GENERATIONS

Where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least the attempt to reach perfection?

 A world of immediate retribution has engulfed us, we are no longer what we can be but what we believe we deserve to be. 

The old generation wants to preserve its acquisitions while the young generation wants to create opportunities, and all rush blindly in their own direction.

It feels like yesterday I was walking in the streets of Philadelphia, Dakar, Paris or Tananarive!

Each step was a discovery, every corner a surprise, and always a multitude of interesting encounters!

No conflict there, just peace made between youth and the knowledge acquired by time.

 And now, nothing!

I have been walking since the shattered sky has been vaguely glued together by the years dedicated to redo what was not….

In my present state of mind there is nothing to look at, very little to discover, and It seems that I can only see the surrounding mediocrity, the poverty; the fact that everybody seems to be walking around with no real destination, without knowing who they are or what they want…

And now too many cities live in fear!  Fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of being scared!

Fear of fear!

Is it a generational issue??

Did the world change or did I change? Am I capable of still seeing the world and what it has to offer?  Or am I blinded by time, old age, incomprehension of new ways and the fact of belonging to another generation?

What happened to our dreams of happiness for an equal society full of life and aspirations? We were supposed to reach the NIRVANA, this “imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion and delusion have been extinguished.”

What happened to the spirit of the sixties? When we decided to rebuild the world for total harmony and total understanding of others! We were working hand in hand with the older generation using their knowledge while they were using our vitality. 

My teachers, in university and in theater, were so close to us, we were friends, companions, and dreamers together. We made plans to bring balance, equality, dreams and happiness to society. 

No conflict of generations came into this collaboration.

But the sky has changed sky… I look at my youth and I see myself…I no longer am that child full of rage…I do not want to murder the truth any more, I want only to look at a possible truth…

Truth? Truth of what? Of the creation of imagination? Of the unfinished fantasies?

Forty five years have passed since this total opening of mind….Forty five years? Did wisdom take over? But does 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? Is that the reason why so many people like snow, snow covers the bitterness of the truth?

My youth you are far away now, lost in inconsistent memories, the memory of the lost senses,  but for you I hold an affection full of wonder…

The wonder of seeing that you are no longer, that you are built by life, shaped by the look of others.

You too, my youth, have disappeared in the fog of life, in the path of what we call existence, you became another recreated by others…but  my youth you are present in me all the time and I never dismissed you from my thoughts , my desires to go on , my tenderness to you.

My youth can you again remodel the world if I call you back or is it impossible for you to return now because of the new conflict of generations. 

Can the conflict of generation prevents some to have both? Accumulated knowledge and the desire to go on?

.

But the conflict of generation is now a dangerous animal and a creator of chaos! We live in a bizarre world where it seems that the abyss between generations is much deeper that it had never been in the past … 

It seems sometimes that we are living side by side and not in the same world, two parallel worlds with opposed rules, almost opposite expectations.

I have memories of my father's generation and while we had definite differences of taste, different ways of looking at many things, we never behave aggressively towards each other or were in denial of the knowledge of each other…

On the contrary we were using the knowledge of older people, we were looking for a sign from them to share, and they were not afraid or intimidated by the new generation.

The young generation was looking at the old one with respect, desire to learn from them and sometimes even with admiration. 

The older generation was looking at the young one with affection and protection and the hope of discovering new things created by a new world.

Today, it seems that everything is based on being young!!! A singer of 32 is becoming too old to start a career, a conductor of 40 is considered “dépassé”, a director of 45 is a joke…

If you are in any profession and beyond 40, you are considered dangerously stagnant and seen as unable to function with imagination, you become suspicious or are even pushed away, not to say destroyed.

Knowledge is becoming a handicap if it is based on real knowledge and most of the time the transient invention is the only admired way of being.

Everything should happen as if the old generation was already mentally dead, nobody wants them to think, to create, even to be existing.

They should be sitting on an armchair in a retirement home looking thru the window at the emptiness around them and smile beatifically at the new generation.

They should be looking at the nonsense of their life, and smile thinking back to their successful youth 45 years ago, no actually 15 years ago…

They should only contemplate at what is gone for a long time in order to justify some individuals and their ambition to become number one, or they should simply deny their own existence by falling silent.

They must live in this denial, they have to accept that now it’s over and the surrounding new generation knows better.

And today the old generation looks at the young one with disdain, sometimes with jealousy, refusing to accept the new needs, rejecting the new freedom in so many aspects of life.

The positive astonishment at new ways is replaced by denial.

Pretending all the time that the young people know nothing, have nothing, believe in nothing, and are just the product of the internet and social media that are guiding every thought, every move.

They are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they want to project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it, and then throwing it out before the complete integration.

According to the old generation, the young one has no culture, no morality, no sense of belonging, no tradition, they refuse the basics of honor, think only about money and adventures, only about silly pleasures, ephemeral and easy successes.

According to the old generation they should go back to the school of life, they should learn how to behave in public and in private and they should put their ambition and their head together.

It seems that both generations in general stay away from each other for many reasons: Feeling that they have nothing in common, believing that older people don’t connect with today’s needs and young people have no experience of needs, uncontrollable disdain of experience and fear of the unknown of today’s life. 

Yes, we have an incredible conflict of generation…Is it because we are between cultures? Is it because we have not found our new place in the difficult world we are living in? May we hope for better days when the old and young generation will hold hands and sing together about the beauty of life, the meaning of being, the joy of sharing?

