WHAT A WONDERFUL NEW WORLD…???????

 We are living under an uncontrollable disease and are losing what was left of our freedom… Are the Greek Gods of the Antiquity trying to tell us that we must be punished, telling us that we deserve it since we have forgotten the basic of our humanity, and the simple rules of our civilization and culture…

Yes, we are all going through dramatic moments in our life and must deal with big and sometimes terrible events!!!! Death of people in our immediate family and people we loved more than anything, husband, wife, father, mother, brother or sister, and many friends, so many friends… Sometimes we are forced to leave the country of our birth and start a new life in a new country.    Yes, most of us are confronted during life to these dramatic events and must deal with it…Sometimes not enough strength left, and we disappear… But most of us survive these events, of course changed by it, sometimes growing stronger and sometimes defeated forever … The changes are drastic, too often too fast and most of the time with terrible consequences…                                

I am sitting in my armchair listening to some of my favorite singers, Jean Ferrat, Barbara, Jacques Brel... and I am back 70 years ago, when I was in Tunis dreaming of becoming an actor to escape the world I was living in…I was dreaming at the age of 7or 8 years old to become a famous actor, collecting in a book the pictures of my favorites American actors, closing my eyes and transported in the wild west with John Wayne or with Marlon Brandon  ‘On the water front” .                                                                                I was a Russian character in a Russian novel, which one? But is there a difference today in being a character of Gogol or a character of Pushkin? Sadly enough it is the same thing for most people, most people do not even know the names of Gogol or Pushkin.                                                                     

 I had talent, or at least in my life I had the talent to make others believe that I had talent… I had so many dreams, but let us not be confused, dreams are only a hidden reality…the reality of the surreal… we are for life seating in the waiting room of achievement, never totally satisfied, and we wonder about dreams or more exactly we have a perpetual attack of advanced self-attempt to be.

Why did we suddenly wake up from an eternity of self-indulgence, believing suddenly that the world owed us something... Every day, some of my friends, singers, actors, conductors, directors, after too much time spent in non-action, in limbo of the anti-chamber of success believe that they should be hired by everybody because they are rehearsing something somewhere and everybody tells them that they are fabulously talented. The years of neglecting knowledge, times of waiting for Godot, do not count anymore…they deserve to be everywhere and if some people believed in them, they should act consequently and PUSH for them everywhere…their talent HAS TO BE RECOGNIZED immediately by all, they deserve it, companies should be happy to have them.    Yes, some people have success immediately, but they are a small minority, most of the others must build a name, a career, respect for their professionalism.                                                                                           Yes, we have forgotten the basic of our humanity, and the simple rules of our civilization and culture…

All this bla bla bla was valid until recently…  

 These days we are living a complete change of society, and new ways of behaving, new ways of thinking, new ways of human relation, a total innovative approach of western culture … AND it is increasingly difficult to function, nothing is really working according to the rules ESTABLISHED for hundreds of years.

Are we witnessing the end of a civilization, and living a chapter in human history which will change forever human society and human relations?  We really do not know how to talk to others, always afraid of saying inappropriate things. We do not dare to engage in discussions about anything, afraid to be accused of something. I am always in terror when I walk in the street and I see families sitting at restaurants, everyone looking at his phone and ignoring the others... 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.

 

In this new life, the meaning of truth at the dusk of life is escaping me, this dusks every day darker, thicker, more somber. I am not capable anymore to distinguish what is real or even the meaning of real, I can only see the nonsense of everyday life... I try to hook myself to lost moments who cannot be alive anymore and cannot be found, I feel my creativity fading and losing its face in the pathetic routine of everyday life.... Why do we believe that everything can or should last forever...hours, days, years go without looking the same but are the same. We have lost the meaning of culture and are devoting ourselves on clichés and looking for the short cut to be different, and some people call that interesting and NEW?                                                                  

 I have so many friends who wanted, craved all their life to be artists, performers. Many still do, even if I have fewer friends now than when I was younger... It seems that people in general stay away from aging people for many varied 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, or even the young people who want to be artists, performers, and singers.                                                                                            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 what we can be but what 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 their own acquisition.

Unfortunately, the internet is the new king, the new emperor, the new bible, the new law… Nobody can really think without checking what the internet is saying about it, and so many opinions become new rules because it is expressed by Facebook, Tweeter, or Instagram or many other absurd ways of exchanging ideas…  The social medias are now the new rules, and everybody feels free to write judgements and declarations very often negative about other people with no consequences, and thousands and thousands of people read it and add some comments, and too often the so-called journalists avid of being printed and the need to publish articles with big titles write about it and make it a possible true.…. How sad, and the life of some people can be ruined forever… It is increasingly difficult to find a channel on Television just giving news, it is most of the time comments from journalists about news according to their own beliefs., And we continue to create a world of fear, a world of terror…

Most people cannot even write anymore, they just dictate to a computer what they need to say... Yes, young creative minds must be admired! But knowledge must be respected.                                                                    Imagine a world where the knowledge and experience are used by a young mind with his energy, invention, and sense of discovery?                                    But knowledge is considered as a ridiculous way to function, it seems that today the least you know about your profession, the more successful you will be since everybody deserves everything.  If you are in a profession for a long time, you are considered dangerously stagnant and with the impossibility to function with imagination and you become suspicious or even pushed away. Knowing is becoming a handicap if it is based on relevant knowledge and most of the time invention of the moment is the only admired way of being.    

What a wonderful world!!! What will be the next chapter? Will we be capable of dominating the pandemic? Will we be capable to create a possible society with real objectives? Will we willing to rethink human relations and recreate a world full of creative ideas and new ways of functioning  without falling in the silly world we just created? 

I hope so, I beg all of us to think about it... It will be an exceedingly challenging task, but i must believe in that possibility.                                                           

What a wonderful world it would be…