HOMMAGE AUX DISPARUS

 The extraordinary story of that woman called Elise Gabrielle recently came to my mind.  I could not stop thinking of her, her amazing life, her incredible strength and how much she represents what women were, are and will be…

Elise was born in 1917  to a Jewish Family in a Third World country, a French colony of North Africa.  Quite strange for the time and the culture of Jews in a Third World country, the family was not practicing Judaism. 

                                                                                                    

Her father Alfred, his family originally from Italy, was Jewish, but he had forgotten what it meant.  He was an abusive alcoholic and a man without respect for others.  For the time he had a relatively good job but despised everybody around him. 

Her mother Rica was also raised in the Jewish tradition but had renounced all the traditions of the Jewish faith because of her husband.

Elise had a brother Aurele, two years older and showing very young signs of total independence and desire to go his own way.

The life at home was painful not to say terrifying…

For example: While they were only four at home, one Sunday, the father Alfred brought home 24 pastries and his wife,  Rica asked him “Why all these pastries?”In anger,  he opened the window and threw them out in the street and then ordered his children to go and pick them up and bring it back home.                                                                                                                           The following Sunday the same story repeated itself and again for a few months,, and although no one was saying anything anymore, they were still forced to eat all the pastries…until he got tired of it all and stopped the game.

One day, the son Aurele mentioned that he would love to go the football game with him, his father raised his cane and broke his arm only because he had mentioned a desire…                      

Another day, Elise mentioned at the dinner table that she loved the salad served that day..  But as the rule was that nobody could talk at the table except him, he ordered her to eat the entire big salad bowl in order to teach the lesson that “taste should not be expressed”. 

 Elise spent her childhood and her adolescence on this terrible surrounding and spent more and more time inside the school she was going to, working extra hours taking care of younger pupils,to escape home life.

She developed a huge appetite for reading novels of all kinds, reading them in secret in the library of the school and building an imagination, creating another world and the possibility of other life….    

  IMAGINE DOING THIS IN THE 1920’S AND 30’s IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY OF NORTH AFRICA!                                                                                                                                                                                     She finished school at the age of 18 years old and was pushed immediately into an arranged marriage  to  a man much older than her because he was in the so-called ''high society'' of the time.

 In 1939, she was 22, and  gave birth to her first son. The second world war was beginning, and soon the Germans arrived in the country….While the Germans did not have enough time to really slaughter the Jews, the 100.000 thousands Jews of the country had to wear the star of David,  5000 people were deported to labor camps all over and all were living in fear and apprehension of what could happen the next day…

Later in her life,  Elise,  almost at peace in her soul with this memory, recalled that  she had been helping a lot of the French soldiers who were in prison,utilizing her impeccable French and Italian to their benefit as many of the guards were Italians allies of the Germans.  She saved many lives and prevented many deportations by stepping into discussions with authorities about the fate of some people, , AND SHE WAS IN HER EARLY TWENTIES…

In 1944, she gave birth to her second son…She was 27…The country was trying to move past the German occupation and the political mood of the country had changed.

A few years went by, Elise was having a good social life, in a very distinctive and sheltered group of the society even if being Jewish in that country could often create difficult times. The family of her husband, Henri, had been in that country for hundreds of years but it was not and had not been always easy.

Elise was well known for her beauty, her great social manners and was one of the top Ladies of her community. She had a privileged life, with servants at home, but never lost track of her duties to her two sons, and therefore she was a great mother. Attentive and full of affection for them, sharing stories, reading to them, and always choosing books they both could appreciate.         

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948, created a complete change of the relation of ethnicities in her country…. The Jewish community was now living again in fear and Elise was accompanying her 2 sons to school every day, something she did not do before prior to these political fears…

Elise even became like a mother to the young workers from other ethnicities who were living at home, talking to them, sharing knowledge, having them join in at the evening readings.

The Israeli war in 1956 did not help the situation, as her country of birth, of her ancestors for hundreds of years, now became independent from France.  Her father had died in the early fifties, and her brother who was in French army had had stayed in France and had already brought her mother over to join him.

Her husband’s family soon lost all their properties, their business, Olive Oil factories and decided to leave for France.  They were forced to leave as refugees, with no money at all, and could not expect any help from the French government, since they were not technically French citizens. The French government gave them the authorization to emigrate but not with the promise of any kind of help, just asylum.  

I remember that the family left on a regular boat but sitting and spending the night to cross the sea in the hold of the ship. 

