CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (S)…

 

There is no end in the difficulties of our time… Yes, punishments continue to invade us: The covid virus is still around, and even worse than a few months ago, every day I learned that somebody I know is sick; wars all over and Ukraine being destroyed; with the climate change the weather is worse in the entire world; the monkeypox disease is starting to be a real danger; the economy is a mess and we have more and more people starving; the cities are terribly dangerous with shootings every day.... and despite that incredible painful situation, too many people continue to behave like the world belongs to them and the rules to guide the society should be their rules. HOW STRANGE IS THAT?

It is time to read again Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky? I remember his book with passion, I went back to it and found quotes I believe are adequate for our times…Here are some:

 

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”                                                                                                                                                  “Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”                                     “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”                                                                                                                “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”                                                                                                                         “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”
“The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?”

Are we punished for OUR CRIME(S)?

Every day I am astonished and very often in shock hearing about the new ways of functioning of our society…. I mentioned many times in this blog the incredible changes of our world and how difficult it is for all of us to adapt to it…

But nothing has changed and even worse it is prevalent… I hear all the times about students complaining to the dean about their teachers because they are not supported enough, and their ARTISTRY is not recognized and actually is defeated… Or about other ARTISTS beginners not understanding why they are not cast in big companies like the Metropolitan Opera when they have such a great talent…But it is not only in the Artistic world, it is in every aspect of life and society, too many people really do not know their jobs and do not try to learn more, they prefer to be on Instagram or…or…and are convinced they KNOW AND DESERVE MORE….

 

PUNISHMENTS???

…. I READ RECENTLY THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE

“The founder of Dubai Sheikh Rashid was asked in an interview about the future of his country, and he replied: My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son will ride a land rover, my grandson will ride a land rover, but my great grandson will have to ride a camel again.

When asked why, his response was hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create difficult times, many will not understand it but we need to create warriors, not parasites, add to the historical reality that all great empires, the Persians, the Trojans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians and later the British all rose and perish within 240 years. They were not conquered by external enemies, they were rotten and destroyed from within. America has reached that 240 years mark and it is starting to become visible and accelerating. We are past the Mercedes and Land rover years, the camels are now on the horizon, the greatest generation consisted of 18 years old kids that stormed the beaches of Normandy and now two generations later some kids, some 18 years old want to hide in a safe room when words hurt their feelings, they want free stuff from the government because they think they are entitled to it. The camels are on the horizon for sure…”                                                

History has a funny way of repeating itself.

Everything is owed to everybody, everybody deserves everything, everybody should have everything…

CRIMES???     We are punished… WHY????                                                                                                                                                       Are we only functioning guided and directed by the Moi buried in our subconscious? And ignoring all the rules and all the lessons of previous generations? The MOI? What is it really?

Example of the MOI in the subconscious…In French theater, to attract public attention before a rising curtain, knocks are hit on the floor by a wooden pole on the backstage and then three loud knocks just before the start of a performance. Since lights were candles that was the way to tell the audience that the performance was starting... It was a tradition and still happen in some theaters today.                                                                                                               Puccini in LA BOHEME, at the beginning of Musetta Aria illustrates this tradition of LES TROIS COUPS (THE THREE KNOCKS) … Did he do it on purpose as a wink to the French theater tradition and to show that Musetta will act a role in a theater scene?? Or had he acquired this knowledge, digested it and it came out without even thinking of it? Did his subconscious work for him? Did the hidden MOI function for this?                                                                                                                                    PROBABLY YES.                                                                                                                                                                                  

The surrealists developed this idea with what they called “ECRITURE AUTOMATIQUE”                                                                                                          “Automatic writing deflects the unconscious thought. It is the imprudence of vocabulary in order to finally release the unconscious expression through writing”

Can we function obeying only our desires, our beliefs, and our culture? Unfortunately, our culture now is fake and false and based on NOTHING…

I think sometimes about the past, even a relatively recent past… Yes, it was possible then to continue to be , to continue to think, to continue to feel, to continue to give to others…I remember 11 years ago a singer sent me the following email about her opening as Mimi in a production:

Dear Bernard,                                                                                                                                          As promised, I send you an email. It was a wonderful evening, but I still cannot sleep because I burned myself emotionally.                                         This role is very special for me and takes enormous power from my soul. I cannot just "play" it, I have to live it on stage as my own life. And this is sometimes goes so far and deep that it is very hard to come back. Thank you for wonderful performance I am allowed to play here. I am so grateful that Mimi is Mimi here and she is alive, real girl, not just a figure or personage from the book or opera.                                                                                       And when I hear orchestra, playing so strong and somehow pitiless I feel like the music tells me how small and helpless we are in confront of destiny. the music is like a natural disaster, an immense power which tell us our future...

