LOVE POEMS

THE VAGABOND

Now Paris will always be foggy and grey

Please somebody give me your hand, so I can go on

Paris again fills me with sorrow, like it did all my life

Please give me your hand, so I can go on.

 Not been back to Paris since my desertion and my attempt to be a man of the world.

"Bernard come to 17 Pierre Demours street,

Make it fast there is very little hope,

At the last hour of his life he whispered your name

And say: Where is Bernard? Where is he? "

Only this message sent me back to the dreaded city.

The city of the nightmares of my adolescence.

I arrived in the pale morning and already Paris had a pasty ghostly complexion.

After all these years of wandering and separation,

His scream was tearing apart our silence

His scream was breaking my heart, again.

Since my departure away of his beloved soul, I had hoped for news, but nothing, ever...

This painful stone of my life, this now unknown to me

Was calling the vagabond and needed his touch.

After all these years of attempt to forget.

17 rue Pierre Demours, the little room at the end of a hallway

The little room of our childhood engraved in my memory

Was still there.

Sitting in a cold and white light 

Three men already dressed in black were waiting for me

I did not ask any question, I said nothing

They looked at me, I understood that I had arrived too late

Once Again…

He was already gone like before, again he had not waited for me.

I came back for one night for the last travel and the last desire

Hoping may be to be warmed by his smile,

But he was already gone without a farewell or without an "I missed you".

In the path of life, he will be unknown forever

I do not want him swollen by the dirt of death                                                                                         But on a bed of roses forever…the roses of my memory.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Roses I had wished to share with him all my life                                                                               And now wilted and wilted…

My brother, my brother

Paris will now be even foggier and greyer

And I cannot remember.

The Paris sky will fill me with sorrow and despair forever.

Please somebody give me your hand, so I can go on…

LOVE LOST

So many hours, so many days, so many long nights since you left

I cannot even remember your departure.

You said: this time it’s the last travel, I promise

For our suffering hearts it is the last falling, I promise

At spring you will see I be back to you, I promise

And you are not here! And you are not here!!!

Tell me, try to tell me when you will be back

It is now spring

 And…

Spring is so beautiful to talk about love!

Let’s look again at the flowers in gardens and laugh and may be smile

Or wander together in the streets of an unknown city, wondering.

But you are not here

Do you only know that life cannot be postponed?

And

Lost time does not come back and becomes smoke or shadow?

Spring is gone for a long time,

Even the dead leaves of autumn are melted

And the fireplace of winter is now quiet

Without you here, without you because gone.

 I am wondering about you and trembling and feeling empty

I look for you in every room, in every corner, in every ghost

And I find only the image of your memory.

And I hurt for love and I hurt for you.

Tell me when you will be back

Lost time does not come back and becomes smoke.

Even if I still love you, even if I love only you

Even if I love you with love

I do not understand your absence

So tell me the why or the why …

And

I will build of you the only memory of my youth                                

My most beautiful one, my most tender one.

I will go on with my wandering to try to find another sun to warm myself

I am not the kind of man to die of sorrow

I do not have the virtue of the crucified souls

But tell me when you will be back

THERE IS NO HAPPY LOVE

Nothing is ever given to mankind, neither his strength nor his weakness or his love                              And when he believes he is opening his arms to love                                                                             He has the shadow of a cross or the fantasy of opening arms.

 When he believes he is holding happiness, he is crushing love                                                                 Life is a strange and painful divorce…

There is only unhappy love

 My beautiful love, my dear love, my wound,                                                                                           I carry you in me like an absent soul, they look at us wandering                                                    Without knowing our hurt and our disarray                                                                                               They repeat after me the words I have braded                                                                                 There is only unhappy love.

