Song of the Amorous Frogs - Summary

Thanks to all of you who joined me – and “I” and Clem and The Cellist – on our recent six-part exploration of life and love in Paris of the 1920s. We’re so honored you came along with us. Needless to say, all the people depicted are fictitious – even those who may bare an uncanny resemblance to any who may once have walked the streets and visited the locations mentioned (or even some who may be walking them today).

I’ve now put all the pieces together and published the full adventure on Substack, should you ever be inclined to take the journey again. You can find it here:

Song of the Amorous Frogs – Complete

Though the people, and even some of the places, in the piece are made up, the FROGS are not. In case you didn’t click the link embedded in Part 1, you can hear their love songs on Youtube at this link. They really get going at about minute 1:30:

Grenouille du Jardin des Plantes

If you enjoyed the piece, and maybe some of the others I’ve shared over the last couple of months, since I started my Substack space, and you subscribed (THANK YOU!), I’d be grateful if you shared it with any of your friends you think might enjoy it too. There’s a SHARE button at the end of every piece. Or you can email them the link:

Recollections, Reflections, Fantasies, Fictions

Scenes of a Life I think Was Mine

As they say, all good things (and even most of the bad ones, thank goodness) must come to an end. And so SONG OF THE AMOROUS FROGS has ended. Or has it? I have the feeling that “I” and The Cellist just might be a duo who could make beautiful music together, if given the chance. And I wonder if Clem has had his last visit to Paris. And that 1920s Paris Party? Why, it’s only 1923 – The Party is only getting started. What do you think? Does the adventure continue? If so, perhaps it goes something like this …

As I approached Café Gaudeamus and looked through the window, before pushing through the door, I didn’t see my Cellist. The dreadful chill of disappointment sickened me. I reminded myself how I knew all along that he would not be there. Had I learned nothing of the ways of the world by now? I almost turned to walk back down the hill.

It was too early for the Bal Musette, but perhaps not so for a solitary dinner of  entrecôte, served in the subterranean depths of L’Ecurie, on the corner of rue Laplace – accompanied by a mountain of frites and a heaped bowl of aioli, which migrated from table to table as the need arose - all served by the “hunchback of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont,” with his limp and his hair to his shoulders – so I thought of him this evening as I let the bitter disappointment fill me with spite. I thought, also, how foolish I’d been, not to have gone up to Clem, even if only for a night. One night would have been better than none, with only a likely tough steak for consolation after being stood up.

But then I saw him, sitting in a back corner of the café, his instrument in its case leaning against the wall. He looked over the room with a somber expression on his beautiful, pale face – perhaps expecting that he would be stood up too? Perhaps thinking how foolish he too was, not to be keeping an appointment set by some Clem of his own, instead of sitting alone in a café, waiting for a passing fancy whose time had already passed. Perhaps grappling (both of us) to accept that there were many Clems in the world we were entering.

Or maybe he was thinking none of that – only half irritated that he’d made an effort, and got there early, only to be kept waiting by an unreliable American. But whatever he might (or might not) have been thinking, when I went through the door, and when he saw me, he smiled and nodded, and I smiled and nodded. And we entered the realm of possibility, together.

Stay tuned!