The start of my time in France has kept bringing me back to Cannes, and I am not sure why. It is not a part of the region that I particularly like, although I have learned to appreciate it more over the years. I always saw it as a “place to be seen.” As a foreigner, the annual film festival gives this town a flavour of celebrity, image, and all the exhaustion that goes along with such a façade. It is a few streets, crammed with shops, restaurants, cafes, and as you walk through, especially the central area, it appears to be a place that lacks soul. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a person who lacks soul, yet I seem to keep coming back here. When life speaks, it’s trying to show me something despite my claim that I should know myself well by now. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from the last decade, it’s that when you think you know yourself… something or someone always comes along to show you that there is an even greater depth within you to discover. So, I thought that I would look up the history of the town to see if it would give me any clues about myself.
It seems that the two little islands floating close by to Cannes were of greater importance than the town itself. In fact below the Suquet, the highest point of old Cannes as it is now, was swamp land in the 10th century. For hundreds of years during this period, monks occupied the mainland until people began to fight over the port town. The Spanish, the British, a variety of powerful French figures… all had their go until all the fuss died down and just a little fishing village remained. Then in the 1800s, a Scotsman bought land in the Croix des Gardes (now a beautiful park looking over the town from the northwest corner) and so began the commercialisation of Cannes as we know it today. The Scot, Henry Brougham, constructed the villa Eleanore-Louise and worked to improve the living conditions in the area. What followed soon after was a hoard of English aristocracy. Since the 1850s, Cannes has been an area for entertainment, hotels and other transitory luxuries mostly enjoyed by those moving through. All the roads, train tracks, commercial buildings and other structures were built around the area’s capacity to accept visitors and make money.
The land here has been fertile financially, and this history allows it to continue to do so even in times where it is visibly aging. Other countries can offer equally as good, if not better, ambience by the sea. They also have luxury hotels and casinos, fancy restaurants, more interesting festivals and edgier technology… but there is only one Cannes. With such a history, I am beginning to understand what this place is trying to teach me. In fact, it reminds me that I have a tendency to like port cities such as Cannes. Like Shanghai, Singapore, Yokohama, Kobe… this place is a corridor. Flashy, visually appealing, but empty of a traditional feeling of settlement or substance. You could even mistake Cannes for lacking a sense of home.
However, I know better. There are people in the world who know the movement “to and from”, between destinations, far too well. This is the place where they reside. On these streets, people come to earn something or spend something. To earn money, a name, a language, a living… to spend time, riches, let the hours slip away between the mountains and the sea. During summer she becomes an insatiable creature, devouring opportunity wherever she can find it, packed with people like sardines filling the net of a very lucky fisherman. During winter, she takes a rest and all you can see is the smoke rising from all the cigarettes of the business owners recovering from the stress of the high season. Smoke which peels the paint off the old buildings, dispersing into nothing before it reaches the Church of Saint Anne at the top of the Suquet. Just outside her door, a sign, big letters which light up at night: CANNES. You can see it from below, shining proudly.
There is a certain buzz here, but it feels transient. People do not come here to be still. Cannes tells me that I have been living in this swinging sense of movement for a while now, that even despite my most desperate of desires to settle… I cannot yet close the door behind me. I suppose that I am still living out a long goodbye. Still trying to move, push myself and my capacity to make money, thinking that money is what I need in order to make a home. That constant chasing for the dream that always seems just a little bit out of reach. I’m always almost there. Waiting for the next season, the next opportunity. I think that this will be the last time seeing Cannes from a different angle… because I know now that all I need to do to create a sense of home is simply withstand the short-lived discomfort of slowing down, stopping for a while. I am ready to say goodbye. But before I do, I will take a little trip to Switzerland soon to write my book.
The winter sun fades early these days, and I am lucky to be writing while watching the soft shadows cast upon the tiny, rust framed balconies of surrounding apartments. The faded walls, shabby window shades, red rooves, the occasional tree peaking out from below. A façade that I have come to know and love well in the last four years. The first time I saw Cannes, four years ago, as I sat on a bus climbing up to Valbonne, I was astounded that France could even claim a place that looks like this. It was absolutely beautiful, especially in the frosty winter air. I was full of energy, ready to set my goals and work hard to achieve them, as if I were taking a dip into my twenties for a second time. Now, I look at these buildings and I see their superficial beauty as well as their inner naivety that life is supposed to be easy, if only you could have more money. But these days I come to Cannes to spend, not to earn. To spend time slowing down, to breathe a little deeper and let all the importance of money, productivity and ambition slide down the Suquet and into the Mediterranean. I don’t need these things to be happy and I certainly don’t need these things to create my home.
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