Upon the arrival in Paris in 1961, Elise, her oldest son( who was now married) and her husband tried to start a new business' They opened a food store and  worked 18 hours a day, Elise cooking meals all day long for the workers around…The second son was sent in the provinces in a boarding school then went to a university… This new life went on for 4 years and things seemed to settle, Elise was now at ease being the cook in a neighborhood for workers…                                                                                    

UNFORTUNATELY, tragedy hits them again…                                                                                  

Her oldest son was killed in a car accident, and a year later her husband died, life had been too much for him, and he died of despair….                                                                                               

 Elise found herself in the street with nothing and nowhere to go…. Her brother who had become a very successful businessman in Paris, did not even try to reach out… Soon , Elise moved in with her mother and her second son who was pursuing his artistic dreams…          That did not last too long, Elise, strong as ever, decided to take a job as a seamstress in a store, in a famous prostitute’s district in Paris and moved in a one room apartment in the building of the store. Her mother went to live by herself, her son pursued his artistic dreams. For many years she worked in this ‘’boutique’’ fixing dresses for prostitutes who were calling her MAMI, and loved her ways, her perpetual giving attitude and her humor.                                    

She was now in her fifties…                                                                                                                    

Then it seems that as if  fate was giving her the opportunity to improve her life! She met a Hungarian Jewish man, who was a jeweler, and they decided to go live in Israel…They settled in Israel, Elise learned how to speak Hebrew and became very fast one of the leaders of her community, but the marriage did not go well and soon she wrote to her son to ask him if he could send her some money to be able to buy a plane ticket and come back to Paris.                       

Upon the reception of this letter, the son borrowed money anywhere he could, took a plane , went to Israel, packed her luggage and both came back to Paris…                                                            

She went back to work in the boutique, but time was passing, and her health was now fragile….But she never complained , never asked for a favor to her family or  her husband family ( a big family all residing in Paris)…

Actually, her brother once invited her for dinner to his home , for Christmas, and while he knew how miserable her life was, his big gift for the holidays was A BOOK called ‘’La vie devant soi’’ by Romain Gary… NO COMMENTS… She took the book, thank him for his generosity and never saw him again…                                                                                                

TIME CONTINUED TO PASS AND THE MAMI OF THE PROSTITUTES WAS STILL AROUND GIVING HER KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE, HER GENEROSITY, HER INCREDIBLE STRENGTH TO EVERYBODY…                                                                                                                                                                                                  Her son finally reached success in life, he had emigrated to the States and was having a good life… He bought a house for her in the States not too far from New york city, and she came to live FINALLY in peace in a community that she loved… In her seventies she met another man, got married, and spent a few years happy, surrounded by friends, and visited regularly by her son, his wife and even a granddaughter…                                                                                                                                 

 Elise was finally in peace but age and difficult life were now invading her, she had a stroke and died soon after, with a smile saying ‘’ I had a great life, thank you to all of you’’

THIS INCREDIBLE WOMAN, THIS LADY, WILL ALWAYS BE PRESENT IN MY MIND, MY LIFE…           YES, MOTHER I LOVE YOU

WHO IS THE REAL ME?

WHO ARE WE REALLY?

More and more often, it seems, I hear the same lines, sentences or affirmations from people with whom I am conversing or exchanging some ideas: “I wonder why people think that about me, why do they believe I am like this, I am not that person at all, they do not really know me, where does that come from?”                                                                                                                

I’ve heard these phrases so many times in my life and even more so recently, that It makes me wonder: DO WE REALLY KNOW WHO WE ARE? WHO IS THE REAL ME?                                                                                                                                                                       

Are we what we look like? Every few years, we look different, and sometimes depending on the day we look different. On the same day some people will look at us with sympathy and others with disgust or fear, probably projecting onto us who they are specifically that day.

Are we to most people what we project? Very often we present an image that we create in order to protect ourselves from the outside world, or maybe this comes from a need to hide or to disguise the truth? Are we sometimes trying to become this image created by our own imagination?                                                                                                                                                   

Are we the product of our education? A creation of our parents, teachers, and educators? Are we a combination of all the rules we have learned throughout our lives? And by acting like this are we then suppressing other aspects of who we really are?                                                        

Are we what we want life to give us? Behaving all the time and denying everything else in order to let our hopes, our desires and our ambitions become the drivers of our life?  Sometimes with negative consequences. 

Are we only the result of our dreams, acting too often without a responsible attitude, and being  guided only by these dreams to the detriment of reality and often hurting people around us?                                                                                                                                                                   

Are we a product of our knowledge, our life experiences, bad ones and good ones, and the headaches that develop as the result of undigested feelings and pain?

Are we what we believe in? Expressing ideas about all subjects of life and sometimes just talking without really having thought seriously about it?  And consequently, creating judgments from others?                                                                                                                                                                           

Are we perceived by others as a result of the way we behave daily? Are we being judged for our strong opinions during a group reunion, a social event, or a conversation with a few people? Are others making a final judgement of us because we are being impatient with tellers in a shop?