Will we reach a stage where the young generation will not dismiss the old one and the old one will not look at the young one with a smile of disdain or even disgust?

Knowledge has to be respected, and young minds have to be admired!

Imagine a world where the knowledge and experience is used by a young mind with his energy, invention and sense of discovery?

Imagine a world where the invention is guided by knowledge?

The glorious Life…
As a director, a singer, an entertainer, a dreamer...

Every time I get close to leaving the city I was hired to share my genius, my talent, my knowledge, my every day banality or my mediocrity, I experience the same images, the same ideas, the same thoughts taking over.

Here I am, ready to go…tomorrow, I am leaving, I am getting the hell out of here, I am clearing out of Dodge, I am going to blow this joint, I am going to make like a tree and leave…

I AM LEAVING....

Last night I packed and I realized, I don't know why but it happens each time, that my suitcase was almost empty when it was overflowing when I arrived, how much stuff can I lose or misplace in three weeks????

I emptied the little fridge in the hallway of the hotel room, and I threw out the leftovers of the cheap food I had accumulated in the past days and made some marvelous discoveries.
-A yogurt oozing all over.
-A bunch of red radishes turned black.
-An intact unopened jar of Moutarde de Dijon.
-A can of tuna and a can of salmon…Every time I am away in a hotel I buy these two cans of fish and never even open the can.
-An old cheese ready to walk by itself.
-Three lemons which were yellow when I bought them and were now grey.
-One celery, alone, still green, and blinking at me.

Did I really buy all of this abomination?

YES, YES, I DID.!!!!!

Tomorrow at 5 am a cab will take me to the airport and I'll jump on my flight back home at 7 am.....
I leave with my soul at peace, my heart intact, my creative forces diminished by a worthless task, and three weeks of more of this or less of that or…
I am getting out of here leaving behind me …I can't remember
I am getting out of here like I was never there.

But during my stay I smiled at everybody… every day.
I made jokes, I told stories, I was funny, I knew what to do, I made new friends that I probably will never see again, I created new myths about me and others, and life will go on…

I am leaving in peace, I did my job...

The day of departure started very, very early in the morning…
The genius at the hotel woke me up at 4 am instead of 4 30 am as I asked, a little mistake on his shitty machine. I told him 4 times the night before, wake up at 4 30 am!

On my way to the airport I am thinking of the past few weeks spent making a living, doing what I like to do or more exactly what I know how to do.
I am thinking about all these years spent to defend senseless causes and fighting battles without any possible victories.
Years spent in the fog of knowledge, in the antechamber of erudition, in the vestibule of wisdom.
A lot of people looked at me as if I were a sorcerer while I am only a sorcerer’s apprentice.

Chekhov wrote a wonderful short play called “The morning of a man of letters”, all my life I tried to be this man or at least a man who functions as a man whose life is full of sensible decisions, and a man whose life is a perpetual search for the truth thru literature and art….
And I am still searching for the right moment, the right experience, the fulfilling adventure…did I fail or do I still have time to find it? Or it did happen but I was not able to see it?

So, I arrive at the airport 2 hours early, I buy myself a coffee, probably brewed the night before that tasted like ink. I don't like coffee anyway but I am civilized and I follow the rules, so I have to walk with a cup of coffee in my hand to belong to our great society.

I sit in a corner with the satisfaction of someone who fulfilled his duty as an artist after a great production and as a man of my time since I am holding a cup of coffee...

An old lady all dressed in black like a Sicilian from Palermo (she is older than me, really old) leans towards me to scream in my ear something I do not understand and by doing that she pours her burning tea on my pants.
Those were the pants I had kept clean for my return home, a freshly ironed pair, pants I had kept beautiful to give my wife the impression that when I am away, I am on top of the way I look.
The old lady repeats 5 times that she is sorry and doing that floods my face with a sputum of the color of the tea she was drinking with the feeling it was a nectar given to her by the gods of Sicily.

Finally we are called for boarding…

I enter the plane, and after a few steps inside I reach my seat, somebody is sitting in my reserved seat…I apologize profusely, but the five hundred pound giant sitting in my seat, fails to answer me, doesn't even turn his head in my direction ….
Since I am a polite and good natured man, I scream at his face that he is in my seat, but the giant just yawns loudly…
The flight attendant arrives like a cannon ball, asks me to cool my temper, and to stop screaming, she checks the tickets and declares very calmly that there is a mistake, but I should not worry, she will find me another seat.

Fifteen minutes LATER….I am still standing in front of the giant, who fell asleep.

Everybody is now sitting, and I am still waiting… the well-mannered flight attendant has found a seat for me in the last row near the bathrooms but there is no room above for my luggage, so she will register it and give it to be put in the hold, she gives me a ticket.

I sit exhausted, sweating, and pissed off…
My pants are now a wreck, my hair is worse than ever, I must look like Curly of the three stooges in a bad day, and I only think that finally I will be able to close my eyes for 3 hours and recuperate by falling asleep…

I begin my journey to another world and my mind starts to navigate…
It seems that the world we are living is out of control, too many professions have people in charge who really have no idea what they are doing. Much too often in the arts I meet little pricks with so much personal ambition that it reminds me of the careerists, the social climbers, the go-getters of the Bourgeois class in 19 century Paris, straight out of a novel by Balzac......
Even I wouldn't dare behave like them, but do people have no shame? The most surprising thing is that I am still asking this question. I had the answer a very long time ago...Shame is an invention of religion, it is not part of our basic psyche, we don’t know shame, some of us are just afraid to be caught or exposed or shown up, so they are ashamed....

