Perspective Change

Today, it came to my mind how differently people can see and perceive a place, especially a city. Everyone has his or her own experience of a city, even when it is exactly the same day or moment. In Paris, you get to see many tourists. And sometimes, especially in the beginning, you are one of them.

You don't only recognize them by their silly outfits (rain coats on a sunny day tied around the waist- just in case...- seriously?!) and a city map in their hands. They also happen to have an expensive camera hanging around their neck and a baseball cap on that says "I <3 Roma" (guess what they visited before Paris). But you can spot them, even when they have decent clothing, because of their look. How they watch and examine the city. They see all of the boulevards, the Haussmann buildings, the great city sights for the first time. You can tell it from their moves. How they stand there with their mouths open watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle for the first time...

"OMG, IT SPARKLES!!!!" - Every tourist ever

And that's why. They don't know it sparkles every full hour after sunset, or maybe they know and they just don't care. Because they think it's just for them. Like I like to tell myself it sparkles just for me, whenever I see it. As we grow taller and become adults, we learn to empathize with others, learn to imagine that there are things happening meanwhile and that there is a world turning outside of our field of vision. That the world doesn't turn around us. 

But indeed, it does. Everything we see, we see through our own eyes. We can't change that, we're bound to our First Person view. Everything we feel, we feel it through our body, our fingers, our feet. Everything we experience, we experience in our mind, our brain. It is us that makes our world. And all the things that happen are only important to us if they happen to us directly.

It's something different seeing all these locks in a HQ* picture 
than being able to touch them and read them one by one...

That's why nobody likes tourists. Except you're the one who is a tourist. You don't feel like a complete loser not finding the way and staring at Sacré Coeur as if it was the greatest miracle in the world (it's pretty impressive, though). When you come back to the places or visit them frequently, sometimes as a part of your daily monotone life, you take them as granted. You don't appreciate them anymore. That's what I learned while guiding my friends and family all around the city. To let myself be fascinated once again, stunned by the beauty or the architecture and the mood of some places (if not yet destroyed by aggressively dumb behaving tourists or black souvenir sellers).

Perspective change: Level Louvre

In the beginning of my year, I met a French guy (as part of a French-German language exchange-bar-talk-thing at POLYGLOT Club) who told me that he likes to show me the places he knows, to pass me around in the Quartier Latin (5e arrondissment) and to tell me stories about what happened here and there in the past and why this place is called that name. Because showing someone a place and experiencing them perceiving the place for the first time is like seeing it for the first time through their eyes. Reliving the "first time" feeling. And sometimes recognizing hidden treasures and finding new corners, new peanuts and pennies of your quarter that you have never seen before.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.                                                     Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.  -  Marcus Aurelius 

This is also one of the reasons why I recently started watching and loving THE ART ASSIGNMENT by Sarah and John Green. It's a new web series in which the two of them meet contemporary artists and they come up with tasks, assignments, on a special topic. The viewer gets inspired by the piece of art and by the idea/topic and is invited to do his own art assignment and share it on social media with the suitable hashtag #theartassignment. 

They inspire me so much! Especially when it comes to perceiving and reflecting my urban environment. One of them, for example (number 5) was about finding the quietest place near your house by just walking around and "following the silence". It's a totally different thing to follow your ears instead of your eyes on a city tour. The assignments help you to gain new perspectives and a really interesting perception of what is going on around you. Because it's your senses and your brain that create your image of a place or a city in your mind. Why don't influence this image to be more funded, deep and reflected? Not just superficial. 

There's so much beauty in Paris. There's so much beauty in this world. 
We just need to change our perspective to see it, that's all.

So cute I almost died.     Jardin des Plantes, March 2014

*Why is the quality so high? - because my best friend and I made them with his superior SLR camera when he visited :) Thanks & L O V E