CYRANO…. REALLY A NOSE???

I just finished a month of total friendship, of sharing feelings and emotion and having the sensation, that, sometimes, we are lucky to do what we do. It was a marvelous gift at my age to be able to connect on both artistic and human levels with younger people! I am happy to be reminded that it is possible for me to learn and to experiment with younger generations.

I was in Detroit Directing my opera Cyrano! Another occasion to share very special moments with the composer of this opera, my dear friend, David DiChiera. We have been friends for more than 35 years. The adventure of Cyrano- him composing the music and I writing the libretto, then directing the production- made us even closer, made us breathe the same air made us completely understand each other totally and become eternally intertwined. David, I want to thank you again for who you are, and your incredible generosity to us all.

Our friend Mark Flint, who was part of the creation of the opera through writing the orchestrations and conducting the premiere, passed away 5 years ago, and David with this production was announcing his retirement from Michigan Opera Theatre, the company he founded against all odds nearly 50 years ago…It was an extraordinary month of emotion, tears, laughs and artistic satisfactions with a cast of friends, old and new.

Returning to this opera, based on Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece, introduced me to an array of exciting opportunities and more questions about artistic involvement, about creativity, about fate, and about life.

While life and the events in our lives teach us how to behave and react to tragic moments, we always learn more about who we are and what we represent when we are in close contact with others.

This past month was another experience in learning how to deal with sorrow, disappointments, pain inflicted by events and sometimes by others! Though, too often, we inflict pain on ourselves due to the failing of not knowing who we really are, what is haunting us or where we belong.

BUT CYRANO…. WHAT IS REALLY HIS NOSE???

Cyrano says in the first act… “My friend there are times when I feel awful about my ugliness, sometimes all alone…” 

Yes, he suffers about his ugliness and his loneliness.

To have an extraordinary long nose can be a source of torment and even pain. BUT DON’T WE ALL HAVE A LONG NOSE WE TRY TO HIDE?

This long nose is only a symbol of the pain we all carry somewhere within ourselves- the feeling that we need something else and, most of the time it is buried inside us and we do not see it, or even we refuse to see it, afraid of being weakened by it… Throughout my life, I very rarely met people who did not have wounds, and too often under a bandage. And sometimes these wounds are continuously ignored due to fear or ignorance.

 Yes, we all have secret lives and those lives and very often kept a secret from ourselves…

Most of us spend our lives carrying pain or incertitude of who we really are, and too often we fall in the trap of disguising it by ignoring it. Unfortunately, we sometimes find ways to bury or deny it by using drugs, alcohol or even by refusing to obey laws and societal expectations... And instead of building a life with achievements and attempts to better ourselves we fall into the traps of self-destruction.

Yes, most of us have hidden pain inside and questions with no answers, and we need to learn how to deal with them and make them into positive elements to advance on our path in life.

Artists have a huge advantage and the opportunity to deal with these challenges! We can use this hidden pain to express ourselves within the context of our art and to process through creating! Find a balance between the real and the imaginary, between the everyday life and the secret life, and finally, we can overcome our excruciating pain. We can deal with our noses through total introspection, sometimes this total introspection is interpreted by others as being self-centered or selfish or even strange, not to say deranged. And very often, we are not welcome by the so-called normal society.     YES, ARTISTS HAVE A LONELY LIFE…AND YES, I KNOW THAT, FOR SOME, IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TRY TO CURE THEIR DESEASE THROUGH CREATING ART AND THEIR LIVES ARE A LIVING HELL, and their curse is stronger than their creativity…

Performers have the same fate! We know or should remember, that in everyday life, consciously or unconsciously, we need to always be putting on a show to disguise “the real Me”, to hide our pains, our frustrations, our weaknesses and be somebody else- the person that “society” expects us to be.

We give to others-and the world at large- an image of ourselves to stay seemingly strong and able to function in a society that constantly demands more and more! We live in a world where we all are expected to play a role instead of being open about the extreme danger of losing the grasp on our true selves and who we really are.

But you must realize that, on stage, we are protected by the character we are performing. The world will see and witness a “personage”, and we are freed from the need to disguise who we really are! The stage is the only place where we do not need to act and we can finally be our true selves, being honest about our strengths and our weaknesses. We can deal with our pain, and use it, and let it go and finally find some kind of peace by opening the door to the buried world inside.

 Performers: you are lucky, you can finally be your true selves. Always dig into your past, into your subconscious, into your experiences and use them to become the character you need to be…Use your memories of events, find the equivalents-the connections- to different situations from your life, and build a bank of feelings to draw from when creating characters.

Not only will your performances be stronger, and real, and bewitching; but you will release the ghosts haunting your soul, you will take the bandage off, and you will enjoy some freedom, even if temporary, and finally some happiness…Always use who you are deep inside to become the character you are personifying and grow from it.,

Cyrano created a world of theater and a perpetual stage around him … He calls that “MON PANACHE!!!” He can function and he can act as a total human being, he found the ways, through using his pain and his NOSE, to be loved and admired by all. When he is alone, of course, he has moments of doubt and sorrow, but he always survives it and his incredible love for Roxane makes him the man we should all become…A SOUL WITH A LONG NOSE AND A BIG HEART!                                                                                                                                               

But throughout all of those years, Roxane could not see behind the appearance of an ugly nose, the real man that Cyrano was, so she wasted her life and his because of her vanity …. Please let’s try to see the people around us for who they truly are, let’s try to find the soul beneath the surface, but we also need to make it easier to find by opening the door to our buried traumas

We must learn how to embody Cyrano in our lives, how to deal with our noses. Let's face our noses, not ignore them or burry them! Let's use them and find the balance in our existence, let's not disguise them with superficial elements!

