WHAT CAN WE DO?????

 

We are living exceedingly tough times, yes, I know, we all know it, we repeat it one hundred times a day to everybody around us…This statement has replaced the traditional words of welcome.     

What is happening in Ukraine is a constant testimony of the terrible situation the world is now in…Struggle everywhere for existence, attempts to adapt to new rules and most of the time total loss of humanity…   These days our heart is exploding with the tragedies all over the world, our heart wounded of not knowing or knowing too much, and while we plunge in the contemplation of our pains, thousands of people die every day in Ukraine…And we dare to complain…Shame on us…    

We must learn how to still function when the best is gone and when only the worst is left in a life without any obvious salvation…We must know how to keep some dignity and despite the destroying pain, we must continue the life of creativity… In front of a terribly cruel fate we must know how to hide our tears, and we should learn how to hide our disarray and hold our hate, we must know or at least learn how to keep some peace in our icing heart.     

The painful events in Ukraine stay present in my mind and in my heart all the time… And I watch the same images of destruction and mass graves all day long… Sometimes I wish I could be again twenty years old, the time when I was caressing time and playing with life, dreaming of the best and of successes in my future life.

 I was living at night without counting the days, these days disappearing at a fast speed in the adventures of each hour. I thought about so many projects, many had a great ending, and many stayed in the fog of possible dreams, but always beautiful dreams.

 I had perpetual hopes for a better life, better accomplishments, better luck in the future, and beliefs that the world sometimes can be giving or even be generous, and most of it I had big hopes for a better MOI, learning and studying as much as possible. Yes, some of these hopes were realized, and many flew with the wind in the unknown world… and very often I was still looking for them, trying to see where they went, and hoping that it could be possible to grab them in the skies, to achieve them and even own them… and since I was stubborn and did not like failures, many times I did. 

Sometimes it seems that I was twenty years old yesterday and learning about life in a million of different adventures and encounters, discovering the imaginary world and the real world, looking for the unknown and some hidden truth, and most of the time finding it, believing I could reinvent the truth… Running all over the world for years to try to understand and becoming breathless in this search, using the experiences of the recent past and denying the negative ones, just talking to myself about my ideas, my past, my future, my next anything and believing that I could criticize the entire world and everybody around me because I knew better, yes, I believed I knew better because I… I really do not know why…    

Yesterday I was twenty years old, and I used my entire time discovering the world and people who were basically so stranger to me, like the three months I spent in this temple in Nepal with Buddhists priests.  These experiences left on my face wrinkles of knowledge and the negation of possible fear of the unknown and so happy to be alive. 

Many people around me, friends and others are gone and will not come back but they left inside me affection and love, did I use my life and my young years by noticing the goods of all around me and just congeal my tears? Yes, I did, AND WE HAVE TO…I believe that with time, yes with time, wounds are just a memory from the past…                                                                                   I am talking about my youth and my lucky life and UKRAINE IS STILL BEING DESTROYED. Can the young people in the world we are living today have desires, or can they be tempted to go away for adventures, it seems that they are now paralyzed by what is happening everywhere, and totally became the preys of the internet and the social medias.

WHAT CAN WE DO???       

We should not forget the faces and the voices of our past, our heart is still beating, and life will go on, and we will continue to be…  The dreams and the successes, the hopes and some doubts and some fears, but we must continue to trust a possible giving future…Some of our dreams and attempts for creating a new world will disappear in the rain or the clouds, but they became part of who we are, and we will be able to find them inside us. With time nothing completely vanishes! And our experiences will continue to create who we are…  

Nothing really goes away… Will the people of Ukraine be wounded forever…? Probably yes, but I really hope for them that they will know how to use it in the next chapter of their life, even if these present days are making them total shadows of humanity and even if it is so heartbreaking for all of us…

All my life I used my memories, good or bad, in my work as an actor or a director, and very often I felt released, ready for the next chapter, with an appeased soul and an open mind…  Acting and directing have been my salvation and made me find great moments of peace and self-indulgence… Please all of you, use your life and your past and your joys and traumas in your interpretation of a character, or in the creativity of your profession, you will grow incredibly and find wonderful moments of total peace…

Terrible events like UKRAINE put back in your life the remembrance of tragedy and throw in our face the sadness and the guilt of human nature…

Yes, we are living terrible times, every day we hear about friends disappearing with the covid virus, or being very sick, and we tremble at the idea it could happen to us… We live in fear and in the expectation of a coming drama hitting us…                                                                            

  WHAT CAN WE DO???     