Makes me laugh or grin...

One thing I was never able to do...Convince people that I know what I am talking about...Some of us have the great talent to become a reference of their own truth...They don’t know more than anybody but they are succeeding in making believe that they KNOW...they speak so well, they are full of self-importance, they pontificate about the most commonplace things, they turn the obvious into a vision, and since we live in a culture with no culture, others seek out their opinion and they suddenly become Gurus, Advisers, Specialists of whatever.

Suddenly the voice of a screaming and crying child wakes me up and raises my blood pressure to 230… I discover sitting in front of me a three year old kid who believes he is Pavarotti acting his own death in a bad opera.
He would go on screaming for the three hours of the trip…

I navigate again….I want to forget trying to distinguish what is true, the meaning of the word truth, or the non-meaning of everyday life…I try to grasp lost moments which cannot be found again, and I feel my creative strength fading and wilting lost, in the fascinating daily routine.
But why do we believe that everything can or must last forever? ... Hours, days, years pass by being the same and yet having nothing in common. I fall asleep, almost, and I am walking again in the streets of Paris, or Tunis or New York or Boston…
I want to be the great I don't know what and I succeed in being only an image of my desire, an approximation of my mirage.

I arrive in New York, totally ravaged, I am now 80 years old, I drag my body to the carousel to grab my suitcase and wait for more than an hour… NOTHING…
I learned from an attendant full of good intentions that my luggage will arrive during the day, so I can wait or have it delivered to my apartment, but for that I have to give proof that it is mine, and I cannot find the ticket given to me when I boarded the plane.
After filling a ton of papers, they believe me when I tell them that my name is on the bag.

I get home with no luggage, exhausted, looking like a homeless person, and only thinking of my bed….

THE MORNING OF A MAN OF LETTERS? Or the three weeks as a hard working plowman of Theater?

Vive les voyages et vive les professions artistiques.

ACHIEVEMENT and AUDITION

This month of September will certainly be memorable…What an incredible succession of events, again I realized that life is never at an end, that surprises can always hit us, that trains are always passing and we have to be ready to jump aboard or at least  be ready to look at them.

Yes, nothing is given, but opportunities are always offered to us, of course some of us are luckier and have many more opportunities than others! But is it also because some always keep their eyes wide open, their hands always ready to grab, their heart always pounding at novelties, their souls always responsive to new information or to live new adventures?

This month I was told that I will be honored by a prestigious Foundation with a LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT award…                                                                                                                       

I am extremely touched and honored, a life time achievement to ME ?????

What did I really achieved to deserve such an honor? Most of my life I was pushed and led by pure necessities, by dramatic moments,  sometimes by despair and very often by ambition… Always ready to do, to try, to take risks, to advance, to survive, to be…

The American dream is a reality…I don't think my grandfather who left the Jewish ghetto of Tunis more than 100 years ago, or my father with whom I left Tunisia 55 years ago practically as refugees could have ever imagined that!!!

Life time achievement!!!!

Life has been a succession of huge surprises and incredible luck!!! From the beginning of my adult life, opportunities were offered to me: my debuts as an actor followed by a career as a theater director and actor, my arrival in the USA, my teaching in universities, my French theater in America for 10 years, my first opera in 1982 leading to my 400 hundred productions, my duties as a general and artistic director, my work as a designer, my writings, my new life as a manager at the age of 60, all of it was the result of opportunities offered to me.                                                                                                             Yes of course, then we have to deal with the gift of the opportunity, and register all that is given to us and deliver more than expected in order to fulfill our commitments.

 A definition of achievement is: A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.

Effort? Courage? Yes, I cannot deny that I gave a lot of efforts and had in many occasions a lot of courage or some will call that nerves or even self-appreciation.

Skill? I do not know if all my adventures and all my so called successes were the result of skill!

Certainly the result of perseverance, stubbornness, and belief in others by having the possibility to surround myself with men and women who knew more than I did in their specific specialty.

We have to learn how to trust others and sometimes believe that they know more than we do, and then we can have successes.

Life time achievement!!!! 

I learned early and I still believe that the best achievement is not how much we do, how much money we make, how much recognition we get, but how much we are able to give and bring to others! I know some people reading this will think “He is full of it, it looks good to say that”…

But the reality is:

As an actor or a singer, even if we love what we do and we find great satisfaction doing it, the best achievement is to know that an audience can be deeply moved by what we bring to them, can discover more about itself, and can even be changed in some beliefs or some actions. And this can be said about all the achievements we can have as a teacher, a director, a writer, a manager, or anything…

THE BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT IS TO SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE WITH OTHERS…And if I have done that, I will be happy in the next decade and in peace with myself to have received this award.

But to have achieved some things called achievements does not mean it is the end or a way for us to be self-satisfied and  start to be unaware of the world around us… There is always room for more adventures, more attempts, more endeavors, and more possibilities.

I said at the beginning of this posting that this month of September was an incredible succession of events.

