In Search of Lost Time

 

 

Should we read the masterpiece of Marcel Proust?

Should we read seven volumes and three thousand pages????

Certainly!

You have to read it to escape the stress of a life totally devoted to the future!! Proust reminds us that sometimes and very often It is particularly important to accept silence, but we have to be present in a world and learn how to appreciate it.

This morning I was looking at old manuscripts and I found the following text I wrote a few years ago:

 

I am floating in the ocean here in Miami and millions of images are invading me... I was recently told that in September I will be honored by a foundation for lifetime achievements... 
Achievements? I really and honestly hope that I deserve such a wonderful prize!

Did I really achieve anything? 

What does achievement really mean? Is it to be recognized for what we have done?

Enough with questions about life and what I have done or not done, let us forget all this and enjoy the day….

This morning the ocean is incredibly ideal, ideal temperature, no waves, no seeds, 

No JELLYFISH...and NOBODY around! Che Pace!!!!

Or maybe because it is six in the morning, and everybody continues to be asleep missing some especially important moments of life (smiling)...            I walk in the water, and I swim, and I float, and I dream...

And I think and I remember...all the oceans and seas I have plunged my body at one time when I was young and strong and full of hopes and plans for the future…

The Mediterranean Sea in Carthage near Tunis the city of my birth, the ocean in Martinique, the sea in Madagascar and Reunion Island where I was touring with a theater company,  and the red sea and the Caspian Sea and the Caribbean Sea or the beaches of Dar Es Salaam or South Africa or Sweden or ten other seas all over the world…. The time of my youth when I was dreaming of becoming Marlon Brando.

Yes, I remember I wrote this a few years ago about my young age trying to be.

 

 

And then this morning, putting my 78 years old out of my bed at 5 30 am like every morning, I opened a drawer , went through some manuscripts, and found a lot of material about Brecht, material accumulated when I was directing Mother Courage with my theater company. I found  the following text :

“This is the year which people will talk about.

This is the year which people will be silent about.

The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die.

The earth no longer produces, it devours. The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.“
   Bertolt Brecht

 

Strangely enough Brecht wrote this more than 70 years ago, and soon after when I was young and discovering with beatitude the world, I was trying to create a new life for myself and spending my time dunking my ignorance in the seas of the planet.

So, at the same time I and many others around me lived in beatitude and false creativity, while some lived in fear and contemplation of a destroyed world… While “ The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die. “I was in a beautiful sea  somewhere in the world, believing that I was special, travelling alone all over and wanting to discover and to learn about life, about others, about my rights….

 Believing that I had paid my dues, I had been punished enough by life, and the time just to be happy and enjoy every moment was now with me, so let us do it…                                                               

 

Maybe the few months I spent in Nepal in this Temple should have opened my eyes. In Nepal I had learned that the world is not what we decide and has not been created only for our well-being. We have to worship mother nature, the sun, the moon, the wind, and the fire….We cannot spend our time ignoring the real facts.

Oh Really????                  

 

How can we so often live in our so-called happiness and ignore the incredibly dramatic life of others? How can we continue to believe we are creating ‘ART’ or what we believe is ‘ART’ when so many are dying of hunger, poverty, terrible wars, and political restrictions.

The first time it is reported that some people were being butchered we had a scream of horror. Then a hundred were butchered and we commented on it.. And when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, we found refuge in total silence. When the world falls in the hands of the devil, nobody even says: NO, enough.

I lived most of the beginning of my adult age ignoring all this, continuing to look for MY WELL BEING, IGNORING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS, and believing that I was special since I had suffered enough, and certainly ready for life and deserving a great future… Yes, I was special in my selfishness, and time went on and life went on , and suffering went on…Now I am in admiration of the ones who spend their life helping others and trying to make life of others bearable.

Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult because today we live in a complete change of ways of leading a life, it is not choice anymore but obligations… Yes, the time of having choices is gone, we have to do what people expect, we have to be according to new rules,  we have to function the way the new world decides and needs us to function.

 

It is increasingly hard to adapt to the new world … I do not know if it is my advanced age or the fact that everything changes every day, but it is increasingly difficult not to say impossible to follow the trends and the new ways of thinking. Approaching questions or even looking at the world with sanity and innocence is becoming impossible. It is unfortunate, and it is really tragic…. But I have to go on and to continue to try…

 

 Another quote from Brecht

 “In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Are we going to continue to accept this masquerade of life? What can we do? It seems that others impose on us who we are, what we do, how to think and what to think of others!!  And we do all this to each other!!! 