Death and love together... what a mixture!

So I hope to find myself again for Friday, I need to be in "Sola soletta" mood at least in the act one;))

Thank you for your attention, you promised me to answer...!                                                                                                                                                                      Good night and have a nice dream!

Yours,

………..

AND I ANSWER HER:

“This is the only good reason to be in theater, to live again and again incredible strong moments, to purge our soul, our body, our mind, our fears of great and deeply buried emotions.

I love rehearsals because for me that is the moment to achieve all this thru my actors... Yes, it takes time to become again ourselves, but we never completely do, because ourselves in every experience change, have an evolution... It is frightening sometimes to know that we will wake up different, how can we deal with the routine of the day, the demands of the ones who believe we are the same person that the day before?

Life goes so fast, so many experiences, so many great moments, so many pains and joys, so many wonderful encounters... And for some people, so many questions about the meaning of What we do...

I love the theater because it is almost the only time where we can be ourselves with no shame, no barriers, no calculation no selfish intentions.                                                                                                                                 You will find yourself for Friday and you will be again the wonderful human Mimi you are because You are a wonderful person ... Each character you will perform will be richer and richer because you will carry with you forever what Mimi is giving you.                                                                                                      

Death and love together!!! Is there anything else?

I send you thru your sleep all the strength possible

Bernard”

Unfortunately it seems that these days are gone .                                                   Yes, I sincerely hope that we could find ways to go back to the times when we were  searching for our soul and our strength and have again the desire to give back to people around us what they really need, and then Crime and Punishment will become only a book, the masterpiece of Dostoevsky and not a possible life.                                             

 

 

 WHO AM I?

We are in 2022 and I realized that I have been in this country fifty years, half a century! Time sometimes goes too fast!!!... I arrived at Middlebury Summer School in Vermont in 1971, to teach French literature and Theater...Me a teacher??? Ah! Ah! Ah!...I was 27 years old, and have been in Paris as an actor, a student, for 10 years... But let us remember from the beginning...

1944 Born in Tunis, from a Tunisian Jewish family, and raised in the French culture, speaking only French (some Italian) and a few words of Arabic and believing that life will be the same forever, easy and with no surprises. 16 years of an incredible and strange life, between the French and the Tunisians, not really belonging anywhere, being a question mark in the country of my birth... At that time it was an easy life for most of the Tunisian Jews but it happened...Tunisia became an independent country, the olive oil factories of my father disappeared, and the family lost everything, and as Jews we were living in constant danger...So we had to go...I did not realize at that time that very soon the entire way of living will change, and I will have to learn new rules, and all of us will have to behave differently.                                                                                                                          Yes, we had to leave Tunisia and arrived in France practically as refugees in 1960-61... Will I be able to learn other ways? Will I be able to still smile when the best of times is gone? What will be waiting for me in this new country France? I had been living in Tunisia for 16 years and now being in France was a huge question mark...                                                                                                              Sometimes I would love to be born again knowing what I know now... THE DREAM OF FAUST... I am thinking about all I have lost fighting for useless dreams or stupid adventures... Why nobody brings to the young Faust the knowledge of the old Faust?  

1960 was my first year in France, I was accepted in a school in Montpellier, I was sleeping in a dorm with real French people, and I wanted to adapt to this new reality of life as fast as possible...I was in the fog of knowledge, in the waiting room of thoughts, in the vestibule of trying to be wise. I tried to learn how to be a real French teenager, I tried to survive, spending most of my time reading and studying, really not involved in the everyday life of the others since I did not really understand their ways of thinking and I did not have a penny to participate in their happy activities... And to be realistic, everybody thought and was acting like I was from another planet...Imagine a Jewish boy from Tunisia thrown among provincial French teenagers...Most of the time I was called RABBI.

A year later I arrived in Paris...I had to learn how to smile when the only things left were the worst ending of what I believed could have been a life of achievements, recognition and love. But I promised to myself that I will contemplate new challenges even if what was left in my life was only anguish, anxiety and tears... I had to learn how to keep some dignity with all my strength. I tried not to look at the adverse events and at the difficult and painful life that history had created.