Time to learn how to live, it is already too late                                                                                        In the night our hearts cry together for a song                                                                                           For the regrets and the sobbing of an unfinished poem.
There is only unhappy love
There is no love without pain
There is no love without cry
There is no love without emptiness                                                                                                   There is only unhappy love


CRAZY LOVE
To love until losing your mind                                                                                                              To love with no restraint                                                                                                                       To have one as a last horizon                                                                                                                 To know seasons only when you depart 
Hunger exhaustion and cold and                                                                                                                All miseries of the world                                                                                                                      

 I survive it because of my love for you
I love to extinction
I love until despair
My love is a unending dream and even a unending nightmare                                                                                                              


Where are You?  Where are You?
If I only knew You,
I would love You                                                                                                                        and                                                                                                                                                           Cherish You and have You part of me                                                                                                Like a unending song of hopes and pleasure                                                                                         Like the non-told story of the world                                                                                                      

Is there a crazy Love that’s is not crazy?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

ALONE

Now what will I do with all that time that will be my life                                                                  With all these people who are for me nobody since you are gone.
Tonight my son my little boy my child my love it is raining out                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   In our home you look like her so much.
We are together and we going to play together ...
We together, you and me ...
Alone.


Tonight she is not coming back…Why? I do not know, I don’t know anymore.                                      She will write tomorrow, maybe we will have a letter                                                                             It is raining on the garden…                                                                                                                     I am going to make a fire                                                                                                                           I have no sorrow since we are together
Alone
Wait, do not cry, I know tales and stories                                                                                           Once upon a time…It is raining in my memory… I can’t remember…

No, don’t cry, wait!  I know tales and stories                                                                                           Stories of people who love each other
Tales of people who love each other
Do not go, do not leave me ….                                                                                                               Alone


I don’t know anymore how to light a fire, my child, my friend                                                           But we are here together in this too big room,
Alone                                                                                                                                                      

Tonight she will not be here, I don’t know,
I don’t know anymore...
I don’t like winter alone, the fire is gone
There is nothing to do, except for you and me to play
Alone                                                                                                                                          

Wait… Do not cry…I know stories…                                                                                                     Once upon a time… I cannot remember,,,I have no memory left.

No… Don’t cry…I know stories…                                                                                                           Once upon a time….But it is a little late tonight                                                                                     Do you want a story about people who loved each other?

Listen…She’s not here anymore…Don’t cry...
We can play at war and you will fall asleep…                                                                                           I cannot do anything anymore…You look like her so much!

Sleep my son, sleep in my arms                                                                                                         You’re not alone… Soon I be back for you, and I will ….

You’re not alone.

GENERATIONS

Where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least the attempt to reach perfection?

 A world of immediate retribution has engulfed us, we are no longer what we can be but what we believe we deserve to be. 

The old generation wants to preserve its acquisitions while the young generation wants to create opportunities, and all rush blindly in their own direction.

It feels like yesterday I was walking in the streets of Philadelphia, Dakar, Paris or Tananarive!

Each step was a discovery, every corner a surprise, and always a multitude of interesting encounters!

No conflict there, just peace made between youth and the knowledge acquired by time.

 And now, nothing!

I have been walking since the shattered sky has been vaguely glued together by the years dedicated to redo what was not….

In my present state of mind there is nothing to look at, very little to discover, and It seems that I can only see the surrounding mediocrity, the poverty; the fact that everybody seems to be walking around with no real destination, without knowing who they are or what they want…

And now too many cities live in fear!  Fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of being scared!

Fear of fear!

Is it a generational issue??

Did the world change or did I change? Am I capable of still seeing the world and what it has to offer?  Or am I blinded by time, old age, incomprehension of new ways and the fact of belonging to another generation?

What happened to our dreams of happiness for an equal society full of life and aspirations? We were supposed to reach the NIRVANA, this “imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion and delusion have been extinguished.”

What happened to the spirit of the sixties? When we decided to rebuild the world for total harmony and total understanding of others! We were working hand in hand with the older generation using their knowledge while they were 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 balance, equality, dreams and happiness to society. 

No conflict of generations came into this collaboration.

But the sky has changed sky… I look at my youth and I see myself…I no longer am that child full of rage…I do not want to murder the truth any more, I want only to look at a possible truth…

Truth? Truth of what? Of the creation of imagination? Of the unfinished fantasies?

Forty five years have passed since this total opening of mind….Forty five years? Did wisdom take over? But does 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? Is that the reason why so many people like snow, snow covers the bitterness of the truth?

My youth you are far away now, lost in inconsistent memories, the memory of the lost senses,  but for you I hold an affection full of wonder…

The wonder of seeing that you are no longer, that you are built by life, shaped by the look of others.

