Memories of a young refugee

 

 

I am 15 years old; I am leaving Tunisia with my father on a refugee boat…

Big difference with my travels before when with the entire family we were going to Paris to spend 3- or 4-weeks’ vacation in the summer and visiting family.…

This time we are on the deck, spending the night on a folding chair, my dear papa asks me every 5 minutes if I need something… I do not need anything  I just do not understand what we are doing, and he answers:

-We are going to try to make a new life in France, we had to leave Tunisia…

-In France ? Where ? 

-You are going to Montpellier, to Lycée Joffre , it is a public boarding school, a free school, you will spend the year there, I will go to Paris and try to start a new life for all of us,

-What about my mother and my brother?

-They are staying in Tunis for the moment, they will come to us later

-So what will I do in that school?

-Study, be the best,  and think about your life, imagine what you want to be, to do, tell yourself what life will be for you.

-But papa, I do not know really, the only thing I know is that I want to be somebody else.

-Yes you do know, you are special, you had so many years to be yourself, just be you, be demanding, listen to people, learn from everyone, be special.

-But papa, what can I do in this school? I do not know anybody , I am not French, I do not know what I really am, a Tunisian Jew? Is that a possible French?

- You are not a French citizen, but you are French, you were raised as a French boy, at home we were French, we love France, we love French people.   Remember You are special, you finish the French school before anybody, you are ready for everything, you are strong, you are a great boy, you know more about everything than anybody we know.

-But papa, I do not know the French boys, how will they see me? Do you think they will accept me?

-Do not worry, just be yourself, you will win, like you always did.

-Ok Papa, I will try, and I will make you proud of me, I have always desired to make you proud…

- I am proud of you, you are an incredible learner and arrived at the last year of school before anybody, next year you already be at the university.

- Yes papa, next year is the university, I will be 16… It is time… And you papa, what will you do in Paris, alone, and nowhere to go, and no money at all….

- Do not worry about me, I am staying in a small hotel Rue Champollion, the room is paid by your uncle, and I will start a new business, I know a lot of people in Paris, and many trust me.

- Ok papa, be sure to give me news…from time to time…I be very alone there… and when will we have news from my brother and my mother?

- They will write to you, I am sure…

 

 

We arrived in Marseille after a very difficult night on the deck of the boat, and we took a train to Montpellier, the city where I will spend the year in the Public Boarding school….

Lycée Joffre was beautiful, in the center of the city… We walked for more than an hour, my valise was heavy, full of my memories as a child, soon I will have to throw all of it…                                                                     To arrive at the entrance gate we had to go through a plaza called PLACE DE L’OEUF, on one side of the plaza a little café called YA BON meaning IT IS GOOD and on the other side of the plaza another café called YA MIEUX meaning IT IS BETTER… That was a great start in my year in France, in Montpellier….

I will pass on my introduction to the gentleman in charge of meeting me, I said goodbye to my father, he left with tears all over his face and said: “ I am not worried about you, I know you will be fine.” I will always remember these words , he repeated the same words five years later when he died in a hospital in Paris, heart broken by the death of my brother in a car accident, he was 59 years old….

 

The superintendent showed me the school. The classrooms and the refectory, we were walking in the hallways and in the courts, walking in the middle of young guys running, laughing,  talking fast… They all looked ok… I asked myself: Will I make some friends? Will I be accepted, will they like me, what should I say to them.  In my class they will be older than me, I wonder if they will make fun of me!!!!!!

Then the superintendent brought me to the dormitory…. He showed me a closet and said: “ This is yours for your stuff, here is the key… Then he showed me a bunk bed …

- Your bed is in the top, you have another student on the bottom bed, always go first on the top…

- Who is in the bottom bed?

-I do not remember his name, but he is also in your class…

 

I had never slept in bunk bed, images of my bedroom from Tunis were invading me, with a balcony, a very large room , where I had all my toys, my memories and more recently all my books.. All this was gone, was taken away from me, now I had a small bed and a metal closet, and I was alone in a foreign country, yes the country of my culture, but still foreign… I started to tremble, while emptying my valise, wondering about life, wondering about my lost family, wondering about my next step of survival, I was 15 years old…. But I had survived many difficult times before, I will do it again, I will….