 

Of course Fate and Destiny have a role to play, and life is often a lottery, but we should not believe that fate and destiny are the only determining factors, we have to believe that we can change the world or our world by shaping it, by interpreting it, by looking at it in a different way…AND BY REFUSING TO FOLLOW THE ONLY WAY KNOWN TOO OFTEN AS THE TREND.

Yes, sure, why not? I am dreaming again and If I think that way, soon I am going to believe I am somebody else…                                                             

The reality is: We cannot say anything to anybody anymore; everybody has good reasons to be who he is, to believe what he wants, to act following his desires…so why should we expect anything from anybody? Why should we believe that we know something?

 

I have the feeling I am not in touch with most of everything …

In public, in our work, even with our friends we cannot address what we really feel about this one or that one, about an aspect of life without taking the risk to be seen as a strange person in the best case or an agitator and may be mental in other cases 

I thought that to be good to some people deserved some recognition?

 

After all these years navigating all over, I still did not get that I have to accept that to do nothing means to open the door to everything… expect nothing from anybody…do not ask anything…do not try to create anything…wait for things to happen, for the world to guide you, for other like you to tell you what to do when they finally look at you…Right? Guess what? NO, NO… I refuse, life would be a torture and a total boredom.

 

“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What is left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

Brecht

 

 AGING…

 

 

"The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” “The older I get, the greater I was.” "I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do." - Mark Twain                                                                                                                                 

Aging people have fewer friends  than when they were younger…It seems that people in general stay away from aging people feeling that they do not  have too much in common. It could be the belief that older people do not connect with today needs; Do people sometimes really show an uncontrollable disdain for knowledge based on experience, or is it pure fear of the unknown since difference of age creates the unknown ? Yes the difference of age creates the unknown , especially in the times we are living where everything changes so fast, with new rules daily.

"The important thing to remember is that I'm probably going to forget." - Unknown         

"You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks." - Joel Plaskett 

I am constantly thinking of the people I love... Thinking of what  I did not give to them, and I do not know what to do. My heart is beating of unfinished love, not knowing if there is a next step and sometimes knowing too much…Life went so fast, I am tired very often the entire day, I cannot think the way I did before and  I cannot talk to a lot of people…But I am still here  dreaming about great achievements.

You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." - T.S. Elliot 

Why do I have to think about all this. Very few people want to talk to me and even many people forget that I am still around… So many former friends are not present in my life and rarely give news, and I  do not want to harass them. Maybe it was only in my mind, my imagination that they were friends, I knew so many people, where are they? … Maybe they are dealing with their own difficulties and have no time for an AGING former friend…AND I HAVE WITH ME THE MOST IMPORTANT: A FAMILY I LOVE IMMENSELY…

"We don't grow older, we grow riper." - Pablo Picasso

I know every generation has problems , I know 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 these days it is going faster and faster, and aging people cannot recognize the world they are living in, knowing that tomorrow will be again different… Most of the time, they find refuge in silence, or talk nonstop to say nothing in order to hide disarray, fear. And they have to adapt again day after day , hour after hour….                                                                 
 BUT PLEASE DO NO lose connection with YOURSELF… We cannot forget who we are and who we were, it is the only way to survive and maybe to create more.

"First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down." - Leo Rosenberg

I am now 78 years old. “The older I get, the better I used to be.” – Lee Trevino ….Sixty years have passed since this total reconstruction of my mind. . Sixty years? Did wisdom of old age take over? But do wisdom leave an after taste of bitterness on the truth? Does the older generation become bitter with time? Bitterness of having wisdom ruling everything and no room anymore for invention?

 “It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.” - Andy Rooney 

The sky has changed sky... I look at my youth and I see myself...l am not anymore that child full of rage...l do not want any more to murder truth, I want only to look at a possible truth.Truth of what? Truth of the creation of imagination, Of the unfinished fantasies ? Is Truth just proof of supernatural? Is Truth a proof of nonsense? And today, does truth really has a meaning, a purpose?