You too, my youth, have disappeared in the fog of life, in the path of what we call existence, you became another recreated by others…but  my youth you are present in me all the time and I never dismissed you from my thoughts , my desires to go on , my tenderness to you.

My youth can you again remodel the world if I call you back or is it impossible for you to return now because of the new conflict of generations. 

Can the conflict of generation prevents some to have both? Accumulated knowledge and the desire to go on?

.

But the conflict of generation is now a dangerous animal and a creator of chaos! We live in a bizarre world where it seems that the abyss between generations is much deeper that it had never been in the past … 

It seems sometimes that we are living side by side and not in the same world, two parallel worlds with opposed rules, almost opposite expectations.

I have memories of my father's generation and while we had definite differences of taste, different ways of looking at many things, we never behave aggressively towards each other or were in denial of the knowledge of each other…

On the contrary we were using the knowledge of older people, we were looking for a sign from them to share, and they were not afraid or intimidated by the new generation.

The young generation was looking at the old one with respect, desire to learn from them and sometimes even with admiration. 

The older generation was looking at the young one with affection and protection and the hope of discovering new things created by a new world.

Today, it seems that everything is based on being young!!! A singer of 32 is becoming too old to start a career, a conductor of 40 is considered “dépassé”, a director of 45 is a joke…

If you are in any profession and beyond 40, you are considered dangerously stagnant and seen as unable to function with imagination, you become suspicious or are even pushed away, not to say destroyed.

Knowledge is becoming a handicap if it is based on real knowledge and most of the time the transient invention is the only admired way of being.

Everything should happen as if the old generation was already mentally dead, nobody wants them to think, to create, even to be existing.

They should be sitting on an armchair in a retirement home looking thru the window at the emptiness around them and smile beatifically at the new generation.

They should be looking at the nonsense of their life, and smile thinking back to their successful youth 45 years ago, no actually 15 years ago…

They should only contemplate at what is gone for a long time in order to justify some individuals and their ambition to become number one, or they should simply deny their own existence by falling silent.

They must live in this denial, they have to accept that now it’s over and the surrounding new generation knows better.

And today the old generation looks at the young one with disdain, sometimes with jealousy, refusing to accept the new needs, rejecting the new freedom in so many aspects of life.

The positive astonishment at new ways is replaced by denial.

Pretending all the time that the young people know nothing, have nothing, believe in nothing, and are just the product of the internet and social media that are guiding every thought, every move.

They are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they want to project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it, and then throwing it out before the complete integration.

According to the old generation, the young one has no culture, no morality, no sense of belonging, no tradition, they refuse the basics of honor, think only about money and adventures, only about silly pleasures, ephemeral and easy successes.

According to the old generation they should go back to the school of life, they should learn how to behave in public and in private and they should put their ambition and their head together.

It seems that both generations in general stay away from each other for many reasons: Feeling that they have nothing in common, believing that older people don’t connect with today’s needs and young people have no experience of needs, uncontrollable disdain of experience and fear of the unknown of today’s life. 

Yes, we have an incredible conflict of generation…Is it because we are between cultures? Is it because we have not found our new place in the difficult world we are living in? May we hope for better days when the old and young generation will hold hands and sing together about the beauty of life, the meaning of being, the joy of sharing?

Will we reach a stage where the young generation will not dismiss the old one and the old one will not look at the young one with a smile of disdain or even disgust?

Knowledge has to be respected, and young minds have to be admired!

Imagine a world where the knowledge and experience is used by a young mind with his energy, invention and sense of discovery?

Imagine a world where the invention is guided by knowledge?

The glorious Life…
As a director, a singer, an entertainer, a dreamer...

Every time I get close to leaving the city I was hired to share my genius, my talent, my knowledge, my every day banality or my mediocrity, I experience the same images, the same ideas, the same thoughts taking over.

Here I am, ready to go…tomorrow, I am leaving, I am getting the hell out of here, I am clearing out of Dodge, I am going to blow this joint, I am going to make like a tree and leave…

I AM LEAVING....

Last night I packed and I realized, I don't know why but it happens each time, that my suitcase was almost empty when it was overflowing when I arrived, how much stuff can I lose or misplace in three weeks????