Become a harp with each string representing a different moment in your past, AND INCLUDE THE HAPPY MOMENTS, THE CREATIVE MOMENTS! Do not fall in perpetual depression by using only the sadness of your past experiences.

This, of course, is not an easy task. It demands courage and abandon, but it will make us so much happier and completely whole!!

Dealing with the hidden is the only way to make us strong -real- CREATIVE.

  

IRRELEVANCE

Recently I have been thinking a lot about LA VOIX HUMAINE, the opera by Poulenc and Cocteau…. As always, an extraordinary coincidence occurred in life. Just as I was thinking of this piece, one of my best friend had a surgery and the doctors advised him not to talk for three weeks and added that his speaking voice will be different forever! When he asked for more details, they answered “we do not know.”

What a splendid irony, yes, events are in perspective again!!! Every event has the potential to contain both, truth and lie, dream and nightmare, reality and fantasy, always mixed.

Years go by and we are still trying to try to find a meaning to it all. And sometimes hazard, or the untamable laws of destiny give us some answers, or more precisely some pieces of answers which drives us to think about the missing pieces, the next step, the next adventure, the next risk of taking risks

The voice…human… or the human voice?

Are we using our voices the way we should? I do not think so; we should try to eliminate all the harsh words we have for others, all the pains we inflict with our voices and our voices should only be the carrier of joy, pleasure, achievement… With this I am dreaming again!!!!!                                                    

And what about the thoughts? What will happen to them?

I am wandering…my thoughts dictate the words I am writing…maybe I should use my voice before typing the letters I am writing and obliterate the non-sense which sometimes invades my blank pages.

The voice…when we wake up every morning are our first thoughts for the voice? Do we pronounce a few reassuring words and smile at the sound of our voices?

I have directed this opera four times and really like it… Every time it was a new adventure because the performer was different and we all know or should know that we do not ask different artists to do the same thing.

I was always wondering why it is called “La Voix Humaine”, is there a voice which is not Human?

What other voices are around or were around? The voice of the supreme Guide? The voice of remorse, the voice of the ghosts? But even they are human creation, so La voix Humaine means what?

Here I am trying to find a meaning to LA VOIX HUMAINE, but why?

Too often, difficult moments in life dictate the meaning of our existence, and why is that? I do not know anymore; no actually I have never known.

It seems that every day I am more and more submerged by the feeling of irrelevance surrounding me and sometimes I feel that I am the head of this new way of being, and finding reasons to speak and use my voice.

Yes, I know every generation says the same about the generation before and the generation after, but I REALLY do not believe it was ever so extreme!        

I think that today a 35 year-old person cannot talk to a younger 18 year-old person… So, imagine a baby boomer trying to communicate with an adolescent or even a forty year-old!!!!

                                                                                                                   

 I am strange, I am from another generation, I am not part of the trends of today, I am not credible in the ways people function…. I do not have the same values, the same CREDO, even the same language! I have to be constantly careful of the words I use in order not to be accused to be temperamental, irrational, aggressive, but at the same time we are all supposed to be equal (which should ABSOLUTELY BE TRUE). Yet we cannot find the words to express ourselves out of fear of being politically incorrect.

In every aspect of life, of culture, of human relations, of beliefs, of our sense of belonging, of politics, of EVERYTHING, I have the horrendous sensation of being totally irrelevant. In the world of the arts or what is left of it, I am totally irrelevant because I believe in the respect of masterpieces, in the tradition of beauty, in the search for the truth, in the study of it to try to find new significance or new lights.

It seems that sometimes (and not because of my French accent) people around me do not understand what I say, what I do, what I think, even what I dream. They look at me like I belong to another planet, to another world, to another society, to another time! I am strange, I am from another generation, I am not part of the trends of today, I am not credible in the ways people function.

My profession became a perpetual question mark for me! Most of the productions I attend are a bizarre approach to rediscover the already made, not to say a ridiculous (for me) attempt to do something new, something different, something more in line with the …. I really do not even know what.                                                                                                                   

The meaning of the words is not taken seriously, if they are considered at all. The stylistic influences of the period and the music are intentionally ignored, or in some cases are contradicted to prove an artistic creativity and a sense of modernism.  

                                                                        

I would like to know when the great museums of the world will distribute special glasses at the doors which will deform or change the colors of the paintings and the sculptures. I cannot wait to have glasses that will show me Mona Lisa all in red or pink or purple and wearing duck ears. I will sit in the room of the museum wondering and letting my fertile imagination wander.

The last shows I have attended in New York, I left after the second act, resisting the desire to leave after the first one, hoping to finally breathe with ease. 