Should we learn how to be able to function almost normally when the best of time is gone, when we live in a life and a society where there are no reasons to smile…

Should we learn how to function when the only things left are the worst ending of what we believe would be a life of achievements, recognition, and love, and should we continue to contemplate new challenges even if what is left in life is strange enough that only anguish, anxiety, and tears happen…

Should we learn how to keep our dignity with all our possible strength and even if it is difficult and sometimes painful, should we continue the path we created for ourselves and try not to look back too often at the bad events and at the negative life that others have created for us with unjustified accusations.

Should we also learn how to hide our tears facing a fate disarming us, and should we be hiding our pains in front of a lost happiness.

Should we learn how to hide our sorrow under a mask and persist in a so-called right way following the aggression of others around us…

And more than anything should we learn how to hold back on the yelling of hate. Should we learn how to stay calm and in control and try to manage a dying heart and a dying mind to be with pride and assurance ready to endure, confront, and survive the next negation of our being…

WE HAVE TO …WE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE

OR  should we learn how to leave the table of life when life is not anymore and learn how not to hang on trying to have sympathy or pity or feelings from others, AND just leave with no noise and no sound… I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT AND I BEG YOU NOT TO FALL INTO THAT TRAP.

 

                                                              

 

ILLUSIONS??????

 

 

The past two years I have been helping my family driving them all around the city, we wanted to avoid public transportation and even Taxis because of the Covid Pandemic… I have been driving almost every morning to pick up my granddaughter to bring her to school and then coming home to bring Diana to her studio…And very often did the same thing in the afternoon.  Vanessa my daughter and Diana my wife gave me a sign to put in the car, the sign is

BERNIE UBER

Here is the picture…

Driving in the city is really a painful adventure, and too often a dangerous adventure… People on bicycles do not respect anything, red lights and one way street mean absolutely nothing… Delivery trucks park anywhere in the street and block the traffic, most of cars do not respect anything, cut you off, honk nonstop…Pedestrians still believe they own the street and insult you when they cross the street if you dare not to let them go first when you have a green light… The outside restaurants are using too many lanes and cars are parked all over the place. Most of the time the police do nothing, except giving tickets to cars parked too long, I already had three tickets in a month. IT IS A REAL NIGHTMARE… Bernie Uber comes home every day exhausted…                                                                                     

But unfortunately, it is as bad to walk in the street, drunk people all over, crimes, assaults with firearms, fires everywhere, and even homeless assassinated while they sleep because they are Homeless.                                                                       

 

SYMBOLS OF A NEW WAY OF LIVING?????

 

The past few blogs or even most of the blogs have been pessimistic, sad, some people say depressed or depressing, negative, and often dark.                                                                                                                                            I must remember my origin and also being a so-called artist, so it is a normal way of behaving, thinking, and telling the world about the world.    The reality is that I am not suicidal, depressed, depressing, or even dark…I still have illusions about everything and even everybody.

Illusions…?????     YES…

Illusions… Illusions of friendship… Illusions of knowledge… Illusions of career… Illusions of love… Illusions of talent…Illusions of truth…Illusions of life…. Illusions of…of…of…

The official definition of Illusion: A thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses.  Synonyms:  Hallucination, Apparition, Mirage, Figment of the imagination, Trick of the light                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I had many illusions during my long life; did I make some become reality? No doubt about it. I manage to have many illusions becoming reality.

