In Which I Pour My Heart Out About Researching A Dissertation

The most important thing I've learned over the last 8 months of research is something I learned at a Parisian restaurant.

My mom, Cathy and I had arrived several minutes early at La Cerisaie, where we were going to have dinner with Maggie, Eden, and JP, who were running a little late. It was freezing out, so we tried to go in. But the door was locked, there were no customers inside, and we were early enough that I figured they just hadn't opened yet. (Many restaurants don't open until 7:30 or 8.) We kept waiting for the other three to show up, getting colder and wondering when the restaurant would open. Finally, someone inside came to the door, opened it, I explained we had a reservation, and she let us in.

When Maggie, Eden, and JP finally arrived, I watched as they, too, struggled with the door. The hostess, who was busy doing something, called out "it's open! just keep pushing!" and a few seconds later they managed to force themselves through the door. I realized the door must have been open when we were trying to get in too, we just didn't push hard enough.

I was reminded of this incident yesterday, when I finally gained access to the archives of a certain Parisian music publisher after 7 months of trying. When I say "7 months of trying," I mean I sent dozens of emails, made gads of phone calls, resorted to pleading with mutual acquaintances to intercede on my behalf. Basically  I did everything short of showing up uninvited at the homes of the people with whom I was trying to get in touch. Oh, and after "getting in touch," I still had to get legal permission to look at something, anything, in their archives. Which took more time, caused more frustration, and made me feel like I was being left out in the cold. It was La Cerisaie all over again.

So I kept pushing. I knew it was possible to open that door, and eventually it did open - just not all the way. When I was finally given access, I wasn't allowed to see any of the things I had originally asked to see, like musical sketches, letters, contracts, and account details. Copyright and other legal questions made these things off-limits, but I did get to study something I hadn't even considered asking for: livres de cotage, the books in which they kept track of how many copies of each piece they print.

I'm purposefully showing you a terribly out-of-focus picture because 1) I wasn't supposed to take pictures and b) I definitely am not supposed to be "publishing" images of their livre de cotage and iii) don't steal my research, ok? It probably wouldn't be that useful, anyway - it's not incredibly useful to me, just a little interesting, worth a few sentences in my dissertation. In 8 months of research, I've gathered all sorts of crumbs like this one, which hopefully will come together to look more like a pie crust and less like a pile of crumbs by the time I'm finished writing up everything.

This archive was a particularly difficult nut to crack; several other archives, libraries, and attempts at making contacts proved challenging as well. But if I accomplished anything this year, it's because I learned to just keep pushing, not to take "no" for an answer, and to only eat at really good restaurants.