Yes sometimes an incredible lesson of humility is given again and it is an injection of youth.                                                

This month I was made aware that a TV series was looking for specific roles for men in their sixties… The series is called MOZART IN THE JUNGLE!!!! 

I have not been to an audition since 1972, but I decided to go and try to remember how we feel when we go to an audition, what we hope and what we expect, how we can impress the people in charge of the audition and make them know us..                                                                

I dressed the way they would expect for  the role they were looking for and  I arrived at the audition an hour earlier and waited for my turn in the middle of people of all ages, some my age and some much younger….Finally my turn came, they called my name, mispronouncing it of course, but I am used to that( Uzan is a strange name in the States)…I was expecting to have a conversation with the casting director, or at least tell him a few things about me, but we exchanged 6 words, just to be polite…

He asked me to read a text of a few lines while they were filming me, asked me to do it again with a different intonation, and then thanked me and opened the door for my exit…

They did not need a copy of my resume, they did not ask one question about who I was…NOTHING…

I left, not upset, but rejuvenated and very pensive…Rejuvenated because I realized that in my twenties I went to many, many auditions comparable to that one, and pensive because I promised myself to act differently when I listen to singers in an audition….                                                                                                                                        It was a great lesson in humility, they were just looking for somebody specific and did not care about who I was, what I do or had done, what my ACHIEVEMENTS were or anything.

Two days later, I received a phone call informing me that I was cast in the role and if I was available the following week for the filming…I said yes… YES, YES, YES….I hung up in shock, again life was generous to me by giving me opportunities to be again what had been my life 45 years ago…IT IS NEVER OVER…
                                                                                                      Even more, I arrived at the studio and had the huge surprise to discover that the star of the show was Malcom McDowell and my scenes were with him… In 1968 and in 1972, I was in the French version of 2 of his movies: IF and CLOCKWORK ORANGE…Again fate is sometimes scary… I told him and he was really excited to know that…

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 While again in the staff and the crew, nobody asked me anything about me, who I was, and where I came from (my French accent may have been the reason), the cast was a wonderful group of human beings, ready to do the best possible job and help each other as much as possible … Mr McDowell was a delight to work with… But I was again a pawn in the game doing what I was supposed to do…

The same month I am honored for LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENTS and I go to an audition after 45 years like a young man, and I do the best I can to justify my presence there surrounded by great actors. What a wonderful lesson of life, a wonderful lesson for life, yes.                                                                 
Nothing is never over, we will always have more opportunities to grow and to learn until the end… Never drop, never give up…                                                                                                                 
 Yes some moments will be difficult and disappointing, yes many, many disappointments caused by events or people we believed in or trusted, but more will happen, new trains will pass…  

                                                                   

LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENTS does not mean LIFE IS ACHIEVED, more AUDITIONS FOR LIFE WILL COME… 

Let’s always stay vigilant and ready…And let’s not forget the most important, the real achievement is to share our knowledge with others.

Robotization or Subconcious ????

Every day, more and more I have the feeling that I am living on another planet or even worse in another dimension.

It seems that everything I experienced in life, everything I knew and that I know, every lesson I learned from friends or mentors or teachers, every experience which I thought was building my personality and my future all of those have no meaning anymore….

It seems that I am in no man’s land of incongruity, irrelevance, improvisation and posturing or even worse falsehood.

It seems that everybody is living thru a ghostly period, perpetually guessing what the next move, the next step of their lives should be; everything appears to work as if it will be the last move or the first of a long series of attempts to be in touch with an evanescent reality or a subterfuge of the truth.

Everybody must be politically correct, and cannot have any real original opinion about anything because it might hurt somebody or offend some belief. You cannot have an opinion about whatever because somebody could take it for a personal attack, you cannot compliment a person about his/her physical beauty because it will be seen as sexual harassment. You cannot ask someone’s age because it can be insulting, you cannot ask a woman if  she is wearing makeup ( I never understood why), you cannot invite people for dinner at home because everybody has an allergy to something or to food in general, you cannot laugh at people’s political ideas, you cannot criticize other political views, in a supermarket you cannot tell the cashier that she or he or it is impolite because it can be taken as a personal insult, you cannot tell the bank teller not to ask questions about your private life, you cannot …you cannot…you cannot…

 BUT IN THE SAME TIME EVERYBODY IS FREE, FREE TO TALK ABOUT WHATEVER, FREE TO MENTION ALL THE IRRELEVANCE OF THEIR TASTES OR THEIR OCCUPATIONS, FREE TO…I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT ANYMORE…  

                                                                                                                                                                   How can we find a balance in these two extremes attitudes? How can we navigate in this obviously contradictory world! How can I be free and muzzled by society at the same time!!!

It seems that all of us live in a surreal world punctuated by the internet, the phone, and social media.

The days fly by fast, the weeks even faster, the years are  like a hurricane and we are in the middle of this uncertainty of what tomorrow will be and that tomorrow really does not bring anything important except what we believe is important like knowing where my neighbor spent his weekend!!!!

AND NOW WHAT?

It seems that we have lost contact with the real our self and we do not know what to do to find the lost humanity?
May be moving to the mountains of Colorado? The forests of Vermont? In a town of a few hundred people? And continue from there but this time alone to have a life punctuated by the internet, the phone, social media!!!!                                                                                                                                              

NO, NO, NO !!!! 