Most people perceive me as a Frenchman, sometimes accusing some of my actions or excusing them because of my French background. I love France and French people, but I spent only eleven years of my long life in France…So am I “French” simply because I have a French accent while speaking English?                                                                                                                       

Should I really believe that I am perceived as French because of my way of thinking, my behavior, my MOI? I really do not think so. To people I am French because of my accent. Regardless of whether they know anything else else about me.                                                          

Too often only one immediate aspect is used to make a general impression and a specific idea of who we are. Very often, too often sometimes, this impression remains the basis of who somebody believes we are, who we were, who we will be…Rarely do these attitudes towards us change.

I know we are the sum of everything mentioned above: what we look like, what we project, our education, our dreams etc.…etc.… but how many people can know all these aspects of us? Most only see one or two of these elements of our personality and too often make a final image or a judgement about us based on them.                                                                                                  

In our daily life, and in every aspect of our lives, we use some of these elements of our personality in order to function, to advance, to progress, to obtain, to succeed, to survive, to prolong some given opportunities to advance and progress.                                                         

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO TO REALLY KNOW WHO WE TRULY ARE? HOW DO WE NOT GET LOST IN THE GAME SOCIETY DEMANDS WE PLAY? HOW DO WE CONTINUE TO BE!!!!! 

FROM TIME TO TIME WE NEED TO STOP AND THINK, TO BALANCE ALL THE ELEMENTS THAT MAKE UP OUR MOI AND EVALUATE WHERE WE ARE IN THE PATH OF LIFE.

AND AS ARTISTS IT IS OF ABSOLUTE IMPORTANCE SINCE ARTISTIC CREATIVITY IS VERY OFTEN THE PRODUCT OF WHO WE ARE…                                                                

What aspect of who I am do I have to use in this specific moment, this specific creation, this specific artistic experience?? Even if sometimes and even many times, we can pass as inconsequential or real or sincere, because this aspect used in that moment of creativity has nothing to do with what people believe they know about us…                                                            

Yes, many times may we act differently and people around us become surprised and can call us unstable or unfocused, not understanding that we are still using our MOI, but a MOI they do not know. They believe we are losing control, but we are not, we are just showing an aspect of ourselves that they previously did not know, because they have a preconceived idea of who we are and know only one possibility.

Of course, we must be careful and try not to lose control in using our MOI and if people  disagree with who we are, that is normal and logical, they see different aspects of us…Not because we are playing games but because we are a juxtaposition of many, many elements…

Our subconscious is always working even if we are unaware …. Every day many of our actions are the result of our thoughts, our experience, our knowledge, our education…. That is why NOTHING can prevent us from continuing to EXIST AS A PERSON with all the elements of our personality and our MOI becoming richer and richer. And if we become a mystery for people, then too bad, we must continue to feed this infinite MOI.                                                                  

In French theater, in order to attract public attention before a rising curtain, since lights were candles, blows (knocking the floor) were hit on the floor of the backstage and then three loud blows just before the start of a performance. It was a tradition that still happens today in some theaters. 

At the beginning of Musetta’s aria in La Boheme, Puccini  musically illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE blows), but did he do that on purpose as a wink to the French theatrical tradition in order to show that Musetta is preparing a theater scene?? Or had he acquired this knowledge, digested it and come up with it out without even thinking? Did his subconscious worked for him? Did his hidden MOI function for him?                                           

 I could multiply this example to the infinite…

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”

Many of our actions are the result of this liberated unconscious! But we must realize that it is part of our MOI and may be a very important side of it… And this expression of the subconscious is possible if we have accumulated knowledge through life experiences, through lessons learned from others, through studying, through an everyday live devoted to LEARNING and building our MOI.…                               

We must continue to accumulate knowledge and to acquire as much as possible, and our subconscious will regurgitate it at some point despite all the irrelevance of our time, despite the incongruity of society, despite being a button pusher.                                                                                                                          

We must continue to learn and to digest, and then we can try to obey to new rules of our world, the new ways of being an almost human being, because nobody can take possession of our subconscious.    

Creativity and talent are always the result of our MOI but in some instances,  it can be the result of the subconscious activated by some frustration created by other aspect of MOI.  

FOR AN ARTIST WHAT IS MORE REWARDING THAN HAVING A SUBCONSCIOUS GUIDING HIS OWN LIFE

 

 

 WE SHOULD LEARN… WITH TIME EVERYTHING GOES AWAY…

We live in an everyday life and a society where there are rare reasons to smile except to avoid drama…

But we should learn how to be able to still smile when the best of times is gone. Yes, we should learn how to smile even if the only thing left is the worst ending of what we once believed would be a life of achievements, recognition and love.

