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Personal context and questions
The reasons behind my anti-capitalism are partly explained in the previous section. I worked in business and strategic and financial marketing, both in an investment bank (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter), multi-nationals in communication (AOL) or in industry (Pirelli), to which I finally chose to slam the door. I cannot validate an unregulated, unbridled capitalism, where I have only been able to observe acts, which I consider, of barbarism, which pressurise people to the point of annihilating them. This competition and this unbridled competition and this “workaholism” for money and personal success, or simply to have or keep a place in life, which are present everywhere, even in public structures, leave no room for more fragile people to exist and do not encourage mutual aid in the collective and society. I am for small people and not for the preservation of gigantic inhuman structures (due to their size), although they are effective on a global level. As Proudhon would say, the individual must never be sacrificed to the general interest. A civilisation never works better than when all individuals feel like they are all taken into account. I consider our world to be in an invisible war, which is economic, for the lucky ones among us who are not experiencing the real real war, to this day.
Some may consider crafting a critique of capitalism by staging factory sounds. I consider that it is necessary to act at the source of the problem, in particular by using the tools of the market as little as possible (although this is less and less feasible in a society overwhelmed by the vision of the market and money), and giving all we can via DIY.
So I currently no longer wish to “interact” with people who use and promote commercial software. These companies have enough customers and I want to support more people who share in open source. The material that we teach and the choices of creation environment that we show to others in our creations (if they are interested in it) are a way of doing “promotion”. And, I no longer want to hear exclusively about Ableton Live or Max MSP (at least as little as possible), although they are very good tools, and I am forced to use them afterwards (see below). This formatting and lack of diversity to the detriment of open source is in my opinion to be combated.
I would first like to thank my former research director, Robert Normandeau, who supported and helped me as best he could during my research at the University of Montréal.
However, after more than ten years of work and research on my spatial performance tool, the frustration stemming from the low opportunities to play in concert (due to multiple reasons, partly to myself, to the low recognition of the spatialised improvisation in the electroacoustic environment, which prefers finished compositions, so as not to take risks, and for simplicity in relation to the lack of prior preparation time in concert to adapt an improvisation) and finally, a pandemic leading to my defense for my doctorate on spatial improvisation via Zoom (which is ironic), I could not accept certain comments and insinuations from a member of the jury of the University of Montréal on my thesis, which I did not consider to be benevolent, constructive and which were likely to diminish my power to act (reference to Spinoza, p. 7), even momentarily, especially since I never had technical assistance during my studies (exclusively from the SuperCollider online community). It was the straw (too much) that broke the camel's back (in overall frustration).
I can understand that practices are more and more diversified and that teaching must reflect this. However, I am a whole person and am not a diplomat or politician. I can't compromise on what I don't believe. I am not a musician who seeks at all costs to make a multitude of sound compositions, piece after piece, whatever the themes, adapting to everything, but more of an activist, in the way that I can, with some themes of predilection, which militates via the tool for the opening of the digital creation process to everyone, and not only to academics, certain privileged people (including myself for the moment) and those who have money. For me, being an artist is above all being an activist. I consider that there is no better and finer means than open source to achieve this goal. I have nothing to sell except a vision to defend and a life to sur-vive.
I am very far from being a saint, just like all people on this planet, except for a few exceptions like Sister Emmanuelle or Mother Teresa, although for the latter her image is also very far from true reality. Also, in the face of hasty and harsh remarks, I can only respond in the same way with the same severity and harshness, by cutting off contact. I do not question the quality of the teaching staff and their skills. But, because of my hyper-sensitivity, my loneliness (in love) and for the good of my project, I can not surround myself with people who are negative and critical of it and who above all do not feed me. Any discussion would be a waste of time, with people who do not have the same values and with whom I cannot share anything concretely and openly with the world. And I have no more time to waste. Being alone in this professional and competitive world does not bother me, although it is more pleasant to be surrounded. The only thing I've been missing in this world is a real, deep and lasting love that the professional world or even art will never be able to provide or replace.
