TEARS

I just came back from Detroit for David DiChiera’ funeral service… 

It was emotional and beautiful, full of tears, memories of great times and great moments of creativity. But also, for many of us memories of pain, anguish about time passing and life sometimes escaping us.

Most of the time, because of David,   there were feelings of joy that sometimes we had achieved a full life, met great people and created great friendship.

Yes, David is leaving us, I wanted to scream in the theater:                      ” No please David do not go!  You are not going, you will never go away in our hearts and our minds: you will be a perpetual and strong presence in whatever is left in our life, an example of how to be.”

You were, and you are, the reason why we became the artists we believe we can sometimes be.

 You were the one who believed in us and gave us chances and opportunities. You were the one who was always present in our life and you will be forever part of us…

David you were the father and the brother I lost at a young age and often alone in the world of so many different foreign countries where I had to build a new life without the possibility of replacing them …

BUT THEN I met you in 1982… It was like a thunder in my life, you believed in me and gave me the chances that nobody did before in my lonely, adventurous and turbulent life.

I was already 38 and trying to make a life and a career in the world of opera,which was for me a total new world..AGAIN…

                                                                                                             You took the risk to trust me with a great opportunity and continued to believe in me for 35 years regularly giving me new challenges in your opera company…                                                                    

Of course, our CYRANO will be part of our common history forever… You as the composer and I as the librettist working closely together to achieve what I believe is a musical masterpiece that the future generations will recognize.

But as I told you many times, it is difficult to be part of the trend when we are not part of the trend.                           

But time will be in your favor and will honor your work.

When I was in the theater this weekend honoring you, your picture was projected on a screen, and I could not stop crying looking at you…

Your gentleness, your comprehension of human dilemmas, your serenity about life. Your constant love for all of us were present…

And how, could I not think about our dear Mark Flint, our friend of so many years who left us in 2012, his intense participation in Cyrano….                                                                

YES MARK AND DAVID ARE GONE, MY TWO BROTHERS ARE GONE AGAIN… Are life and its pains a perpetual resumption?

David we will miss you forever, not that is not enough, to follow your message and be worthy of your heritage we will continue to function, and we will be present to honor you and your memory.

On my way to Detroit, in the plane, I chose to watch a movie called DISOBEDIENCE,

Fate? Coincidence? This movie brought back to me so many memories of my childhood….   It is set in a Jewish surrounding in London and deals with choices in life…

Memories of my young life with a brother and a father who disappeared very soon from my world, memories of a Jewish tradition that I never had the opportunity to practice after the age of 16, memories of what could have been a life!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was ready to acknowledge David Dichiera input in my life… And watching this movie, so many memories were aggressing me in the plane, all my childhood, all my attempt to be, to try to become somebody later, with never any help but actually most of the time having to deal with the contempt of people for the strange one around them… I was always the stranger, the different one, the question mark.

NO WONDER I DECIDED TO BECOME AN ARTIST or at least to tempt to be an artist, at least I had an excuse or a reason to be different.

 And unfortunately, this followed me all my life…I was always everywhere the stranger, the different one, and I have to say more in this country than in France coming from Tunisia, even if this country is my country now and I am proud to be part of it, a country I love and that gave me all possible chances.

Wherever I am, I went, or I was, … people make me feel different…I have an accent everywhere, most of the time people do not know where to place me…. More than 55 years of being seen as different  is exhausting.

Do people understand that there are other ways of thinking? Other ways of being? Other ways of anything?

I arrived in Detroit full of all these memories and all these pains inside me.

 I walked to the theater and sat by myself on the third row, I was probably the third person to arrive there, in front of me was David’s picture looking at us and then for me the entire theater went to dark, it was only David looking at me… David was invading my thoughts, my heart and my memories…

His gentleness, his comprehension of human behavior, his incredible humanity went thru me again and made me feel more peaceful while tears were running on my cheeks.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

During the time in the theater honoring you David, everybody was in TEARS thinking of you and I was myself overwhelmed by the showing of so many people coming to me and expressing feelings towards me, knowing my relationship with you and the recent events in my life…

So many testimonies and proofs of affection from Men and Women who were totally comforting in ANOTHER DIFFICULT TIME IN MY LIFE…

But David do not worry about me, this difficult time, while destroying my reputation, is not destroying my strength, unfortunately or fortunately I have seen much worse in my life..And real facts or absence of real facts will one day emerge….and the people responsible for that, will……

On my way back from Detroit, I was watching the second half of the movie DISOBEDIENCE.

I was still overwhelmed by sorrow to have lost my dear friend, and also overwhelmed by proofs of friendship to me by so many people, and testimonies of real worries about me and my next step in life, yes next step, life is never finished. 
Even if between us, I do not think about the next step of my life, I am more concerned about the worries of people around me and so dear to me.                                                                                                                               

The second half of DISOBEDIENCE was in the David Dichiara way of being, of thinking, of feeling…,                                        

 It was all about compassion , forgiveness, love, AND FREEDOM TO CHOOSE…

Yes, can we be strong enough to forgive? Strong enough to have compassion? Strong enough to try to love? Even for the people who have been so trying to judge us, to negate us, to destroy us?

Tears are part of life and often are the way to deal with painful realities, but tears should not prevent us to go ahead, we every day have new responsibilities and we must go for it…Tears and feelings should be the background of our soul but not the engine of our actions. Tears can be sometimes the revelation of a next step, the beginning of new thoughts and new decisions.

Since 1982 I do not remember one person talking negatively about David, did he succeed in this way of being?

                                                                                                        Life is a constant attempt to acquire knowledge, knowledge of the passed thru history, and knowledge of the present thru experience….                                                                                      These days are very difficult because we must acquire new ways very fast and too many times to apply it even if it is not digested totally and it creates mistakes…

This past weekend has been another opportunity to learn, to feel. to go back to the past, to have more thoughts about experiences, and to try, even if it is difficult, to new ways of being alive.

But David and his way of being, his understanding of the world and human relations, his artistic genius, will always be a model.

David, you have been an example, David we will always love you.