But these days, it is increasingly difficult for me to try to understand the world we are living, it seems that we deal with new tragedies daily… After Covid, we are now living the tragedy of Ukraine, and it seems that more tragedies will be on their ways very soon… 

Ukraine is becoming the symbol of the nonsense of the world, of the loss of dignified human behavior...                                            

 

The reality is that, like I said in other posts, we are at the end of a culture, the end of known human relations, and it is extremely difficult for everybody to adapt to the new rules, the new ways of functioning, the new ways of thinking… We are in the turning point of a huge change of our way of living and our known times, and of course while it is difficult for the young people to adapt fast and every day to the new needs and rules, it is IMPOSSIBLE for the older generation to be part of the new life… In the arts, all is changed, all is according to new values…                                                                                                           Only artists like Van Gogh or Cezanne could find a balance in today’s life because their art was the result of being totally introverted.                                                                                     Are some people happy? Is it possible to find an exit or at least an answer to the new ways? What is today the meaning of having a life? But not having one is even worse, I simply do not know what that means, I do not hate life or despise it, I do not know anymore what it is, anymore? Maybe I never knew but I never asked.

 

Fifty years have passed since my attempt to open my mind. Fifty years? Wisdom tried to 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 so many people like snow because snow covers the bitterness of the truth?

 

My youth you are far away now, lost in the inconsistent memories, the memory of the lost senses, but I keep for you an affection full of stupefaction... The stupefaction to see that you are not anymore, that you are one built by life, shaped by the look of others.

You too my youth, you 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 are you now in the impossibility to be back because of the new rules, the new ways of understanding the world and the new human relations. My youth will you also be destroyed by the new ways?

 

I should walk in a forest looking for a path which will bring me to a field of poppies, so red that they will look like a bleeding bull after a corrida and decide that I want to be the next torero who believes he is Rudolf Valentino... And maybe I will find the truth about being ... me. I often dream about fields of red poppies, may be because I have never seen one...

Or I should think about my father who was a much simpler man, and who died at 59 after a life of aggravation and thank my destiny about what I have and stop these attacks of belly button contemplation.

 

But the sky has changed sky... I look at my youth and I see myself...l am not anymore that child full of rage...l do not want any more to murder truth, I want only to look at a possible truth.

Truth? Truth of what? Of the creation of imagination? Of the unfinished fantasies? Does truth even exist today? Truth based on what?

Too often illusions can be denied by others…For example me too I often denied the illusions of people…According to too many people, everything around us is like we are supposed to be dead…The world around us does not want us to think, to create, even to exist…

We should be sitting on an armchair at home and look thru the window at the emptiness around us and accept the non-sense of the new ways of behaving. We should look at the non-meaning of life, we should look at what does not exist anymore to justify the existence of the new creators of the new ways and their ambition to be…

 

But my country is a great country and I still have illusions… I just must hope that the new world invading us will have enough to give to the new generation, and most people will find ways to have a balance in their life… I hope they will find new truths which are escaping me now…After all the human race went many times in thousands of years of existence through drastic changes and most of the time found possibilities to continue to function, continue to love, continue to create, continue to be.

Yes, illusions sometimes are NOT ;

Hallucination, Apparition, Mirage, Figment of the imagination, Trick of the light 

It will be your duty young people to make it possible, to make illusions real and full of discoveries and peace of mind found again...I believe in you, I know you will do it and be successful, I will observe you from the other world...

AND SMILE AT YOU 

 

 

WHAT A WONDERFUL NEW WORLD…???????

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

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

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

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

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

All this bla bla bla was valid until recently…  

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

Are we witnessing the end of a civilization, and living a chapter in human history which will change forever human society and human relations?  We really do not know how to talk to others, always afraid of saying inappropriate things. We do not dare to engage in discussions about anything, afraid to be accused of something. I am always in terror when I walk in the street and I see families sitting at restaurants, everyone looking at his phone and ignoring the others... They are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it.