I knew the Faculty of Music of Montreal at a time of transition: In the past, at the beginning of my studies in 2015, promoting open source software (Cecilia, PD, Pyo) with Olivier Bélanger or Patrick Saint Denis, the defenders and representatives of open source finally disappeared little by little during my journey and were overtaken by life (which will surely happen to me unfortunately too). What the university has become unfortunately no longer interests me, if it is only a matter of aesthetic considerations or adaptation to the market.
Although I have cut off my relations with the University of Montréal (at least with certain professors), this will not prevent me from returning there on occasion to see certain interesting conferences. But, just like the SAT, I try to avoid these places as much as possible, because I don't need to surround myself with people who toughen me up. I only need people who soften me up.
My vision, philosophy or belief are obviously to be moderated and time and life (if it gives me the time) will surely perhaps help me to do so... As a Wolf Biermann song says: ”Only he who changes his ideas remains true to himself.”
”You call me a misanthrope because I avoid the company of men. You are wrong, I love the world. But in order not to hate people, I abstain from their company.” Caspar David Friedrich
”No institution emancipates people... Critical thinking, we learn it ourselves, through what we see, what we judge, or experience.” Jacques Ranciere
“Love the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It is thanks to her that the change begins.” Unknown
“I am not a man of reflection, I work on feelings and my feelings go out to the crippled, the tortured, the damned, the lost, not out of compassion but out of fraternity, because I am one of them, lost, helpless, indecent, shabby, scared, cowardly, unjust, with brief flashes of kindness; badly affected and conscious of being so, this lucidity is of no help to me, instead of curing me it weighs me down. (I live in luxury because my pockets are full of dreams...)” Charles Bukowski
“...I share her silence, for I, too, no longer have my heart in my mouth.“ Jean-Luc Godard
”Love does not want duration; It wants the instant and eternity.” Friedrich Nietzsche
”Since love is not worth more or less than what it lasts...” from Marie's song with lyrics by Pierre Perrault in the documentary Le règne du jour
”I believe that love always goes hand in hand with love, you can't love on your own, I don't believe in that, I don't believe in desperate loves that we experience alone. He loved me so much that I had to love him, he wanted me so much that I had to want him. It's not possible to love someone who doesn't like you at all, who totally annoys you, I don't believe in that.” Marguerite Duras in The Material Life
”Remember not to ne angry. Remember when we fell in love. Remember what made me want to love her. Remember her expression, intimidated, her smile, red with pleasure, just from looking at me. If people remembered, they'd never leave each other. (It's beautiful, even if it's a little sappy.)” from the québec movie You will remember me
”He who misses out on the most beautiful story of his life will only be as old as his regrets, and all the sighs in the world won't be able to lull his soul to sleep.” Yasmina Khadra in What the Day Owes to the Night
”I want to cherish whoever loves me and give them everything that's mine in the world : my body that rebels against sharing, my body that's so sweet and my freedom.” Colette
”Sex should be a religion. I have no other. [...] I made an hour last an eternity.” Patricia Highsmith
”And even if nothing were to turn out the way we'd hoped, that wouldn't change our hopes. Hopes would remain, utopia would be necessary, not as an illusion or a mirage, but as the very condition of our existence. For if we were to lose hope in a better world, in a fairer society, in a brighter tomorrow, then we would also lose the meaning of our commitment, the strength of our resistance and the impetus of our creativity. Utopia, far from being a pipe dream, is the driving force that keeps us imagining, dreaming and fighting for a future where freedom, equality and fraternity are not just empty words, but tangible realities. So, even if nothing turns out as we had hoped, our hopes will remain, eternal and indispensable, carrying with them the promise of a better world, a world to come where dreams become reality.” Jean-Luc Godard