I survived all year in this Lycée, doing the homework of others for a few francs. Writing sometimes 6 or 7 dissertations for the students around me , even if they were not in my class… My surname was: the useful guy……

Once a Saturday afternoon, one of the students said to me:

- Bernard you never go out from the Lycée, I am going this afternoon to a surprise- party, we will dance and meet girls, do you want to come, you will have a good time.

- Really you want me to join you ?

Nobody never had asked me to join a group for a good time.

-Yes, it is time for you to be a real French boy by meeting everybody in a dancing group.

-Ok, I will go with you, do I have to wear something special.

- Just wear what you think is fancy….

 

We arrived at the place of the surprise party, many people were dancing the TWIST, laughing and screaming and being young… I looked at all this and smiled, maybe I should also dance the twist and be happy for a few minutes… A girl came to me and said: You want to dance with me? I looked at her, she was so beautiful and smiling and happy…

-I never danced before, I will not know…

-Give me your hands , I will teach you…

She took my hands and guide me in the center of the room, first time for me to dance and be with young people….

She hold my hands, a girl holding my hands, I was so happy, I was almost smiling of joy…Then she said:

-What is your name

- Bernard

- Are you in the lycée?

- Yes , I am.

- Where are you from?

- I am from Tunis in Tunisia.-

- What?

-From Tunis.

-Ah, ok, have a good time.

She left.

I was in the middle of the room, with people dancing the Twist around me, I was alone, but I decided not to stop, and I continued dancing by myself, thinking, too bad for you…..

 

A lesson that I kept all my life: IN LIFE GO ON WITH YOUR DREAMS EVEN IF PEOPLE AROUND YOU DENY YOU ALL POSSIBILITIES….. YOU WILL WIN AT THE END, JUST BECAUSE YOU WENT ON, AND LEARNED SO MUCH FROM IT….

 

 

 Bernard, do you miss it????... YES I DO…

 

Four years ago, I retired from the opera world, and I stop directing operas… I had been a theater director since 1962, and then starting in 1981 to direct Opera… I have directed more than 100 plays ( Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Moliere, Racine, Marivaux, Ionesco, Arrabal, Corneille, Shakespeare, Chekhov, etc.….) and 463 operas all over the world… Sometimes an assistant director was on location, and I was going only for a few days...                                 

So, at the age of 74 , 4 years ago, I said goodbye to the passion of my life, and I decided to concentrate to my other passions , writing and acting…  So the past 4 years I have been writing libretti and I am finishing my next novel, also I have been acting in commercials and television series ( very small roles ).                                                                                                                            The passion of writing is very satisfactory , the passion of acting has highs and lows, sometimes the role given to me was simply ridiculous and unfortunately the experience has been VERY RARELY satisfactory… I must have appeared in a dozen of roles, and not once I have met the director who always talked to me through a mike, when he was finally talking to me….                                                                                                                 The only time I really met a director was for a commercial about Dementia and Alzheimer disease, I was an old man in a wheelchair, I could not really talk, and I had trembling hands…Suddenly the director appears on the set just in front of me and screamed: “Bernard do not act, be yourself, you are perfect for the role”…

And I thought that my ways of thinking were still impressive…A lesson of life and for life…ENFIN!!!!! IT IS WHAT IT IS!!!!!

During these four years I stayed in contact with many , many of my friends of the opera world…I have to thank them to have kept me in their thoughts, in their heart, and still showing for me a lot of affection…. Yes, friendship has now a new definition for me, and it is also a source of memories of the past times. We have to continue to have affection and to show support for the ones who now are not in the circles anymore…                                                 SO THANK YOU MY FRIENDS…..

Very often friends are asking me if I miss the theater and Opera as a director… My first immediate answer is no, absolutely not…   Why should I ?  How can I miss it ? Especially these days with the new rules , the new style, the new ways, and the strange obligations of approaching actors and singers…                               I have been trained by masters like Jean Louis Barrault, Tania Balachova, and with the reading and studying of Artaud, Jouvet , Stanislavski…                                                                                Today these ways of directing from the old generation of geniuses are not accepted, and sometimes actually considered as a crime… Yes life has changed, rules have changed, styles have changed, understanding of human behavior has changed.  

But the honest reality is YES I MISS IT A LOT… Directing was for me a way of living, directing saved my existence in France in the sixties, and directing showed me the ways to discover myself and to reinvent who I was during each production for the past fifty year. Yes, directing was for me a way  to know where I really was in the world and giving me possibilities to reinvent myself to continue to be….