                                                                                                                                         

In every profession it seems that the race is constantly more intrepid, more challenging, and exhausting.  In the arts, or what is left of that attempt to capture the reality of life it is even worse.  

 I can remember the time when to want to be an artist or to be interested in the arts meant a life of devotion and challenges, a perpetual search for the truth, for beauty, for reaching the unknown through creativity and the creativity of another.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 I KNOW IT IS STILL PRESENT IN MANY OF THE ARTISTS WHO CHOOSE THIS PROFESSION… but how many of us sincerely care? And if they care, how many are really meant for it? How many have what it takes? How many continue to build the necessary material?

Are we living the end of a culture? The final moments of Western culture and the beginning of the non-cultural world? Or is it the beginning of a different culture?  A culture that I am not getting or understanding! The culture of pushing buttons!!!! Are we becoming the cartoons of my childhood full of robots?

The other night I was watching a movie, THE BUTTERFLY AND THE DIVING BELL… I use to think that I could write depressing pages and dark events but this movie showed me that I am actually much more of an optimist…

It’s the story of the editor of French ELLE Magazine who suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He wakes up two weeks later, totally paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his eyes, but mentally aware of the surroundings.

The same night I dreamed about my father and my brother who died 50 years ago…They were in a desert, standing up in a cloud of dust, a pale dust, almost watery…They were looking at me as if asking a question, and mumbling.

Suddenly, both of them said at the same time:                                                                                          

 Bernard…Bernard…  Viens, viens, viens, on t’attend…                                                                          Bernard…Bernard… Come, come, come, we are waiting for you!

They smiled and then disappeared in the dust without another word, without looking back.

I woke up, got out of bed, went to drink some water and went back to sleep…

I dreamed the same thing again, and the exact same dream recurred three times, three times, with no changes, no difference. The same vision, the same smile, the same words.

I will not try to explain this dream/nightmare, many people have attempt to explain dreams much better that I could ever do…

But, it opened to me another chapter of thoughts… which was a welcome experience in order to stay human instead of being a machine created by the society we are living in.

Our subconscious is always working even if we are not really aware of it…. Every day a lot of our actions come from our thoughts, our experience, our knowledge, our education…. That is why NOTHING can prevent us from continuing to EXIST AS A PERSON and not become a silly product of today society!!!

In the French theater, to attract public attention before a rising curtain, loud banging can be heard backstage and then three more blows just before the performance begins since candles were used to light the theater...
That tradition still exist in some theaters today.

                                                                                                                                                           When Puccini, in LA BOHEME, at the beginning of the Musetta Aria writes this music, it illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE BLOWS), but did he do it on purpose as wink to the French theater tradition and to show that Musetta is preparing a theater scene??

Or had he acquired this knowledge, assimilated it and used it later without even realizing it?

Did his subconscious worked for him ?

 I could multiply this example infinitely….                                                                                                                  

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

My dream was the result of this liberated unconscious! Liberated because of the protection of sleep   and the total abandon of my psyche without any barriers created by political or social correctness.     

Of course it was a painful dream, but a real one, a reenactment of my passed, and another connection to loved ones.

But this acting of the subconscious is possible if we have accumulated knowledge with life experiences, lessons learned from others, study, and everyday live devoted to LEARNING…

 If we can build a full reservoir of it, then our subconscious will be richer, and more adequate to apparently express itself, and no internet, phone or social media can stop it.

We have to continue to accumulate knowledge and acquire as much of it as possible, our subconscious will bring it to the surface at one point despite all the irrelevance of our time, despite the incongruity of society, despite being a buttons pusher.

 We must continue to learn and assimilate, and then we can try to obey the new rules of our world, the new ways of being a nearly human being, because nobody can rob us of our subconscious.    

Creativity and talent will rise out of the subconscious activated by the frustration of everyday, and for an  artist what can be more rewarding that having the subconscious acting his own life!                                              

PS MANY OF YOU EMAIL ME WITH COMMENTS, PLEASE CONTINUE TO DO SO
IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO READ YOUR REACTIONS

THE GAZE OF OTHERS

Every morning when I wake up I go to the kitchen to make my coffee…with one of those new coffee machines… I hate it! I have to turn on the machine, I have to add water in the tank, I have to find a pod of coffee in the closet, I have to place the pod in the right place, I have to put a cup under the beak of the machine, and then I have to press a button, the one indicating medium, and I wait…. A few seconds later the coffee comes out…. If I want another cup, I have to do ALL OF IT, over again instead of just pouring from the coffee pot…who invented this nonsense?

On my way to my favorite morning chair, I pass in front of a mirror, and it reflects the image of a man that sometimes I do not recognize, and depending upon the morning, it fills me with surprise, astonishment, pleasure, anxiety, pride, disdain, pain, joy or sorrow, with ….anything that comes to mind.

Looking at myself is a truly adventurous experience as I am sure it is for everybody… Do I see in the mirror what others see? This image in the mirror is it really me or only an appearance of me? Who really am I and what do I really project on people?

I feel like saying all the time, you believe I am like this but in reality I am not, I am more this or that, and the this or that depends on the hour, on the day, on the time in my life.

What impressions do I make on people? And do I project the same kind of person to different people? Does my personality change if someone looks at me in a different way, projecting what he wants to see or what he wants not to see?

