THE GIFTS OF LIFE

Yesterday, very early in the morning, I walked the streets of Manhattan for more than 3 hours…not really going anywhere just walking with no real destination or purpose, just another illustration of everyday life. 

But quickly, and for no apparent reason, it became a fascinating plunge into the memories of my time in Paris in the early sixties when I walked and walked and walked, incessantly, every day for most of the day, discovering the city and many different neighborhoods of varying cultures, trying to understand the people in this new country, trying to be part of it, trying to feel like I belonged to the strange and sometimes negative world it was for me.

I was very young and already my head was spinning and my mind was confused by the mixed memories of the dramatic recent past years and this new way of living. I learned so many things in these walking adventures close to madness, just watching and wondering about where I would be in this new life with no real links to the real world.

Will I belong to it? Will I understand it? It was an incredible change for me, like a nightmare or maybe sometimes the impossible dream of a new life.                          

Then in the subsequent years, I continued to learn in my crazy travelling all over the world, discovering complete new civilizations and who I could maybe become outside of ME and MY SELF-CENTERED WAY OF LIFE.                                                                                                     

More than fifties years have passed and here I am walking in the streets of Manhattan, wondering and wandering, with memories again assaulting me and I became more and more aware during these 3 hours, how lucky I have been in my now long life…

I started to smile at my good fortune and then whistle and even sing loudly, some people looked at me thinking I had lost it.

Yes, lucky to meet during my life all these incredibly interesting and fascinating people who brought me so much in knowledge, in feelings, in the attempt to comprehend the world and to accept other’s behavior, understanding that we all function in our own ways, or at least we should….

Yes, lucky to understand with the help of others, that judging actions or behavior of others is not always justified.

Lucky to have kept eyes open to discover new worlds and lucky to have been opened by others to look and try to understand new minds and new ways….

Maybe this openness was due to my education or a lack of specific education -always being a foreigner or perceived as a different mind - forced me to find ways to adapt to others.

Sometimes it was difficult and even painful since new encounters and new relationships are not always fulfilling and sometimes create wounds or can even be destructive. Encounters that left me with a bad taste but were always an experience of life, a lesson and a better knowledge of human nature. 

         

Lucky to have been offered new adventures by fate or destiny, lucky to have gone through all these changes, the addition of responsibilities in my professional life with the desire to achieve, always attempting to grow in these different paths of life, adding more colors in everyday life and creating new challenges in order to still BE AND GROW.

Lucky to have met (and still meeting) so many people who believed in me, in my possibilities, and who gave me the tools to advance and to persevere in sometimes difficult situations. They were taking risks and I owe them everything, and these people are always present in my mind when it is my turn to try to help young people- I believe in- to achieve their dreams.

Yes, Luck has been on my side…Yes, very giving people have been on my side… Giving their time, their energy, their knowledge. Sometimes and even most of the time, giving to me without any expectation for me to give back. Did I ever realize it?  Was I conscious of all these gifts handed to me by others and was I really aware of this luck given to me?

Most of the time I did not realize it or perceive it… Was I just thinking in my world of constant need and denial that it was owed to me because I was special and more deserving than the big majority of people around me? Was I blinded by my own image?

Life has been an incredible gift, an incredible source of discovery and an incredible perpetual travel to the next stage, the next adventure, the next encounter.

Was I too busy, too selfish, too obsessed with power to realize the gifts of life? Or maybe I still am but I am going through a moment of clarity in the cloudy sky of life? Was the sky shattered forever?  I know it was not, I love the new sky and I am thankful for the gifts of life and still expecting other ones.

THANK YOU LIFE

I promised myself in the past few years and even more today, never to turn my back or ignore the ones who have been given to me, they are part of who I was, who I am, who I will be… for the years to come.

I was walking in the streets of Manhattan, and each store was bringing images to me, each coffee shop was talking to me with stories of the past…. Of course, we need some kind of imagination to look at a STARBUCKS and be reminded of a bar called “CHEZ FERNAND” fifty years before.                                                        But imagination authorizes the stories of the past to be present and real and beautiful. Imagination is the engine of creativity and sometimes can be the engine of happiness.

In Paris, at the beginning of time, after a long walk, I had to stop in a bar and ask for a glass of water to deal with my thirst and most of the time it was denied with impatience, a gesture of disdain and I was asked to leave the bar.

I sat in the street on the sidewalk and was thinking of what just happened, I decided to go to the next bar and then the next and the next one until a generous soul was finally pouring water (with no ice) in a glass.  I am still drinking water with no ice…maybe the unconscious memory. To almost beg for water was not depressing, it was an act of survival, and will be a lesson for all my life.                          

