Conversations From GodKnowsWhere #4: KristinFouquet

With Jason Michel

Kristin Fouquet’s stories ooze atmosphere. Really. You can almost s-s-s-smell them or breathe them in with the faint aftertaste of French cigarettes. They are seductive, sultry, smoky, sophisticated, sensual, subtle, surprising and yes, dammit, downright sinful. It must be where she comes from. It must be something they have in the air down there.
So pack your bags people, we’re going to New Orleans …

JM – Hello Kristin,

Whenever I think of New Orleans, I think of voodoo, (or is that vaudou) and all things spooky à la Angel Heart, Interview with a Vampire et al.
Also there’s your recent Cemetery In Blue series of photos.

Tell me, have you got any stories?
Ever seen a ghost?

KF – As a child, I was fascinated with the alluring stories of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Those tales initiated the appreciation I have for my city as a historic and mysterious place. Years later, I read of her methods for influencing people and how her daughter continued her legacy. I’m still a fan and while I embrace those aspects of my culture, I’m not superstitious and I don’t believe in voodoo. Nonetheless, there is a mystique about New Orleans that is not easily explained.
I once spent a night at The Myrtles, a haunted plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. While there, I crept around the empty mansion with my companion hoping to encounter something. We heard a loud noise near the staircase, but I believe it was just the heater kicking on. I stayed awake most of the night eliciting and inviting any ghosts to present themselves to me. Alas, none did.
Having an associate’s degree in Funeral Service Education, I’ve been and worked in many funeral homes and cemeteries. I’ve certainly seen my share of dead bodies, but the living frighten me far more than the dead.

Your fiction often embodies surreal and ethereal elements. Have you ever been visited by spirits?

JM - I definitely agree with you about live people.
Snakes, spiders etc., who cares?
People… run for the hills!
I once had a weird experience in one of those half asleep, half awake moments in Asia. I awoke dribbling into my pillow when a beautiful blonde girl appeared out of some red mist. In the palm of her hand burnt a flame. She glided over me and I just remember just closing my eyes and thinking …”It’s the gods …”*snore*. Dream states, gotta love ‘em.

What made you study Funeral Services?
I think that’s fantastic.

Do you think that people’s perceptions of it as being ghoulish is just our society’s own obsession with the virtue of youth and so the fear of mortality?

KF – It was a decision inspired by fear and television. As a child, I watched a made-for-TV movie about anorexia. There was a scene where the teenage girl was fed intravenously. It made a lasting impression on me. If anyone was to so much as utter the word “vein,” I would shudder.
I also became an enormous fan of the television show, Quincy M.E.; it made me want to become a forensic pathologist. In the opening sequence for the show, Jack Klugman announces to the six policemen, “Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most fascinating sphere of police work…the world of forensic medicine.” Then one by one, the cops faint at the site of the autopsy, which is never shown. It piqued my curiosity.
So to overcome my vein fear and also to pick up a relevant trade that I could use while attending medical school, I enrolled in Funeral Service Education. I got over the fear quickly as I learned embalming techniques, but became disenchanted after two years of the sights and smells of cadavers. I got the degree, but didn’t pursue the license to practice. It wasn’t my calling.
Fear of death is certainly a factor. I’d say also that it’s an emotional response to not let go of the person. I think embalmers as well as surgeons must desensitize themselves to some extent to perform their duties. Thankfully, I wasn’t in it for that long.
I did have some great teachers and the classes were full of interesting characters, as I’m sure you can imagine. The educational aspect of it might be an idea for a future story. I don’t think I’d write about the actual industry because Evelyn Waugh’s “The Loved One” is perfection in my opinion.

Have you ever had a strange job or fallen dream inspire your writing?

JM - Strange jobs? Not really.
But I have been inspired by the strange people I’ve met in mundane jobs. They’re everywhere in my stories, lurking around the edges and under the innuendo. The grotesqueness of our species is something that definitely inspires me. I am writer of fantastic contempt.

And what about you?
What keeps you writing?
Which books have personally affected you, if indeed any have?