I have heard many different and even contradictory comments about me, about my personality, my life, my temper, my behavior…Is it because I was changing according to whom I was talking, or is it because people project on us who they are?
Or even may be because they do not care that much!!! I have been called rude when I was, according to me, just honest, and it seems that sometimes you have to be careful about everything you say because it can be understood by others in a complete different way or even taken as something you had no intention to have happen….

Am I the product of what others want me to be? Am I funny sometimes because people are expecting me to be funny? Am I pontificating sometimes because the situation set by others demands my pontification?

As a stage director, do I change my ways, do I dress differently, do I speak with a different voice on purpose and become fake, OR do I find a different MOI within myself?

How many times we look at couples and we wonder what she/he can find in the other? Or we look at leaders in every area of life and we wonder WHY?

Are we all multiple personalities, multiple possibilities of being and every different situation dictates how different we should be?

How can we have honest relationships with anybody if we are most of the time called to answer their expectations? How can we stay real and ourselves if at so many moments we have to change who we are because of the decision or the need from others?

Does” THE EYES OF OTHERS” influence us so much that we can be like a chameleon and mutate according to the situation?

And who are the OTHERS? Do we need their absolution? Do we need their comments? Do we need their friendship? Do we need to be understood by them?

And is it so important to be able to change according to whoever is in front of us?

Some professions are based on this possibility, this sometimes unconscious attitude, this perpetual bet on finding for every situation the most rewarding (and in some cases the least rewarding) answer to challenges!                                                                                                                                         When I arrive in a classy restaurant, before I enter, I look thru the doors and the employees of the restaurant are apparently joking, laughing, with elbows on tables and totally themselves as human beings… Then a customer comes in, and everything changes, they become waiters, sommelier, Maître D with all the gestures, the attitudes that we are expecting and created by THE GAZE OF OTHERS.

People in performing art professions are probably those who are most confronted to this situation!!! They have to become somebody else and a character in their work and in the same time they have to be submitted by the perpetual judgment and gaze from others!                                                        AND
in rehearsal it is even a harder situation, they are the creation of THE GAZE OF OTHERS as a person trying to become somebody else!!!!!!!!
How can they deal with that? How can they be at the same time, somebody trying to become somebody else under the eyes of others turning them into what they want to be!!!!

And we wonder why sometimes they can be temperamental?                                                              Or the opposite, cold and indifferent?

I know people who never bend or accept THE GAZE OF OTHERS, they apparently stay themselves, or what they believe is themselves, all the time, and deal very little with others! They protect themselves by ignoring the need to please or to refute, they enclose themselves in an armor of artificial strength, and travel through life like astronauts in space! It must be a very lonely life, but for some, success can be achieved faster by just concentrating on ignoring others and by making no concessions…

Is that way of leading your life actually the key for great success and leadership?

Do we have to murder the truth in order to survive THE GAZE OF OTHERS? Or should we try to reconstruct the truth? But the truth? The truth of what? The truth of the lies created by our imagination? Or the imagination of others? The truth of unfinished fantasies?

Hopefully when we reach a certain age, wisdom can take possession of us, but does wisdom leaves an after taste of bitterness on the apparent truth at times?
Can we disappear in the fog of life, in the path of what we called existence, forgetting who we really are and what we really want, dismissing our aspirations and be recreated only by THE GAZE OF OTHERS?

Do we have the right to be lost because others look at us, projecting their own uncertainty? They always want to know: is all this truth? Is your life is it truth? Is It the Truth? Truth? What does that mean? Everything is truth and all is invented…There is only one truth, the one we chose and THE GAZE OF OTHERS is only a possible comment on a possible moment and should never determine who we are and what we do or what we want to do.

We have to continue to have a mind that tries to understand the meaning of all this, the aim of life lost in the eternity of life… We have to learn how to absorb others and their GAZE, we have to learn how to stay strong and complete, and to continue to live trying to understand, trying to live.

Too many people believe that life is life… we should not believe in a controlling fate, we should believe in the idea that we can change other people’s opinions about us, we should believe that we can remodel the world around us by looking at it in a different way and have people looking at us in a different way. We have to stay one, and not become a wave of changes in the perpetual violence of an ocean full of rage.

THE GAZE OF OTHERS should become a weapon to advance, a tool for knowledge…

And what about OUR GAZE ON OTHERS? Should we be more generous, more understandable? And be willing to forgive?

In an ideal world, THE GAZE OF OTHERS should be only constructive, generous, understanding, helping, giving, affectionate and even full of love… AM I DREAMING ABOUT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD????

Let’s work on it…

FAUST MEMORIES

Recently in Detroit I was directing Faust… 33 years ago I was there directing the same opera and I have since directed Faust 15 times and I still love this opera.

So many memories were invading me every day and these memories were trying to take possession of my mind, my mood and my feelings.…

Not only memories of the first Faust directed in 1982 when I was a young man full of appetite for life and full of ideas and dreams to be, to achieve and to become someone …

This time in Detroit it became a trigger to so many of memories and an incredible long list of moments of joy and pain, sorrows and happiness of the past 33 years. Actually I can even say of the past 60 years of my life.

Life has gone by so fast, and goes even faster every year, it seems that the clock is trying to jump the hours and the days… I met so many men and women during that time, had so many experiences, so many images and feelings… 

So many people who have forged the person I became…Many great moments, many regrets, sometimes even remorse. 

