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.