The work on the characters, the situations and the period was nonexistent, the attempt to understand and to go deeper in human relations was forbidden, the sense of beauty was laughed at.

They believe they will attract a new audience with it, and the theaters are empty! They simply forget that human nature has not really evolved significantly and real feelings, real stories do not change from generation to generation. Since the beginning of times the human heart has been touched by REAL FEELINGS AND REAL THOUGHTS…

These so-called monuments of the past continue to move audiences because they speak to our souls, to our hearts, to our beings…                                                                   

And do not answer me by saying WHAT IS REALITY? I am sure you know.                                                                                                                                          

YES you can write new pieces, new art, new anything you want the way you want and try to discover new approaches. Actually it is even our duty as artists, if we do not, we cannot advance and progress to the next step. But please leave the masterpieces alone.

                                                                                                                                 

Did Picasso create his last masterpieces by taking his paintings from the blue and the rose periods (the figurative period) and painting on top of it to create the Demoiselles D’Avignon? No, He did not, he developed a new form of expressing himself.

The chorus in Ballo is dressed like Ladybugs, Romeo is in love with Stefano, Juliette is blind, Turandot is a butcher, Figaro is a German soldier, Manon is a whore in the low district in Paris may be Pigalle, the set of Boheme is in the Chinese district of Tokyo, nobody knows what the words mean…

Of course, sometimes we have to adapt a new sensitivity and new understandings, but not to the detriment of the basics which are life and human soul.

La voix humaine is betrayed, and in place we have La voix ridiculed and the humaine denied.

Unfortunately, this attitude of irrelevance is not only wounding or murdering the arts but also every aspect of everyday life.

My freedom you helped me to leave my chains, I suffered to satisfy your demands, I gave you everything, I left my world and I lost my friends, but I owe you everything I have.                           

But I became irrelevant in my aspirations, in my dreams, and in my attempts to change the world which was always my priority. I wanted to change the world by bringing new truth and new beliefs, but ALWAYS BASED on knowledge, on understanding, on research…. And I have the feeling that I am completely irrelevant, dismissible and out of touch with the “geniuses “of today.  

YESTERDAY....????...TOMORROW

Saturday night I had a dream…Yes, me, a dream…not a nightmare, but a dream. Probably I must have been sleeping on my two ears and could not hear the voices of the world sending me hopeless, nasty, mean or confused messages coming from the times we are experiencing today.

Here it is…

I was 15 years old, and I was whistling an old song I learned from my grandmother, one of the pillar of my youth. The old song is about a young boy who learns about life by travelling all over the world on the back of a giraffe…

From there, he has a nice view and feels very comfortable--free to be himself, and to think.

I was walking in a forest filled with fruits: strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries…giant fruits, the size of a talisman in a fairy tale…All the fairy tales that I do not allow to enter my mind anymore since I believe I am an adult and want to be responsible for my ….?????

I arrived on the edge of a very small pond and in front of my eyes this pond slowly became a huge lake; suddenly, the forest disappeared and became the school I attended in my childhood.

The fruits transformed into the old friends of my past who I have not seen in more than sixty years. They all came around me dancing, smiling and screaming:

” Bernard…Bernard, where were you? we were looking for you, where did you go? We missed you, and we still miss all your stories, and all your adventures, tell us, tell us…

They came very near me and asked a million questions about my life, my perpetual travels all over the world, about girls, about music, about singers and about opera…  I had an answer ready about everything, but strangely enough, my answers had nothing to do with the questions asked, though I believed they did, and they were looking at me puzzled and frowning, even worried…but I was happy, I was smiling, I was talking non-stop, I was even laughing…

                                                                                                                                                                  Full of joy, I looked at myself in the pond, and the water reflected the image of an older man who looked like I do today, but my friends were still the young ones of sixty years ago, and still eager to know more about life, about the world, about everything and continued on and on with the questions!

One of them, the one who had been my rival during my school years, looked at me, approached me, and whispered in my ear: “You are not the one we knew; you are not Bernard; you are only a parody of him; you are a fake; where did Bernard go, the one we knew, the one I despised openly but admired secretly?”

“Who are you, who are you???”

I woke up with that voice in my head, full of questions about myself and about the world in which I live; and about all I know, all I ignore or want to ignore, falling in the trap of trying to ignore the reality, or overwhelmed by my habit of functioning with fake knowledge of life and others.

Who are we? Do we go on in life by becoming somebody else? Is that really what growing up and learning is about? Is that really what becoming an adult means? Do life, society, and encounters impose new rules on us, new ways of being ourselves?

I wondered if I had changed so much since the time I was being devoured by the desire to become something or may be somebody?

Are we falling in the trap of easy success? Or the trap of fast failure? Or, even worse, the trap of banality?

Slowly, I realized that I should still try to be what I was at one time--at least to reconnect with the young boy, and subsequently the young man, who wanted to reinvent the wheel.

I jumped out of bed (it is an Image, I cannot jump anymore) full of a new strength, and decided to tell those around me what I believe is the truth…the truth of life, the truth of what it is to be alive, the truth to still want life to bring great moments of discovery and joy… and to share with others what I believe I know and give some of my experience to the ones who want it…

And I thought about all the ones who have something to share, something to give, something to say and I want to tell them not to stand down. Please do go back to your duties as real people: SHARE WITH OTHERS, GIVE TO OTHERS, PROTECT OTHERS.                                                                                                      

We need you! We count on you!

