A Book Story on Talia
A Book Story on Talia
My story with Talia begins in 2019. I met her when I was in need of an adventure. I'd just given up on a transatlantic crossing and, frustrated by this missed rendezvous with my childhood dream, I was determined to make another one come true: to buy myself a boat to build my cabin, my travelling companion, my floating library. I had also lost my father two years earlier, and the disappearance of the man who for me embodied the very definition of daring had filled me with a furious desire to stand up alone against the world in the open sea, and bite into life.
That's how I came across Talia's wake. She was waiting for me on an island: the Frioul archipelago, which majestically stretches its long limestone silhouette across the bay of Marseille. She didn't look like much, but her curved lines were as cheerful as a smile, and her voice was full of salt. A modest sailboat of barely 8 meters and already well over 40 years old, built in plastic but still displaying some old woodwork and sky blue hull paint which made it warm. I set about repairing her, tending to her carcass just as I was tending to my heart and the distant memories still nestling in it.
I'm six years old: I'm at anchor in the Bay of Porquerolles or somewhere else on the Côte d'Azur, my father is tinkering on deck, the weather is clear, and I can devour a book a day, cradled in the forward cabin of the boat, sheltered from the sun, caressed by the mild air that comes in through the upper porthole. I can hear a few halyards outside, maybe a few boats going by, I don't know. I'm absorbed in my reading, we have no mobile phone or television, and life goes on like this, from book to book, from mooring to mooring, for days on end.
I was ten years old at the time, I think, when my father started taking me to the flea market in the Arnavaux district of Marseille every Sunday. From the Vieux Port, we'd ride our motorbikes along the footbridge over the Joliette district, overlooking the sea, and every time we did, I felt like I was flying off to unknown treasures: we'd go bargain-hunting for old books and various objects, looking at the carpets spread out in the dust, brimming with odds and ends from other lives.
Once a month, we went to the Cours Julien, and then we didn't know which way to turn: everywhere, the second-hand booksellers on the banks of the Cours - of which there were many at the time - got out their boards and trestles and unleashed their marvels. It's the monthly book fair: there are books everywhere, in all formats, for all ages. I caress the covers, smell the pages, daydream over the drawings. I watch my father immerse himself in the books, ask what he finds so special about one over another, listen to him talk to the shopkeeper. He loves them. I love it too.
I'm twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen or eighteen and the years go by like this: between books and the sea. Marseille. Between the pages I skim and the waves that caress me in turn. In the end, it's all about sensuality. And it seems to me that I might never need anything else. So finally, after years in Paris, detours through fashion, architecture and music, like a boat that rocks from side to side but always comes back to its centre, I too am coming back: to Marseille, to books and to the sea.
Willy-nilly, I tinker with Talia, confronting the elements with her, searching for their essence on the waves and trying to transcribe their poetry onto paper.I'm not alone: there are Jimmy Granger and Zuri de Souza, also sailors and publishers, whom I met in Marseille's Vieux Port after their Mediterranean voyage (Zuri is an excellent chef to boot!). ) ; Adélie de Soumagnat, who designs superb crew uniforms with her Double Double brand ; Viken Avedissian, Hugo Denis Queinec and Léon Prost, who immortalise our madcap voyages and sea crossings with their photographic skills ; the infernal trio of Cyprien, Sonni and Lucas, marine carpenters at the Borg shipyard ; and Gustave Alfsen and his Australian shepherd called Bakounine, both well-known figures on the island of Frioul.
A bookshop, a publishing house, a boat and friends, like anchors, landmarks, my “amers”.