"I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they're cramming for their final exam."- George Carlin 

 My youth you are far away now, lost in the inconsistent memories, the memory of the lost senses, but I keep for you affection ... Yes my youth, I really love you and admire you..  You are not around anymore, but I keep the memory of your great consistency, and even if it is a shock to witness your disappearance, I continue to smile thinking of you and be full of tenderness for who you were… Youth you will always be present in my mind, in my memory…

"Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened." - Jennifer Yane

Aging !!!! We could become dangerously stagnant and too often with the impossibility to function with imagination and we become suspicious and sometimes we could be pushed away…

I know and I realize that life is not the same, health is often a problem, I will develop this subject, too negative and you all know how positive I am about life and everything.

Aging people should be sitting on an armchair in a retirement home looking thru the window at the emptiness around them and smile with beatitude looking at the new generation?  They should smile thinking of their successful youth so long ago and disappear behind it… Is that a manifestation of Aging?

"Old age comes at a bad time." – San Banducci

Is that a definition of not belonging to a new world? Is it another moment in time when what is happening does not coincide with reality? What is REALLY my reality? I cannot guess, is my reality to accept my loneliness? Is my reality to accept that the big majority of people is not interested in my life, my feelings, my thoughts, my leftover creativity.

 "When I was young, I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then, and I'm labeled senile." – GB

I can still have opinions and ideas; I was and still am alive.. I did not let life, but events of life guide me by the tip of the nose... When you look at me, please do not do it with impatience. Realize that most of us reach the different steps of life, youth, maturity and then the AGE DE RAISON, thinking that it is forever, that nothing will or can stop us, that it is a perpetual story in the making… We just have to find the next chapter…

"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it." - Golda Meir 

 I have to say that today the aging PEOPLE look at the young one with disdain, with sometimes jealousy, with non-acceptation of the new needs , with the refusal of the new freedom in so many aspects of life. Pretending all the time that the young people know nothing, have nothing, believe nothing, and are just the product of the internet and social media, and  they should go back to school of life, they should learn how to behave in public and in private. Aging people pretend that Knowing is becoming a handicap if it is not based on real knowledge of the past and history…  

   "Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere."  "At my age, flowers scare me." - George Burns 

The young people, they are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it.                           The young generation according to the old one has no culture, no morality, no sense of belonging, no tradition, they refuse the basic way of honor, they think only about money and adventures, only about factice and easy success. THAT IS NOT TRUE… The young generation has other priorities, and often valid ones.

“You spend 90 percent of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10 percent trying to convince the Lord that you’re actually not that tired.” – Robert Brault 

So Aging is not an easy task, but it is unbelievably difficult if we have to go through it only with our family, with nothing else, nobody else, every day looks like an eternity, every hour is a punishment, please take care of the AGING, be close to them, consider them, stay FRIENDS….

 

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." - "When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old." - Mark Twain 

 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (S)…

 

There is no end in the difficulties of our time… Yes, punishments continue to invade us: The covid virus is still around, and even worse than a few months ago, every day I learned that somebody I know is sick; wars all over and Ukraine being destroyed; with the climate change the weather is worse in the entire world; the monkeypox disease is starting to be a real danger; the economy is a mess and we have more and more people starving; the cities are terribly dangerous with shootings every day.... and despite that incredible painful situation, too many people continue to behave like the world belongs to them and the rules to guide the society should be their rules. HOW STRANGE IS THAT?

It is time to read again Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky? I remember his book with passion, I went back to it and found quotes I believe are adequate for our times…Here are some:

 

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”                                                                                                                                                  “Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”                                     “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”                                                                                                                “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”                                                                                                                         “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”
“The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?”

Are we punished for OUR CRIME(S)?

Every day I am astonished and very often in shock hearing about the new ways of functioning of our society…. I mentioned many times in this blog the incredible changes of our world and how difficult it is for all of us to adapt to it…

But nothing has changed and even worse it is prevalent… I hear all the times about students complaining to the dean about their teachers because they are not supported enough, and their ARTISTRY is not recognized and actually is defeated… Or about other ARTISTS beginners not understanding why they are not cast in big companies like the Metropolitan Opera when they have such a great talent…But it is not only in the Artistic world, it is in every aspect of life and society, too many people really do not know their jobs and do not try to learn more, they prefer to be on Instagram or…or…and are convinced they KNOW AND DESERVE MORE….

 

PUNISHMENTS???

…. I READ RECENTLY THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE

“The founder of Dubai Sheikh Rashid was asked in an interview about the future of his country, and he replied: My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son will ride a land rover, my grandson will ride a land rover, but my great grandson will have to ride a camel again.