Let’s not let the misadventures of life, the everyday disappointments impede all we can do…

Yes, most of us are not on the top of the heap, are not the lead characters in the story of success, and we all believe that we deserve more because of  the huge talent we have in our art or our profession…

At one point in life, we cannot go home day, after day, with an empty heart, a distorted soul, a disappearing courage, a dead mental capacity, a non-connected intellect, a vanquished passion, a wounded body.

No more of this whining, enough of these complaints of a spoiled brat, enough of the masturbation on a misfortune which does not exist!

It is an insult to the ones who really suffer, a slap to the ones who have nothing, a lack of consideration for the ones who really have courage! JUST LOOK AROUND: THINK, REALIZE, AND BE THANKFUL!

I told myself, today is Sunday, the day of the Lord and the day of the thieves…

The day when we love to look at the world with a naughty or generous eye, or hopefully an eye open to the question marks.

These boys talking to me, asking questions, were they real? A manifestation of another life?                                                                                                                             Were they part of a hidden reality or the reality of the unreal?

At the age of 8 or 9, I wanted to become a famous actor. I would close my eyes and was transported to the wild west with John Wayne or to the waterfront with Marlon Brando. Sometimes I wanted to be a Russian character in a Russian novel, which one? Is there a difference today in being a character in a Gogol novel or a character in a Chekov play?

Sadly enough, most people today would not know the difference...we have lost the meaning of culture and are devoting ourselves to clichés, and we just go to the shortcut to have answers and to try to be different, and some people, too many for my sanity, call that interesting and NEW.

                                                                                                                                                  I have so many friends who wanted, craved, and endeavored all their lives to be artists, performers, creators…Please do not stop, go on with your desires, nothing should stop you.

                                                                         

But where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least OUR attempt for perfection.

A world for immediate retribution has ungloved us, we are not anymore who we can be but who we believe we deserve to be.

What to think? What to do? Where is the truth? I know every generation has problems, I know that every generation is asking for something different while the older one wants to preserve the rights and qualities of life for which they fought.

BUT it is going faster and faster.

Many still do, even if I have fewer friends than when I was younger... It seems that people in general stay away from aging people for many different reasons: feeling that they have nothing in common, belief that older people do not connect with today needs, uncontrollable disdain of knowledge based on experience, or pure fear of the unknown since difference of age creates the unknown.

In any case, I am thinking of my friends or my possible friends, and the young people who want to be artists, performers, and singers or in other capacity in the world of opera, or in any profession.

DO NOT LOSE CONNECTION WITH YOURSELF, DO NOT FORGET WHO YOU WERE, WHO YOU ARE , IT IS THE BEST WAY TO BE WHO YOU WILL BE.

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HEAVY HEART

Another important part of myself disappeared a few weeks ago, with the death of my best friend, and I was plunged again into my own world--my world of loneliness.

I have slept so often and so deeply with my loneliness that she has almost become a friend, a tender habit. My loneliness never left me even for a second. It was faithful like a shadow and was following me in my youth all over the world on my silly voyages…

And now, thanks to my loneliness, I am never alone.

When my loneliness is in my bed in the same ridiculous hotel room in the middle of nowhere, while my creative genius is directing another masterpiece, she takes over the entire room.

And we spend long nights face-to-face wondering: where will the accomplice of my wandering go?

Do I have to love it or do I have to fight it?

My loneliness taught me as much as she made me pour tears, my loneliness taught me how not to be alone, and if sometimes I deny it, she never makes me weak … even if sometimes I had wished to fill my loneliness with dreams and hopes, I know she will be with me forever.

My loneliness was resurrected recently by the death of my dear friend Robert, who died a month ago, after a fight with cancer for 6 months....

IS IT BECAUSE HE DIED THAT I FELT SO LONELY? DID HIS DEATH PUT ME IN TOUCH AGAIN WITH MY LONELINESS WHO HAD BEEN BURIED FOR SO MANY YEARS?

He was my friend since 1962 when we met at the university in Paris, he was the gentlest, most generous person I know, and incapable of being mean or hateful!!!

He was the memory of my youth, the image of my quest for the truth of life, and the smile of my bitterness.

And he died at the age of 71, when he had never been sick!!! What the fuck???!!!! How is it possible to die so fast, and suddenly to disappear from EVERYTHING..                                                                                                                                                            Why do all my friends have to die one after the other?

Am I a bad omen?

It seems that I have been spending my life burying people! Actually, No!  I am never there when they die, I am on the road or living another escapade, or, when I was younger, trying to discover the world--or whatever I believed the world was in my young mind full of questions and, most of the time, empty of answers!

My brother died at the age of 24, I was 19, and I was not there: I was traveling in Asia trying to find the truth about life in a monk monastery! My brother dies and I talk about life with monks!!!  Almost laughable!

My father died 6 months later and I was not there, I was acting in a c movie trying to become A GREAT ACTOR and be venerated by the crowd! He died almost by himself like a poor soul in a c movie.