I spent 10 years in Paris, going to university and travelling all over the world hitchhiking and working in all different places as a waiter, a door attendant, or a potatoes seller, whatever was given to me. I started to be an actor, in theater and in movies, and was spending my life reading most of the time a book a day... It is incredible to think that in my entire life I spent only 10 years in France, and even if I have accumulated so much knowledge about the French culture and the French ways, I continue to ask myself...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 WHO AM I ? AM I FRENCH? AM I TUNISIAN? AM I AMERICAN?  

 In Paris, I had so many dreams, so many hopes, I will be the next Marlon Brando, the next Dustin Hoffman, the next... But with the death of my brother at the age of 25 in a car accident and a few months later the death of my father, all went away...The dreams of success, the dreams of hopes, and the trusts... The dreams disappeared in the rain and the clouds, I had to confront the reality of not knowing who I was in an unknown country... I had another dream: To be the one that everybody loves and actually I was only an appearance since I had to compose a personality to find myself .                                                                                  

WHO WAS I?

Amazingly fast I felt like a tired animal and was looking for a possible icy bed... I was often wondering why life had betrayed me and lost me in Shattered Skies... I tried not to be lost, I had to hope, to dream that I was loved by some, and protected by others; dreams are only a hidden reality, the reality of the unreal...

And suddenly the opportunity of AMERICA...

1971/1972... After 10 years in France, the world opened again for me...USA...

Now 50 years of fantastic life, the beginning was difficult, and later difficult again many times, but that is life, NO?

In 1988 I had accepted a position for the Montreal Opera. I did not move there but for 13 years I spent many months a year there, it was another challenge, after Tunis, Paris, New York now Montreal... Many people in my profession believed, many still do, that I am Canadian. Tunisian , French, American, Canadian...While I was in Montreal I read in a paper talking about me: "Why do we need a French Jew at the head of the Montreal Opera?" This person forgot or did not know that France had been only an episode of my life...But reading this I wrote:

“I am sitting in my hotel room like I have been doing the past 30 years, wondering why and how, thinking that finally it will be over, and I be awaking from a nightmare and have a different life. And be smiling and happy, and do things I like to do... What are they? I lost touch with what I really like, I am going thru a tunnel for so long that I have no idea anymore about what I like, what I need, what I want... I have no idea of how to treat people around me, I have no idea of what they really think of me, I have no idea anymore of who I am, where I go, what I want, what is tomorrow or yesterday. I am not depressed just uncertain of   the meaning of all this.

Are other people really happy? What is the meaning of having a life? 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? No, I think I never knew but I never asked.

I look around and some days I behave exactly as they want me to be and some days what nobody wants me to be... I wander in space looking for an island of truth and find the void and wonder about the next wandering.

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 maybe 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.” 

And now, retired from my profession after the accusations three years ago, accusations destroying my life and my entity, I am revisiting this strange existence and found it interesting...Tunisian, French, American, Canadian...

WHAT AM I ???

We are now living exceedingly difficult times, I already talked about it in other blogs. Recently I was looking at old manuscripts I wrote during my life:

 Came to my attention two lectures I gave in the mid-seventies in universities of the country while I was performing with my theater company “French theater in America.” Reading it after 50 years was a strange experience since it seemed that nothing has changed while I believed everything had changed… The first one was called “Decadence of Occidental Theater” and the one was called “Grandeur and Misery of the Actor”

Here is an excerpt:                                                                                                                                                   “I gave the title “Decadence of Occidental Theater” to my lecture; I should have called it “Death of art in Occident” because we are talking about a death, a murder, a condemnation to death, and an "autodafe".     We have never talked so much in the western world about civilization and culture when actually it is life that is leaving us. The sign of our time is confusion, a break between life and the words to describe life and we have pushed the absurd to the point where we create ideas from acts instead of trying to identify our acts to our thoughts. All our ideas about life have to be rethought since nothing anymore is a consequence of life, everything functions like if we had on one side Culture and on the other side Life.”                            

YES, I WROTE THIS IN THE SEVENTIES…HOW STRANGE….do we feel and think the same way now than 50 years ago?                                                                                                                                             

I tried to be one person, but it seems that I am many… Many What? Many Who? I still do not know…. 

WHO AM I? 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

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…