A life devoted to the arts or a cherished profession, very often devoted to help others, and sharing experiences and knowledge.

We should continue to contemplate new challenges even if what is left in life is strange enough that only anguish, anxiety and tears become the “modus vivendi” of every day…

Sometimes new challenges will not be offered, so it should be our duty to create them, and not to fall in the arms of despair and self-pity…

We should learn how to keep our dignity using every ounce of strength we possess and even if it is difficult or even sometimes seems hopeless, we should continue to advance in the path we created for ourselves pursuing the unfinished dreams and the unfinished attempts to become a real person, a real individual…

We should try to not turn back too often to look at the dramas and catastrophes a long existence can create for us, and if it is sometimes difficult to digest the denial of life that others have brought to us, at least we should use it to become more generous in our judgments of others.

We should also try to hide our tears and our pains facing a destiny disarming us and we should accept the reality that we have lost forever the innocence of our beginnings…

We should learn how to hide our sorrow under a new reality and try to make this new reality the new path of life and find new ways to fight the possible new monotony of life….

We should learn how to stay calm and in control and try to manage a wounded heart and a wounded mind in order to survive with pride and assurance, ready to endure and confront the next denial of our being…

And when time comes, we should 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 more than anything we should learn how to hold back on the yelling of hate, trying not to become like the ones who are making definitive judgements with no real understanding of facts, no real knowledge of situations, not even another opinion or possible view…

YES, WE SHOULD LEARN, WE SHOULD, NOT AN EASY TASK, NOT AN EASY WAY TO GO ON WITH THE LONG JOURNEY…

Sometimes it seems that I was twenty years old yesterday when I was caressing time and playing with life the same way some people play with games…

I was living at night without counting the days, these days disappearing at a fast speed in the adventures of each hour…

I had so many projects, trying incessantly to have them realized, and made so many attempts to invent new ways and new looks at the world, most of it stayed in the fog of impossible dreams but many went on and extend my development as a man…

I had so many hopes for a possible better life, better luck in the future, better accomplishments, better beliefs that the world sometimes can be giving, or even sometimes the world could be generous, and most of it I had big hope for a better Moi…

Yes, some of these hopes were realized, many flew to the wind in the unknown world…and very often I was still looking up for them, trying to see where they went, and hoping that if it could possible for me to grab them in the skies, to achieve them and even own them…at least for a time before the next ones….

It seems sometimes that I was twenty years old yesterday when I was wasting my time in futile adventures and useless encounters, discovering the imaginary world and the real world, looking for the unknown and some possible truth, and most of the time not finding it, believing I could stop the time by denying it or ignoring it…

Trying to find the possible truth and sometimes became breathless in this difficult search, using my ideas and the experiences of the past and discovering the new ones who had something real in them…

I believed I knew better so I could take risks with events and people, I could confront everything, I could face any obstacle, and I believed I was gifted… Yes, I believed I was gifted because I…I really do not know why….

Yesterday I was twenty years old and I spent a lot of my time doing useless and crazy things leaving nothing tangible inside, may be just wrinkles on my face, but the fear of boredom, the fear of others, the fear sometimes of just being still alive were never assaulting me…

So many people around me, family members and friends are gone and will not come back but they are still present in my heart and in my thoughts, they are the reasons I do not feel emptiness and nothingness.

I will freeze my tears and I will continue in what is left of my life to notice the good in people and deal with the refusal of some to look at the possible truth.

Youth is only a state of mind.

Of course, with time, yes with time, many things seem to fade … We can forget the faces of people and we can even forget the voices, but they are now part of us, we are who they were…. If the heart is not beating the same way, it is still beating and we must look for further signs of existence, a replacement will come, and other stories will be there again…

With time, all of it become part of who we are, the dreams and the nightmares, the successes and the defeats, the hopes and the doubts, the fears and the trusts…Some will be hidden in the rain or the clouds and while they do not seem to be with us, even if makeup added by the years is now on their faces, they are there and recognizable…

With time everything could vanish, even the best memories can have now a different appearance, but they are there…

With time, we must continue to believe in the meaning of the words: friendship, love, and passion and hear every day some voices whispering to our ear” be careful… take care of yourself… do not catch a cold… you are a friend… I am thinking of you… I like you… I love you… I admire you… Where were you all my life…”

With time we can feel like a tired animal and we could be looking for a possible icy bed. We could feel very alone and almost quiet, yes finally mute or muted... but even if we spent many years lost in shattered skies, life did not betray us, life did not abandon us, life is still ahead with new possibilities, new challenges, new unbelievable gifts…

Especially if we have the gift of another member in the family, a new arrival… Life will go on, life will be full of happiness, full of cherished moments, by just witnessing the continuation of our life… A NEW BORN CHILD… Oh I am now in total peace…Thank you for this gift, thank you for making me a new man with other priorities and other dedication…

A STAR IS BORN



I was disappointed by most of the films I attended over the last few years. Is this another example of time passing very quickly and not being in touch with today’s popular culture? Last weekend I decided to take another chance and decided to go see A star is Born…  

Within the first few minutes not only was I not disappointed, but I was transported to another world, forgetting where I was and totally immersed in it… It is a great movie, fantastically acted by Lady Gaga and wonderfully directed and acted by Bradley Cooper.