KF – The sheer fun of it is what keeps me writing. And of course, the characters still introduce themselves to me. I’m sort of an optimistic cynic. I always hope that people are going to do the right thing, but I’m not surprised or even disappointed really if they don’t. I find human foibles, including my own, endlessly entertaining.
I’m still learning how to write. I have this idea, almost a Platonic ideal, of myself as a writer that I will never attain. I wouldn’t want to reach it because I hope that my stories will always be improving, almost in a state of becoming. I don’t compare myself to other writers. I try not to think in terms of better or worse, but rather in different perspectives. As a writer, I compete with myself, much like a track runner trying to beat his or her own time.
I’m a great admirer of the short form. The first short story collections I read were those of Guy de Maupassant. Flannery O’Connor’s work has certainly affected me as have J.D. Salinger’s shorts, and P.G. Wodehouse. Recently, I told someone that I wear my love of Raymond Carver on my sleeve like an old worn-out torch singer.
There’s still so much I have to read and to learn.

What are your major literary influences?

JM – I share your love of Maupassant and O’ Connor.
Wise Blood is an old fav. The book and the film.
I have a real penchant for Southern Gothic and Harry Crews, his grotesques and brutality just hit me. Right in the guts.
If you enjoy shorts, you should really pick up a copy of Alan Sillitoe’s Collected Stories, another big influence. Best British short story writer since Lawrence.
Also comics (US and UK), pulpy sci-fi and horror, they have been all mixed up in my head since I could read.
And dear old Dostoevesky … he taught me (and still does) what real writing is.
Hunter S Thompson’s gonzo madness …

There are so many, aren’t there?

I guess by your photos that music means a lot to you too?

KF – Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, so many greats.

Music does mean a lot to me. I remember the first time I heard jazz.
For several years in my childhood, it was a Sunday tradition for my parents to take my brother and me to the French Quarter for beignets and chocolate milk; then, we would head over to the French Market to buy our produce for the week. I must have been around six or seven years old. We entered the open-air market. It was a warm humid evening and the aromas of the ripe fruits and vegetables were heavy. As my mother was selecting Creole tomatoes, I wandered by the stalks of sugar cane. There, the old merchant had a transistor radio on playing music that I had never heard before. After my parents bought a few items, they called me over to join them as they wanted to walk further into the market. I found myself sauntering in order to be obedient, but also to remain in earshot of that fantastic music. Impatient, my mother backtracked to get me. She asked, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “That music.” Her reply was, “Oh, that’s just jazz.” I’ve never forgotten her understatement.
Then classical music found me. Like many average American teenagers, I listened to rock and roll, heavy metal, then punk and hardcore. Yet, at about nineteen or twenty, I returned to almost exclusively listening to jazz and blues. I especially have a soft spot for female jazz vocalists.
Personally, I’m not musically proficient in any instrument nor sadly, can I sing. This inability explains why I’m especially endeared to musicians and love taking photographs of them.

I’ve noticed that music enters into your writing. How much does it inspire your painting?

JM – Only because I am usually listening to it when I paint or draw.

To be honest, I’m not that competent. I have done a couple of pieces that I am chuffed with but I don’t feel my skill is that good.
Doesn’t stop me drawing though. Never will.

New Orleans. Jazz. The two are inextricably linked.
There is an atmosphere in your writing that seems to be linked to both.
Can you describe the feeling of the city to an island monkey like myself?

KF - You’d think this would be an easy one, but it’s the hardest yet.

There is a local trumpeter Kermit Ruffins who has a song “What is New Orleans?” It is eight minutes and twenty-five seconds long. He first says, “New Orleans is red beans and rice on a Monday night.” Then he continues that New Orleans is different kinds of gumbos: Creole, filé, cowan, chicken, smoke sausage, hot sausage. He gives shout-outs to local businesses, jazz clubs, more food, musicians, social clubs, and brass bands. In the live recording you can hear people laugh, clap, whistle, and yell out when they agree. With the Rebirth Brass Band, he has another song “What is New Orleans? Part 2.” For six minutes and twenty-six seconds, Kermit calls out more food, businesses, musicians, restaurants, street names, etc… Now, if he can’t define New Orleans in fifteen minutes, I doubt that I can do it in a couple of paragraphs.

It all goes back to perspectives. Just like “New Orleans is mashed potatoes and turkey necks on a Thursday night” might be Kermit’s Thursday night meal, it certainly isn’t everyone’s in New Orleans. I can only try to relay “my” New Orleans to you. For me, it is beautiful architecture, great music, the people, an attitude, and a sensual lifestyle. It is a hedonistic culture and we deny ourselves few pleasures. New Orleans is my friends and the joie de vivre we share. People in New Orleans love to laugh and have a good time. This city has many problems and worries, so you have to be passionate about living here or you move. The two brief times that I lived in other cities, I felt lost and misunderstood. I was told, “You can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of the girl.” As Kermit sings in Part 2, “If you don’t love this life, you gotta be crazy.”