”You have to be able to believe in the afterlife. That's why I wrote a book about the ability to believe, the aptitude to believe. ”We only learn to believe when there's nothing else left.” Faith is born of need. [...] Clearly, for you, the afterlife is always linked to death. And for me, the afterlife is a willingness to believe that makes life here on earth more bearable. Belief in the hereafter makes the world more beautiful than it is. [...] And I've found that faith makes the world more beautiful than it is. This is true from every point of view and for everyone. [...] We believe more than we know. Forgive me for oversimplifying, but that's the message : the world would be an unbearable place if we didn't believe in this or that. This applies to everyone, including the most rational minds. If each of us could measure it in our own psyche, even the most rigorous rationalists would realize that they believe far more than they know. [...] Faced with truly unpleasant events or situations, we can only get through them if we have faith powerful enough to imagine the world as something other than it is. [...] The language, the spirit, the soul, the heart, all of which Nietzsche held dear in order to be able to endure this world, and to do so against all forms of rationality. That's what it's all about : the ability to believe. He said that our consciousness, everything we know, is nothing more than the interpretation of greater feelings. In other words, thoughts come from the heart. Incidentally, he was sometimes criticized for this. So he too was deeply religious. Of course, even in writing, relying on language is an act of faith. We're just not aware of it. But it's obvious when you create a character, a destiny, this or that event. [...] But always, with this tendency that we cannot dominate, but which is present in ourselves, always with this tendency to make the world more beautiful than it is. That's the most important thing about faith. But it's important to realize that it's not an aptitude that's permanently available. Let me quote Kierkegaard, who said : ”The strength of belief is measured by the strength of unbelief.” I said emphatically : ”One second of belief is worth a thousand seconds of despair and unbelief.” Whatever it is, it's the power of faith, the strength of faith. It creates a beyond. Nietzsche : ”The existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.” If faith doesn't help you make the world more beautiful, you can give it up. To believe is to climb mountains that don't exist. You have to take it literally. Those who are able to climb mountains that don't exist, as Nietzsche would have said, are more advanced in knowledge than those who can only climb mountains that do exist. It's an aesthetic vision.” Martin Walser
”All my life, I've believed in the power of desire. We'll no doubt discover that desire is tangible matter. Everything we write ends up being true.” Colette
”The difference between dream and reality, that's the real hell. [...] That's what I feel in myself, it's a disappointment of what one whishes. But, in a way, it's normal. It does not necessarily mean that one becomes insane. Because, I think, almost everybody has hopes either about their work or their marriage or something, that does not quite come true.” Patricia Highsmith
”We have to see ourselves as fertile land to be cultivated. If we don't, we rot like a cow that we don't milk. Everything we don't exploit in ourselves dies, spoiled.” Patricia Highsmith
”Such is human life. A few joys, quickly erased by unforgettable sorrows. There's no need to tell children.” Marcel Pagnol, concluding his book Le Château de ma mère
”There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. To judge whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy.” Albert Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus
”Art is not a power, it is only a consolation, it is only an alibi for turning away from the world and escaping reality. Through the beauty of works of art, we contemplate perfection and the ideal, we ascend to higher heights, we find refuge in divine spheres. But art doesn't solve the world's problems, it can't change the real conditions of existence. It merely provides momentary relief, a respite for the spirit.” allegedly attributed to Thomas Mann in The Artist and Society ?
