SOUNDTRACK: BILAL HASSANI-“Roi” (France, Eurovision Entry, 2019).
I was going to be done with Eurovision, but then I read this graphic novel. And since it was called Paris 2119, it seemed worth tying it to the 2019 French Eurovision entry.
This song is a remarkably powerful ballad sung in both English and French. It opens with a quiet piano melody as Bilal sings
I am me
And I know I will always be
Je suis free oui, j’invente ma vie
Ne me demandez pas qui je suis
The pre chorus turns minor
You put me in a box, want me to be like you
Je suis pas dans les codes, ça dérange beaucoup
At the end of the day you cannot change me, boo!
Alors laisse-moi m’envoler
but the chorus swells.
I’m not rich but I’m shining bright
I can see my kingdom now
Quand je rêve, je suis un roi
I like the restraint Bilal shows in the chorus, downplaying potential soaring notes with dramatic effect The second time through the song is bigger, but again, they are downplaying their singing until they comes to the last line
Moi je les cala pas, you can never remove my crown
When they show off what a powerful voice they have by holding that “crown” for an extended note.
The first listen through I thought the song was okay, but a second listen revealed quite a great song. I am pretty surprised this came all the way down in 16th place.
[READ: May 27, 2021] Paris 2119
I saw this book at work and wanted to read it. The cover was quite dramatic. This book was written by Zep and translated by Mike Kennedy.
The story is quite simple. Possibly too simple. But its very compelling.
The book opens on Tristan Keys as he heads into the Metro. He is scanned by a face recognition drone. The subway is virtually empty asides from tourists, junkies and woman who looks like she is totally zombied out. She sits next to Tristan and drools.
He arrives at his girlfriend Kloé’s apartment–she is very glamorous. They have sex and discuss the possibility of having a baby. But Kloé dismisses it saying that was how babies were born before–not anymore. But maybe one day they can request a reproduction visa.
Kloé prepares to leave. She is off to Beijing to meet with clients. She tells him to be careful while she’s gone. His latest text post has his boss calling him in for a talk about his future as a writer.
When Kloé leaves she climbs in the Transcore machine–a teleportation device that everyone uses. Tristan will be walking–he says he’ll never get in one of those contraptions.When he gets to work, it turns out his boss (whom he has not met in person before) is the woman from the metro. But she seems well put together and alert. When he mentions the metro she doesn’t know what he’s talking about and threatens to fire him.
The next night on his way home from Kloé’s he sees his boss once again on the Metro. But two officers grab her. He follows behind and watches as hey zap her and she disintegrates. What?
As he stumbles away he hears someone crying for help in an other Transcore machine. It’s a woman coughing up blood. He brings her to the hospital. But she dies on the table. As Tristan walks away the two officers from earlier show up and disintegrate this woman as well.
But he was able to get her name and when he calls her cell phone (or whatever it is) she answers and says she was in Paris an hour ago but is safely home.
When he gets home Kloé calls him to check up on him but she is acting weird and he soon realizes it is a digital clone–trying to pry him for information.
He can think of only one person he can talk to–a professor he had studied with years ago. The professor worked on Transcore but then seemed to disappear. When he tracks him down the professor tells him some details about the way Transcore works. The details are pretty cool. And very scary.
Several things happen as the story finishes up.
Tristan talks to the owner of Transcore–an old friend–and tries to warn him about what he has learned.
But the friend takes Tristan’s revelations as a threat. And he threatens to erase Kloé’s mind of him.
The ending was pretty cool and quite exciting.
So when I say it was too simple, it’s more that it felt like there was SO MUCH to explore in this world. This was like a tiny glimpse into a huge story with many facets. So many books are stretched out to a trilogy for no good reason, it’s hard to believe he could cram so much into one book.
So saying it’s too simple is actually more of a compliment because I want to read more! Not just about what happens to these two but about what happens to everyone else in this world.
The back pages of the book include some interviews with the creators and examples of how Zep wrote the storyboards and Bertail worked from them.
Leave a Reply