But now I can think “I made it” I do not need to beg for a glass of water… I can buy it and even more I can afford to buy a coca cola if I want… And yes, before you say it or even think it, I know that to “make it” is not only based on the power of money, but also on a million of other things…                                                      Achieving a balance between the positive and the negative aspects and events of life, finding some kind of peace within ourselves, contemplating the past with acquired serenity, looking at the future with assurance and bringing elements of our acquired knowledge and digested feelings and thoughts to as many  people as possible.

We have to go through life with open eyes on all the chances given to us, and be open to the new discoveries and the encounters who are incessantly presented to us…

Let’s be open to the gifts of life, because too often, we are and can be blinded by self-consciousness, self-importance, by education and sometimes because we have been spoiled in our adolescence or young adult age by the rest of the world.

When I was living in different countries than the US, the reputation of Americans was that they are happier, more innocent, more open to new ideas than we were… Please let’s be sure to go on and make this reputation a reality of everyday, it is a gift of life, it is the only way to go on with our mission… We do not need the fake gifts of substitutes presented to us, believing that they will help us to stay ourselves in search of success!  

                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 

FEAR !!!!!!!!!....

How can we define fear?  What is the meaning of fear? Can being cautious sometimes be defined as being fearful?  It seems that each day a new fear is assaulting us: fear of diseases, fear of others betraying us, fear of relationships going wrong or even right, fear of failing in our profession, fear of political issues, fear of honestly exchanging ideas, fear of being direct in our opinions, fear of being funny, fear of life and death, fear of the consequences of talking about certain subjects with the people involved, fear of friendship, fear of everything.                                           

Fear, fear, fear, fear!!!!

Why are we so fearful? Until very recently I had no fear in my life and behaved like nothing negative could ever happen to me!                                                                                                        

Is the world today more dangerous than it was in the past? Is society more threatening?  Is the perpetual judgement of others of all our actions or thoughts so intense that it creates a world of questions, doubts and instability?                                                                                                            

In my youth, I had no fear … In my teens, my family arrived in a different country as foreigners with nothing, and almost immediately I had to deal with major traumas and death, but I always took risks trying to survive, to be inventive, to be challenging to myself and sometimes to others with of course consequences, and yet I never felt fear.

Maybe I had no choice or time for it?

In my early twenties hitchhiking from Paris to Istanbul or from Paris to Kabul or from Paris to Nairobi with $3 in my pocket, sleeping anywhere, talking to whomever was crossing my path, taking so-called jobs to survive, even if most of the time I knew nothing about these jobs.  Only scars on my body and my soul are the proof that not always everything was perfect but I never really felt FEAR.                                                               

Nothing could stop me, I thought that nothing could happen to me, nobody could really hurt me or endanger my existence, learning from each experience about life and others, building my reservoir of thoughts, memories, feelings and emotions which would become so important on my path to be in show business and in my so-called maturity.                                                                                                                      

May be some people or many people called me a crazy teen, a crazy adolescent, then a dangerous personality, a crazy adventurer with no sense of responsibilities, no barriers in his imaginary world, no respect for others and perpetually attempting to discover the hidden side of things and people… But, I believe that I always respected others, I always took care of other’s needs, I always was considerate of others…I just had no fear about my next move, my next step, my own destiny, my thoughts to share with others even if I could sometimes feel the danger in the middle of an adventure... My everyday choices were made without the fear of failing even if I had the knowledge of the possibility of it.

   

Later in my life I had no fear to change my country again, to go on to new adventures, to try anything new, to establish relationships with people who were so different to me, and even to learn to speak English - a task accomplished without fear. I made enemies and I am sure many people around me accused me of being impossible to deal with, a crazy megalomaniac and self-centered. I was throwing myself into new ideas, new challenges, news attempts to learn, to grow, to try, to…BE ALIVE. 

And all this went on for many, many years!                                    

Fear of lacking solutions to go on, fear of making the wrong move or the wrong decision never stopped me.                              

Doubts of possible success? Yes, sometimes…                              Questions about the purpose of the new adventure and the risk of a possible abyss? Yes, often…

Often loneliness while waiting for a result? Most of the time...

BUT FEAR? NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!                                                                                                                                                         

IS IT BECAUSE I HAD NO CHOICE????

AND THEN IN THE PAST RECENT FEW YEARS, FEAR STARTED TO ATTACK ME AND SLOWLY TRIED TO TAKE POSSESSION OF MY EVERYDAY THOUGHTS!