”Writing is, it goes without saying, a substitute for the life I cannot live, that I am incapable of living.” Patricia Highsmith
”The poet knows that the best images come when the mind is not thinking too intensely, when it is doing something else, something mechanical. Inspiration and ideas come from the subconscious. You still have to let it have it.” Patricia Highsmith
”How disappointing you make the end of a film, is a matter, I suppose, of taste or artistic balance, whatever it is. But you’ll always are faced with the problem of : are you going to try to reinforce this illusion, which melodrama fosters, or are you going to try to reflect what we sees about life. Melodrama uses all the problems of the world and all the disasters, which will be fall on the main characters, to finally show you that the world is a benevolent and fair place. And all the tests and trials, and seeming misfortune which occur in the end just reinforce this belief. But tragedy or honesty are attempted presenting life in a way that seems closer to the reality than melodrama, can leave a feeling of desolation. But, certainly, the formula approach, which presents the world, other than it is, doesn’t seem to have a great of merit, unless you’re just making entertainment.” Stanley Kubrick
”From death comes life. Lack gives rise to hope. And expectation increases the pleasure to come. Death frees our earthly shell from the dross that has made it unfit for heaven and immortal life.” Caspar David Friedrich
”The painter's task is not to represent air, water, rocks or trees faithfully. What must be reflected in his work are his soul and his feelings.” Caspar David Friedrich
”But to explain why I am leaving and why one becomes an artist, one must go deeper and try to determine why art exists and what its mission is. Today as yesterday and as always, artists have the same vocation : to show men something that they do not know or are not aware of, but that they should know and be aware of.” Anna-Eva Bergman
”Without fear, to put the most violent light on the smallest corner of oneself, and yet all the time to have a perceptive look towards the outside, towards others. In short, to define oneself in relation to one's surroundings. It is only later that one can begin to dedicate one's work, one's art, one's philosophy to the service of the true. It is then that one can recognise the true from the false and understand what happiness, joy and truth mean, because one has recognised to push away the false and the lie. The final goal is great love, great compassion and great respect for the true. This is the artist's mission and reason for living.” Anna-Eva Bergman
“Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.” Joseph Beuys
“Man is nature becoming aware of itself.“ says Élisée Reclus in the preface to the first volume of “L'homme et la terre“, published in 1905, the year of his death.
“There are two worlds side by side : the world of perception, which is immense, and the world of ideas, which is tiny. And the problem with words is that they are in-between, acting as intermediaries between these worlds. [...] When you're an artist, you have to remain a child for life. A child is perpetually in a state of discovery, because he doesn't know. So, naturally, they discard preconceived ideas. Children play and build without thinking, without preparation. They're not governed by fear. They just go for it. And even as you get older, you have to keep moving forward, surpassing yourself again and again, exploring, overcoming obstacles, swimming, clearing a path. When you're a painter, you can't stick to your habits. You have to be curious, you have to keep an open mind at all times. I confess I have no principles when it comes to painting. In fact, I don't think there's any need for principles in painting. To create, you have to forget principles, to detach yourself from them. Principle fades away in creation.“ Raphaëlle Ricol
“Art has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy to be nothing more than a way of expressing and bringing to consciousness the divine, the deepest interests of man, the broadest truths of the spirit... Art has this destination in common with religion and philosophy, but in such a way, however, that it presents in a sensible way even that which is highest and thus brings it closer to the mode of manifestation that is proper to nature, the senses and sensation.“ allegedly attributed to "Hegel or Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder ?
“There's no difference between art and religion. Only the taxman can tell the difference.“ Martin Walser
“We only need morality for lack of love.” André Comte Sponville
“Moral value cannot be replaced by the value of intelligence and I would add : thank God!” Albert Einstein
”What is the absoluteness of principles worth if it is to the detriment of simple humanity, common sense, gentleness, compassion ?" André Comte Sponville
”The horizon means for me eternity, the infinite beyond the known, where one passes to the unknown. When I contemplate my horizons in my paintings, they awaken in me a nostalgic desire, but a desire for what ? I do not manage to define it. It inhabits me however, but I do not know how to formulate it. It is as if this horizon was the limited traced of all human experiences. I try desperately to move it back, to enlarge it. Behind the horizontal limit is a realm that, although physically and bodily unreachable, is nevertheless real to experience. Some would call this phenomenon a purely natural, atmospheric or irrational experience. Others would place it in the metaphysical realm, the absolute.” Anna-Eva Bergman
“There are two sets of principles. The principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you run after power and privilege, it will always be at the expense of truth and justice.” Noam Chomsky
“In our time, it is no longer conceivable to “not deal with politics”. All problems are political problems, and politics itself is nothing but a collection of lies, red herrings, foolishness, hatred and schizophrenia.” George Orwell
“The main enemy of truth is not lying, it is belief.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Beginning of a critique on my closed principles, beliefs or commitments advocating for open source and its consequences and contradictions
The writer Andreï Makine once evoked, the sentence, formulated by Dostoyeski “Beauty will save the world”, “means everything without saying anything”: “I think that what will save the world is perhaps completely desperate attempt of the last poets and the last writers who say : man is not a piece of flesh, man is not his social status, man is not these little worldliness, the man is not someone who with 30 million spectators watches a football match while people are dying in Ukraine. The man is something else. And the poets try to say it. And that, that vision will save the world, I believe.”