 

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

 I have so many friends who wanted, craved all their life to be artists, performers. Many still do, even if I have fewer friends now than when I was younger... It seems that people in general stay away from aging people for many varied reasons: feeling that they have nothing in common, belief that older people do not connect with today needs, uncontrollable disdain of knowledge based on experience, or pure fear of the unknown since difference of age creates the unknown.  In any case, I am thinking of my friends or my possible friends, or even the young people who want to be artists, performers, and singers.                                                                                            Where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection? Or at least OUR attempt for perfection. A world for immediate retribution has ungloved us, we are not anymore what we can be but what we believe we deserve to be.                                                                                                              

 What to think? What to do? Where is the truth? I know every generation has problems; I know that every generation is asking for something different while the older one wants to preserve their own acquisition.

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

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

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

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

What a wonderful world it would be…                                       

 

MEKTOUB…

Today I am up at 4 15 AM.                                                              Mary met Joseph a day like every other day… another day supposed to bring nothing special. I look around and I see only people submerged by the decease of our time : absence of happiness… Happiness seems to be part of an old fairy tale…Was it like that 20 years ago and I was not aware of it? I am overwhelmed by the feeling that all around me, there is only stress and distress , attempts to be, search for a possible truth .

Mary met Joseph a day not like every day… A day when Joseph wanted to be another himself and Mary wanted to meet the Mary who was hiding herself under the blankets of society, the smokes of appearance .

It seems that everybody is looking for a refuge in the easiest artifices, the masks of a disguised truth and then falls again in the hallways of despair, the sewers of distress,  and despite all this I see as always the need to be recognized and accepted.            

 I look at all my stuff, my books, my trinkets, my statues, my masks, my dolls. Did I spend most of my life working like a demented person just to buy more of that crap ?   I look at all my awards , Oscars, prizes, award plaques, and I smile in front of the silliness of it…                                                                                                       

The shattered sky becomes more shattered every day.                                                                                                                               

I received the following email from a friend living in Europe, I will keep it unknown since I am so discreet, as you know….

“Already distressful news about my world.. I just came back from the local (office)branch. On the way there I had to pull over like ten times to let the ambulances pass. It is unbelievable....Only one doorman and an assistant were there. The others are sick or in isolation as contacts of other sick people. Euffff. The assistant was having a ''to do list'' of a few feet in length. It is crystal clear that he won't manage anything in due time………………..... At 4 pm, when I got back to the city, the main DHL office was already closed. There are several others in the neighborhoods, but I checked on google and all get closed now at 4 pm. The severe mandates start taking effect on Monday, but they do not apply to ''boostered'' people, so I am a free person in a dying country (how horrible this sounds!). …….Here  the situation is desperate, my students, who go to hospitals for other courses and practical activities, are in depression and tell me that it is literally a warzone there. Even the mortuaries are full and dead bodies lie outside in black bags. 99% unvaccinated. The President finally realized the outcome of the politics ''we set up vaccination centers even in McDonald's and McDrive, next it's up to you'' and yesterday appointed as prime-minister a general (military) who successfully commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the situation will be handled like in the army and a population that in the last 6 months protested, rioted and distributed unimpeded crazy ideas will suddenly face army-like mandates and punishments. From an extreme to another, but currently there is no other way.” 

Unfortunately, the situation is not much better in New York city. It is now 6 am...After a painful night , awakened so many times by the sirens of the police, the ambulances, and by the screaming of the people in the streets, I get up and I look out the window,  It is dark out and only a few homeless in the street...                      

 I live near Columbus circle, supposedly a great neighborhood, street construction is the beautiful view I have...                            

More construction everywhere every day.                                    

All streets in New York look the same, a non-answer to the 

anguish and the fear...

We are submerged with non-collected garbage, in every 

corner of every street  workers are digging huge holes 

probably checking and replacing rusty pipes (symbol of our 

soul), it is even difficult to drive on these roads which are not 

tarred or asphalted; to follow the covid restrictions, restaurants 

are invading the streets, cars and delivery trucks double parked 

all over, bicycles going like crazy with no respect at all for red 

lights, for one way street, for NOTHING….                              