YES I MISS DIRECTING… All the moments of it.

I miss the period of creativity when with the designers we create a new décor… The research of the times of the piece, and what it meant for me…. Becoming again a person of the 16, or 17, or 18 centuries, make some research and have images of the surroundings of these characters, trying to understand how they lived, where and with what needs…                                                   Yes, to be interested in only their love stories and their obsession with power was not enough…  Rediscovering the life of these heroes was the result of an intense research of their times, of their customs, of their ways in a specific country at a give I learned so much about history and society and religion of so many countries just by studying the period of the opera…

I miss the hours spent with the lighting designer in an empty theater, when we were creating incredible effects to show new situations , new locations, and recently the use of projections added so much to his creativity.

I miss the work with singers and conductors… I met during these years incredible and amazing personalities, talent for singing was most of the times linked to a real knowledge of life… I learned so much just by talking to them , by being with them in a rehearsal room , by becoming sometimes a real friend…

How can I not think about some of them , they brought so much to me as an artist but also as a man… How can I not keeping in my mind the memories of these great people, I became another Bernard just by going to rehearsals every day for 9 hours and be with these artists…                                                                        And very often, after rehearsals , we spend some time together talking about family, difficulties of travelling and being alone so often, each of us opening his heart to the new friends .                  Yes, again I learned so much about human behavior and what loneliness can do for all of us…                                                           I had so much admiration for them, enjoying incredibly the trust they had in me when I was directing, when I was bringing them new dimensions of life through the character they were personifying... 

So many times, I was telling them, you see what you tell me now has some relation with the character you are performing, do not hesitate when you sing the role to use these memories for being somebody else, use your memories, your own experiences for delivering the music of your character.    Use your life every time you can and bring it on stage… By doing it,  you will deal with your buried feelings and your character will be so real .                   I am proud to say that many singers and actors went to the next step of their career after our work together, and I have many assistant directors who now are important in the business and very successful.

Sorry if I am bragging, but I miss doing it again , I miss sharing whatever I know with others thru acting and using directing for that.                                                                                                     I do not miss to be important, to hear sudden silence when I entered a rehearsal room, when everybody stopped talking and looked at me whispering : HERE HE IS…AND THEN COMING TO ME TO SALUTE ME…No , I do not miss that !!!!                                  It is not true I miss it; it made me feel existing, it made me feel useful, and it made me feel like a roman emperor when I had been for so long lost in question land… Yes, I miss it…

I miss the relation you have to have with the administration of the producing company… I learned how to be open to other suggestions , to other ways to deal with problems, to different approach of everyday dilemmas… And also, I learned how to accept other ways of doing things, which for me was the most difficult, since unfortunately I had the wrong attitude to believe that my ways were the best and I knew more than anybody else…

I miss watching performances of my productions and realize with the public reaction what was good, what was a source of painful emotion or a total abandon of restraints or….                                   Bringing emotion to people, bringing joy, bringing ways of distance with everyday life, bringing knowledge, bringing…bringing… was for me an engine for the next show…

So yes, I miss it, but I have to believe it is a normal reaction ….Doing the same thing 55 years and suddenly stop it is not something easy… I just hope that the last years of my life will be filled again with a new passion… Obviously acting is not going to give me that and writing is wonderful but a very lonesome passion … But I am confident I will find another passion , and this new passion will be the most important of my entire life… All my life, I have been reinventing myself, and I have no doubt that I will do it again , I am still strong enough to do it, I am still full of ideas, still full of thoughts…So  be ready all of you for the new Bernard….             AU REVOIR ET A BIENTOT…

 

 

  In Search of Lost Time

 

 

Should we read the masterpiece of Marcel Proust?

Should we read seven volumes and three thousand pages????

Certainly!

You have to read it to escape the stress of a life totally devoted to the future!! Proust reminds us that sometimes and very often It is particularly important to accept silence, but we have to be present in a world and learn how to appreciate it.

This morning I was looking at old manuscripts and I found the following text I wrote a few years ago:

 

I am floating in the ocean here in Miami and millions of images are invading me... I was recently told that in September I will be honored by a foundation for lifetime achievements... 
Achievements? I really and honestly hope that I deserve such a wonderful prize!

