TO HONOR

I have decided to create a FUND for singers named after my brother and father….

It will be called the Fabien and Henri Uzzan competition…For people who wonder why two Zs in their names, when I have only one Z in my name…the explanation is simple, everybody in my family has two Zs, I am the only one with a single Z…
Some Uzan with one Z did exist in Tunis, and when my name was written officially, the employee of the administration put just one Z.

I am a mistake from the beginning…. how ironic, I do not even share the same name as they have… It’s as though they never existed, as if they are not part of me, as if they were just a figment of my imagination.

I have already talked about this in preceding postings, but this one will be different.
We all have our headaches, and memories of pain and suffering.

During the past few months for whatever reasons I have been thinking a lot of my brother and my father. I had for so many years canceled their memories, and even obliterated their existence for reasons I don’t know.
Is it possible that for almost 50 years we can refuse to see, to admit, to realize the truth of some events??????

Can we spend an entire life denying the painful events of the past in order to survive, to make a new life, to BE???

Why did I ignore that reality for so long? Why did I continue to exist, to live as if nothing happened?
What was wrong with me? What is wrong with me?
In the course of the past few months I have been invaded with memories of my childhood, of my brother, and father.

In my early years we had a good life in Tunis. We were Jews but had assimilated there, in that country for more than 300 years, even before most of the Arab invasion, and then everything changed suddenly in the fifties, we became strangers, enemies, and JEWS.

It all changed even more when we had to leave Tunisia in 1960 to go to France in a new country where we were trying to survive.

Yes, my brother died when he was 25 years old in car accident, when I was 19 …We were just arriving in Paris from Tunis, we were poor, we were alone, we were Nothing…
AND HE DIES!!! In a stupid car accident!!! Why? Why??
I was at the university studying French literature with a specialty in theater and Philosophy…
Philosophy??? What a joke, it did not help. Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and all the others did not really help.
I did not go to my brother’s funeral, I was not at his burial; I had an exam that day…
An exam??????  To become another specialist in French literature or Philosophy??? Another joke in my life…

He was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Paris and I was not there, I was not there…for my brother, so I could become a specialist in French literature.  It really helps tremendously in life, being a specialist in French literature!!!!!

I do not think I cried when I learned about his death, and I did not cry for 50 years, I ignored it, I deleted it, I refused to accept it, I went on as if nothing had happened, I behaved for 50 years like I never had a brother and I went on with my life, my struggles, my challenges, my obsession to become somebody.

I am crying now…I cry because he died, I cry because I did not know him, I cry because I imagine what life could have been with him next to me in all these years of struggle. I cry…

Six months after my brother’s death, my father died… He died because his heart was broken, he died because he could not deal with life anymore …He was a Jew in the thirties and early forties under the German occupation, he was a Tunisian Jew when Tunisia fought to be independent from the French, and then the French wanted nothing to do with him when he had to expatriate himself from Tunisia …

He was a lost soul arriving in Paris at the age of 54 with two sons, one who died four years later in a fucking car accident and another one, me, with all my problems of a missed childhood and being an unbalanced young man in his teens…so he died…and left us, my mother and I…Alone in Paris, refusing to admit, denying reality, enclosing myself in my issues.

I am just thinking of my brother and my father more and more.
They never saw me acting, they ever saw me as an adult, they never saw me happy or unhappy, they never saw me directing a play or an opera, they never read what I wrote, they never KNEW ME… and they are gone…

Why???
Why all this???? I do not know, and I really do not want to be better understood or tolerated by the people who do not like me.

Now they are coming back to me, they are present in my memory, my thoughts, and my every day feelings. I see them more and more…Fabien the handsome tall young man with blue eyes, and how much as a child, I wanted to be tall and have blue eyes… Henri, my father, a very stylish man, with his elegance and his incredible ways of charming people…I can see you both, but I cannot remember the sound of your voice, you are like mute figures in my memory….

I wish you were here Fabien and Papa, you would be proud of me, of what I have achieved for myself, for us, for the family name …Yes, you will be proud to know that your younger brother and your son is …
What am I? I still do not know… I probably will never know…

I wish you could have shared some of this with me, share my joys and my achievements… for some people my achievements are insignificant and I am just one more person who tries to be, and they are probably right.
But for us it means something…I did it, for me but also unconsciously for your memory, for what I missed sharing with you.

So we will have a competition in New York for singers and we will honor them with prizes and acknowledgments. 

You will live again in a world that you do not know at all, the world of music. It will be music for the heart, music for the memory, music for the soul. And you will be there for me and for them…

I mentioned many times that we all have our traumas and our bad experiences and our life is sometimes difficult …THAT IS WHY WE ARE PERFORMERS… I beg all of you to deal with it as soon as you can, as soon as you are ready… Use these traumas to enrich your life, to make your life fuller and your life on stage stronger…
Do not wait 50 years to deal with it, have the courage to confront it, but only when you are ready…It is a challenge to know when we are ready, but it will come when you do not expect it, and at that moment do not block it anymore, do not deny it, deal with it and even cherish it.

Fabien and Henri, you will be present in spirit, I am sorry I had erased you from my memory for so long but you will be present in spirit and very close to my heart

bernard uZZan