Most of people walking looking at their phone ,  scaffoldings in 

front of each building , and huge cranes blocking the traffic…

To drive in the city is going to war and It is even dangerous to 

walk out during the day, since we have to keep an eye all the 

time at who is approaching us, who looks strange, who looks 

like a possible aggressor…

…..  

                                                                                                         My head is spinning with disgust, my stomach is full of strange 

ideas. Again memories and millions of images are assaulting me.                                                   

            

 Je pars A la recherche du temps perdu   …. ( Title of a beautiful 

book by Marcel Proust)

 I am floating in an ocean  … This morning the ocean is 

incredibly ideal, ideal temperature, no waves, no seeds, No 

JELLYFISH...and NOBODY around! Che Pace!!!!  0r may be 

because it is very early in the morning and everybody continues 

to be asleep , missing some moments of life.... I walk in the water, 

I swim, I float, and I dream... And I think and I remember...all 

the oceans and seas I have plunged my body at one time young 

and strong.

The Mediterranean sea in Carthage near Tunis, the ocean in Martinique, the sea in Madagascar, The red sea and the Caspian sea and the Caribbean sea or the beaches of Dar Es Salaam or South Africa or Sweden or ten others… One day , I will write about my travels in Africa, in Asia ( Especially in Nepal and Afghanistan),  in Europe.

 And I think about my achievements to ignore the incredibly challenging times we are all living.                                                                                                                                                       Achievements? Did I really achieve anything? 

What does achievement really mean? Is it to be recognized for what we have done? What is the purpose of all this? Sometimes we know how to make important what really is not!!!! ... It seems every day that the world is being controlled by non-capable people, every day we hear about the nomination of somebody with no experience in a position of knowledge and responsibilities …What have we done? Where are the dreams we had 20, 30 years ago of an equal society? Everybody is  just struggling for more power, more influence, more justification of his own wellbeing . Another person has been chosen to be in charge of a very important business…Somebody with so much personal ambition that he reminds me the careerist, the social climber, the go-getter of the Bourgeois class in the 19 century Paris, he acts like he is from a Balzac novel.......Revolting...

Convince people that we know what we are talking about...some of us have the great talent to become a reference to their own truth...They don’t know more than anybody but they are succeeding in making believe that they KNOW...They talk well, they are full of self-importance, they pontificate about the most banal things, they make the obvious become a vision, and since we live in a culture with no culture, many are looking for their opinion., but people have no shame? The most surprising 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 do not know shame, some are just afraid to be caught, exposed, or shown, so we are ashamed....It makes me laugh or grin...   

It is now 8 am.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         It is raining...I am 77 years old and I am wondering why, why 

what? I do not even know…I never needed recognition, so why? 

Why?    Really ? I never needed recognition? Is that true  ?   Or 

am I dreaming again of being special???   Or maybe it is my 

French accent??? Ah ah ah…                                                                                                                                                    I miss the theater,  am I addicted to the theater? The smell of 

the theater, the darkness, the ghosts, the silent laughs and cries, 

the only place where we all can be ourselves, protected by the 

anonymity, the character, the disguise...Live an entire destiny in 

a few hours, go thru many, many lives with the words of 

another...                                                                                                                                                                    

We have an expression in my family “ MEKTOUB” meaning 

“IT WAS WRITTEN”.                                                                       

Should we accept MEKTOUB or fight it ?  Fight it by finding 

new ways, new thoughts, and adapt to new realities… Yes, life 

goes on and still will give us great joys, great achievements, and 

beautiful memories, 

SO LETS GO ON, I DO NOT ACCEPT 

                           MEKTOUB

 

 NEW BEGINNINGS…

 

As you know, for the past 3 years I have been trying to go back to my youth in order to renew with my passion …ACTING…Becoming somebody else, finding the reality in the character, making research about the period, the family history, etc.…

I had a few interesting experiences, appearing in TV series and Netflix movies…Always small supporting roles or even appearances, nothing really overwhelming, but I have been acting…   

With JOY!...                                                                                                                                                