IS FEAR THE GIVEN RESULT OF SOME KIND OF ACHIEVEMENT? THE RESULT OF SETTLING IN A LIFESTYLE OF FINANCIAL, MORAL AND PERSONAL COMFORT? IS FEAR CREATED BY EDUCATION, FAMILY SURROUNDING OR THE ACCEPTATION OF SOCIETY’S RULES?  AND THE THOUGHTS OF MAYBE LOSING SECURITY?                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Are we more and more living in a secure “bourgeois” world where the possibility of losing our cell phone creates insecurity, fear and even panic?

WHAT HAPPENED TO ME???????????????????????????????????????????????????

Why in the very recent years I feel fear….                                      WHAT HAPPENED?????

Did society change very fast and dramatically and continue to change every day creating instability in acquired knowledge? Is knowledge not a guarantee of safety anymore? Do we even have a definition of knowledge or does that change daily, creating unbalance and fear? Do the chances given to us become nonexistent or full of negativity? Are people like I was cannot hope to function fearless of consequences? It seems that there is no truth in anything on which we can base decisions, everybody is throwing opinions about everybody creating new stories every day based on impressions and rumors! It seems that around me ALL are full of fear, of incertitude of going forward, of negativity about a possible wrong turn in an upcoming challenge.                                                                                                                                                                       

Myself I feel fear about a lot of things, about taking risks, about knowing new people since everything changes at an incredible speed.                                                                                                                                          

Did fear become a synonym to wisdom? Is now wisdom the perpetual attempt to balance between yes and no and maybe? Is Fear now the rule of life in order to advance in the world but actually we all forget that fear is becoming the paralysis of creativity?  

Are the consequences after making a mistake much more dramatic than they were?                                                                  

Every day I hear “I do not know if I should do this because maybe….” A common line today is “what if I do this because if not, what can happen?” and this question too often prevents people to take a decision or to make a step in a new stage of life.

It seems that everybody (including me) is afraid of creating new relationships, tempting new challenges, afraid of giving himself, afraid of hearing the truth, afraid of having a real conversation about life and needs, afraid of criticism, afraid of honest feelings, afraid of hurting, afraid of sensitivity, afraid of talking in person, beyond social media.                               

Social media gave everybody the protection of not having personal involvement with the appearance of freedom of thoughts and judgments.

Are my fears, since I do not use social media (I am very scared of it), probably due to my old age?             

 Is older age the reason of this new feeling? I honestly do not think so even if my body is shrinking, my nose is longer every day, wrinkles are invading my face, and hair is leaving my head. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if this face is really the face of the guy I knew before? The one who was afraid of nothing for so long and most of his life? Maybe it is due to a beginning of dementia, or Alzheimer?                                                                       

The fear of death is a perpetual feeling every day, is it a normal sensation or the consequence of the disappearance of most of my best friends in the past few years? Can I say that they died in order to give me a longer life since we owe to humanity a certain amount of deaths? Do I have to be afraid of death or should I take it as a normal way of leaving the world and the passionate life we had and still have?           

 If fear today is a normal way of existing, maybe for all of us it is time to deal with it, to master it. We cannot ignore it, it is present in our daily life…  But we cannot be overwhelmed by fear and become its creature, we have to use it…So, let’s hold it in our hands, let’s look at it, study it and find its weaknesses… Let’s make fear a way of pondering about the next step, the next stage… Let’s make fear an ally to our next decisions and a second person for advice… Life goes too fast to be shadowed with fears!  

SELF  I  ???????

I was in my twenties during the Vietnam War and while Vietnam was for us in France another adventure of the Americans, I had been very influenced by it and by its consequences on society, and we believed in the necessary changes demanded by a new generation.

The sixties were the years of EVERYTHING, all was permitted, all was accepted, and all was forgiven and blessed…Yes, to be in your twenties during the sixties was at the same time a blessing and a curse, despair, and a hope for change. Total adventure was possible, and attempt to reach a new dimension an everyday task.                                                                                            

THE ME GENERATION WAS THE NEW LAW OF THE LAND.

The generation of my parents in remote Tunisia and then as refugees in France was totally protected by education, some credo in religion, the thoughts of their parents, a certain way of life and a given way of thinking…

Of course, I had heard from a cousin or a friend, or even a remote friend of my parents, that they knew somebody who was betraying his family, or had an affair, or an addiction to alcohol or some drugs, or even in the worst cases some sexual perversion…but it was the reason for whispering dirty secrets in corners, or badmouthing somebody about his terrible double life.

The sixties brought to some of the young generation, the idea that we had to contest society and the rules given by our parents, and the idea of smoking pot was cool, overdrinking alcohol was permitted, total sexual freedom accepted… We were the culmination and the explosion of a culture still wounded by the Second World War and we went for it totally with no restraints and no hesitations…

At the time, I was thinking that it would be just a period in our western society and soon all will go back to a life of order, of self-control, of respect for others and we will again TRY to obey the rules of society set by many generations.