Did I really achieve anything? 

What does achievement really mean? Is it to be recognized for what we have done?

Enough with questions about life and what I have done or not done, let us forget all this and enjoy the day….

This morning the ocean is incredibly ideal, ideal temperature, no waves, no seeds, 

No JELLYFISH...and NOBODY around! Che Pace!!!!

Or maybe because it is six in the morning, and everybody continues to be asleep missing some especially important moments of life (smiling)...            I walk in the water, and I swim, and I float, and I dream...

And I think and I remember...all the oceans and seas I have plunged my body at one time when I was young and strong and full of hopes and plans for the future…

The Mediterranean Sea in Carthage near Tunis the city of my birth, the ocean in Martinique, the sea in Madagascar and Reunion Island where I was touring with a theater company,  and the red sea and the Caspian Sea and the Caribbean Sea or the beaches of Dar Es Salaam or South Africa or Sweden or ten other seas all over the world…. The time of my youth when I was dreaming of becoming Marlon Brando.

Yes, I remember I wrote this a few years ago about my young age trying to be.

 

 

And then this morning, putting my 78 years old out of my bed at 5 30 am like every morning, I opened a drawer , went through some manuscripts, and found a lot of material about Brecht, material accumulated when I was directing Mother Courage with my theater company. I found  the following text :

“This is the year which people will talk about.

This is the year which people will be silent about.

The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die.

The earth no longer produces, it devours. The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.“
   Bertolt Brecht

 

Strangely enough Brecht wrote this more than 70 years ago, and soon after when I was young and discovering with beatitude the world, I was trying to create a new life for myself and spending my time dunking my ignorance in the seas of the planet.

So, at the same time I and many others around me lived in beatitude and false creativity, while some lived in fear and contemplation of a destroyed world… While “ The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die. “I was in a beautiful sea  somewhere in the world, believing that I was special, travelling alone all over and wanting to discover and to learn about life, about others, about my rights….

 Believing that I had paid my dues, I had been punished enough by life, and the time just to be happy and enjoy every moment was now with me, so let us do it…                                                               

 

Maybe the few months I spent in Nepal in this Temple should have opened my eyes. In Nepal I had learned that the world is not what we decide and has not been created only for our well-being. We have to worship mother nature, the sun, the moon, the wind, and the fire….We cannot spend our time ignoring the real facts.

Oh Really????                  

 

How can we so often live in our so-called happiness and ignore the incredibly dramatic life of others? How can we continue to believe we are creating ‘ART’ or what we believe is ‘ART’ when so many are dying of hunger, poverty, terrible wars, and political restrictions.

The first time it is reported that some people were being butchered we had a scream of horror. Then a hundred were butchered and we commented on it.. And when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, we found refuge in total silence. When the world falls in the hands of the devil, nobody even says: NO, enough.

I lived most of the beginning of my adult age ignoring all this, continuing to look for MY WELL BEING, IGNORING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS, and believing that I was special since I had suffered enough, and certainly ready for life and deserving a great future… Yes, I was special in my selfishness, and time went on and life went on , and suffering went on…Now I am in admiration of the ones who spend their life helping others and trying to make life of others bearable.

Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult because today we live in a complete change of ways of leading a life, it is not choice anymore but obligations… Yes, the time of having choices is gone, we have to do what people expect, we have to be according to new rules,  we have to function the way the new world decides and needs us to function.

 

It is increasingly hard to adapt to the new world … I do not know if it is my advanced age or the fact that everything changes every day, but it is increasingly difficult not to say impossible to follow the trends and the new ways of thinking. Approaching questions or even looking at the world with sanity and innocence is becoming impossible. It is unfortunate, and it is really tragic…. But I have to go on and to continue to try…

 

 Another quote from Brecht

 “In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Are we going to continue to accept this masquerade of life? What can we do? It seems that others impose on us who we are, what we do, how to think and what to think of others!!  And we do all this to each other!!! 

 

Of course Fate and Destiny have a role to play, and life is often a lottery, but we should not believe that fate and destiny are the only determining factors, we have to believe that we can change the world or our world by shaping it, by interpreting it, by looking at it in a different way…AND BY REFUSING TO FOLLOW THE ONLY WAY KNOWN TOO OFTEN AS THE TREND.

