Suddenly it seems that with
age or maybe more time alone, everything around me, any word pronounced by anybody, any moment with
people or even alone looking at a wall, any second, any note of music or song,
any word read: I am assaulted by a memory…
Any encounter becomes an avalanche
of images from the past, any gesture is a tornado of old emotions invading my
soul and provoking moments of total absorption in memories…
The shattered sky has changed
sky…. I look at my youth, at that young man full of anger and I forgive him, I
love that young man and I miss him…
And no, he was not tormented, tormented???
Not at all… He was only a mind trying to understand the meaning of being alive,
to figure the lost aim in the eternity of life… He was able to tame adversity,
he was able to stay one in the complete destruction of his surroundings, he was
capable to stay strong and undivided.
Yes, I love that young man, I miss his
passion, his strength, his vision and his imagination….
Time has passed, more than 50
years, I am still here, alive, and the world around me has changed drastically,
almost all of the people who were supposed to have a life after me are dead…
Fifty years have passed since the decision to turn the page, to start from
scratch, to go conquer a new world….Where are all these years ? They went
faster than the years of the lost youth trying to understand the meaning of life
and just trying to stay alive…
I look at
myself in the mirror of the bathroom and see somebody unknown to me, a stranger…
In all professions it seems that the race is everyday more intrepid,
more challenging, and more exhausting.
In the arts, or what is left from this attempt to catch reality of life,
it is even worse.
I can remember the time when to want to be an artist or to be interested
by the arts was an acceptation to a life of devotion and challenges, a
perpetual search for the truth, for beauty, for finding the unknown through
creativity and the creativity of others.
I KNOW IT IS STILL PRESENT IN MANY OF
THE ARTISTS WHO CHOSE THIS PROFESSION.
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? Are we living the final moments of a culture? Or is it the beginning
of a new one?
A
culture that I am not understanding! Is that the reason I am perpetually
assaulted with memories?
In order to fill emptiness?
The other night I was
watching a movie, THE BUTTERFLY AND THE DIVING BELL… I thought sometimes that too
often I write depressing pages and relating dark events, but this movie showed
me that I am on the optimistic and lucky side of life…
It is the story of the
editor of French ELLE Magazine who suffered a stroke and lapsed into coma. He
awakes two weeks later, totally paralyzed except for some movement in his eyes,
but mentally aware of the surroundings, and while he hears every comment about
his condition, a multitude of memories assault him…
Imagine, just imagine what
he must have felt…
The same night I dreamed
about my father and my brother who died 55 years ago…They were in a desert,
standing up in a cloud of dust, a pale dust, almost watery…They were looking at
me like asking a question, and mumbling. Suddenly, both said at the same time:
Bernard…Bernard…Viens, viens, viens, on
t’attend! Il est temps !!
Bernard…Bernard…
Come, come, come, we are
waiting for you ! It is time!!
They smiled and then
disappeared in the dust without another word, without looking back.
I woke up, got up, went to
drink some water and went back to sleep… I dreamt the same thing again, and it
happened three times, the exact same dream, 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 so welcome in order to stay a human instead of a machine created by the
society we are living in.
Our subconscious is always
working even if we are not aware of it…. Every day a lot of our actions are the
result of our thoughts, our experience, our knowledge, our education…. That is
why NOTHING can prevent us to continue to EXIST AS A PERSON and not become a
silly product of today’s society!!!
My dream was the result of
this liberated unconscious! Liberated because of the protection of the sleep
and the total abandon of my psyche with no barriers created by correctness or
prohibition of society.
Of
course, it was a painful dream, but a real one, a reenactment of my passed, and
another connection with loved ones creating when I woke up so many memories!
This acting of the
subconscious is possible because we have accumulated knowledge thru life
experiences, thru lessons learned from others, thru studying, thru an everyday
live devoted to LEARN… We build a full
reservoir of memories and thoughts, and our subconscious becomes richer and
more adequate to express itself.
One
day at a rehearsal of Cyrano, during a dramatic moment,
I held the hands of the soprano and went with her through the emotions of the
character, communicating to her my emotions using an equivalent I brought to
the surface, transfusing my life to her… With the help of my memories, I gave her the boy of the Shattered
sky holding her hands. At the end while singing, she was sobbing, tears all
over her face and all the people watching were in tears...
She
told me after, that she had never experienced that, she felt different with so many memories invading her …
She
added: I think I discovered something about me... I have a lot of memories buried, and I just
learned how to use them…. To use them for my art and also for my life… I don’t know if I should thank you or feel bad about
it...
I said don’t thank me, and feel good, you just
grew, you found new things about you, and new chapters of life are now there for
you, and that is the reason we do what we do.
But
should life always be a masquerade? A moment of theater? Do we need a
subterfuge to find the truth? To advance
in the knowledge of our MOI? Do we need to always call for memories to function? Is it exhausting to perpetually live that way?
Too
many people believe that life is what it is… I do not… I believe that we can recreate
our world by bringing up the buried memories and reshaping our world, by
interpreting it and by looking at it a different way…
Yes, the world can bring more than deceptions, treasons and bitterness… All
of us have good reasons to be who we are, to believe what we want, and to act
according to our desires…
We
are sometimes waiting for people to have gratitude for what we have done for
them… And they should do the same for
us…Too often, we do not understand why they do not!
BUT we should expect nothing, ask for
nothing, life is too difficult and too demanding for all.
The
meaning of Truth at the dusk of life can escape us, this dusk can become
darker, thicker, more somber. It can be more and more difficult to distinguish
what is real or even the meaning of real. Should we hook our self to lost
moments who cannot be real anymore and cannot be found? Why do we believe that everything can or should
last forever…?
LET’S
KEEP OUR EYES OPEN AND OUR MIND READY TO ACCEPT THE GIFTS OF LIFE, THEY ALWAYS
APPEAR AND REBUILD OUR ENTIRE BEING.
NEW
EVENTS CAN BRING HOPE, LOVE, PEACE AND NEW DEDICATION.
I
am now a grandfather, and I am suddenly totally alive again, with great reasons
to go on, a heart full of feelings, and no time anymore to waste my life in
self-absorption, self-pity and contemplation of my ego… Yes, the birth of a grandchild
brought me hope for the future, serenity, and more reasons to give happiness
and to be myself happy. Seeing the smile on my daughter’s face and watching how
she quickly became a mother full of attention is an incredible experience and
will be the most important memory in my last chapter. To look at this little
baby fills me with a joy I did not know I could have, a desire to continue to
be. to see her later in life and BE ASSAULTED BY GREAT MEMORIES.
NO,
I DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING, YES I CAN STILL LEARN FROM OTHERS, ABOUT OTHERS,
ABOUT LIFE AND ABOUT MYSELF…