Time flew, years went very fast, and we went from the sixties to the seventies to the eighties to the nineties and to the new millennium… and now we are in 2017.

Year after year, decade after decade, I have witnessed an incredible change in the ways of living, in the ways of thinking. Not only did we not go back to the life before the sixties, which is normal and expected, but everything went forcefully in the opposite direction to reach a degree where life and society and behavior are less and less understandable even for most of the new generation.

When one of the idols of my youth, Robin Williams passed away, even if he was a child of the seventies I always believed that he was really the product of the sixties…  

His genius was GENIUS, his talent was TALENT, his suffering was SUFFERING.

Today do we even understand what genius and talent are? It seems that the rules of life are improvisation and an attempt to prove incessantly the importance of being dishonest.

It seems that we are living in a world of total addiction more than ever…. Alcohol and drugs seem to be the normal way of living…and we have invented new addictions: addiction to phones, to social media, and even worse, compared to today, the ME generation is nothing since now we live in a total world of self-contemplation, self-admiration, self EVERYTHING.

Recently thirteen million people looked at the picture of a star who had posed half-naked with their new twins and I wondered why this is so interesting. Everyday walking in the street I bump into people who are taking pictures of themselves to publish on social media, I think they call that SELFIES but it should be called selfish OR EVEN “SELF I”.

Yes, SELF I since it is more and more obvious that everyone is totally satisfied with his own image, his own MOI…The MOI gives the right to all to denounce everything, to protest everything, to make everything valuable. And at the same time we cannot say anything because we could hurt the MOI of somebody else. We can be accused of anything since all is permitted and all is forbidden.

It seems that everybody needs to exhibit his life, his desires, his successes and failures, his latest and newest adventures on a daily basis with perpetual exposure…The general rule is to have no mystery or mysteries, everybody has to know everything about everybody, and everybody is ecstatic to expose themselves. 

The time when mystery or mysteries were present is a notion totally ridiculed by the majority, EVEN IF a life with no mystery can be very boring and even senseless.

Where is the time when private imagination and private dreams were part of the game of life and a way to be and to find a new balance…?                            

Imagination and dreams and illusions are the hidden reality, the reality of the non-said or told.

The mystery of life and the mysteries of relations are a basic of learning and a key for a life devoted to growing. Yes, dreams are only a hidden reality…the reality of the surreal… forever we should be sitting in the waiting room of final achievement, never totally satisfied.  We should wonder about tomorrow and the mystery of everything and everybody, but unfortunately, we rarely meet somebody with mysteries.                                

We too often believe that we are loved by all, hated by all, protected by all or protector of all, we believe that everybody wants us as a friend or everybody pushes us away... The reality of the non-real!!!!!

But despite that, we have to fight for discovery, yes still discovery can exist, discovery actually exists…

We have to wake up from an eternity of self-indulgence, and the belief that the world owes us something… every day, after too much time spent in non-action and in limbo of the anti-chamber of success, some of my friends of the real world, or people from the other world (I mean the artists) believe that they should now be recognized since they are exposing themselves 24 hours a day to the look of others! They enjoy the perpetual attack of self-attempt to be…

The years of neglect, of waiting for Godot, do not count anymore…they deserve to be successful since they expose themselves everywhere … and now by doing it, they should be RECOGNIZED immediately by all…

SO what to think? What to do? Where is the truth? I know every generation has problems, I know that every generation is asking for something different while the older one wants to preserve their own acquisition.

I was dreaming at the age of 8 or 9 to become a famous actor, I collected in a book the pictures of my favorites American actors, closing my eyes and transporting myself into the Wild Wild West with John Wayne or with Marlon Brandon in ‘On the Waterfront”.

Or I was a Russian character in a Russian novel, which one? Is there a difference today in being a character of Gogol or a character of Pouchkine? Sadly enough it is the same thing for the majority of people...we have lost the meaning of culture and are devoting ourselves to clichés, appearance and exposition of everything we believe we are.

Will we at one moment in this auto-destructive society wake up and find again a sense of Mystery, and some modesty? 

According to the present time we should not build a name, a career, and respect for our professionalism. I have so many friends who wanted, craved all their life to be artists, performers. But where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least OUR attempt for perfection. A world for immediate retribution has ungloved us, we are not anymore what we can be but what we believe we deserve to be.

We cannot be only ONE, our self, and believe that it is enough to advance in life!!!! The absence of mystery and mysteries will prevent us to advance on the long path of life, we have to create a multiplicity of feelings, of thoughts, of knowledge…We SHOULD NOT let everybody know every second of our life what we do and what we do not do. We have to be a person full of surprises, of perpetual acquisition of thoughts.