Yes, sure, why not? I am dreaming again and If I think that way, soon I am going to believe I am somebody else…                                                             

The reality is: We cannot say anything to anybody anymore; everybody has good reasons to be who he is, to believe what he wants, to act following his desires…so why should we expect anything from anybody? Why should we believe that we know something?

 

I have the feeling I am not in touch with most of everything …

In public, in our work, even with our friends we cannot address what we really feel about this one or that one, about an aspect of life without taking the risk to be seen as a strange person in the best case or an agitator and may be mental in other cases 

I thought that to be good to some people deserved some recognition?

 

After all these years navigating all over, I still did not get that I have to accept that to do nothing means to open the door to everything… expect nothing from anybody…do not ask anything…do not try to create anything…wait for things to happen, for the world to guide you, for other like you to tell you what to do when they finally look at you…Right? Guess what? NO, NO… I refuse, life would be a torture and a total boredom.

 

“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What is left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

Brecht

 

 AGING…

 

 

"The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” “The older I get, the greater I was.” "I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do." - Mark Twain                                                                                                                                 

Aging people have fewer friends  than when they were younger…It seems that people in general stay away from aging people feeling that they do not  have too much in common. It could be the belief that older people do not connect with today needs; Do people sometimes really show an uncontrollable disdain for knowledge based on experience, or is it pure fear of the unknown since difference of age creates the unknown ? Yes the difference of age creates the unknown , especially in the times we are living where everything changes so fast, with new rules daily.

"The important thing to remember is that I'm probably going to forget." - Unknown         

"You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks." - Joel Plaskett 

I am constantly thinking of the people I love... Thinking of what  I did not give to them, and I do not know what to do. My heart is beating of unfinished love, not knowing if there is a next step and sometimes knowing too much…Life went so fast, I am tired very often the entire day, I cannot think the way I did before and  I cannot talk to a lot of people…But I am still here  dreaming about great achievements.

You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." - T.S. Elliot 

Why do I have to think about all this. Very few people want to talk to me and even many people forget that I am still around… So many former friends are not present in my life and rarely give news, and I  do not want to harass them. Maybe it was only in my mind, my imagination that they were friends, I knew so many people, where are they? … Maybe they are dealing with their own difficulties and have no time for an AGING former friend…AND I HAVE WITH ME THE MOST IMPORTANT: A FAMILY I LOVE IMMENSELY…

"We don't grow older, we grow riper." - Pablo Picasso

I know every generation has problems , I know every generation is asking for something different while the older one wants to preserve the rights and qualities of life for which they fought… BUT these days it is going faster and faster, and aging people cannot recognize the world they are living in, knowing that tomorrow will be again different… Most of the time, they find refuge in silence, or talk nonstop to say nothing in order to hide disarray, fear. And they have to adapt again day after day , hour after hour….                                                                 
 BUT PLEASE DO NO lose connection with YOURSELF… We cannot forget who we are and who we were, it is the only way to survive and maybe to create more.

"First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down." - Leo Rosenberg

I am now 78 years old. “The older I get, the better I used to be.” – Lee Trevino ….Sixty years have passed since this total reconstruction of my mind. . Sixty years? Did wisdom of old age take over? But do wisdom leave an after taste of bitterness on the truth? Does the older generation become bitter with time? Bitterness of having wisdom ruling everything and no room anymore for invention?

 “It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.” - Andy Rooney 

The sky has changed sky... I look at my youth and I see myself...l am not anymore that child full of rage...l do not want any more to murder truth, I want only to look at a possible truth.Truth of what? Truth of the creation of imagination, Of the unfinished fantasies ? Is Truth just proof of supernatural? Is Truth a proof of nonsense? And today, does truth really has a meaning, a purpose?

"I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they're cramming for their final exam."- George Carlin 

 My youth you are far away now, lost in the inconsistent memories, the memory of the lost senses, but I keep for you affection ... Yes my youth, I really love you and admire you..  You are not around anymore, but I keep the memory of your great consistency, and even if it is a shock to witness your disappearance, I continue to smile thinking of you and be full of tenderness for who you were… Youth you will always be present in my mind, in my memory…

"Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened." - Jennifer Yane

Aging !!!! We could become dangerously stagnant and too often with the impossibility to function with imagination and we become suspicious and sometimes we could be pushed away…

I know and I realize that life is not the same, health is often a problem, I will develop this subject, too negative and you all know how positive I am about life and everything.