Both bring so much honesty, depth and truth in the characters they portray that they made me forget time and where I was.

During the movie, I felt tears running down my cheeks many times. Sometimes tears of sadness and pain and sometimes tears of joy and happiness for the characters’ total immersion in life. By telling their stories, they were able to bring to the surface my understanding of who I believe I am. Elements within me forgotten for years or even decades. I was not watching them- I was with them- I became one of them. Laughing and suffering with them.

I left the theater with a new hope for an art form that was a great passion of my life for many years: films. Yes, movies when they are real piece of art or showing real humanity can bring us discoveries and some truth about life, and new ways of thinking and even being.                           

I walked home along the same old dirty streets as I always do but this time, they were looking different, people were suddenly more interesting, and many aspects of the surroundings were now visible to me for the first time. I was walking with a mind full of Passion and Renewed Desire to go deeper in my thoughts about the passing life, the purpose of existence, day-to-day experiences and the essential nature of being alive.

One line in the movie was haunting me:” IF YOU DO NOT GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SOUL, YOU WILL LOSE YOU LEGS” … This line whispered by Bradley Cooper to Lady Gaga about interpretation and being an artist was resonating very strongly in my head. 

It was a powerful reminder of what had often been a guiding force of my youth and later most of my artistic enterprises. This line is the equivalent of that line I incessantly repeated to myself, to actors, singers, friends, and even strangers…This notion was, at the time, a rule of life and the rule of managing ourselves. It was a way to handle relationships, and even the most basic of rules for behavior in a wide array of situations and opportunities presented by life.

And now, after all these years, it was coming back to me so strongly and I recalled what I believed to be true throughout most of my life: REACHING THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SOUL IS THE BEGINNING OF TRUE ART AND EVEN TRUE LIFE. 

BUT SOUL??? SOUL???? We can ask, what does the word really mean?

How can we define SOUL? Is soul the conglomeration of what we were given at birth, by genetics, by education? Is it a given from the beginning?

 YES, ALL OF THIS! BUT IT ALSO contains our great happy moments and the big traumas and sometimes tragedies, the different experiences, the learning adventures, the successes and the failures, the encounters, the accumulated knowledge from every day moment of discoveries… The books we’ve read, music we’ve heard and sometimes, EVEN FILMS. 

All of these build our souls… 

But we must keep our souls perpetually present and at the surface or at least ready to be brought to the surface. We must use it often and not bury it in the dark depths, comfortable sense of security created by living without feeling. 

We all have a soul. Some souls are more intense, or more experienced, or have more wounds or joys built by life, but each of us has a soul and we have to dig into it and learn from it and bring it to the surface when demanded by moments of significant challenges or pain, and also in the big moments of trust and love.

Yes, of course, if we are not careful or really in command of ourselves, bringing our soul to the surface could be dangerous, could be threatening, could be at the edge of catastrophe. This is especially true in a world laden with selfishness, with intense competition, with people waiting for any small misstep to take advantage of us and even sometimes use it to destroy our lives.

BUT IT IS THE WAY TO BE IN CONTROL OF OUR DESTINY, TO BE ALIVE, TO BE AN ARTIST, AND ALSO TO FIND SOME PEACE IN OURSELVES ...

I left the theater almost as a new man, or at least a renewed man, full of strength and full of the reborn desire to tell everyone around me what I think to be true… and to share with others what I believe, what I know and what I dream about… Yes, I still dream…It is and always must be part of my soul.

Do not be confused, dreams are only the reality we hide…the reality of the surreal… Too often in life we seat in the waiting room of achievement. We rarely are totally satisfied, wondering and wandering. Or more precisely, we go through a perpetual attack of self-attempt to define ourselves, always trying to pursue the road to finally become a fully-realized entity…                                                                                                                                                                    

GO TO THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SOUL AND SAVE YOUR LEGS, and you will transport yourself to another dimension, you will be assaulted by the discovery of yourself through your revealed soul and your revealed SELF. 

We will suddenly wake up from an eternity of self-indulgence, when we believed that the world owed us something… After too much time spent in non-action, in limbo of the antechamber of revelations, after years of neglect, of waiting for Godot…Let’s get comfortable GOING TO THE BOTTOM OF OUR SOUL and our world will change.

