief, loneliness and isolation I felt.
So I decided to take up the invite from Frank and Edwige for a night out. I thought it would help me snap out of the state I was getting into. Frank and Edwige had friends who were visiting from Paris, two couples who would also be staying in their apartment. We would all meet a larger group of their friends in the centre of Nantes. I remember the gig we went to quite vividly, it was in a large venue and rammed. Again I found myself silent, unable to properly join in. Looking back, language barriers aside, I was probably not the best of company. I drank and drank, listened to words I didn’t understand and by the end found myself alone in the main room watching and listening to a guy on a stage screaming into a microphone with a power drill, piercing industrial noise battering my ears. Oblivious I’d probably walked into an extended encore from Einstürzende Neubauten. I was pissed and didn’t have a clue who it was or really remember anyone on the line up, my head was battered too. I do remember catching an act I recognised earlier in the night, Hong Kong Counterfeit, a electro-pop duo from New York. The group of people I was with hated them, it wasn’t serious enough, I thought it was fun and for a brief moment it cheered me up. By the time I found myself absorbing the frequencies of the power electronics and the screaming man it was all too much and I felt a panic building up in me. I just wanted to be back home or at least back in the lonely house in Saint-Nazaire soaking in a hot bubble bath with Harold Budd — anywhere but here. It was late and I asked Frank if the trains were still running back to the coast, he said no but if I wanted to go back to their’s he would give me a key. He asked if I was OK and helped put me into a taxi.
Frank and Edwige’s place was a small one bedroom apartment with an open plan living and dining room. I remember the sinking feeling at the realisation that I would be sharing the floor with the two other couples. This is not where I wanted to be. It was probably around midnight, I made some tea, had a bit of bread, switched on their badly tuned portable black & white TV and tried to watch something through all the interference and static. On their dining room table was a small wooden box, I opened it to find lots of small plastic baggies filled with what were obviously tabs of LSD and micro-dots. I really didn’t want to be here.
From this point on and for the rest of the night I battled with the fear; was the tea I drunk one of Frank’s special tea bags? Was the bread I’d eaten made with Edwige’s special dough mix? I’d not taken drugs for a long time for a reason. I was consumed with a spiralling paranoia, made all the worse when the couple and their friends returned home. I parked myself on a chair in the living room half of the flat and remained mostly silent for the night. They all sat at the dining table; drank wine, ate cheese, dropped acid and talked and talked and talked. They offered me wine, cheese and kept trying to persuade me to partake in the other. I have no doubt they were talking utter shit and was thankful I couldn’t understand them. It was torture and no matter how much I pretended to try and fall asleep I couldn’t relax and my anxiety levels just kept creeping up.
It was still dark when they all decided to call it a night. Frank shook me and I pretended to wake up. They laid out sleeping bags on the floor and Edwige kindly pulled out a small fold-out camping bed for me. I had maybe a few hours before the first train back to Saint-Nazaire and would have to endure a while longer and what I endured was two couples kissing, giggling and having covert coitus in the dark. Moaning and fumbling not an arms length from where I lay. I may have asked them to pack it in and give me a break, I can’t remember, maybe I was just willing them to stop in my head. I do remember as soon as it got light leaving the flat sharpish and wandering around Nantes trying to find my way to the train station.
I had not slept at all and the mother of all hangovers had kicked in. I arrived back in Saint-Nazaire; it was a weekend, warm early spring sunshine and hords of people disembarking from trains to hit the beach. I desperately wanted to speak to my ex-girlfriend and rang her from a phone booth at the station. She spoke to me and I broke down. Blubbering I made no sense and she was worried about me. My credit ran out and and made my way back to the house in the park. To further compound matters I had picked up the wrong keys when I left Frank & Edwige’s and was locked out. I had to go to the art school and pray someone would be there so I could try and get a spare set or somehow find a way get my originals back. By now I’d been awake for about 30 hours.
Luckily Saturday morning art classes were taking place at the school and Chantelle the director was there. She could tell I was in a bad way and called Rachel the only member of staff who could speak English fluently. As the house was owned by the municipal Chantelle would call someone and get me back in. Rachel took me down to the sea front and bought me an ice cream. I felt about 14 years old. I had bottled up everything but now it was all coming out. I couldn’t handle the rejection and the feelings running around my head and body. I didn’t know what to do. I felt ashamed and broke down again. There on the sea front consoled by a complete stranger, crying into an ice cream, like a lost child. What a big mess.