But we cannot take back what we have done, we cannot undo the past, but we can learn from it. All the countries I lived in, all this travel all over the world from all Europe to the Far East, to all of Africa and very often hitchhiking at the time … 

Every moment was a discovery, every minute was an experience and I learned so much from it… 

Now I remember it, and using it is another great experience. So many objects, trinkets and sometimes real pieces of art were accumulated! Just to remember?

But are objects the true carriers of our past? Or should we use them as a trigger?

When we reach a certain age is it our fate to remember more and more the events of the past and to uncontrollably be attacked by all these intense moments, all the people we knew and loved and admired and despised and sometimes hated…?

Or is it because I was working on Faust….

 A man who reaches the end of his life and believes he has achieved nothing pertinent, nothing useful, and nothing valid. He is wondering about the purpose of all of it. So he decides to try one more time by becoming young again and achieve other aims,possibly new adventures?

I was all day trying to bring present reality into my life, in my work, my relation with colleagues, by trying to be funny, judgmental, and temperamental or whatever possible in order to be present, to be alive… 

Trying to avoid showing everyone that I was drowning in memories and every day was more difficult because every day was a catalog of the past…

Every word said in rehearsals conjured memories, every moment triggered images of my past experiences, my past lives.

I was able to overcome that state of mind because I know we must use our memories, and our experiences in everyday life in order to find new things, new adventures, new ways of looking at the world and even sometimes find peace… 

 I know, I am saying that enough to performers, that memories are the basic of a performance full of truth, full of life, full of intensity…

Yes, in everyday life, and on stage, we have to use these memories to find new facets of ourselves, new ways of functioning, new realities by confronting them to the present, by adding them to the new knowledge, by coloring the new picture of life with it.

Yes, we have to use these memories and not bury them in the deepest of our soul, in order to become better, a better man, a better artist... 

But is it dangerous to let the memories resurface and perhaps take possession of us? 

No, actually by letting them coming out of the abyss and the forgotten territory, we tame them, we own them and we can use them. 

Will the memories at one point become the possible balance we are searching for? 

Do we have to reach a certain level of peace, a certain amount of acceptance to deal with all these memories? Or do digested memories actually bring us peace and acceptance?

Why do we have painful memories most of the time alone and happy memories while we are with others?
Why do we share funny moments of our life, happy recollections or joyous experiences with others, and when we are alone we relive the difficult memories, we rarely share them… 

 Sometimes we do with some chosen people or one individual in a moment of abandon.

Is it modesty? The result of education? Our way of being discreet? 

 Or simply fear that by sharing the painful moments we could be weakened and used?

 Or worse be called a looser, a neurotic mind, or even a deranged soul. 

 We should realize that painful memories become much less painful if we look at them, assume them, and dominate them. 

Memories should be present all the time, not necessary exposed, but at our disposal to recall them when we need them, without fear, without disturbance.

We certainly do not want to share all these memories with everybody, at all moments…but these memories are the stuff of who we are, who we want to be, and how we function.

We become the result of our past, we become an entity sculpted by time, the present and all we dream about what our future could be and should be.

We live in a time when it is more and more difficult to exchange opinions, ideas, or feelings with anybody directly. Everything is private, every opinion is taboo, every moment or every word can be insulting to somebody, we must respect everything, we have to believe in everything…

AND AT THE SAME TIME, everybody believes that he has the right to expose the superficial side of his life, some of his silly tastes under the cover of social media…
Everybody believes he has the right to attack people, to tell stories about them under the cover of a social media…
But very few have the courage to expose their personal memories, their real SELF, with the reason or the excuse that it is too private and nobody business…

Every day during the Faust, I was thinking about my youth in Tunis, my young adulthood in France, my maturity in Montreal and the United states... 

 I recalled with tenderness my family that disappeared a long time ago and at the beginning of my life and this absence which was a heavy burden for so long is now a strength because it is now part of the digested memories.
I recalled the start of my new life with Diana and our first adventures and achievements and Vanessa my daughter when she was a child and when she became this incredible young adult full of energy and talent...

I recalled my friends from school or universities that I have not seen in 30, 40 or 50 years and who are still present in my life...

Images, vivid images of happy moments and difficult ones, words pronounced by others, moments of panic when the world was not generous to us or others. NO I AM NOT DEPRESSED, on the contrary, I feel full of strength and passion and life, and ready for the next twenty years…

 And I owe that to my memories always present in my life... 

I think that during my work in Detroit, I was always attentive to my colleagues, always present, always passionate… I was cherishing some short happy moments with the kids of the show, some discussions with the cast, some jokes and stories shared with the staff and technicians, some great creative moments with artists, and pure real feelings of sincerity and abandon...

It does not happen to me often at all, it came because of the memories overtaking me, I learned how to love them, to respect them, to make them part of my future. Memories make me a better man and not a bitter man.        

TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

Recently I was invited to an event to celebrate a good friend of mine and she delivered the following words in her acceptance speech:

“For a singer, every performance is an audition and every audition is a performance. No one really likes to audition, but it is a necessary evil. As I tell singers who are nervous about auditions, those of us who sit through hours and hours of auditions always hope that the next singer who walks into the room, or onto the stage will be wonderful. That’s the good news, the bad news is that there are a lot of them, and only so many jobs or prizes to give.

Whenever I speak with young singers, at schools or contests or in young artists programs, someone will variably ask” what is the one thing you are looking for?

