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…
Good article Bernard. Your new grandchild (Congratulations!) reminded me of something.
ReplyDeleteWhen my nephew and niece (twins) were born almost eleven years ago, I thought of what has transpired in the world in my (then) 53 years of life, and now 64 years;
My life's work, opera singing, had exploded across America over my lifetime, creating companies in almost every state of the union. Young Artists Programs and apprentice programs have proliferated in the last four decades producing far more talented artists than I think our business (somewhat shrinking at the moment)can now accommodate on a full-time basis. (This now worries me too!)
We put men on the moon in my lifetime.
We cured diseases like polio, small pox, and mumps, measles, and Rubella (If everyone will accept getting the vaccines!)
Many cancers are now either curable or can be kept as chronic diseases that do not kill.
We can communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe.
We can instantly answer almost any question we have on any subject by a simple task known as a Google.
We can be anywhere on the globe in a matter of hours if we need to.
We are likely to live well into our 80's or even 90's now where the average lifespan was under 60 when I was born.
In 2009 when I first held my niece and nephew I thought what will happen in their lifetimes;
Probably no one will die of cancer by the time they are 60 years old. Or Alzheimers.
Many more diseases will be eradicated completely.
They will probably see people living on the moon and even Mars.
Healthcare will be a birthright in America, not a potential bankruptcy issue in one's lifetime. Health Insurance unnecessary.
They will likely live to see the dawn of the 22nd Century and spend a possible 100-120 years on the planet.
They will travel across an ocean in about an hour or so.
Their cars will drive them anywhere they want to go with no fear of accidents at all. Auto Insurance unnecessary.
Hopefully religious differences will no longer be the primary source of war and terrorism.
Racism might be finally just in the history books and museums. This one might still be a challenge.
Entertainment will be at our fingertips to draw on however you choose to want to view it. Any artists in any form of stage entertainment from any generation as far back as the early 20th Century will be able to be brought back to be re-created in any combination of their art form as though they have always existed. Visually and aurally. Using our reference points, imagine watching a production of Don Carlos with Caruso, Callas, Horne, Warren, Siepi, and Pinza onstage with their images and voices singing the actual roles, whether they did them or not in their lifetimes!
Of course my nephew or niece will have another century of singers to choose to mix and match from as well!
Of course the point is, they will have experiences we cannot even imagine now in their long lifetimes.
The cycle of life. That is what we all experience and keeps us positive even as we can now see the conclusion of ours somewhere in the not too distant future. Given that life expectancy at our births was barely 50-57 years, if we are now in our 60's or older, that means the majority of the people who came before our generation had nowhere near the length of time we are now experiencing in our lifetime on the planet, so we should not despair that our lives seem far too short. And our children or grandchildren will likely have even more time. Yet they too will likely feel even 100 years was far too short a lifetime.
It is exciting to watch them with so much potential lying there in the crib within them as well, eh?
1. If there are so many talents nowadays, why would somebody need Callas-Caruso-Siepi combination? We can very well listen to the current star Olga Peretyatko. She also sang at the Met like Callas, Tebaldi, Horne, Verrett, the wife of this blogger and others we love. So she must be comparable to these artists. Is she???
Delete2. There are just a few cancers that can be cured, and even those only if diagnosed in incipient phase. And it cannot be keep as a chronic disease. You are either cancer free or you'll die of it. Its intrinsic feature is the multiplication of aberrant cells, invading organs and shutting them down. Medicine didn't progress as you wrote here. Unfortunately.
3. We can get answers by a simple click but the quality of Google information cannot be compared to the one we get by studying books written by specialists.
4. We can communicate, but 90% use this facility to spread platitudes and ineptitudes. The population is less and less educated despite this facile access to information. Since the answer is in the pocket they do not bother to learn anything, which finalmente leads to a terrible regress. Most of them will live 120 boring, virtual, phone-attached years.
Again beautifully felt and written. Pain and hope. Even joy. I'd have expected no less.
ReplyDeleteOften, usually before sleep, an afternoon cat nap, I can turn off directing my mind and distant memories come streaming in of things irrelevant (my highschool cafeteria, the shoes I was wearing, the music on my CD player) and I can feel myself exactly as I felt in the moment in life. It really informed my acting process when I was younger, and now, well, I don't know, but it informs something. It's like I'm carrying an emotional pillow that is filled with recorded thoughts and their accompanying sensation, but they are hidden until sought out.
ReplyDeleteYour posts are so raw. They make me dig into recesses of my own experience. An artist's respite.