Every day, more and more I have the feeling that I am living
on another planet or even worse in another dimension.
It seems that everything I experienced in life, everything I
knew and that I know, every lesson I learned from friends or mentors or
teachers, every experience which I thought was building my personality and my
future all of those have no meaning anymore….
It seems that I am in no man’s land of incongruity, irrelevance, improvisation and posturing or even worse falsehood.
It seems that everybody is living thru a ghostly period,
perpetually guessing what the next move, the next step of their lives should
be; everything appears to work as if it will be the last move or the first of a
long series of attempts to be in touch with an evanescent reality or a
subterfuge of the truth.
Everybody must be politically correct, and cannot have any
real original opinion about anything because it might hurt somebody or offend
some belief. You cannot have an opinion about whatever because somebody could
take it for a personal attack, you cannot compliment a person about
his/her physical beauty because it will be seen as sexual harassment. You
cannot ask someone’s age because it can be insulting, you cannot ask a woman
if she is wearing makeup ( I never understood why), you cannot invite
people for dinner at home because everybody has an allergy to something or to
food in general, you cannot laugh at people’s political ideas, you cannot
criticize other political views, in a supermarket you cannot tell the cashier
that she or he or it is impolite because it can be taken as a personal insult,
you cannot tell the bank teller not to ask questions about your private life, you
cannot …you cannot…you cannot…
BUT IN THE SAME TIME EVERYBODY IS FREE, FREE TO
TALK ABOUT WHATEVER, FREE TO MENTION ALL THE IRRELEVANCE OF THEIR TASTES OR
THEIR OCCUPATIONS, FREE TO…I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT ANYMORE…
How can we find
a balance in these two extremes attitudes? How can we navigate in this
obviously contradictory world! How can I be free and muzzled by society at the
same time!!!
It seems that all of us live in a surreal world punctuated
by the internet, the phone, and social media.
The
days fly by fast, the weeks even faster, the years are like a hurricane and we are in the middle of
this uncertainty of what tomorrow will be and that tomorrow really does not
bring anything important except what we believe is important like knowing where
my neighbor spent his weekend!!!!
AND NOW WHAT?
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?
May be moving to the mountains of Colorado? The forests of Vermont? In a town of a few hundred people? And continue from there but this time alone to have a life punctuated by the internet, the phone, social media!!!!
NO, NO, NO !!!!
In every profession it seems that the race is constantly
more intrepid, more challenging, and exhausting. In the arts, or what is
left of that attempt to capture the reality of life it is even worse.
I can remember the time when to want to be an
artist or to be interested in the arts meant a life of devotion and challenges,
a perpetual search for the truth, for beauty, for reaching the unknown through
creativity and the creativity of another.
I KNOW IT IS STILL PRESENT IN
MANY OF THE ARTISTS WHO CHOOSE THIS PROFESSION… but how many of us sincerely
care? And if they care, how many are really meant for it? How many have what it
takes? How many continue to build the necessary material?
Are we living the end of a culture? The final moments of
Western culture and the beginning of the non-cultural world? Or is it the
beginning of a different culture? A culture that I am not getting or
understanding! The culture of pushing buttons!!!! Are we becoming the cartoons
of my childhood full of robots?
The other night I was watching a movie, THE BUTTERFLY AND
THE DIVING BELL… I use to think that I could write depressing pages and dark
events but this movie showed me that I am actually much more of an optimist…
It’s the story of the editor of French ELLE Magazine who
suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He wakes up two weeks later, totally
paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his eyes, but mentally aware
of the surroundings.
The same night I dreamed about my father and my brother who
died 50 years ago…They were in a desert, standing up in a cloud of dust, a pale
dust, almost watery…They were looking at me as if asking a question, and
mumbling.
Suddenly, both of them said at the same time:
Bernard…Bernard… Viens, viens, viens, on t’attend… Bernard…Bernard… Come, come, come, we are waiting for you!
They smiled and then disappeared in the dust without another
word, without looking back.
I woke up, got out of bed, went to drink some water and went
back to sleep…
I dreamed the same thing again, and the exact same dream
recurred three times, 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 a
welcome experience in order to stay human instead of being a machine created by
the society we are living in.
Our subconscious is always working even if we are not really
aware of it…. Every day a lot of our actions come from our thoughts, our experience,
our knowledge, our education…. That is why NOTHING can prevent us from
continuing to EXIST AS A PERSON and not become a silly product of today
society!!!
In the French theater, to attract public attention before a
rising curtain, loud banging can be heard backstage and then three more blows
just before the performance begins since candles were used to light the theater...
That tradition still exist in some theaters today.
That tradition still exist in some theaters today.
When Puccini, in
LA BOHEME, at the beginning of the Musetta Aria writes this music, it
illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE BLOWS), but did he do
it on purpose as wink to the French theater tradition and to show that Musetta
is preparing a theater scene??
Or had he acquired this knowledge, assimilated it and used
it later without even realizing it?
Did his subconscious worked for him ?
I could multiply this
example infinitely….
The surrealists developed this idea with the ECRITURE AUTOMATIQUE… ”Automatic writing deflects the unconscious thought. It is the
imprudence of vocabulary in order to finally release the unconscious expression
through writing”.
My dream was the result of this liberated unconscious! Liberated because of the protection of sleep and the total abandon of my psyche without any barriers created by political or social correctness.
Of course it was a painful dream, but a real one, a reenactment of my passed, and another connection to loved ones.
But this acting of the subconscious is possible if we have
accumulated knowledge with life experiences, lessons learned from others,
study, and everyday live devoted to LEARNING…
If we can build a full reservoir of it, then our
subconscious will be richer, and more adequate to apparently express itself,
and no internet, phone or social media can stop it.
We have to continue to accumulate knowledge and acquire as
much of it as possible, our subconscious will bring it to the surface at one
point despite all the irrelevance of our time, despite the incongruity of
society, despite being a buttons pusher.
We must continue to learn and assimilate, and then we
can try to obey the new rules of our world, the new ways of being a nearly
human being, because nobody can rob us of our
subconscious.
Creativity and talent will rise out of the subconscious
activated by the frustration of everyday, and for an artist what can be more rewarding
that having the subconscious acting his own life!
PS MANY OF YOU EMAIL ME WITH COMMENTS, PLEASE CONTINUE TO DO SO
IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO READ YOUR REACTIONS
IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO READ YOUR REACTIONS