Please believe me when I say and I am not doing the question-but that is the wrong question. It’s never just “one thing”. Each time a singer makes a sound, the god given voice, the technique, and the expressivity are inextricably intertwined.

Some people have more voice than technique, some have more expressivity than voice. The ratio of each element to the other determines the kind of career one can have. And then there’s looks. And heath. And resilience. And tenacity. And luck.

In the literally thousands of auditions I've done over the years, I have heard some sensational new voices-first rate, world class voices; the kind of voices an audience will pay money to hear.

And a few years later, they have disappeared.

And then I hear people with far less vocal talent, who go on to have major careers. Careers are not determined by what kind of voice the person has, but by what kind of person has the voice.

The single-mindedness is not the “one thing” WE are looking for; but rather, it is the “one thing” a young singer must find WITHIN.

If you approach this career with the idea of “well, if I don’t make it I can always fall back on…”-then you won’t make it.

Successful singers are not necessarily practical people. They are-at best- hard working dreamers. They are fortunate if they have practical, knowledgeable, honest people around them. ….. Who are helping those dreamers to come a bit closer to realizing their dreams.”

THANK YOU LENORE ROSENBERG FOR THESE WORDS…

All this was very true and going to the real question… SHOULD WE DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS?

I think it is the same road and the same questions in every profession…AND NOT ONLY IN THE ARTS!!!

Are dreams really pure fantasies, the result of a too fertile imagination or real inclinations to do something specific? 

Are we predestined to take a specific road in our lifetime?

Are we the result of genes, education, family surroundings, proper rearing etc… It seems that sometimes what we have achieved or have not achieved is only due to Fate, and may be because of decisions made by others!

What role dreams play in our progression through the years? Sometimes we wonder if we should continue to dream impossible dreams, if we should carry the sorrow of life leaving us or betraying us, or if we should burn with a wild fever and go where nobody goes in order to continue to be, in order to see in a mirror year after year a new image, a new person, a new fantasy.

How much can we share it with others? Are they ready to understand it or even ready to listen to it? Who will REALLY be ready to accept our dreams, and sometimes to share them by just being present?

It seems that we spend our life chasing the dreams of childhood or on the contrary fighting off those dreams… But are they really dreams?

Sometimes others say that our dreams are only the product of a fantasy and a waste of our time and even of their time, but for us they are reality and they have to become reality in order to be. They are part of who we are, they are us.

After a painful youth, my dream was to become an actor and I realized it…To become an actor was the only way to overcome that wounded youth, but was it a dream or a necessity?  I left France my adopted country to come to the American dream and I bless that decision every day, but was it a dream or a burning need?  I went from an acting career and directing Straight Theater to the dream of directing the absolute definition of theater: Opera and do not regret it, but was it a dream or a compelling need?   I wanted to have artistic freedom and I wanted to be in charge of a company and my dream was realized, but was it a dream or a necessity? 

And I could go on…  

                                                                                             

I heard all my life and still do: “how can you even dream of doing this, or becoming that, or trying this road or that one?” It seems that while around us we are called dreamers, only dreamers make their way in life, create something, and reinvent themselves perpetually and there is nothing to prevent them to make progress, to achieve, and grow.

Where would society be without the dreamers? Don’t you think that all achievements in Politics, Science and every aspect of life are truly the result of Dreams?

Throughout our life we sometimes dream to love the new adventure until we are torn apart and sometimes we love it too much and badly…Sure sometimes we can be burned and wounded and we try without protection to reach the hidden and the inaccessible, but we live a full life.

Should it be our duty to follow this road, even if the world around us denies our chances of success? But is it really that important if some are in denial? And at the end of the road is it, was it important if success escapes us and if we fail?

Should we fight and struggle for achievement without rest, without peace?

Can we have questions about the legitimacy of this road to dreams?

Can we take the risk of being sacrificed for the possibility of success, and only a slight possibility of achievement?

Can we be this hero looking to realize these dreams?

Yes we can and we should… Dreamers make the world a better place, a place where we can find appeasement or pain but a full more complete place… A brighter world full of lights…with always the possible danger of the dream becoming a nightmare, and waking up after years of unachieved dreams in a lonely desert or even a sewer.

We can wake up alone with no dreams left and a vacuum around us, but was the risk legitimate?

Most of people do not have this need for dreams or even function without it, are they luckier and happier? I do not know… 

The world is not and cannot be entirely populated by dreamers.

And are we reaching a certain age or after some achievements able to function without dreams?  

YES, but then the time comes to help with other people’s dreams, to guide them, to protect them, and try to help them make them real.                                                                                                     Yes, we have this duty…and actually even at the beginning of the road if we are not part of the chosen, the dreamers, we have the obligation to understand them and  the duty to help them.                                                                                                                             The world and life without the dreamers will be a sea with no color, no depth, no waves, and no advancement…How boring!  The world without the dreamers will be a Neanderthal world!                                                                                                                                                                                       

Dreams of Friendship? Dreams of Knowledge? Dreams of Career? Dreams of Love? Dreams of Talent? Dreams of Truth? Dreams of Eternity?

Dreams of…of…of…

Successful people are not necessarily practical people. They are-at best- hard working dreamers. They are fortunate if they have practical, knowledgeable, honest people around them. ….. Who are helping those dreamers to come a bit closer to realizing their dreams.