The photographer Eric Guglielmi, whose work includes Paradis perdus, a series of photos on the deforestation of the second largest rainforest in the Congo, using the platinum palladium photographic technique, said : ”I've got nothing against militant, committed photography, but I find it a flaw because it's directly a position that asserts itself, and in my work, what interests me most is questioning. What I like and how I like to photograph is to be able to raise questions, which is almost a little vicious, because I know where I want to take people. I'm not interested in giving the key directly, because the key doesn't matter, it's as quickly erased as the rest. What interests me is the photographic construction, the very meaning of the image, to see differently, better, to construct something that leads to a feeling, an imagination, a reaction. I had a lot of hope when I was working as a press photographer, I was young, a kind of flaw I had, carelessness, naivety in fact of youth, telling myself, yeah, my photographic work is going to change things, we're going to denounce what's happening in South America or Africa, in fact I realised that no, things pass, pass again, pass away, but in reality, we change nothing. News and information are a kind of well-oiled business. On the other hand, when I realise that I'm selling images - and this is the great dilemma of my work, because I do work with photos, even if I don't like the word - all my series are committed. When I find myself exhibiting at the Grand Palais, I realise that there are collectors who buy, who on the other hand have a portfolio of actions for people who destroy, yes, I think that this can perhaps give small consciences, I think that beauty, aestheticism are still something that make us react, so to go through aestheticism and beauty to achieve that this world is a little better, in any case, I tell myself that it is a bet that is rather not bad.” I also like this vision and this bet. However, like the writer Michel Houellebecq, I believe more and more that no great theory or idea, not even beauty, will save the world, but only love and its beauty.
As a lesson from the little prince might teach, ”there are no good or bad people, there are people who do what they can as best they can, according to what they have and what they have received. A person cannot give what he does not have, so it is important to always cultivate love.”
Although Louis Aragon never considered himself a committed writer (at least not in the sense of Jean Paul Sartre, but more in the sense of the language of the concierge), he said: ”Every morning, I ask myself the question of my political choice and [...] I rejoin the PCF (French Communist Party). [...] Literature is an event and the novel must be considered as such. The event is not a prefabricated thing. This committed literature that people talk to me about seems like a prefabricated literature. I think of certain things, they are close to my heart, I talk about them, I give them a figure, they appear in poems, in novels, that's another matter. But it's not because I sacrifice and I sacrifice myself, and instead of telling pretty stories about flowers and birds, for which I was perhaps made, I decide to fulfill my duty as a citizen by writing.”
“[...] He who believed in heaven
He who did not
From the top of the citadel
The sentry gave a shot
Twice and one staggered
The other one falls who died
He who believed in heaven
The one who didn't believe
They are in jail.
Which one has the sadder couch ?
Which of the two is colder ?
Which one prefers rats ? [...]” The Rose and the Mignonette by Louis Aragon
As I wrote at the conclusion of my doctoral thesis : my wish is not to remain alone in this adventure. By delivering this program in open source, I also hope to make the spatial performance tool live and continue, by meeting real combat companions in SuperCollider and open source audiovisual software, to collaborate around concert nights around the themes of rhythm, dance and space. Otherwise, it's also possible that I resign to my ideals and dreams and use commercial software, like Ableton Live, but maybe with the idea of hacking it through other programs like gibberwocky (Roberts and Wakefield , 2017), so as not to remain alone in creation.