Aging people should be sitting on an armchair in a retirement home looking thru the window at the emptiness around them and smile with beatitude looking at the new generation?  They should smile thinking of their successful youth so long ago and disappear behind it… Is that a manifestation of Aging?

"Old age comes at a bad time." – San Banducci

Is that a definition of not belonging to a new world? Is it another moment in time when what is happening does not coincide with reality? What is REALLY my reality? I cannot guess, is my reality to accept my loneliness? Is my reality to accept that the big majority of people is not interested in my life, my feelings, my thoughts, my leftover creativity.

 "When I was young, I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then, and I'm labeled senile." – GB

I can still have opinions and ideas; I was and still am alive.. I did not let life, but events of life guide me by the tip of the nose... When you look at me, please do not do it with impatience. Realize that most of us reach the different steps of life, youth, maturity and then the AGE DE RAISON, thinking that it is forever, that nothing will or can stop us, that it is a perpetual story in the making… We just have to find the next chapter…

"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it." - Golda Meir 

 I have to say that today the aging PEOPLE look at the young one with disdain, with sometimes jealousy, with non-acceptation of the new needs , with the refusal of the new freedom in so many aspects of life. Pretending all the time that the young people know nothing, have nothing, believe nothing, and are just the product of the internet and social media, and  they should go back to school of life, they should learn how to behave in public and in private. Aging people pretend that Knowing is becoming a handicap if it is not based on real knowledge of the past and history…  

   "Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere."  "At my age, flowers scare me." - George Burns 

The young people, they are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it.                           The young generation according to the old one has no culture, no morality, no sense of belonging, no tradition, they refuse the basic way of honor, they think only about money and adventures, only about factice and easy success. THAT IS NOT TRUE… The young generation has other priorities, and often valid ones.

“You spend 90 percent of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10 percent trying to convince the Lord that you’re actually not that tired.” – Robert Brault 

So Aging is not an easy task, but it is unbelievably difficult if we have to go through it only with our family, with nothing else, nobody else, every day looks like an eternity, every hour is a punishment, please take care of the AGING, be close to them, consider them, stay FRIENDS….

 

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." - "When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old." - Mark Twain 

 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (S)…

 

There is no end in the difficulties of our time… Yes, punishments continue to invade us: The covid virus is still around, and even worse than a few months ago, every day I learned that somebody I know is sick; wars all over and Ukraine being destroyed; with the climate change the weather is worse in the entire world; the monkeypox disease is starting to be a real danger; the economy is a mess and we have more and more people starving; the cities are terribly dangerous with shootings every day.... and despite that incredible painful situation, too many people continue to behave like the world belongs to them and the rules to guide the society should be their rules. HOW STRANGE IS THAT?

It is time to read again Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky? I remember his book with passion, I went back to it and found quotes I believe are adequate for our times…Here are some:

 

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”                                                                                                                                                  “Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”                                     “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”                                                                                                                “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”                                                                                                                         “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”
“The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?”

Are we punished for OUR CRIME(S)?

Every day I am astonished and very often in shock hearing about the new ways of functioning of our society…. I mentioned many times in this blog the incredible changes of our world and how difficult it is for all of us to adapt to it…

But nothing has changed and even worse it is prevalent… I hear all the times about students complaining to the dean about their teachers because they are not supported enough, and their ARTISTRY is not recognized and actually is defeated… Or about other ARTISTS beginners not understanding why they are not cast in big companies like the Metropolitan Opera when they have such a great talent…But it is not only in the Artistic world, it is in every aspect of life and society, too many people really do not know their jobs and do not try to learn more, they prefer to be on Instagram or…or…and are convinced they KNOW AND DESERVE MORE….

 

PUNISHMENTS???

…. I READ RECENTLY THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE

“The founder of Dubai Sheikh Rashid was asked in an interview about the future of his country, and he replied: My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son will ride a land rover, my grandson will ride a land rover, but my great grandson will have to ride a camel again.

