I Watched Céline Dion Come Back to Life in Paris

I sell Paris for a living, so I like to think I'm hard to impress. I've built a whole company around this city's ability to hand people a moment they'll talk about for years. This week the city handed me one, and now I'm the one who can't shut up.

A little context, in case her story passed you by. Céline Dion hadn't done a proper show in six years. Stiff person syndrome, the cancelled Courage tour, that documentary where the whole world watched her body turn against her. Then the Olympics happened, she sang from the Eiffel Tower, everyone cried and quietly wondered if that was a goodbye. This March she posted a video from under that same tower announcing a Paris residency, and something like nine million people entered the ticket lottery. Nine million. Every date gone in hours. Somehow I was in the building.

Strange thing is, La Défense Arena is not where you'd expect magic. It's a giant hangar out in the business district, you walk past office towers and a shopping mall to get to it. 35,000 seats. But the atmosphere inside was unlike anything I've felt at a concert, and I've been to alot of them. Not the usual pre-show buzz. Quieter than that. Everyone seemed to know exactly what this night was, and what the odds were of being in the room for it, and nobody wanted to waste a second.

Then she came out, and she was small.

Nobody tells you that part. She walked on almost shy, reserved, like she was stepping onto ice she wasn't sure would hold her. You could hear it in the voice too, those first songs were careful, testing. Her face had something guarded in it, almost sullen. And I watched 35,000 people do the opposite of what crowds normally do. Nobody deflated. Everybody leaned in. The whole arena tilted toward her like it wanted to catch her if she fell.

What happened over the next couple hours is the thing I keep failing to explain to people.

Every ovation went into her like fuel. You could literally watch it happen. A chorus sung back at her and her chin came up. A wave of applause and her shoulders dropped an inch. Song after song the hesitation burned off and the voice got stronger, I swear it got physically stronger, until somewhere in the middle of the night I realized the careful woman form the opening numbers was gone. It was Céline up there. The one from the records, full voice, planting notes in the roof like the last six years never happened. She fed off our affection and gave it back doubled, then fed off that too, around and around, all night.

By the time the big ones came, the Titanic song, the French classics the crowd around me knew every syllable of, I was finished. I left that arena emotionaly drained in a way I won't apologize for. The love in that room moved in both directions at once and I've never felt anything like it and I honestly doubt I ever will again.

One gripe, because this is my blog and I'm allowed one. The show was maybe 30% in English, and she spoke to us in English exactly once. I get it, we're in France, she's a French-Canadian daughter come home singing in the language of her heart, and the Parisians around me were living for every word. But some of us grew up on the English albums in the back of a car an ocean away from here, and one more moment in our direction would of gone a long way. Its a splinter in an otherwise perfect night.

The walk out is the part I keep coming back to. Thousands of people spilling toward the RER, and it wasn't silent, but it wasn't the usual drunken chaos after a show either. No chanting, nobody shrieking the setlist at each other. People talked quiet, the way you do leaving a wedding. Like everyone was carrying something and trying not to spill it.

They call Paris the city of love, and usually that means the postcard stuff. Couples on the Pont Neuf, champagne, padlocks on bridges. Last week the city earned the name for real. Real love is patient with weakness, loud when its needed, and strong enough to pull somebody back to themselves. Thirty-five thousand strangers gave it to one woman, and she took it, turned it into that voice, and handed it right back.

Six years away. She came back to the city of love, and the city loved her back to life. I was there. I still can't quite believe I was there.