Yes, some of us have our souls always omnipresent, but this is a GIFT FROM GOD. These people represent a very small minority; Most of us do not have this luck or destiny, so we must continuously build ourselves by the intense, incessant search for our soul.

Unfortunately, to have one’s soul omnipresent and at the surface is not always well received by others, and the vulnerability that it creates can be difficult and challenging… Sometimes it can be a big handicap for functioning in our society and is perceived as a threat.

Some of us are perceived as difficult people, or egocentric, or strange, or non-conformists, and sometimes are not accepted by the majority.

                                                                                                           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 preceding generation wants to protect its norms.

When I was 8 or 9, I dreamt of becoming a famous actor as an escape from the nightmarish world in which I lived…. I collected in a book, looking at it every day, pictures of my favorite American actors. Closing my eyes, I was transported in the Wild West with John Wayne or I was on ‘On the Water front”. with Marlon Brando. 

Or I dreamt of being a character in a Russian novel, a character of Gogol or a character of Pushkin.

How did these men become so famous? Why were they so often idolized? Were their souls always present in their performances? I think they were, we can deny them as people or negate them as artists, but their souls were always present, and they achieved a total unity.

In any case, I am thinking of my friends or the people I believe are my friends, and even the young people who want to be REAL PEOPLE and the ones who want to be artists, performers, and singers.. 

To you I say: GO TO THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SOUL and develop a cult for work, a cult for perfection or at least an attempt at perfection.

Dismiss the world of immediate retribution which has engulfed us, build your soul with who you are and not with what you believe you deserve to be.

Accumulate experiences, memories, and knowledge and bring them to the BOTTOM OF YOUR SOUL.

AND NOW WHAT?????............

It is 4 30 am, it is still dark out and raining… I feel strange today…not depressed, not anguished, not sad, just strange… Lost? Do I feel lost?                                        

I have been thinking for a few weeks: What is going to be my life for the last chapter, for the last few years? What is going to be my next step, oh really? a next step? 

OR should I finally enter the age of renouncement? Should I decide that it will be no next chapter or next step!!! I spend all my life creating new chapters, new adventures, new…And I am so used to it, can I really renounce and consider that it is not a next step but just a last chapter.                                                                      

I must be realistic and practical, the world has changed tremendously, I have the feeling that most people around me think differently, act differently, are basically different of what I have known the past decades.                                                                                                                                 

I am told almost every day that I do not act the ways of today, I do not even express myself with the right words for THIS SOCIETY, I do not have the same way of looking at things…SO obviously I do not belong to this time...                                                                                                           

God, I wish I could believe in a supreme force, in an afterlife life, or believe in hell…  I know, I know what you are thinking BUT NO, NO, I am not a manic depressive, I am just having some thoughts and I am just asking questions about the new rules and the legitimacy of a society who changes every day...                                

I am like a cow ruminating…I wonder if everybody has these moments, do some of the people I know think about all this???   What do people really want? What is the real purpose of life for today criteria of living?                                                                                                               

From the window in my room, I can see a man walking in the dark, in the rain…who is he?  What does he really look like? Why does he walk in the dark, so early morning, in the rain…? He walks very slowly, he probably has nowhere to go or maybe he wants to kill time and forget his existence…He stops suddenly…and is looking at something, he bends and picks up an object…What is it? I cannot distinguish…  But suddenly he bursts of laughter and I can see his face… I can see that he is laughing, and laughing…Maybe he found the secret of life and how to behave…in a box…                                                                                                      

 I hope I can meet him and ask him to share this secret with me and make me aware of new ways to contemplate existence. He is walking again and disappear behind a building…No! here he is again, but he looks different, maybe it is somebody else? Or himself but different after his discovery and his laughing? He is now in front of a parking, 8 floors down…Maybe I should go downstairs and ask him who he is… Maybe I should take a walk in the street and make a new friend….

NO FORGET IT!!!

It seems that it is yesterday that I was walking in the streets of Tunis, Paris, Dakar, Moscow or Tananarive…  The past two months I have been walking a lot, AND yesterday I was walking again in the streets of New York, but I realized that do not like anymore to walk in the streets of a city…  I loved that so much! It was my way of being!  Each step was a discovery, every corner a surprise, and a multitude of interesting encounters!                                                                           

Did the world change or did I change? Am I still capable to see the world and what it has to offer? Or is it a question of getting older and to belong to another generation?

In my present state of mind there is very little to look at, very little to discover, and it seems that I can only see the surrounding question about life, about behavior, about thoughts. 