My mother died and I was not there, I was directing Romeo and Juliette. And I arrived two days later to see her in a coffin full of flowers… What irony!

My other best friend, Mark Flint, died and I was not there, he was very far away from me and I was too busy with silly every day occupations, trying to be!

I can continue the list forever!!! Is life protecting me by keeping me away from death?

BUT If all this had to be done again, and if I had the choice presented to me, I would be there.

I regret, bitterly, that I missed these painful moments, and especially that I missed them because I wanted to become somebody in my own mind, in my own ambition, in my own fantasy world!!!

Why do we have to go through all this pain? Is that destiny? Is that fate? PLEASE DO NOT SAY “IT IS THE HUMAN CONDITION,” you will make me laugh and I am not in the mood!!!

Is that the reason we become artists? Because we believe it is the best way to deal with real life? To have the luck and the power to hide our pain and our suffering behind a character, or while directing a play or an opera, to have the opportunity to become somebody else wearing the mask of a so-called creation?

Do we do all this unconsciously and in order to avoid this loneliness that we do not know how to confront? This loneliness which is a common feature for all of us, and especially in the world of the arts?

Are we born, and will we live forever trying to deal with this loneliness and find ways to endure it?

  I remember the great lines of my Russian Acting teacher: 

When we act, it is the only time in life when we do not need to act, we are protected by the character we are performing! So be totally yourself, do not hide anything, do not protect yourself with pretending to be another, and use all this to find a balance in your life.                                                                                                                          Acting is the equivalent of what alcohol or drugs are for some, but much healthier.

Your loneliness is now under the cover of the character you are performing; express it, use it, deal with it, cure it and because of this cure on your wounds you can become a better person and you will certainly be a great artist!

My loneliness: I hate you for leading me to the bottom of life so many times. But I also cherish you…you gave me the tools to be a better artist and, maybe, a better person.

The DEATH of friends makes us think a lot about LIFE, how ironic again!

We go through life searching desperately to do the best we can for ourselves, for people we love, and for people we like and we disguise our loneliness. 

Sometimes we ease it by being close to some people and some others we love!

Let’s try to use our loneliness to be fair, generous with people, and giving!!! I know that TOO OFTEN we get in return distrust, disdain, refusal, negativity, and sometimes hate! 

But is that really important?

We wonder often why this one or that one acts this way? Why he or she turns his/her back to us, let’s just think about their loneliness and forgive them.                                 Maybe they did not have the opportunity to find a way to express their loneliness through the channels we used.

Should we feel with our heart but act with our reason? YES, YES , YES…

Let’s try to feel with our heart, our passion, our abandon, and let’s be sure to act with our judgement, our reason AND NOT WITH OUR LONELINESS.

Unfortunately, too often most of us act with our hearts and feel with our reason, then our loneliness grows day after day!! And then, it could be too late to dominate it and we can fall in hell.

Too many people in our lives disappear because of new interests, new adventures, and sometimes new directions! Or unfortunately we are not useful any more in their development!

It is difficult to stay close to the ones who have been very present at one point, and we lose track of them... And worse, sometimes the former important ones deny us!!! And very often, we prefer not to know the reasons out of fear, or apprehension to discover the bad sides of ourselves!

It seems that we live more and more in a world and in a society where we have a tendency to ignore or to avoid the ones who are no longer immediately involved with our quest for a better life, and we become contributors to their loneliness.

So please, all of us, let’s not wait for the death of somebody close to us or important in our lives to think of him/her, to take care of her/him; they could be lonely, let’s be sure to bring some comfort in that loneliness by being there and being attentive to them and their possible needs.

  

REINVENTING OURSELVES

Yesterday I had a text message exchange with a former assistant of mine who became AN IMPORTANT personality in our business (at least in his mind).

I have to add for personal history that for the past few years, he was calling me PAPA and had been always looking for my advice, input, and guidance in his life, professional life and private life.

Anyway, in that exchange of texts, he told me that:

It was a conflict of interest for me to be a manager and a stage director, that I was pressuring people and companies for my own interest as a director and it was bothering him (I have to add that I NEVER asked him to hire me as a director, I was just asking him if he had chosen a director for a specific production).

Then, he added that I was hated in the business by many, many people, and he was very critical of all of my professional activities by saying that I was not a success in most of my endeavors.

His tone was aggressive and full of hate and I was really overwhelmed by sadness to hear him saying all this.

Where did all this came from? I know, but will not express it since as you all know I am a generous person (laughing).

It took me some time to think about this painful exchange and brought to my mind a few thoughts:

I know that some people do not like a lot of people for any number of reasons, and, most of the time, based on personal issues, personal headaches, lack of self-confidence and sometimes reputation based on rumors and invented stories… If I had lived 10% of the stories said about me, about what I did or did not do, I would be considered a giant or a legend…

 Sometimes I wish people knew more of the true stories in my life--it would be more interesting.

I know that in my long life, I am now 72 years old, I have done a lot of different things and many times things I did not necessarily want to do but I had to survive! But guess what? I am now happy I did them. They made me a man with experiences, sometimes painful experiences, painful memories, and painful background, but even with all that I am still open to new experiences even if I do not know if I can really deal with it at my age or if I have the strength to deal with the new ways.