When asked why, his response was hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create difficult times, many will not understand it but we need to create warriors, not parasites, add to the historical reality that all great empires, the Persians, the Trojans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians and later the British all rose and perish within 240 years. They were not conquered by external enemies, they were rotten and destroyed from within. America has reached that 240 years mark and it is starting to become visible and accelerating. We are past the Mercedes and Land rover years, the camels are now on the horizon, the greatest generation consisted of 18 years old kids that stormed the beaches of Normandy and now two generations later some kids, some 18 years old want to hide in a safe room when words hurt their feelings, they want free stuff from the government because they think they are entitled to it. The camels are on the horizon for sure…”                                                

History has a funny way of repeating itself.

Everything is owed to everybody, everybody deserves everything, everybody should have everything…

CRIMES???     We are punished… WHY????                                                                                                                                                       Are we only functioning guided and directed by the Moi buried in our subconscious? And ignoring all the rules and all the lessons of previous generations? The MOI? What is it really?

Example of the MOI in the subconscious…In French theater, to attract public attention before a rising curtain, knocks are hit on the floor by a wooden pole on the backstage and then three loud knocks just before the start of a performance. Since lights were candles that was the way to tell the audience that the performance was starting... It was a tradition and still happen in some theaters today.                                                                                                               Puccini in LA BOHEME, at the beginning of Musetta Aria illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE KNOCKS) … Did he do it on purpose as a wink to the French theater tradition and to show that Musetta will act a role in a theater scene?? Or had he acquired this knowledge, digested it and it came out without even thinking of it? Did his subconscious work for him? Did the hidden MOI function for this?                                                                                                                                    PROBABLY YES.                                                                                                                                                                                  

The surrealists developed this idea with what they called “ECRITURE AUTOMATIQUE”                                                                                                          “Automatic writing deflects the unconscious thought. It is the imprudence of vocabulary in order to finally release the unconscious expression through writing”

Can we function obeying only our desires, our beliefs, and our culture? Unfortunately, our culture now is fake and false and based on NOTHING…

I think sometimes about the past, even a relatively recent past… Yes, it was possible then to continue to be , to continue to think, to continue to feel, to continue to give to others…I remember 11 years ago a singer sent me the following email about her opening as Mimi in a production:

Dear Bernard,                                                                                                                                          As promised, I send you an email. It was a wonderful evening, but I still cannot sleep because I burned myself emotionally.                                         This role is very special for me and takes enormous power from my soul. I cannot just "play" it, I have to live it on stage as my own life. And this is sometimes goes so far and deep that it is very hard to come back. Thank you for wonderful performance I am allowed to play here. I am so grateful that Mimi is Mimi here and she is alive, real girl, not just a figure or personage from the book or opera.                                                                                       And when I hear orchestra, playing so strong and somehow pitiless I feel like the music tells me how small and helpless we are in confront of destiny. the music is like a natural disaster, an immense power which tell us our future...

Death and love together... what a mixture!

So I hope to find myself again for Friday, I need to be in "Sola soletta" mood at least in the act one;))

Thank you for your attention, you promised me to answer...!                                                                                                                                                                      Good night and have a nice dream!

Yours,

………..

AND I ANSWER HER:

“This is the only good reason to be in theater, to live again and again incredible strong moments, to purge our soul, our body, our mind, our fears of great and deeply buried emotions.

I love rehearsals because for me that is the moment to achieve all this thru my actors... Yes, it takes time to become again ourselves, but we never completely do, because ourselves in every experience change, have an evolution... It is frightening sometimes to know that we will wake up different, how can we deal with the routine of the day, the demands of the ones who believe we are the same person that the day before?

Life goes so fast, so many experiences, so many great moments, so many pains and joys, so many wonderful encounters... And for some people, so many questions about the meaning of What we do...

I love the theater because it is almost the only time where we can be ourselves with no shame, no barriers, no calculation no selfish intentions.                                                                                                                                 You will find yourself for Friday and you will be again the wonderful human Mimi you are because You are a wonderful person ... Each character you will perform will be richer and richer because you will carry with you forever what Mimi is giving you.                                                                                                      

Death and love together!!! Is there anything else?

I send you thru your sleep all the strength possible

Bernard”

Unfortunately it seems that these days are gone .                                                   Yes, I sincerely hope that we could find ways to go back to the times when we were  searching for our soul and our strength and have again the desire to give back to people around us what they really need, and then Crime and Punishment will become only a book, the masterpiece of Dostoevsky and not a possible life.                                             

 

 

 WHO AM I?