But the best was around the corner, the past few months I became the first choice for many companies, commercials, TV series for a very specific role… I am now very much in demand for a role I was not expecting to do in my life… 

In the sixties and the seventies, I was cast as a lead and most of the time, I was a young adventurer, or a young lover, or a successful whatever…. So, I was   not expecting to be… Try to guess… 

Here is the description:                                                                                                                              I am an old man, in a nursing home or a retirement community, or an assisted living…. I have Dementia or Alzheimer’s, I cannot really talk freely, cannot remember anything, I am lost in a foggy world, I walk with difficulty and only with the help of a nurse or a walker…                             Most of the time sitting on a wheelchair, or in bed …Dressed in Pyjamas or in a nightdress, I am asked to smile a lot, since the nursing home is treating me so well, and also, I have to be thankful to my helpers……

Most of the time, the dialogue is limited, I am just uttering a few words, and smiling or making faces… Most of the time, the director does not ask anything specific, and I heard many times from many of them: DO NOT ACT, BE YOURSELF … YOU ARE PERFECT FOR THIS ROLE…

You are laughing!!!   STOP LAUGHING!!!! Stop….

 I always felt very sorry for the older people with this fate in their life, and now I feel even sadder to portray them, I can understand even better what they are going through.

So, in a way I am back at the time when I was studying acting with Jean Louis Barrault and Tania Balachova. The method acting, the Stanislavski way…DO NOT ACT…USE WHO YOU ARE… I have been trained to play roles from Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Moliere…And now, I can use all this knowledge by staying myself in total integrity,  being an old man in a nursing home with Dementia or Alzheimer’s… TO BE MYSELF….

Here is an example of a scene:

It is 8 am, and I am in my room sitting on my wheelchair, waiting for the nurse to come and talk to me… She enters…

-Good morning! How are you today?

- ?????? (I do not answer, I just smile)

-Hello, did you sleep well?

-What???

- Did you sleep well?

-Eh?

-Are you ready to take you pills?

-My pills?

-Yes, your pills.

-Ah, ah, ah, you are funny, my father was taking pills all the time, but you know, I do not. I want to thank you to come to see me. You kkkkk…nnnn..owwww, a long time ago, I was capable of doing many things, even to take pills, not anymore, now I need you Ms.…?  what is your name? I cannot remember…

- Julia.

-Oh yes, of course, thank you so much, thank you Lydia…. For visiting me…

ETC…ETC… AND STOP LAUGHING IT IS NOT FUNNY…                                                                                     

After a few minutes of silence, while Julia is preparing my potion, I have to say:

-Andrea play some music, some Beethoven. 

Silence

-Andrea, play for me… 

Silence

-Lydia, Andrea is not responding. 

 -Do you mean Alexa?                                                                                                                                

 -Oh yes, Alex, play some music, some Schubert.

 

The nurse gives me pills and I continue to be in another world.  Once I started to improvise some text and the director said nothing, he let me go, and then after a few minutes, he said:

-Wonderful, you see when you do not act and you are yourself, you are perfect…

This morning while I was writing this, I received another offer to be again a patient with Dementia who now has cancer… I am progressing, it is becoming more intricate…

I knew I will reach this level with age; I knew I will be recognized as a famous actor…  Here it is, being myself in a nursing home, the role of my life...

I remember in the sixties, I was performing In a Theater in Paris…The play was by Alfred de Musset, the title is LES CAPRICES DE MARIANNE…. Two main male characters, Octave and Celio...I was sharing the dressing room with the other actor, I was Octave, he was Celio…

One evening before the performance, somebody knocked at the door of our dressing room, and we opened the door. It was the director of the company.

-Be good tonight, Jean Louis Barrault is in the audience.

-Oh God, really?