Is it really a question of belonging to another generation?                                           

The world has changed and continues to change at an incredible speed… 

So many cities live in fear!                                                                                             FEAR seems to be the normal state of mind of the majority.Fear of others, Fear of any kind of action and its consequences, Fear of thinking, fear of having an opinion, Fear of human relation, Fear of the unknown, Fear of the next dramatic event, Fear of being scared! 

What happened to our dreams of Happiness for an equal society full of life and aspirations? We were supposed to reach the NIRVANA, this unflappable state of mind when the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been extinguished.      

What happened to the spirit of the past decades when we decided to rebuild the world for a total harmony, and total understanding of others? We were working hand in hand with the older generation, using their knowledge and them using our vitality. My teachers, in university and in theater, were so close to us, we were friends, companions and dreamers together. We made plans to bring to society: balance, equality and happiness. No conflict of generation was involved in this collaboration.

But the sky has changed sky... It is not Shattered anymore, it has exploded…          

Can we look at a possible truth? Truth? Truth of what? Of the creation of imagination? Of the unfinished fantasies?                                                                            

What about search for wisdom? But does wisdom leave an after taste of bitterness on the truth? Does the older generation become bitter with time? Bitterness of having wisdom trying to rule and no room anymore for invention? Is that the reason why so many people like snow, snow covers the bitterness of the truth?  All this white snow creates a false impression of purity, a false impression of quietness, of unexpected silence like a piece of white velvet on the wounds of life.                                                                                                         

When youth is gone, what is left are the inconsistent memories: memory of the lost senses, and the stupefaction to see that we are now built by life and by routine. Youth can disappear in the fog of life, in the path of what we call existence and we discover with horror that we are now another one recreated by the look of others.                                                                                                              

Can we call back our youth and try to reinvent it and show tenderness to it?  

Can we again try to remodel the world? 

Can we have both: The accumulated knowledge and the desire to go on?                                                                                

Is the conflict of generations becoming a creator of chaos? We live in a bizarre, and dangerous world where it seems that the abyss between ways of thinking is much deeper everyday and becoming an irreversible tragedy… more that it has been in past centuries… It seems that people are living side by side and not in the same world, living in parallel worlds with opposed rules and opposed expectations ignoring the needs of each other.

Like most people, sometimes we deny possible death about people we love and care for… And we continue to live the same way, until it is too late. Most of us do not know how to show some people the importance they have in our life, our being, our existence and when we finally realize it, it is too late.                                                                                                                                                                            We must confront and endure the departure of someone and we never found the time to tell them: Thank you for being you, thank you for your love, thank you for your friendship, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

WE HAVE TO TRY TO STAY STRONG AND HAVE THE COURAGE TO GO TO THE NEXT STEP OF LIFE, THE NEXT CHAPTER OF ADVENTURE, THE NEXT POSSIBLE MOMENTS OF PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS…

We must remember:    

 It takes strength to be firm and it takes courage to be gentle 

It takes strength to conquer and it takes courage to surrender 

It takes strength to be certain and it takes courage to have doubt

It takes strength to fit in and it takes courage to be stand out

It takes strength to feel a friend’s pain and it takes courage to feel your own pain

It takes strength to endure abuse and it takes courage to stop it

It takes strength to stand alone  and it takes courage to lean on another

It takes strength to love and it takes courage to be loved

It takes strength to survive and it takes courage to live

NEVER

  NEVER

   NEVER
     GIVE UP

    

TEARS

I just came back from Detroit for David DiChiera’ funeral service… 

It was emotional and beautiful, full of tears, memories of great times and great moments of creativity. But also, for many of us memories of pain, anguish about time passing and life sometimes escaping us.

Most of the time, because of David,   there were feelings of joy that sometimes we had achieved a full life, met great people and created great friendship.

Yes, David is leaving us, I wanted to scream in the theater:                      ” No please David do not go!  You are not going, you will never go away in our hearts and our minds: you will be a perpetual and strong presence in whatever is left in our life, an example of how to be.”

You were, and you are, the reason why we became the artists we believe we can sometimes be.

 You were the one who believed in us and gave us chances and opportunities. You were the one who was always present in our life and you will be forever part of us…

David you were the father and the brother I lost at a young age and often alone in the world of so many different foreign countries where I had to build a new life without the possibility of replacing them …

BUT THEN I met you in 1982… It was like a thunder in my life, you believed in me and gave me the chances that nobody did before in my lonely, adventurous and turbulent life.

I was already 38 and trying to make a life and a career in the world of opera,which was for me a total new world..AGAIN…

                                                                                                             You took the risk to trust me with a great opportunity and continued to believe in me for 35 years regularly giving me new challenges in your opera company…                                                                    

Of course, our CYRANO will be part of our common history forever… You as the composer and I as the librettist working closely together to achieve what I believe is a musical masterpiece that the future generations will recognize.