We are in 2022 and I realized that I have been in this country fifty years, half a century! Time sometimes goes too fast!!!... I arrived at Middlebury Summer School in Vermont in 1971, to teach French literature and Theater...Me a teacher??? Ah! Ah! Ah!...I was 27 years old, and have been in Paris as an actor, a student, for 10 years... But let us remember from the beginning...

1944 Born in Tunis, from a Tunisian Jewish family, and raised in the French culture, speaking only French (some Italian) and a few words of Arabic and believing that life will be the same forever, easy and with no surprises. 16 years of an incredible and strange life, between the French and the Tunisians, not really belonging anywhere, being a question mark in the country of my birth... At that time it was an easy life for most of the Tunisian Jews but it happened...Tunisia became an independent country, the olive oil factories of my father disappeared, and the family lost everything, and as Jews we were living in constant danger...So we had to go...I did not realize at that time that very soon the entire way of living will change, and I will have to learn new rules, and all of us will have to behave differently.                                                                                                                          Yes, we had to leave Tunisia and arrived in France practically as refugees in 1960-61... Will I be able to learn other ways? Will I be able to still smile when the best of times is gone? What will be waiting for me in this new country France? I had been living in Tunisia for 16 years and now being in France was a huge question mark...                                                                                                              Sometimes I would love to be born again knowing what I know now... THE DREAM OF FAUST... I am thinking about all I have lost fighting for useless dreams or stupid adventures... Why nobody brings to the young Faust the knowledge of the old Faust?  

1960 was my first year in France, I was accepted in a school in Montpellier, I was sleeping in a dorm with real French people, and I wanted to adapt to this new reality of life as fast as possible...I was in the fog of knowledge, in the waiting room of thoughts, in the vestibule of trying to be wise. I tried to learn how to be a real French teenager, I tried to survive, spending most of my time reading and studying, really not involved in the everyday life of the others since I did not really understand their ways of thinking and I did not have a penny to participate in their happy activities... And to be realistic, everybody thought and was acting like I was from another planet...Imagine a Jewish boy from Tunisia thrown among provincial French teenagers...Most of the time I was called RABBI.

A year later I arrived in Paris...I had to learn how to smile when the only things left were the worst ending of what I believed could have been a life of achievements, recognition and love. But I promised to myself that I will contemplate new challenges even if what was left in my life was only anguish, anxiety and tears... I had to learn how to keep some dignity with all my strength. I tried not to look at the adverse events and at the difficult and painful life that history had created.

I spent 10 years in Paris, going to university and travelling all over the world hitchhiking and working in all different places as a waiter, a door attendant, or a potatoes seller, whatever was given to me. I started to be an actor, in theater and in movies, and was spending my life reading most of the time a book a day... It is incredible to think that in my entire life I spent only 10 years in France, and even if I have accumulated so much knowledge about the French culture and the French ways, I continue to ask myself...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 WHO AM I ? AM I FRENCH? AM I TUNISIAN? AM I AMERICAN?  

 In Paris, I had so many dreams, so many hopes, I will be the next Marlon Brando, the next Dustin Hoffman, the next... But with the death of my brother at the age of 25 in a car accident and a few months later the death of my father, all went away...The dreams of success, the dreams of hopes, and the trusts... The dreams disappeared in the rain and the clouds, I had to confront the reality of not knowing who I was in an unknown country... I had another dream: To be the one that everybody loves and actually I was only an appearance since I had to compose a personality to find myself .                                                                                  

WHO WAS I?

Amazingly fast I felt like a tired animal and was looking for a possible icy bed... I was often wondering why life had betrayed me and lost me in Shattered Skies... I tried not to be lost, I had to hope, to dream that I was loved by some, and protected by others; dreams are only a hidden reality, the reality of the unreal...

And suddenly the opportunity of AMERICA...

1971/1972... After 10 years in France, the world opened again for me...USA...

Now 50 years of fantastic life, the beginning was difficult, and later difficult again many times, but that is life, NO?