TO BE ONE DIMENSION, ESPECIALLY FOR A PERFORMER IS AN ACT OF SELF DESTRUCTION.

CYRANO…. REALLY A NOSE???

I just finished a month of total friendship, of sharing feelings and emotion and having the sensation, that, sometimes, we are lucky to do what we do. It was a marvelous gift at my age to be able to connect on both artistic and human levels with younger people! I am happy to be reminded that it is possible for me to learn and to experiment with younger generations.

I was in Detroit Directing my opera Cyrano! Another occasion to share very special moments with the composer of this opera, my dear friend, David DiChiera. We have been friends for more than 35 years. The adventure of Cyrano- him composing the music and I writing the libretto, then directing the production- made us even closer, made us breathe the same air made us completely understand each other totally and become eternally intertwined. David, I want to thank you again for who you are, and your incredible generosity to us all.

Our friend Mark Flint, who was part of the creation of the opera through writing the orchestrations and conducting the premiere, passed away 5 years ago, and David with this production was announcing his retirement from Michigan Opera Theatre, the company he founded against all odds nearly 50 years ago…It was an extraordinary month of emotion, tears, laughs and artistic satisfactions with a cast of friends, old and new.

Returning to this opera, based on Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece, introduced me to an array of exciting opportunities and more questions about artistic involvement, about creativity, about fate, and about life.

While life and the events in our lives teach us how to behave and react to tragic moments, we always learn more about who we are and what we represent when we are in close contact with others.

This past month was another experience in learning how to deal with sorrow, disappointments, pain inflicted by events and sometimes by others! Though, too often, we inflict pain on ourselves due to the failing of not knowing who we really are, what is haunting us or where we belong.

BUT CYRANO…. WHAT IS REALLY HIS NOSE???

Cyrano says in the first act… “My friend there are times when I feel awful about my ugliness, sometimes all alone…” 

Yes, he suffers about his ugliness and his loneliness.

To have an extraordinary long nose can be a source of torment and even pain. BUT DON’T WE ALL HAVE A LONG NOSE WE TRY TO HIDE?

This long nose is only a symbol of the pain we all carry somewhere within ourselves- the feeling that we need something else and, most of the time it is buried inside us and we do not see it, or even we refuse to see it, afraid of being weakened by it… Throughout my life, I very rarely met people who did not have wounds, and too often under a bandage. And sometimes these wounds are continuously ignored due to fear or ignorance.

 Yes, we all have secret lives and those lives and very often kept a secret from ourselves…

Most of us spend our lives carrying pain or incertitude of who we really are, and too often we fall in the trap of disguising it by ignoring it. Unfortunately, we sometimes find ways to bury or deny it by using drugs, alcohol or even by refusing to obey laws and societal expectations... And instead of building a life with achievements and attempts to better ourselves we fall into the traps of self-destruction.

Yes, most of us have hidden pain inside and questions with no answers, and we need to learn how to deal with them and make them into positive elements to advance on our path in life.

Artists have a huge advantage and the opportunity to deal with these challenges! We can use this hidden pain to express ourselves within the context of our art and to process through creating! Find a balance between the real and the imaginary, between the everyday life and the secret life, and finally, we can overcome our excruciating pain. We can deal with our noses through total introspection, sometimes this total introspection is interpreted by others as being self-centered or selfish or even strange, not to say deranged. And very often, we are not welcome by the so-called normal society.     YES, ARTISTS HAVE A LONELY LIFE…AND YES, I KNOW THAT, FOR SOME, IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TRY TO CURE THEIR DESEASE THROUGH CREATING ART AND THEIR LIVES ARE A LIVING HELL, and their curse is stronger than their creativity…

Performers have the same fate! We know or should remember, that in everyday life, consciously or unconsciously, we need to always be putting on a show to disguise “the real Me”, to hide our pains, our frustrations, our weaknesses and be somebody else- the person that “society” expects us to be.

We give to others-and the world at large- an image of ourselves to stay seemingly strong and able to function in a society that constantly demands more and more! We live in a world where we all are expected to play a role instead of being open about the extreme danger of losing the grasp on our true selves and who we really are.

But you must realize that, on stage, we are protected by the character we are performing. The world will see and witness a “personage”, and we are freed from the need to disguise who we really are! The stage is the only place where we do not need to act and we can finally be our true selves, being honest about our strengths and our weaknesses. We can deal with our pain, and use it, and let it go and finally find some kind of peace by opening the door to the buried world inside.