I did not have the luck or the result of Fate to be born in a stable family in a stable country and I had to reinvent myself all my life to stay sane and to continue to want to conquer the world despite all the handicaps I had to overcome.

Did I conquer the world? NO I did not, but I went all the way to try.

And guess what? I STILL DO!                                                                      

Nobody made me change my mind, and nobody will be able to sway me from my desire to succeed, even if it did not happen and will not happen in the ways people expect.

But I am still alive and trying to be creative and all the negative feedbacks will not stop me.

Yes, I know, I have been and sometimes still am: a theater director, a theater actor and creator of a French theater company in America, a professional gambler, a university professor, a garbage collector, a writer, an opera general and artistic director, a packing person in a supermarket, a librettist for opera, a designer, an artist’s manager, an opera stage director, a lecturer, a movie and television actor etc... etc.…

I believe I did, and continue to do all this with full responsibility and full dedication, and never sacrifice one aspect for the other… I was always and still being totally honest in my actions and sometimes maybe too honest in my ideas, judgements, or opinions.

BUT ISN’T THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STAY ALIVE?

To reinvent our lives all the time in order to be creative, full of ideas, excited by the next experiences, and ready to go for new adventures and challenges?

Isn’t experimenting with new things the best way to stay alive?

To approach challenges with a new mind, a new thought, a new self?

YES, I am still a director and a designer, an actor (sometimes), a writer, AND A MANAGER!!! So what?

Where is the conflict of interest?

The interest of whom?

Of my artists in my roster? When actually I know a lot of our business from every side?

Of artistic directors of companies? When actually I know a lot of our business from every side?

All this opens the major theme...

REINVENTING OURSELVES…

We live in a time when IT IS A NEED!!!

In the generation before mine, when people were changing careers during their lifetime it was suspicious, something was wrong, something did not work…

These days are over, we have to stay open all the time to new challenges, new adventures, new possibilities. IT IS THE ONLY WAY to grow and progress and be ALIVE AND GIVE BACK WHAT WE KNOW! AND TO GIVE BACK IS TOTAL PLEASURE.

If our mind and our energy can be concentrating on a new adventure without neglecting the existing ones… why not? On the contrary, it will bring new assets and new vision.

Please keep your eyes open, your energy open, your creativity open…Your desire to grow open to new challenges!

Do not be complacent in your life when you appear to be in control of your destiny. If your dreams are fulfilled, DO NOT CLOSE THE DOOR TO REINVENTING YOURSELF, THIS HAS TO BE A PERPETUAL AIM OF LIFE!

My dear FORMER assistant, do not rest on your so called successes…soon, they will be the past, and today the past is today.

Yes, I am still a director and a manager and a million other things, SO WHAT?

Yes, I love what I do, being a director, being a manager, being a writer etc.… BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS A CHALLENGE AND I DO NOT FALL ASLEEP IN THE ARMS OF COMFORT OR BOREDOM… and I sincerely hope I will be able to find the strength to go on until my last breath, even if some hate that in the name of a so-called CONFLICT OF INTEREST!!!! And I will continue to stay open to new adventures and new challenges….

My dear former assistant, I still love you as a son, please do not fall in the trap of being successful, success is only an image to your own VISION. Keep your eyes and your entire you open to new challenges, reinvent yourself all the time and your present work will benefit tremendously, even if you believe that you have reached the top of the tree... Remember there are always bigger trees and different kind or trees…And to advance in our own quest YOU have to try to claim new trees!!!

And keep in mind: Do not fall in the trap of those who may misguide you in trying to deny the people of significance in your past, because those people deserve to be appreciated today for their so-called “achievements.”

Remember the unfortunate line: They do not want to know me now because I knew them when they were nobody!!!

Also, now that you have responsibilities and people reporting to and relying on you, do not close their minds to appreciating exciting possible experiences because you believe you know it all…. Tell them that life is perpetually a new beginning, a new adventure, a new challenge, and ignore the ones who want to put you down for reasons I do not need to express.

I wish you the best my son!!!!

BELONGING ???

I really don't get the world I am living in anymore … Is it my advanced age or the fact that everything changes every day, and it is more and more difficult not to say impossible to follow the trends and the new ways of thinking, of approaching questions or even looking at the world with sanity and innocence.

It seems that all relations and relationships have changed, Sometimes I believe that I don't know how to talk to friends, to enemies, to family, to men, to women, to professional relations, to unknown people, to a bank teller, to a vegetable seller, to singers, to concierges, to doormen, to waiters and even less to waitresses, to workers, to garbage collectors, to directors of companies, to colleagues… TO NOBODY.

I never laugh when people are laughing, I laugh sometimes and I realize that I am the only one in the room to do so, and people look at me with an air of surprise or even contempt for the strange human being with a different sense of Humor.

I was a big movie goer, have seen thousands of movies but for the past few years I have been bored with most of movies but entertained by watching the news on TV which most of the time are pathetically boring for most of us.

I have the feeling I am not in touch with most of everything and it is not because I am not American born. I am even more of a stranger to the people of my origins… BUT I ALSO REALIZE THAT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE HAVE THE SAME FEELINGS I HAVE AND DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO THINK OR WHERE THEY BELONG.