In 1988 I had accepted a position for the Montreal Opera. I did not move there but for 13 years I spent many months a year there, it was another challenge, after Tunis, Paris, New York now Montreal... Many people in my profession believed, many still do, that I am Canadian. Tunisian , French, American, Canadian...While I was in Montreal I read in a paper talking about me: "Why do we need a French Jew at the head of the Montreal Opera?" This person forgot or did not know that France had been only an episode of my life...But reading this I wrote:

“I am sitting in my hotel room like I have been doing the past 30 years, wondering why and how, thinking that finally it will be over, and I be awaking from a nightmare and have a different life. And be smiling and happy, and do things I like to do... What are they? I lost touch with what I really like, I am going thru a tunnel for so long that I have no idea anymore about what I like, what I need, what I want... I have no idea of how to treat people around me, I have no idea of what they really think of me, I have no idea anymore of who I am, where I go, what I want, what is tomorrow or yesterday. I am not depressed just uncertain of   the meaning of all this.

Are other people really happy? What is the meaning of having a life? Not having one is even worse, I simply do not know what that means, I do not hate life or despise it, I do not know anymore what it is, anymore? No, I think I never knew but I never asked.

I look around and some days I behave exactly as they want me to be and some days what nobody wants me to be... I wander in space looking for an island of truth and find the void and wonder about the next wandering.

I should walk in a forest looking for a path which will bring me to a field of poppies, so red that they will look like a bleeding bull after a corrida and decide that I want to be the next torero who believes he is Rudolf Valentino... And maybe I will find the truth about being … me. I often dream about fields of red poppies, may be because I have never seen one...

Or maybe I should think about my father who was a much simpler man, and who died at 59 after a life of aggravation and thank my destiny about what I have and stop these attacks of belly button contemplation.” 

And now, retired from my profession after the accusations three years ago, accusations destroying my life and my entity, I am revisiting this strange existence and found it interesting...Tunisian, French, American, Canadian...

WHAT AM I ???

We are now living exceedingly difficult times, I already talked about it in other blogs. Recently I was looking at old manuscripts I wrote during my life:

 Came to my attention two lectures I gave in the mid-seventies in universities of the country while I was performing with my theater company “French theater in America.” Reading it after 50 years was a strange experience since it seemed that nothing has changed while I believed everything had changed… The first one was called “Decadence of Occidental Theater” and the one was called “Grandeur and Misery of the Actor”

Here is an excerpt:                                                                                                                                                   “I gave the title “Decadence of Occidental Theater” to my lecture; I should have called it “Death of art in Occident” because we are talking about a death, a murder, a condemnation to death, and an "autodafe".     We have never talked so much in the western world about civilization and culture when actually it is life that is leaving us. The sign of our time is confusion, a break between life and the words to describe life and we have pushed the absurd to the point where we create ideas from acts instead of trying to identify our acts to our thoughts. All our ideas about life have to be rethought since nothing anymore is a consequence of life, everything functions like if we had on one side Culture and on the other side Life.”                            

YES, I WROTE THIS IN THE SEVENTIES…HOW STRANGE….do we feel and think the same way now than 50 years ago?                                                                                                                                             

I tried to be one person, but it seems that I am many… Many What? Many Who? I still do not know…. 

WHO AM I? 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

WHAT CAN WE DO?????

 

We are living exceedingly tough times, yes, I know, we all know it, we repeat it one hundred times a day to everybody around us…This statement has replaced the traditional words of welcome.     

What is happening in Ukraine is a constant testimony of the terrible situation the world is now in…Struggle everywhere for existence, attempts to adapt to new rules and most of the time total loss of humanity…   These days our heart is exploding with the tragedies all over the world, our heart wounded of not knowing or knowing too much, and while we plunge in the contemplation of our pains, thousands of people die every day in Ukraine…And we dare to complain…Shame on us…    

We must learn how to still function when the best is gone and when only the worst is left in a life without any obvious salvation…We must know how to keep some dignity and despite the destroying pain, we must continue the life of creativity… In front of a terribly cruel fate we must know how to hide our tears, and we should learn how to hide our disarray and hold our hate, we must know or at least learn how to keep some peace in our icing heart.     

The painful events in Ukraine stay present in my mind and in my heart all the time… And I watch the same images of destruction and mass graves all day long… Sometimes I wish I could be again twenty years old, the time when I was caressing time and playing with life, dreaming of the best and of successes in my future life.

 I was living at night without counting the days, these days disappearing at a fast speed in the adventures of each hour. I thought about so many projects, many had a great ending, and many stayed in the fog of possible dreams, but always beautiful dreams.