 Performers: you are lucky, you can finally be your true selves. Always dig into your past, into your subconscious, into your experiences and use them to become the character you need to be…Use your memories of events, find the equivalents-the connections- to different situations from your life, and build a bank of feelings to draw from when creating characters.

Not only will your performances be stronger, and real, and bewitching; but you will release the ghosts haunting your soul, you will take the bandage off, and you will enjoy some freedom, even if temporary, and finally some happiness…Always use who you are deep inside to become the character you are personifying and grow from it.,

Cyrano created a world of theater and a perpetual stage around him … He calls that “MON PANACHE!!!” He can function and he can act as a total human being, he found the ways, through using his pain and his NOSE, to be loved and admired by all. When he is alone, of course, he has moments of doubt and sorrow, but he always survives it and his incredible love for Roxane makes him the man we should all become…A SOUL WITH A LONG NOSE AND A BIG HEART!                                                                                                                                               

But throughout all of those years, Roxane could not see behind the appearance of an ugly nose, the real man that Cyrano was, so she wasted her life and his because of her vanity …. Please let’s try to see the people around us for who they truly are, let’s try to find the soul beneath the surface, but we also need to make it easier to find by opening the door to our buried traumas

We must learn how to embody Cyrano in our lives, how to deal with our noses. Let's face our noses, not ignore them or burry them! Let's use them and find the balance in our existence, let's not disguise them with superficial elements!

Become a harp with each string representing a different moment in your past, AND INCLUDE THE HAPPY MOMENTS, THE CREATIVE MOMENTS! Do not fall in perpetual depression by using only the sadness of your past experiences.

This, of course, is not an easy task. It demands courage and abandon, but it will make us so much happier and completely whole!!

Dealing with the hidden is the only way to make us strong -real- CREATIVE.

  

IRRELEVANCE

Recently I have been thinking a lot about LA VOIX HUMAINE, the opera by Poulenc and Cocteau…. As always, an extraordinary coincidence occurred in life. Just as I was thinking of this piece, one of my best friend had a surgery and the doctors advised him not to talk for three weeks and added that his speaking voice will be different forever! When he asked for more details, they answered “we do not know.”

What a splendid irony, yes, events are in perspective again!!! Every event has the potential to contain both, truth and lie, dream and nightmare, reality and fantasy, always mixed.

Years go by and we are still trying to try to find a meaning to it all. And sometimes hazard, or the untamable laws of destiny give us some answers, or more precisely some pieces of answers which drives us to think about the missing pieces, the next step, the next adventure, the next risk of taking risks

The voice…human… or the human voice?

Are we using our voices the way we should? I do not think so; we should try to eliminate all the harsh words we have for others, all the pains we inflict with our voices and our voices should only be the carrier of joy, pleasure, achievement… With this I am dreaming again!!!!!                                                    

And what about the thoughts? What will happen to them?

I am wandering…my thoughts dictate the words I am writing…maybe I should use my voice before typing the letters I am writing and obliterate the non-sense which sometimes invades my blank pages.

The voice…when we wake up every morning are our first thoughts for the voice? Do we pronounce a few reassuring words and smile at the sound of our voices?

I have directed this opera four times and really like it… Every time it was a new adventure because the performer was different and we all know or should know that we do not ask different artists to do the same thing.

I was always wondering why it is called “La Voix Humaine”, is there a voice which is not Human?

What other voices are around or were around? The voice of the supreme Guide? The voice of remorse, the voice of the ghosts? But even they are human creation, so La voix Humaine means what?

Here I am trying to find a meaning to LA VOIX HUMAINE, but why?

Too often, difficult moments in life dictate the meaning of our existence, and why is that? I do not know anymore; no actually I have never known.

It seems that every day I am more and more submerged by the feeling of irrelevance surrounding me and sometimes I feel that I am the head of this new way of being, and finding reasons to speak and use my voice.

Yes, I know every generation says the same about the generation before and the generation after, but I REALLY do not believe it was ever so extreme!        

I think that today a 35 year-old person cannot talk to a younger 18 year-old person… So, imagine a baby boomer trying to communicate with an adolescent or even a forty year-old!!!!

                                                                                                                   

 I am strange, I am from another generation, I am not part of the trends of today, I am not credible in the ways people function…. I do not have the same values, the same CREDO, even the same language! I have to be constantly careful of the words I use in order not to be accused to be temperamental, irrational, aggressive, but at the same time we are all supposed to be equal (which should ABSOLUTELY BE TRUE). Yet we cannot find the words to express ourselves out of fear of being politically incorrect.

In every aspect of life, of culture, of human relations, of beliefs, of our sense of belonging, of politics, of EVERYTHING, I have the horrendous sensation of being totally irrelevant. In the world of the arts or what is left of it, I am totally irrelevant because I believe in the respect of masterpieces, in the tradition of beauty, in the search for the truth, in the study of it to try to find new significance or new lights.

