Too young for 68

Too Young for 68

A while ago I was discussing with one of my friends about being born too young to have participated in the events of May 1968. I was six at the time of the events, well, coming up to six, and they seemed to make a big impression on me. They were, of course, closely followed by the events in Northern Ireland, and those, too, made a very big impression. Last year I read Olivier Assayas's A Post May Adolescence, his letter to Alice Debord, and even though he was a young teenager in May, he was still too young to be really involved, although I certainly appreciate his sense of missing out on the big one. 

When I went to LSU, one of the lecturers who made a big impression on me was Jane McDermid, who taught history. Very early on she recounted how, in January 1971, she travelled to Paris for the centenary commemorations of the Commune. I sometime bore people by telling them about how, when I was nearly sixteen, I lay on my bed listening to a programme on the radio, about the ten year anniversary of the events of May, and being amazed that it was only ten years before. Maybe all this time (from 1981) that has been drifting round in my head, the thought of going to Paris and being there on a particular anniversary, and for me that anniversary is May, always May.

Well I won't be going anywhere in May, and so I've done what I always do, think a lot, and try and come up with a solution. I've been reading Guy Debord's letters on and off for ages, and recently came across a letter he sent after leaving Paris in 68. You can read this letter here

What more could I want? A letter to Raoul Vaneigem, about cookery, well, I'm not sure. Okay, if he'd still have been married to Michele, that would have been better, but let's not get embroiled in that. If you haven't read the letter, it involves rather constructed cooking - I think Antoine Careme would have probably approved - that celebrate the events of May. I greatly enjoy Debord's letters, filled with news about him expelling people, paying his tax, and well, stuff

I've never cooked a lobster before, but I did look at a frozen one yesterday in a well known supermarket. I like the idea of vaguely being here, in England, but my soul is on the Boulevard St Michel, while my body will be cooking these weird recipes, during the anniversary of those days, in my kitchen. Given the rather sketchy instructions for some of them it will involve some guess work, and I also suppose that not only will I, mangling Guy's words, be doing the revolution, but also the washing up.