I emptied the little fridge in the hallway of the hotel room, and I threw out the leftovers of the cheap food I had accumulated in the past days and made some marvelous discoveries.
-A yogurt oozing all over.
-A bunch of red radishes turned black.
-An intact unopened jar of Moutarde de Dijon.
-A can of tuna and a can of salmon…Every time I am away in a hotel I buy these two cans of fish and never even open the can.
-An old cheese ready to walk by itself.
-Three lemons which were yellow when I bought them and were now grey.
-One celery, alone, still green, and blinking at me.

Did I really buy all of this abomination?

YES, YES, I DID.!!!!!

Tomorrow at 5 am a cab will take me to the airport and I'll jump on my flight back home at 7 am.....
I leave with my soul at peace, my heart intact, my creative forces diminished by a worthless task, and three weeks of more of this or less of that or…
I am getting out of here leaving behind me …I can't remember
I am getting out of here like I was never there.

But during my stay I smiled at everybody… every day.
I made jokes, I told stories, I was funny, I knew what to do, I made new friends that I probably will never see again, I created new myths about me and others, and life will go on…

I am leaving in peace, I did my job...

The day of departure started very, very early in the morning…
The genius at the hotel woke me up at 4 am instead of 4 30 am as I asked, a little mistake on his shitty machine. I told him 4 times the night before, wake up at 4 30 am!

On my way to the airport I am thinking of the past few weeks spent making a living, doing what I like to do or more exactly what I know how to do.
I am thinking about all these years spent to defend senseless causes and fighting battles without any possible victories.
Years spent in the fog of knowledge, in the antechamber of erudition, in the vestibule of wisdom.
A lot of people looked at me as if I were a sorcerer while I am only a sorcerer’s apprentice.

Chekhov wrote a wonderful short play called “The morning of a man of letters”, all my life I tried to be this man or at least a man who functions as a man whose life is full of sensible decisions, and a man whose life is a perpetual search for the truth thru literature and art….
And I am still searching for the right moment, the right experience, the fulfilling adventure…did I fail or do I still have time to find it? Or it did happen but I was not able to see it?

So, I arrive at the airport 2 hours early, I buy myself a coffee, probably brewed the night before that tasted like ink. I don't like coffee anyway but I am civilized and I follow the rules, so I have to walk with a cup of coffee in my hand to belong to our great society.

I sit in a corner with the satisfaction of someone who fulfilled his duty as an artist after a great production and as a man of my time since I am holding a cup of coffee...

An old lady all dressed in black like a Sicilian from Palermo (she is older than me, really old) leans towards me to scream in my ear something I do not understand and by doing that she pours her burning tea on my pants.
Those were the pants I had kept clean for my return home, a freshly ironed pair, pants I had kept beautiful to give my wife the impression that when I am away, I am on top of the way I look.
The old lady repeats 5 times that she is sorry and doing that floods my face with a sputum of the color of the tea she was drinking with the feeling it was a nectar given to her by the gods of Sicily.

Finally we are called for boarding…

I enter the plane, and after a few steps inside I reach my seat, somebody is sitting in my reserved seat…I apologize profusely, but the five hundred pound giant sitting in my seat, fails to answer me, doesn't even turn his head in my direction ….
Since I am a polite and good natured man, I scream at his face that he is in my seat, but the giant just yawns loudly…
The flight attendant arrives like a cannon ball, asks me to cool my temper, and to stop screaming, she checks the tickets and declares very calmly that there is a mistake, but I should not worry, she will find me another seat.

Fifteen minutes LATER….I am still standing in front of the giant, who fell asleep.

Everybody is now sitting, and I am still waiting… the well-mannered flight attendant has found a seat for me in the last row near the bathrooms but there is no room above for my luggage, so she will register it and give it to be put in the hold, she gives me a ticket.