It seems that sometimes (and not because of my French accent) people around me do not understand what I say, what I do, what I think, even what I dream. They look at me like I belong to another planet, to another world, to another society, to another time! I am strange, I am from another generation, I am not part of the trends of today, I am not credible in the ways people function.

My profession became a perpetual question mark for me! Most of the productions I attend are a bizarre approach to rediscover the already made, not to say a ridiculous (for me) attempt to do something new, something different, something more in line with the …. I really do not even know what.                                                                                                                   

The meaning of the words is not taken seriously, if they are considered at all. The stylistic influences of the period and the music are intentionally ignored, or in some cases are contradicted to prove an artistic creativity and a sense of modernism.  

                                                                        

I would like to know when the great museums of the world will distribute special glasses at the doors which will deform or change the colors of the paintings and the sculptures. I cannot wait to have glasses that will show me Mona Lisa all in red or pink or purple and wearing duck ears. I will sit in the room of the museum wondering and letting my fertile imagination wander.

The last shows I have attended in New York, I left after the second act, resisting the desire to leave after the first one, hoping to finally breathe with ease. 

The work on the characters, the situations and the period was nonexistent, the attempt to understand and to go deeper in human relations was forbidden, the sense of beauty was laughed at.

They believe they will attract a new audience with it, and the theaters are empty! They simply forget that human nature has not really evolved significantly and real feelings, real stories do not change from generation to generation. Since the beginning of times the human heart has been touched by REAL FEELINGS AND REAL THOUGHTS…

These so-called monuments of the past continue to move audiences because they speak to our souls, to our hearts, to our beings…                                                                   

And do not answer me by saying WHAT IS REALITY? I am sure you know.                                                                                                                                          

YES you can write new pieces, new art, new anything you want the way you want and try to discover new approaches. Actually it is even our duty as artists, if we do not, we cannot advance and progress to the next step. But please leave the masterpieces alone.

                                                                                                                                 

Did Picasso create his last masterpieces by taking his paintings from the blue and the rose periods (the figurative period) and painting on top of it to create the Demoiselles D’Avignon? No, He did not, he developed a new form of expressing himself.

The chorus in Ballo is dressed like Ladybugs, Romeo is in love with Stefano, Juliette is blind, Turandot is a butcher, Figaro is a German soldier, Manon is a whore in the low district in Paris may be Pigalle, the set of Boheme is in the Chinese district of Tokyo, nobody knows what the words mean…

Of course, sometimes we have to adapt a new sensitivity and new understandings, but not to the detriment of the basics which are life and human soul.

La voix humaine is betrayed, and in place we have La voix ridiculed and the humaine denied.

Unfortunately, this attitude of irrelevance is not only wounding or murdering the arts but also every aspect of everyday life.

My freedom you helped me to leave my chains, I suffered to satisfy your demands, I gave you everything, I left my world and I lost my friends, but I owe you everything I have.                           

But I became irrelevant in my aspirations, in my dreams, and in my attempts to change the world which was always my priority. I wanted to change the world by bringing new truth and new beliefs, but ALWAYS BASED on knowledge, on understanding, on research…. And I have the feeling that I am completely irrelevant, dismissible and out of touch with the “geniuses “of today.  

YESTERDAY....????...TOMORROW

Saturday night I had a dream…Yes, me, a dream…not a nightmare, but a dream. Probably I must have been sleeping on my two ears and could not hear the voices of the world sending me hopeless, nasty, mean or confused messages coming from the times we are experiencing today.

Here it is…

I was 15 years old, and I was whistling an old song I learned from my grandmother, one of the pillar of my youth. The old song is about a young boy who learns about life by travelling all over the world on the back of a giraffe…

From there, he has a nice view and feels very comfortable--free to be himself, and to think.

I was walking in a forest filled with fruits: strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries…giant fruits, the size of a talisman in a fairy tale…All the fairy tales that I do not allow to enter my mind anymore since I believe I am an adult and want to be responsible for my ….?????

I arrived on the edge of a very small pond and in front of my eyes this pond slowly became a huge lake; suddenly, the forest disappeared and became the school I attended in my childhood.