 I had perpetual hopes for a better life, better accomplishments, better luck in the future, and beliefs that the world sometimes can be giving or even be generous, and most of it I had big hopes for a better MOI, learning and studying as much as possible. Yes, some of these hopes were realized, and many flew with the wind in the unknown world… and very often I was still looking for them, trying to see where they went, and hoping that it could be possible to grab them in the skies, to achieve them and even own them… and since I was stubborn and did not like failures, many times I did. 

Sometimes it seems that I was twenty years old yesterday and learning about life in a million of different adventures and encounters, discovering the imaginary world and the real world, looking for the unknown and some hidden truth, and most of the time finding it, believing I could reinvent the truth… Running all over the world for years to try to understand and becoming breathless in this search, using the experiences of the recent past and denying the negative ones, just talking to myself about my ideas, my past, my future, my next anything and believing that I could criticize the entire world and everybody around me because I knew better, yes, I believed I knew better because I… I really do not know why…    

Yesterday I was twenty years old, and I used my entire time discovering the world and people who were basically so stranger to me, like the three months I spent in this temple in Nepal with Buddhists priests.  These experiences left on my face wrinkles of knowledge and the negation of possible fear of the unknown and so happy to be alive. 

Many people around me, friends and others are gone and will not come back but they left inside me affection and love, did I use my life and my young years by noticing the goods of all around me and just congeal my tears? Yes, I did, AND WE HAVE TO…I believe that with time, yes with time, wounds are just a memory from the past…                                                                                   I am talking about my youth and my lucky life and UKRAINE IS STILL BEING DESTROYED. Can the young people in the world we are living today have desires, or can they be tempted to go away for adventures, it seems that they are now paralyzed by what is happening everywhere, and totally became the preys of the internet and the social medias.

WHAT CAN WE DO???       

We should not forget the faces and the voices of our past, our heart is still beating, and life will go on, and we will continue to be…  The dreams and the successes, the hopes and some doubts and some fears, but we must continue to trust a possible giving future…Some of our dreams and attempts for creating a new world will disappear in the rain or the clouds, but they became part of who we are, and we will be able to find them inside us. With time nothing completely vanishes! And our experiences will continue to create who we are…  

Nothing really goes away… Will the people of Ukraine be wounded forever…? Probably yes, but I really hope for them that they will know how to use it in the next chapter of their life, even if these present days are making them total shadows of humanity and even if it is so heartbreaking for all of us…

All my life I used my memories, good or bad, in my work as an actor or a director, and very often I felt released, ready for the next chapter, with an appeased soul and an open mind…  Acting and directing have been my salvation and made me find great moments of peace and self-indulgence… Please all of you, use your life and your past and your joys and traumas in your interpretation of a character, or in the creativity of your profession, you will grow incredibly and find wonderful moments of total peace…

Terrible events like UKRAINE put back in your life the remembrance of tragedy and throw in our face the sadness and the guilt of human nature…

Yes, we are living terrible times, every day we hear about friends disappearing with the covid virus, or being very sick, and we tremble at the idea it could happen to us… We live in fear and in the expectation of a coming drama hitting us…                                                                            

  WHAT CAN WE DO???     

Should we learn how to be able to function almost normally when the best of time is gone, when we live in a life and a society where there are no reasons to smile…

Should we learn how to function when the only things left are the worst ending of what we believe would be a life of achievements, recognition, and love, and should we continue to contemplate new challenges even if what is left in life is strange enough that only anguish, anxiety, and tears happen…

Should we learn how to keep our dignity with all our possible strength and even if it is difficult and sometimes painful, should we continue the path we created for ourselves and try not to look back too often at the bad events and at the negative life that others have created for us with unjustified accusations.

Should we also learn how to hide our tears facing a fate disarming us, and should we be hiding our pains in front of a lost happiness.

Should we learn how to hide our sorrow under a mask and persist in a so-called right way following the aggression of others around us…

And more than anything should we learn how to hold back on the yelling of hate. Should we learn how to stay calm and in control and try to manage a dying heart and a dying mind to be with pride and assurance ready to endure, confront, and survive the next negation of our being…

WE HAVE TO …WE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE

OR  should we learn how to leave the table of life when life is not anymore and learn how not to hang on trying to have sympathy or pity or feelings from others, AND just leave with no noise and no sound… I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT AND I BEG YOU NOT TO FALL INTO THAT TRAP.