The fine line between the outside and the inside.

Last week I went to Paris and fully intended to come back full to the brim of classical French existential pondering. However, the direction of my thoughts went elsewhere. I went to Paris and stood on the corner of the St Germain, waiting for a flummoxed Parisien to take me to the finest French Restaurant he knew, he knew none but suggested  'I do know a really great Japanese place nearby?' I discovered the hot new cafes in Paris were English run, I ended up going to the talking point gig in town which was Icelandic and the most popular exhibition which was American.

It made me think of some of the artists that I associate with Paris; Picasso, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald. All from the outside, but does that make them less Parisian or more so? These artists were obviously attracted to Paris because of a legacy of Parisian thinkers, but it is the people who are attracted to a city that come to define it as well.
They say that globalisation make our cities all the same, each place steadily losing it's identity to the mix of nations present within it. Yet there are those who are attracted to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm or Havana for different reasons; some artists and scientists seek to adhere themselves with a cities classical history and some come to let its modern aesthetic seep into them.
Paris has a history of acceptance, which attracted those from Josephine Baker and Oscar Wilde to Jay Z, Kanye and Kendrick Lamar; there are much bigger erections to compare his with, but he chose the Eiffel Tower for a reason.
Two artists who are currently in residency in Paris are outsiders in all definitions of the word. Both Icelandic Bjork, and the artists contained within The Museum of Everything sit outside of their own culture but find a home in the city of Paris. After leaving both experiences, the feeling of 'otherness' present within both experiences could be disconcerting to the point of nausea.
Yet on the last day, exploring the Atelier of Moreau, I felt little difference between the obsessions of  the insider Parisien; apparently sane and trained, painting endless recreations of great myths and the obsessives at the Museum of Everything devoting their lives to making voodoo dolls or making clay cameras. Bjork is often seen as outside the realms of normality, but her concert on the Ile de Seine in a circus tent, attempted to do what she has always done, straddle the natural and the manmade, the mainstream and the experimental, in inside and the outside, the crazy and the sane, the disgusting and the beautiful. She took our hand and gently led us into realms existential, unknown, enchanting and thrilling. Essentially, the atypical Parisian experience.