When asked why, his response was hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create difficult times, many will not understand it but we need to create warriors, not parasites, add to the historical reality that all great empires, the Persians, the Trojans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians and later the British all rose and perish within 240 years. They were not conquered by external enemies, they were rotten and destroyed from within. America has reached that 240 years mark and it is starting to become visible and accelerating. We are past the Mercedes and Land rover years, the camels are now on the horizon, the greatest generation consisted of 18 years old kids that stormed the beaches of Normandy and now two generations later some kids, some 18 years old want to hide in a safe room when words hurt their feelings, they want free stuff from the government because they think they are entitled to it. The camels are on the horizon for sure…”                                                

History has a funny way of repeating itself.

Everything is owed to everybody, everybody deserves everything, everybody should have everything…

CRIMES???     We are punished… WHY????                                                                                                                                                       Are we only functioning guided and directed by the Moi buried in our subconscious? And ignoring all the rules and all the lessons of previous generations? The MOI? What is it really?

Example of the MOI in the subconscious…In French theater, to attract public attention before a rising curtain, knocks are hit on the floor by a wooden pole on the backstage and then three loud knocks just before the start of a performance. Since lights were candles that was the way to tell the audience that the performance was starting... It was a tradition and still happen in some theaters today.                                                                                                               Puccini in LA BOHEME, at the beginning of Musetta Aria illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE KNOCKS) … Did he do it on purpose as a wink to the French theater tradition and to show that Musetta will act a role in a theater scene?? Or had he acquired this knowledge, digested it and it came out without even thinking of it? Did his subconscious work for him? Did the hidden MOI function for this?                                                                                                                                    PROBABLY YES.                                                                                                                                                                                  

The surrealists developed this idea with what they called “ECRITURE AUTOMATIQUE”                                                                                                          “Automatic writing deflects the unconscious thought. It is the imprudence of vocabulary in order to finally release the unconscious expression through writing”

Can we function obeying only our desires, our beliefs, and our culture? Unfortunately, our culture now is fake and false and based on NOTHING…

I think sometimes about the past, even a relatively recent past… Yes, it was possible then to continue to be , to continue to think, to continue to feel, to continue to give to others…I remember 11 years ago a singer sent me the following email about her opening as Mimi in a production:

Dear Bernard,                                                                                                                                          As promised, I send you an email. It was a wonderful evening, but I still cannot sleep because I burned myself emotionally.                                         This role is very special for me and takes enormous power from my soul. I cannot just "play" it, I have to live it on stage as my own life. And this is sometimes goes so far and deep that it is very hard to come back. Thank you for wonderful performance I am allowed to play here. I am so grateful that Mimi is Mimi here and she is alive, real girl, not just a figure or personage from the book or opera.                                                                                       And when I hear orchestra, playing so strong and somehow pitiless I feel like the music tells me how small and helpless we are in confront of destiny. the music is like a natural disaster, an immense power which tell us our future...

Death and love together... what a mixture!

So I hope to find myself again for Friday, I need to be in "Sola soletta" mood at least in the act one;))

Thank you for your attention, you promised me to answer...!                                                                                                                                                                      Good night and have a nice dream!

Yours,

………..

AND I ANSWER HER:

“This is the only good reason to be in theater, to live again and again incredible strong moments, to purge our soul, our body, our mind, our fears of great and deeply buried emotions.

I love rehearsals because for me that is the moment to achieve all this thru my actors... Yes, it takes time to become again ourselves, but we never completely do, because ourselves in every experience change, have an evolution... It is frightening sometimes to know that we will wake up different, how can we deal with the routine of the day, the demands of the ones who believe we are the same person that the day before?

Life goes so fast, so many experiences, so many great moments, so many pains and joys, so many wonderful encounters... And for some people, so many questions about the meaning of What we do...

I love the theater because it is almost the only time where we can be ourselves with no shame, no barriers, no calculation no selfish intentions.                                                                                                                                 You will find yourself for Friday and you will be again the wonderful human Mimi you are because You are a wonderful person ... Each character you will perform will be richer and richer because you will carry with you forever what Mimi is giving you.                                                                                                      

Death and love together!!! Is there anything else?

I send you thru your sleep all the strength possible

Bernard”

Unfortunately it seems that these days are gone .                                                   Yes, I sincerely hope that we could find ways to go back to the times when we were  searching for our soul and our strength and have again the desire to give back to people around us what they really need, and then Crime and Punishment will become only a book, the masterpiece of Dostoevsky and not a possible life.