This radicalism in research and creation, using SuperCollider almost exclusively in the context of sound improvisation and no longer considering trade and market tools, finally relatively “excluded“ me from this professional sound world, which generally only use Live from Ableton and Max MSP, as I have seen many times during my conferences and concerts. Although teaching SuperCollider is used in academia, positions for teaching it in the academic world are relatively rare, since the university is more constrained to adapt people to the job market and their tools than promote open source software. Also, because of its limitations (both from myself, which is not diversified or too exclusive enough, and from the world, which is not inclusive enough), it is quite possible that my research-creation will only continue within the amateur or underground milieu or disappear.
Finally, I will end in the same way as Lewis (2018, p. 128) does in his article Why do we want our computers to improvise ?, quoting Arnold Davidson : “What we say about human / computer interaction is all too frequently dictated by an already determine picture of the boundaries of the possible and the impossible. [...] When one is pushed to go beyond already established models of intelligibility and habitual practices of the self, when one searches for new forms of self and of social intelligibility, new modes of freedom, the improvisatory way of life assumes not only all of its ethico-political force, but also all of its very real risks of unintelligibility and self-collapse.“
The loneliness that made me start this project will perhaps also be the cause of its end. That said, what I wish for myself for the future, both for this project and for my eventual "love", is to be able to say at the twilight of my life, like Daniel Pennac, who continues in his books the saga of the Malausaine family for 40 years: “I didn't expect it to last, as a lifetime lasts.“
I would like (or would have liked) to be able to form a couple like Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet did for several decades and invent and declare my love for her in a way similar to these two poems :
“One day, Elsa, my verses will rise to your lips
That to the end, life and love are the same,
That there are loves knotted like a vine,
As long as the vein is blue, wine flows.
The wine of youth, foreign to death,
It's all the blood that boils in our beloved veins.“ Le fou d'Elsa by Louis Aragon
“I will invent for you the rose of adoring fingers
Which formed nave and intersected and defoliated.
I will invent for you the rose under the porch
For lovers who have no other bed than their arms.“ I will invent for you the rose by Louis Aragon
- One of naturo-biologist and astro-biologist Nathalie Cabrol's answers to the question : “What is life ?“
“No definitions, but descriptions of life. Life is bio-physics. Schrödinger and the new models today think that life is inevitable in the universe, because it's the way to fight entropy, which is chaos and disorder.“
Momentary thought : The purpose of life would be to unite and build... I would have looked for this mainly in love, but also in art for all...
- From the film Val Kilmer - A life between "Top Gun" and "The Doors", where Val Kilmer plays and takes up the words of Mark Twain :
“How do you heal a broken heart ? What are the words that heal a broken heart ? I know it's not the most important question in the world, but it's the ball and chain around my memory tonight.“
Momentary response attempt : If the person is still alive, a heart could sometimes perhaps heal only from that same person who broke it, if they take us in their arms, telling us simply and sincerely the most beautiful of sentences : I love you. If she is no longer alive or whatever, other words cannot heal a heart him in my opinion, although some consider that there are certain visions of nature which can heal them of all pains. Partial healing could only come from faith in life and in this world, though they are both beautiful and horrible, giving as much love as possible... I try to do it but I have not really succeeded yet... since without love, it is difficult to give love back to people who are not able to share everything and whose visions not focused on sharing to the whole humanity do not really interest me.
- From the film Mr Morgan's Last love, where the actor Michael Caine answers a question :
“Why did you stop loving life ?
