#13 Islands

They started by singing us one of their songs in a choral-lullaby style. Then Islands proceeded to do whatever they felt like: they stirred up shit, played with dogs, sang in the middle of the road. There’s a taxi driver that should remember them well.

I went to see Nick Diamond. He was at a table with his band, an hour before his concert at La Maroquinerie. After my mumbled explanation of our project, he said something to me: “We’ll do this in the street. I want to annoy people in the street.” Then he introduced me to the rest of the band—there was a tangle of first names, and I didn’t retain any of them—and I left. I caught up with them again after the concert.

Islands are eight people onstage. There were five of them in the street: a guitar, a tambourine, a bass clarinet and two violins. Two violins, at midnight, on rue de Ménilmontant. And one clarinet. They barely had to do anything to annoy people in the street. We walked, they sang, and a dozen people followed us.

There was this owner of a bistro who repeatedly refused to let them sing in his establishment. Upon hearing the band’s surprising “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby”, he came out and exclaimed, “Ah, they actually sing well!” There was a fat German baker that Kate never stopped following, who ran away from the camera. There was a man on the wall at the chapel of Nemo and a car with its hazard lights flashing.

And then there was the return to La Maroquinerie.

Nick started the song while walking in the middle of la rue de Ménilmontant. The others took their places around him. He walked down the street, the cars advancing carefully; we prudently bypassed certain ones and dangerously, narrowly missed others. Only the taxi decided not to move. Islands had blocked the street. He had four passengers on board, and he was stopped. Kate faced him. He felt pressured to keep his cool: there was a camera and a lot of people around him.

It was tense, but Kate extended one foot and leapt forward, climbed on the hood of the taxi, like a kid gathering her courage to timidly stroke the nose of a wild animal. Pretty and rebellious.

She accomplished Nick’s mission. They had annoyed people.

Translated by Caitlin Caven