In public, in our work, even with our friends we cannot address what we really feel about this one or that one, about an aspect of life without taking the risk to be seen as a strange person in the best case or an agitator and may be mental in other cases… but we can say whatever we want in ASSBOOK (my way of saying face book), commenting on other people life, making judgments about their actions and even quoting what they could have said or actually what we believe they could have said, and all of this with self-assurance, self-congratulating attitude and total impunity.

Society has found the way to be a gossiper while earning everyone's respect!

The point of reference in life today is the phone, the real secret to knowledge is to push the right button in order to have very fast answers with no time wasted to THINK and unfortunately the search for the acquisition of feelings, knowledge, culture is ridiculed.

It is not important anymore to know about the thoughts and ideas of the past in order to formulate new ideas, the answer to ANYTHING is to push the right click.

Some people make comments and judgments about others, talk about their life and their behavior when most of the time they have never met them or have witnessed what they denounce…VERY SAD…

We cannot have strong opinions about anything, we cannot express what we are thinking but at the same time we are free to say whatever about whoever, HOW CONFUSING!!!!!!

We have to be careful about the language we use in a working situation especially if we have a person of the opposite sex in the room and then we have to behave differently and we cannot talk about some subjects. I AM LOST!!!!!

We cannot for example in a rehearsal room tell singers of the opposite sex, in order to find the right mood of the character to think about the last time they made love because it is considered as sexual harassment or a language which is full of irreverence and lack of respect...

Everywhere we go we have to sign a declaration of good behavior and the paper we sign is warning us about what to do and not to do, but nothing is really precise or really understandable. WHAT?????

We all know about people who talk about us, about our habits, our behavior, our ideas, our way of living and most of the time the talk is full of negative comments, while these people have never met us or exchange one word with us. But it is easy to peddle rumors, and judgments.

Especially if we are part of the non-sinners.

I do not know what friendship means anymore, I do not know because most of my so called friends have other interests, and it seems that friendship today means LET’S HAVE A GOOD TIME TOGETHER.

I do not see often in the so called friendship the notion of sacrifice for somebody else, and it seems that life is becoming a succession of events and a race for …WHATEVER… and we have no power over it.

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

I believed that to be good to some people deserved some recognition? After all these years navigating all over, I still did not get that to do nothing means to open the door to everything… expect nothing from anybody…do not ask anything…do not try to create anything…wait like an ass for things to happen, for the world to guide you, for other asses to tell you what to do when they finally look at you…Right? Guess what?

NO, NO… I refuse, life would be a torture and a total boredom.

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

Too many people believe that life is what it is…. I do not…

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

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

The man who is walking in the street and who believes that he is being looked at… thinks what??? I do not know what he thinks and what to think…what do people REALLY think when they look at us or when they talk to us…

Kay Castaldo, my dear friend of 34 years died after a long battle with cancer.
My dear friend Kay is dead and it makes me angry because she was one of the rare persons who was still herself, a real human being, a woman full of thoughts and compassion, always looking for the truth and incapable of being nasty or destructive…

I am angry but I am not supposed to be the child full of anger of “the shattered sky” and the sky is not shattered anymore … Fifty years have passed since my anger of the shattered sky, fifty years?

Did wisdom take me over? But does wisdom leave some bitterness on truth? My youth: you are far away now, lost in memory, lost in the fog of life, but I keep some tenderness full of surprise for you. Surprise to see that I am another person built by life and by the vision of others…

I do not want to murder the truth anymore; I want to recreate the truth like I tried to do after all the years of wandering, but is it still possible? Do I still have the power, the desire, the strength, or even the opportunity??

Do we live in a time when we can recreate our truth? Is it this still possible? Or are we now the puppets of a world which dictates who we are according to the fashions, the internet, and the PHONE.

We have to have hope, hope that all of us will find a new balance and new ways to stay human in this world, to have compassion in this race for superficial successes and quest for pleasure.

Let’s keep in mind always that some of us knew how to stay real and compassionate and giving…

                             

Good bye Kay, It was an honor to have been your friend.

BETRAYAL OR NECESSITY….

The spring went fast, very fast, may be too fast….

It has been a very busy fall and even a busier winter with many events in business and private life!

Our UIA agency is growing immensely, my work as a director is extremely active with lots of satisfaction, Mozart in the jungle adventure, The Gari Foundation honor, meeting new interesting people, the selling of my beloved house in New jersey, and so on…

It seems that nothing is slowing down and everything continues to function, to happen, to advance and all this despite having celebrated my 71 birthday on December!

I have received many emails about many of these events, commenting this or that, sometimes even congratulating me, from people I have not heard about in years or even people I don’t know at all… 

But strangely enough, people I was expecting some kind of reaction from, people I thought were friends or at least were friends at some point in this long life full of events...from them I RECEIVED NOTHING...  not a word, not a comment, not a question... SILENCE...

It reminded me of all these people with whom I was a close friend in the past, at the beginning of their career, singers, directors, conductors, administrators, who became SOMEBODY (may be only in their own mind) and suddenly stopped being in touch with me! And even in some cases, disrupting their memory and act like if I did not exist!