I sit exhausted, sweating, and pissed off…
My pants are now a wreck, my hair is worse than ever, I must look like Curly of the three stooges in a bad day, and I only think that finally I will be able to close my eyes for 3 hours and recuperate by falling asleep…

I begin my journey to another world and my mind starts to navigate…
It seems that the world we are living is out of control, too many professions have people in charge who really have no idea what they are doing. Much too often in the arts I meet little pricks with so much personal ambition that it reminds me of the careerists, the social climbers, the go-getters of the Bourgeois class in 19 century Paris, straight out of a novel by Balzac......
Even I wouldn't dare behave like them, but do people have no shame? The most surprising thing is that I am still asking this question. I had the answer a very long time ago...Shame is an invention of religion, it is not part of our basic psyche, we don’t know shame, some of us are just afraid to be caught or exposed or shown up, so they are ashamed....

Makes me laugh or grin...

One thing I was never able to do...Convince people that I know what I am talking about...Some of us have the great talent to become a reference of their own truth...They don’t know more than anybody but they are succeeding in making believe that they KNOW...they speak so well, they are full of self-importance, they pontificate about the most commonplace things, they turn the obvious into a vision, and since we live in a culture with no culture, others seek out their opinion and they suddenly become Gurus, Advisers, Specialists of whatever.

Suddenly the voice of a screaming and crying child wakes me up and raises my blood pressure to 230… I discover sitting in front of me a three year old kid who believes he is Pavarotti acting his own death in a bad opera.
He would go on screaming for the three hours of the trip…

I navigate again….I want to forget trying to distinguish what is true, the meaning of the word truth, or the non-meaning of everyday life…I try to grasp lost moments which cannot be found again, and I feel my creative strength fading and wilting lost, in the fascinating daily routine.
But why do we believe that everything can or must last forever? ... Hours, days, years pass by being the same and yet having nothing in common. I fall asleep, almost, and I am walking again in the streets of Paris, or Tunis or New York or Boston…
I want to be the great I don't know what and I succeed in being only an image of my desire, an approximation of my mirage.

I arrive in New York, totally ravaged, I am now 80 years old, I drag my body to the carousel to grab my suitcase and wait for more than an hour… NOTHING…
I learned from an attendant full of good intentions that my luggage will arrive during the day, so I can wait or have it delivered to my apartment, but for that I have to give proof that it is mine, and I cannot find the ticket given to me when I boarded the plane.
After filling a ton of papers, they believe me when I tell them that my name is on the bag.

I get home with no luggage, exhausted, looking like a homeless person, and only thinking of my bed….

THE MORNING OF A MAN OF LETTERS? Or the three weeks as a hard working plowman of Theater?

Vive les voyages et vive les professions artistiques.

ACHIEVEMENT and AUDITION

This month of September will certainly be memorable…What an incredible succession of events, again I realized that life is never at an end, that surprises can always hit us, that trains are always passing and we have to be ready to jump aboard or at least  be ready to look at them.

Yes, nothing is given, but opportunities are always offered to us, of course some of us are luckier and have many more opportunities than others! But is it also because some always keep their eyes wide open, their hands always ready to grab, their heart always pounding at novelties, their souls always responsive to new information or to live new adventures?

This month I was told that I will be honored by a prestigious Foundation with a LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT award…                                                                                                                       

I am extremely touched and honored, a life time achievement to ME ?????

What did I really achieved to deserve such an honor? Most of my life I was pushed and led by pure necessities, by dramatic moments,  sometimes by despair and very often by ambition… Always ready to do, to try, to take risks, to advance, to survive, to be…

The American dream is a reality…I don't think my grandfather who left the Jewish ghetto of Tunis more than 100 years ago, or my father with whom I left Tunisia 55 years ago practically as refugees could have ever imagined that!!!

Life time achievement!!!!

Life has been a succession of huge surprises and incredible luck!!! From the beginning of my adult life, opportunities were offered to me: my debuts as an actor followed by a career as a theater director and actor, my arrival in the USA, my teaching in universities, my French theater in America for 10 years, my first opera in 1982 leading to my 400 hundred productions, my duties as a general and artistic director, my work as a designer, my writings, my new life as a manager at the age of 60, all of it was the result of opportunities offered to me.                                                                                                             Yes of course, then we have to deal with the gift of the opportunity, and register all that is given to us and deliver more than expected in order to fulfill our commitments.

 A definition of achievement is: A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.

Effort? Courage? Yes, I cannot deny that I gave a lot of efforts and had in many occasions a lot of courage or some will call that nerves or even self-appreciation.

