Drownout France

Making a Living

A view I've espoused repeatedly is that I'd gladly live in Paris if there was only something to do here. I mean, when the dot-com era money runs out, you need to get a job, right?

So my friend Ralph is an artist, in a city where the profession "artist" apparently is good enough to score the daughters of comfortable (aisé) Jewish doctors' families.

The striking fact I realized lately is that absolutely none of his clients are French. They are all Londoner or New Yorker financiers. What does that tell you?

One thing it might say is that it's always more glamorous to be an overseas/cross-Channel artiste when marketing your portraiture services. (Hear that Williamsburgites?) But I think he other thing it says is that there is a reason the French are parodied as being so bored.