Is it Betrayal or Necessity?

At one point in life do we have to renounce, ignore or even deny those who helped us to make it, those who were supporting us and even in some cases created us, and go ahead in a new attempt to finding an exit to a dead-end life?

Is their presence or even their memory a reminder of the years of struggle and we just decide to erase them for self-preservation?

Do we want to ignore who we were in order to build a new image, an image of achievement?

Is that a valid necessity in order to give to the surrounding world the idea of a strong and indestructible presence?

Did I do the same thing? I sincerely hope not!
On the contrary, I think I tried to keep present in my life those who helped me, who gave to me or even who paved the way to the next chapter!

I don’t think it is only a question of gratitude, I believe it can be a great joy to keep the past alive in our life with all its successes and failures. 

Let’s not dismiss the years of struggle and sometimes failures by eliminating the witnesses of that period of life!

It cannot be or should not be a necessity, but is it a betrayal?

Betrayal????

Am I using too dramatic a term? Is it a normal way of going thru life? I sincerely hope not! It is very frustrating and sometimes even painful to see these people acting that way.

PEOPLE PLEASE MAKE THE EFFORT IN YOUR BUSY SCHEDULE TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THOSE WHO KNEW YOU WHEN YOU WERE NOTHING OR NOBODY…

LETS NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT THE ONES WHO OWE US THEIR SUCCESS, THEIR FAME, THEIR CAREER ….

I could make a list of these individuals but as you all know I am a discreet man, and a reserved soul, so I will not, they will recognize themselves and hopefully will stop acting that way (not with me, it is too late) in the next stage of their life

Trust my experience, when the time comes AND IT WILL COME, when your fame and success is no longer there anymore, you will be alone with your mirror reflecting the image of a sad and lonely soul.

You will wonder what happened! Why do I have nobody to talk to? Nobody to express my doubts, my feelings, my thoughts with!

I remember with affection, and always try to have in my life the ones who gave me my first acting role or my first theater directing in the sixties, and later the ones who gave me my first opera job, my first assignment as head of a company, I am proud to show to them that I deserved their trust…

Of course we have to grow and advance and go on to the next step and the new chapter of life, we cannot carry with us forever every one we have met and cherished. Sometimes and even often, YES we have gone beyond them, BUT LET’S NOT IGNORE THEM, they are part of who we were, who we are and who we will become.

How can we really turn the page on somebody when the time comes?

I received often some emails about every new chapter or renewed chapter I am living…

You are acting again referring to Mozart in the jungle?

You are still directing Opera, not enough of it?

Do you still enjoy being a manager? And if yes, why?

Why are you still writing? What does that bring to you?

MY ANSWER IS SIMPLE: ALL OF THIS IS OFTEN A RENEWAL OF MYSELF, THE MEMORY OF THE FRIENDS I SOMETIMES DO NOT SEE ANYMORE, AND A WAY OF THANKING THE ONES WHO HELPED ME, WHO BELIEVED IN ME.

And sometimes, coming from nowhere, I received some messages about the blog from some of the Betrayers who have not been in touch for many, many years…                                                                

You are writing a blog? And some say..."what is your problem, are you a megalomaniac, a blog?  About your ideas, your feelings, your thoughts?

What a joke, who cares? Nobody wants to know! Nothing stops you? where do you find the time to do all this? You should take care of your real job.

."If they only knew...”

The blog? should I go on with it? Did I make again enemies with that?

May be I am acting with extreme outbursts AGAIN… May be what I call the betrayers were not really friends but just business acquaintances who needed me at one point in their life.

Friends???

BUT what does friendship really mean? I hear often from people:

Bernard, you are my friend, you are like a brother, I really like to be with you and in your company…    
They give me lots of words of friendship and love and everything…
But it is never followed by a real act showing friendship!!!!

Friendship should be based on WHAT WE DO for the ones we call friends and not based on words…
I know people around me who never REALLY had acts of friendship, who always dropped the ball when action is necessary, who go the other way, but continue to call me their friend, and react like I am unreasonable when I show my disappointment!

Enough with that masquerade!!!!

So, Do I have to believe that the betrayers were not betrayers, that just they were not real friends?

How sad, how depressing to believe that we have been used by some in order for them to advance in their life! But even if that is the case, can they have some moments of gratitude or at least stop ignoring us?                                    

Can they just try to be REAL and keep some integrity towards themselves? Probably they have lost the contact with their own reality or even never had a notion of it...
Or maybe they just invented superficial ENTERTAINMENT in order to forget the obligations of life and of human conduct! Pascal was right when he wrote Les Pensees...mankind has invented entertainment in order to forget the void of the soul...                                                                                                                                    

Life goes so fast, every year the days, the months are faster and shorter.

I feel sometimes that all is passing in front of my eyes, my soul and I miss more and more the ones who were in my life, the ones I helped and the ones who helped me!
Where are they, what happen to them, where are the friends and even where are the betrayers? So many passed away or are retired or forgotten in the tunnel of life!   
                                                                     
Can we really have some kind of action or influence on the betrayers or should we ignore them? 

                                                                                                                                                                    Is it a NECESSITY to dismiss them in order to forget the BETRAYAL?

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