-Yes… Be good…

Barrault was the number one theater man in France, considered as a genius actor and Director and having a school for young actors… My colleague and I went crazy, screaming joy and fear…Yes. we will be great tonight… And we went on stage…

At the end of the performance, we are back in the dressing room, trembling of expectations, hoping that Barrault liked us…

Knock at the door, we open, Barrault is in front of us, a very short man, and very skinny and very withered…We almost fell on our knees in front of the genius who came to see us... but his voice stopped us…

-Boys, you did an excellent job, I can see that both of you worked a lot on your role, it was well done, congratulations but I have to add that one of you has a lot of talent… And he left without a goodbye, without a word...  I was in chock, not knowing what to say, my colleague started to laugh and laugh and laugh...

 He said:

-That was funny, don’t you think?

-I do not think it was funny at all…

The next 30 days, twenty-four performances, he continued to laugh each night talking about Barrault, and each night I was furious screaming my anger…. Life can be strange, the name of my colleague was Gerard Depard…, I am sure you know him...

But I have to add that 3 months later, Barrault hired me to be his assistant on a new play.

Now, I am back to acting, and according to the directors I am working with, not acting but being myself, an old man with Dementia or Alzheimer’s in a nursing home…VIVE LA DIFFERENCE    

One more thing, I am increasingly challenged by the world we are living in. I do not think it is funny, but it seems that the least we know, the best chances we have to advance in the latter of life especially if we are capable of using all the new ways of being a social climber… I sincerely hope that  the next generation will go back to what is for me the only way to grow: Learn from the great creators of the past, and be hungry for knowledge, maybe I am just dreaming or living In a past which does not mean anything anymore… sometimes I have hope that the next generation will follow that way…And I have dreams when I see my granddaughter, Sophia, who is 2 years old and 5 months sitting on the floor, turning the pages of a book…The book being  BIRTH OF THE TRAGEDY by Nietzsche…I am adding a picture of her in this blog with the  book..  New beginnings????

Ok, time to go back to concentrate on how to be myself for my next apparition as an old man with dementia in a nursing home.

PS I received now everyday spam like this one

[uzan]
Why This Mad Scientist Is Being Sued By Big Pharma For Revoking Alzheimer

 

CORAGGIO…COURAGE…

Three of my dear friends are suffering from Cancer and are in a hospital for radiation and chemo…Many, too many died in the past few years… Every day we learn about a friend, an acquaintance being very sick or even sometimes who passed away, not only because of covid, but many other reasons…I believe that the stress we have been living for the past 2 years is one of the reasons of this hecatomb…

And now with the Variant we are back to step one of the tragedies… and we are again trembling of fear.

Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer, and had to go through radiation… I was victorious of my cancer, and I want my friends to know they will  be victorious too.                                                                                                                                              

MY FRIENDS I KNOW YOU WELL, I KNOW YOU ARE STRONG AND CONFIDENT, SO just stay YOURSELF and think about the next chapter of your life…Every day will be a challenge, but you are not alone, and we are all thinking of you and sending you all we have and all we can. I know that loving people around you are giving you the full support you need, but please know that we too are here for you.

Of course, it is not easy to go through that kind of challenge and I have painful memories about my struggle with cancer… I wrote about it a long time ago and here are some excerpts about that experience.

 I gave the title Memories of the house of the living to my experience fighting cancer:     

“I am lying down for my first radiation. Incapable or more exactly told not to move a little finger or even one hair on my head. They put me in a box, no it is not a box, they call it a BODY MOLD... my legs and my arms are blocked, my back is blocked, my head is blocked, even my mind seems to be blocked... I feel what a mummy in a sarcophagus must be feeling. The hospital prepared this MOLD for me, taking all my measurements, they wanted it to be perfect and be sure I will feel comfortable during the radiations, Ah! Ah! Ah!

 I chose for the BODY MOLD the color blue, the color of hope...hope????!!!!!... Ah! Ah! Ah! I really had a sense of humor. Ah! Ah! Ah! But now in my mold, I cannot laugh, it could be dangerous, we never know!!!                                                                                                

………………………………………                                                                                                                                                      

I lost the notion of time, I have no idea how long I have been in this box, no sorry this BODY MOLD... Ten minutes, twenty? Thirty? No idea... I am just looking at the ceiling trying to see a smile, but nothing. Then suddenly a machine comes above me and turn and turn, it is a robot, nobody else is in the room... Robert-this is the name I gave to the robot- is dancing around me, the radiation is starting, it is called cyber knife, to destroy my cancer. I am in the mold waiting for ...not even Godot… Godot disappeared from my life a long time ago… I am not waiting for him anymore; I am in my mold, and I have no idea of passing time... 