Well, you don’t love life itself. You love places, animal, people, memories, food, literature, music. And sometimes, you meet someone who requires all the love you have to give.“
Momentary response attempt : Without this last part, a real love with a person, life has no real meaning to me without sharing intimacy with a person. And, the more the time goes by without this meeting, the more you get out of breath. Only people who have been alone since time immemorial without a real family can understand that. This is also the reason why I started this life project, because I would surely have adapted to this fucking business world with this meeting, like most people. It is now too late. In no way putting art or creation above all else, I'm not an artist, just a tinkerer, on a quest to give and make love to his love.
- From the book Clair de femme by Romain Gary :
“I often think about what we would have become if we hadn't met [...] There are so many men and women who miss each other ! What do they become ? What do they live on ? It is terribly unfair. It seems to me that if I hadn't known you, I would have spent my life hating you. - That's exactly why you see so many hateful people. You see a lot of people who hate everyone they haven't met, it's even what we call friendship between peoples. [...] I shall have no peace until your face is taken from me. If you don't come, I'll wait, but I'll wait in distress and dryness of heart.“
Momentary response attempt : For hyper-sensitive people for whom love is essential, they become living dead. To this day, I have lived thanks to this spatial creation project. But the day it stops, my life will stop too if I'm still alone. I will not grow old in solitude and without money in this capitalist world. I have experienced intimate loneliness (without a lover) enough in my life. Life meeting opportunities will decide of my life end. For not having had the chance to find a lasting love over several years (if it does not happen soon, it will be too late), I will hate life for what it has offered or inflicted on me. I did what I could in spite of my shyness, but I will never thank life for having toughened me up in solitude instead of softening me in the intimacy of two. I'd rather have died of love, although one can love many times, than die of loneliness in love.
- Again from Romain Gary :
A. From the correspondence with Maria Casarès :
“You came, by chance, into a life I wasn't proud of, and from that day on something began to change. I breathed better, I hated fewer things, I freely admired what deserved to be admired. Before you, apart from you, I didn't believe in anything. This strength, which you sometimes mocked, was never anything but a solitary strength, a strength of refusal. With you, I accepted more things. I learned to live. That's probably why my love has always been mingled with immense gratitude. [...] Every moment to come is sweet to me because it's on my way to you.“
B. From an ORTF interview in March 1972 :
RG : “I'm in favor of married life and family life. In reality, I'm neither for nor against, I'm for happiness wherever people find it. There are people who find their happiness in family life and others who find it in bistros or elsewhere...“
Q : “Where do you find your happiness?“
RG : “Like everyone else. For me, the unity in life is the couple, that's the ideal [...] In the end, the truth is that the unity remains a couple. When there's no couple, there's nothing.“
Momentary response attempt : I don't really have any comments. It's all been said. And that's why I currently have no gratitude towards life, because for me learning to live alone without love is worthless, and has led me towards the desperate and suicidal fight for my ideals instead of being in acceptance of life. I hope, however, that this chance will come soon, before it's too late.
- From the book You'll never know how much I love you by Daniel Prévost :
“I am alone and I would like to be two.“
Self-realisation or the desire to be and do together as two ? In contrast to Daniel Prévost, two other visions preferring solitude and self-realisation than the desire to live together as a couple :
A. In a letter to her husband announcing her break-up, Anna-Eva Bergman wrote : “I think this is the most difficult letter I have ever had to write. It will not please you, but it must. It is obvious that I cannot do otherwise, so we must separate. You will be relieved to know that it is not because of another man. The reasons lie elsewhere and you know them. First of all, this feeling of dependence on my mother, you know how much she made me suffer. So I have to try to make my own way in this world and I will. I have recovered and I have the strength I need. But for that, I have to be free and alone, to have time and not housework or taking care of others, but to only take care of my work and have time to rest. It has been a terrible time for me to come to this conclusion. But, nothing can be done about it, I have to and I want to be alone.“
B. “I need to be alone and know that I am alone to look at nature, to feel it fully. I must surrender to what surrounds me, unite with the clouds and rocks to be what I am.“ Caspar David Friedrich
Momentary response attempt : I am definitely in line with Daniel Prévost. I can understand the need for solitude, but in its extreme form, it can also become the loss of self for some individuals. I don't have a priority and absolute love for art, I would always prefer that of a person. If I tried to create this spatial performance tool, it is partly to fill this void in my existence, of a presence, of a reciprocal and intimate love. The ideal is of course to know and experience both : the love of art and of a person. But, if both cannot be experienced, or at least one of them cannot continue due to life constraints, life will stop for me.