But as I told you many times, it is difficult to be part of the trend when we are not part of the trend.                           

But time will be in your favor and will honor your work.

When I was in the theater this weekend honoring you, your picture was projected on a screen, and I could not stop crying looking at you…

Your gentleness, your comprehension of human dilemmas, your serenity about life. Your constant love for all of us were present…

And how, could I not think about our dear Mark Flint, our friend of so many years who left us in 2012, his intense participation in Cyrano….                                                                

YES MARK AND DAVID ARE GONE, MY TWO BROTHERS ARE GONE AGAIN… Are life and its pains a perpetual resumption?

David we will miss you forever, not that is not enough, to follow your message and be worthy of your heritage we will continue to function, and we will be present to honor you and your memory.

On my way to Detroit, in the plane, I chose to watch a movie called DISOBEDIENCE,

Fate? Coincidence? This movie brought back to me so many memories of my childhood….   It is set in a Jewish surrounding in London and deals with choices in life…

Memories of my young life with a brother and a father who disappeared very soon from my world, memories of a Jewish tradition that I never had the opportunity to practice after the age of 16, memories of what could have been a life!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was ready to acknowledge David Dichiera input in my life… And watching this movie, so many memories were aggressing me in the plane, all my childhood, all my attempt to be, to try to become somebody later, with never any help but actually most of the time having to deal with the contempt of people for the strange one around them… I was always the stranger, the different one, the question mark.

NO WONDER I DECIDED TO BECOME AN ARTIST or at least to tempt to be an artist, at least I had an excuse or a reason to be different.

 And unfortunately, this followed me all my life…I was always everywhere the stranger, the different one, and I have to say more in this country than in France coming from Tunisia, even if this country is my country now and I am proud to be part of it, a country I love and that gave me all possible chances.

Wherever I am, I went, or I was, … people make me feel different…I have an accent everywhere, most of the time people do not know where to place me…. More than 55 years of being seen as different  is exhausting.

Do people understand that there are other ways of thinking? Other ways of being? Other ways of anything?

I arrived in Detroit full of all these memories and all these pains inside me.

 I walked to the theater and sat by myself on the third row, I was probably the third person to arrive there, in front of me was David’s picture looking at us and then for me the entire theater went to dark, it was only David looking at me… David was invading my thoughts, my heart and my memories…

His gentleness, his comprehension of human behavior, his incredible humanity went thru me again and made me feel more peaceful while tears were running on my cheeks.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

During the time in the theater honoring you David, everybody was in TEARS thinking of you and I was myself overwhelmed by the showing of so many people coming to me and expressing feelings towards me, knowing my relationship with you and the recent events in my life…

So many testimonies and proofs of affection from Men and Women who were totally comforting in ANOTHER DIFFICULT TIME IN MY LIFE…

But David do not worry about me, this difficult time, while destroying my reputation, is not destroying my strength, unfortunately or fortunately I have seen much worse in my life..And real facts or absence of real facts will one day emerge….and the people responsible for that, will……

On my way back from Detroit, I was watching the second half of the movie DISOBEDIENCE.

I was still overwhelmed by sorrow to have lost my dear friend, and also overwhelmed by proofs of friendship to me by so many people, and testimonies of real worries about me and my next step in life, yes next step, life is never finished. 
Even if between us, I do not think about the next step of my life, I am more concerned about the worries of people around me and so dear to me.                                                                                                                               

The second half of DISOBEDIENCE was in the David Dichiara way of being, of thinking, of feeling…,                                        

 It was all about compassion , forgiveness, love, AND FREEDOM TO CHOOSE…

Yes, can we be strong enough to forgive? Strong enough to have compassion? Strong enough to try to love? Even for the people who have been so trying to judge us, to negate us, to destroy us?

Tears are part of life and often are the way to deal with painful realities, but tears should not prevent us to go ahead, we every day have new responsibilities and we must go for it…Tears and feelings should be the background of our soul but not the engine of our actions. Tears can be sometimes the revelation of a next step, the beginning of new thoughts and new decisions.

Since 1982 I do not remember one person talking negatively about David, did he succeed in this way of being?

                                                                                                        Life is a constant attempt to acquire knowledge, knowledge of the passed thru history, and knowledge of the present thru experience….                                                                                      These days are very difficult because we must acquire new ways very fast and too many times to apply it even if it is not digested totally and it creates mistakes…

This past weekend has been another opportunity to learn, to feel. to go back to the past, to have more thoughts about experiences, and to try, even if it is difficult, to new ways of being alive.

But David and his way of being, his understanding of the world and human relations, his artistic genius, will always be a model.

David, you have been an example, David we will always love you.