I feel like I haven’t told you anything. I’m sorry. As I said earlier, there’s a mystique about New Orleans that isn’t easily explained.

Do you feel passionate about your hometown or Paris?

JM - There’s a coincidence.
As I was reading through your reply, last night, what should be on French telly but Live & Let Die … Roger Moore at his finest, New Orleans and Baron Samedi.
It sounds like a place that I’d really enjoy.

I don’t really feel passionate about a particular city, maybe London, but I do feel a love of the wild places in the world.
The beauty and terrible necessity of nature humbles me every time.
I don’t really have a conventional political bone in my body, but something that riles me is our hubris of thinking that the we are the pinnacle and the world is ours for the using.
Me included, dammit! Me included.

How are people dealing the post-Katrina clean up?
I know that it was a while ago but still when something hits that hard the effects are going to be felt for a long time.

KF – Oh, I love that movie, especially the jazz funeral scene with the Olympia Brass Band. So, we started this little chat with Marie Laveau and no wonder the Baron Samedi wanted in.

If you visited New Orleans and remained in the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, or Uptown, you may never know anything happened. Yet, if you ventured out to areas hardest hit like the 9th Ward, Lakeview, and St. Bernard Parish, you would find significant evidence. The majority of the clean-up has been accomplished, but the rebuilding is an ongoing project.

Even if everything, every physical aspect of the city, could be restored to pre-Katrina conditions, it would not be the same. It couldn’t be, because the event is etched in our collective psyche. For years, we had heard our elders talk of Hurricane Betsy like others talk of the boogie man. We had seen the old films of the flooded city. Those who rode out Betsy, a Category 3 hurricane, acquired a false sense of security that they could withstand any future ones. Despite all the scientific data that forecast New Orleans to be underwater within fifty years, we lived in a naïve denial that it couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen. But then it did.

Mother Nature has a way of putting things into perspective. Losing all of my worldly possessions has made me less materialistic. I’m ashamed at the significance and sentimental value I had put on mere things in the past. We’re in hurricane season right now and anything could happen. We New Orleanians are always in a state of cautious optimism: we hope for the best, but you never know. Our local media remind us of our vulnerability due to an inadequate levee protection system, coastal erosion, and the inevitability of another devastating hurricane. I think because of this acute awareness, we hold our culture even closer.

Has anything cataclysmic happened in your life or maybe simply a string of little disasters?

JM – Being born. Ho ho.

After living in so-called Third World countries, I am a bit hesitant to call anything a disaster. It changes the way that you see things. The everyday grinding poverty. The tropical diseases and hideous disfigurements. The children with severed limbs placed on pavements by gangsters to beg from them. The feral packs of dogs. These things become common place. Normal. You become de-sensitised. You really do. Put it this way, when I first came back to Europe and saw guys begging in the streets, I thought to myself “You’re not poor. You’re wearing clothes!”

Anyway, a final question …

What is your idea of heaven?

And thank you very very much, Madame!

KF – Thanks for having me, Jason. It’s been a pleasure.

Well, I suppose since you seem to have just described hell, I can take a crack at heaven.

I don’t believe in a traditional afterlife, a party in the clouds. Although, I’m sure the band would be heavenly and the hors d’œuvre and cocktails divine. For me, paradise is this lifetime, the only one I believe I have. Decadent, pleasurable things come to mind as heaven: the perfect raw oyster, salty and cold; a fun time on a balcony; that first sip of champagne; la petite mort; discovering; finding the perfect word; watching an outstanding movie; Mardi Gras; a good conversation; making art; a lovely hotel room with room service; a favorite song; collaborations; air-conditioning; looking at photographs and taking them- knowing when you got the shot; excellent wine; making people feel good about themselves; finishing a terrific book; wearing a hat; learning; beholding beauty; writing; anticipation; sharing a genuine guffaw.

Heaven is right now.

Kristin’s website is Le Salon: http://kristin.fouquet.cc

Her blog is Le Salon Annex: http://kristinfouquet.blogspot.com/

She has her first collection of short stories, Twenty Stories, coming out soon through Rank Stranger Press.

Tags: Conversations, Kristin Fouquet