Skill? I do not know if all my adventures and all my so called successes were the result of skill!

Certainly the result of perseverance, stubbornness, and belief in others by having the possibility to surround myself with men and women who knew more than I did in their specific specialty.

We have to learn how to trust others and sometimes believe that they know more than we do, and then we can have successes.

Life time achievement!!!! 

I learned early and I still believe that the best achievement is not how much we do, how much money we make, how much recognition we get, but how much we are able to give and bring to others! I know some people reading this will think “He is full of it, it looks good to say that”…

But the reality is:

As an actor or a singer, even if we love what we do and we find great satisfaction doing it, the best achievement is to know that an audience can be deeply moved by what we bring to them, can discover more about itself, and can even be changed in some beliefs or some actions. And this can be said about all the achievements we can have as a teacher, a director, a writer, a manager, or anything…

THE BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT IS TO SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE WITH OTHERS…And if I have done that, I will be happy in the next decade and in peace with myself to have received this award.

But to have achieved some things called achievements does not mean it is the end or a way for us to be self-satisfied and  start to be unaware of the world around us… There is always room for more adventures, more attempts, more endeavors, and more possibilities.

I said at the beginning of this posting that this month of September was an incredible succession of events.

Yes sometimes an incredible lesson of humility is given again and it is an injection of youth.                                                

This month I was made aware that a TV series was looking for specific roles for men in their sixties… The series is called MOZART IN THE JUNGLE!!!! 

I have not been to an audition since 1972, but I decided to go and try to remember how we feel when we go to an audition, what we hope and what we expect, how we can impress the people in charge of the audition and make them know us..                                                                

I dressed the way they would expect for  the role they were looking for and  I arrived at the audition an hour earlier and waited for my turn in the middle of people of all ages, some my age and some much younger….Finally my turn came, they called my name, mispronouncing it of course, but I am used to that( Uzan is a strange name in the States)…I was expecting to have a conversation with the casting director, or at least tell him a few things about me, but we exchanged 6 words, just to be polite…

He asked me to read a text of a few lines while they were filming me, asked me to do it again with a different intonation, and then thanked me and opened the door for my exit…

They did not need a copy of my resume, they did not ask one question about who I was…NOTHING…

I left, not upset, but rejuvenated and very pensive…Rejuvenated because I realized that in my twenties I went to many, many auditions comparable to that one, and pensive because I promised myself to act differently when I listen to singers in an audition….                                                                                                                                        It was a great lesson in humility, they were just looking for somebody specific and did not care about who I was, what I do or had done, what my ACHIEVEMENTS were or anything.

Two days later, I received a phone call informing me that I was cast in the role and if I was available the following week for the filming…I said yes… YES, YES, YES….I hung up in shock, again life was generous to me by giving me opportunities to be again what had been my life 45 years ago…IT IS NEVER OVER…
                                                                                                      Even more, I arrived at the studio and had the huge surprise to discover that the star of the show was Malcom McDowell and my scenes were with him… In 1968 and in 1972, I was in the French version of 2 of his movies: IF and CLOCKWORK ORANGE…Again fate is sometimes scary… I told him and he was really excited to know that…

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 While again in the staff and the crew, nobody asked me anything about me, who I was, and where I came from (my French accent may have been the reason), the cast was a wonderful group of human beings, ready to do the best possible job and help each other as much as possible … Mr McDowell was a delight to work with… But I was again a pawn in the game doing what I was supposed to do…

The same month I am honored for LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENTS and I go to an audition after 45 years like a young man, and I do the best I can to justify my presence there surrounded by great actors. What a wonderful lesson of life, a wonderful lesson for life, yes.                                                                 
Nothing is never over, we will always have more opportunities to grow and to learn until the end… Never drop, never give up…                                                                                                                 
 Yes some moments will be difficult and disappointing, yes many, many disappointments caused by events or people we believed in or trusted, but more will happen, new trains will pass…  

                                                                   

LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENTS does not mean LIFE IS ACHIEVED, more AUDITIONS FOR LIFE WILL COME… 

Let’s always stay vigilant and ready…And let’s not forget the most important, the real achievement is to share our knowledge with others.

Robotization or Subconcious ????

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.

                                                                                                                                                           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!                                              

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