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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