The fruits transformed into the old friends of my past who I have not seen in more than sixty years. They all came around me dancing, smiling and screaming:

” Bernard…Bernard, where were you? we were looking for you, where did you go? We missed you, and we still miss all your stories, and all your adventures, tell us, tell us…

They came very near me and asked a million questions about my life, my perpetual travels all over the world, about girls, about music, about singers and about opera…  I had an answer ready about everything, but strangely enough, my answers had nothing to do with the questions asked, though I believed they did, and they were looking at me puzzled and frowning, even worried…but I was happy, I was smiling, I was talking non-stop, I was even laughing…

                                                                                                                                                                  Full of joy, I looked at myself in the pond, and the water reflected the image of an older man who looked like I do today, but my friends were still the young ones of sixty years ago, and still eager to know more about life, about the world, about everything and continued on and on with the questions!

One of them, the one who had been my rival during my school years, looked at me, approached me, and whispered in my ear: “You are not the one we knew; you are not Bernard; you are only a parody of him; you are a fake; where did Bernard go, the one we knew, the one I despised openly but admired secretly?”

“Who are you, who are you???”

I woke up with that voice in my head, full of questions about myself and about the world in which I live; and about all I know, all I ignore or want to ignore, falling in the trap of trying to ignore the reality, or overwhelmed by my habit of functioning with fake knowledge of life and others.

Who are we? Do we go on in life by becoming somebody else? Is that really what growing up and learning is about? Is that really what becoming an adult means? Do life, society, and encounters impose new rules on us, new ways of being ourselves?

I wondered if I had changed so much since the time I was being devoured by the desire to become something or may be somebody?

Are we falling in the trap of easy success? Or the trap of fast failure? Or, even worse, the trap of banality?

Slowly, I realized that I should still try to be what I was at one time--at least to reconnect with the young boy, and subsequently the young man, who wanted to reinvent the wheel.

I jumped out of bed (it is an Image, I cannot jump anymore) full of a new strength, and decided to tell those around me what I believe is the truth…the truth of life, the truth of what it is to be alive, the truth to still want life to bring great moments of discovery and joy… and to share with others what I believe I know and give some of my experience to the ones who want it…

And I thought about all the ones who have something to share, something to give, something to say and I want to tell them not to stand down. Please do go back to your duties as real people: SHARE WITH OTHERS, GIVE TO OTHERS, PROTECT OTHERS.                                                                                                      

We need you! We count on you!

Let’s not let the misadventures of life, the everyday disappointments impede all we can do…

Yes, most of us are not on the top of the heap, are not the lead characters in the story of success, and we all believe that we deserve more because of  the huge talent we have in our art or our profession…

At one point in life, we cannot go home day, after day, with an empty heart, a distorted soul, a disappearing courage, a dead mental capacity, a non-connected intellect, a vanquished passion, a wounded body.

No more of this whining, enough of these complaints of a spoiled brat, enough of the masturbation on a misfortune which does not exist!

It is an insult to the ones who really suffer, a slap to the ones who have nothing, a lack of consideration for the ones who really have courage! JUST LOOK AROUND: THINK, REALIZE, AND BE THANKFUL!

I told myself, today is Sunday, the day of the Lord and the day of the thieves…

The day when we love to look at the world with a naughty or generous eye, or hopefully an eye open to the question marks.

These boys talking to me, asking questions, were they real? A manifestation of another life?                                                                                                                             Were they part of a hidden reality or the reality of the unreal?

At the age of 8 or 9, I wanted to become a famous actor. I would close my eyes and was transported to the wild west with John Wayne or to the waterfront with Marlon Brando. Sometimes I wanted to be a Russian character in a Russian novel, which one? Is there a difference today in being a character in a Gogol novel or a character in a Chekov play?

Sadly enough, most people today would not know the difference...we have lost the meaning of culture and are devoting ourselves to clichés, and we just go to the shortcut to have answers and to try to be different, and some people, too many for my sanity, call that interesting and NEW.

                                                                                                                                                  I have so many friends who wanted, craved, and endeavored all their lives to be artists, performers, creators…Please do not stop, go on with your desires, nothing should stop you.

                                                                         

But where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least OUR attempt for perfection.

A world for immediate retribution has ungloved us, we are not anymore who we can be but who we believe we deserve to be.

What to think? What to do? Where is the truth? I know every generation has problems, I know that 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 it is going faster and faster.

Many still do, even if I have fewer friends than when I was younger... It seems that people in general stay away from aging people for many different reasons: feeling that they have nothing in common, belief that older people do not connect with today needs, uncontrollable disdain of knowledge based on experience, or pure fear of the unknown since difference of age creates the unknown.

In any case, I am thinking of my friends or my possible friends, and the young people who want to be artists, performers, and singers or in other capacity in the world of opera, or in any profession.

DO NOT LOSE CONNECTION WITH YOURSELF, DO NOT FORGET WHO YOU WERE, WHO YOU ARE , IT IS THE BEST WAY TO BE WHO YOU WILL BE.

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