I let a flood of images conquer me. I can still see myself, back from the urologic center, alive and pissing blood like the fountain di Trevi visited by Dracula after a big meal of raw meat.             

Besides all this, I feel great, like a poppy rocked by a light "brise" in the spring fields of the mountains of Sarajevo. I put inside my underpants a white virginal towel acting like a diaper, and I know now what it will be to be incontinent, impotent, senile, and gaga soon.

 I go back for the radiation every day for a week, and I have the great opportunity to think again about life, about future, and about youth. Oh, my youth where are you?

Yes…Only yesterday, I was twenty years old, I played with life taking risks and fighting fate, I was living at night without thinking about the time disappearing in the sunrise. I ran and ran and became breathless by ignoring the past and believing only in the future. I wasted time believing I could stop it in my favor …. I had so many hopes and I had thousands of aspirations which were never completed, and now in my mold I have the feeling that I am lost not knowing where to go, my eyes looking at the robot turning on me… And I thought I loved horror movies. Too many friends are gone and will not be back and I feel guilty not to have done enough for them, and sometimes to have been negative to their dreams.

Did I spoil my young years throwing away real possibilities. I thought my opinion about everything was the best and I could criticize the entire world with despise. I finally was left with really nothing except to be able to pontificate about all my travels in the world, and also a few wrinkles on my face and the fear of being bored.  WHERE ARE MY BEST YEARS???  “  

That was some lines I wrote about my cancer a long time ago…. Ten years…                      

And now I want my friends to feel safe and not to feel alone. I was in a mold, like my friends must be in bed in the hospital with all kinds of transfusions and so many images in their head, but I came out of the mold and kill my cancer like I did with so many lions in my life…And I expect my friends to do the same, and I know they will and later we will talk about it as an experience of survival….Yes, time has passed, and life went on, and the cancer became just a memory of bad times buried in many others… In my present state of mind there is not too much to look at, very little to discover. But a voice seems to whisper to me: go on, do not renounce… The same voice I heard all my life in the difficult moments, the voice of eternity, the voice of courage, the voice of hope we have to continue to cherish. The voice whispers: You will vanquish… You will, I promise…A voice? Is it a human voice?                                                                                                   

 La voix humaine??!!!!

Do we use our voice the way we should? Should we eliminate from our voice the hard and insulting words for others, and use our voice only to carry happiness and joy? And what will happen to thoughts, can we carry bad words with thought only? 

La Voix humaine??!!!! Is there a voice which is not human??? What the hell were they thinking about when they wrote this title? When I do not know anymore what I am writing, maybe I should use my voice first and then write words in order to avoid nonsense.

I am always saying that we must reinvent life in order to survive and try to have moments of happiness or joy, before old age takes over and fatal decease invades us, and we have to try not to become bitter and stay open to the other’s needs. Death and love together what a mixture! Death and love together!!! Is there Nothing else? For too many people, still so many questions about the meaning of…

Yes unfortunately, it seems that the more we go, the least we know... It is like going thru a tunnel, and we have no idea anymore where the tunnel will bring us.  Too many of us live in an irrelevant world and do not really know what they want… But when we are confronted to a possible ending of our life, we must find the strength to be, we must find the energy to go on, we must find the desire to share life.

So, my dear friends going through this terrible time of fighting cancer,  listen to the "voice"
and the voices of optimism and courage, in your sleeps or your semi-conscience sometimes, stay open to your next adventure, your next success, your next triumph, I need you, we need you, and you will be with us forever. Yes, you will reinvent life in order to give us more joy, I am waiting with almost impatience for the new you, the new you full of life.

CORAGGIO…COURAGE…