- From Guy de Maupassant's Bel ami :
“Get married, my friend, you don't know what it's like to live alone, at my age. Solitude, today, fills me with a horrible anguish : solitude in the dwelling, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on earth, horribly alone, but surrounded by vague dangers, unknown and terrible things; and the partition that separates me from my neighbor, whom I don't know, distances me from him as much as from the stars seen through my window. A kind of fever comes over me, a fever of pain and fear, and the silence of the walls frightens me. It's so deep and so sad, the silence of the room where one lives alone. It's not just a silence around the body, but a silence around the soul, and, when a piece of furniture creaks, one shudders to the core, for no sound is expected in this dreary dwelling.“
Momentary response attempt : I met this woman with whom I wanted to marry and build a family. But, when my heart finally opened up, she didn't want me or didn't want me anymore. I must be too slow and other things... I can't marry the world, but only one person.
- From Jean-Luc Godard's movie Masculin Féminin, in which actor Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya ask each other :
CG: “What is the center of the world for you ?“ [...]
JPL: “Like that, love, I find.“
CG: “That's funny, I would have told you, me. Does it seem strange to you ? Don't you think you're the center of the world ?“
JPL: “In a way, yes, of course.“
CG: “But in what way ?“
JPL: “Like this, to live, to be, to see with your own eyes, to speak with your own mouth, to think with your own head.“
CG: “Do you think it's possible to live on your own, all the time on your own ?“
JPL: “No, I don't think it's possible, like that, no, it's not possible. I mean, you can't live, that's what I was saying, without tenderness. It's enough to get you killed.“
CG: “Look me in the eye. If I said to you one day, maybe I'd love you, would that make you happy ?“
JPL: “Of course it would please me.“ [...]
CG: “Love, love, In the heart of man, solitude, And your face is upturned, On my naked woman's forehead, And my love is in the sea, in the dreams, And here we are against death.“
- From a report/interview on Jean-Luc Verna's visual work :
“In my drawings, I could talk about a lot of very specific things, like what it's like to be born in the 60s, what it's like to grow old, what it's like to live in a country at war, all these things that for me are symptoms of a single disease, which is life. And I prefer the overall subject to be the vicissitudes of life, which are the same and will always be the same, from the beginning of humanity to its end, i.e. we live, we love, we unlove, we die“.
Momentary question attempt : Can't we go on loving forever, even if the other's love has died ? Can't love continue between two people/souls, despite the hazards and constraints of life ? Don't we keep a trace of love anchored within us that spreads into our future lives of love ?
- From the film Mademoiselle de Jonquières, itself loosely based on a story by Diderot :
“Nature is changeable. I only believe in friendship. When love is linked to the flesh, it becomes as fragile as the flesh itself. A mere nothing can spoil it. [...] You love her and she doesn't love you. Love stories are always like that. There's always one who loves too much and one who loves too little. My father used to say that nature doesn't like equality, that it likes to bother us. You always need one who is more and one who is less in all subjects and all matters, even those of pleasure. [...]
The French language is right : Happiness (bonheur) is just one good hour (bonne heure) among many.
You're wrong : happiness that doesn't last is called pleasure.“
Momentary question attempt : Can we or can I really experience a lasting and equitable love, without separating this link between two bodies and souls ?
- From the book Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse by Jean Jacques Rousseau :
“I see, my friend, by the temper of our souls and the common turn of our tastes, that love will be the great business of our lives. When once it has made the deep impressions we have received, it must extinguish or absorb all other passions; the slightest cooling would soon be for us the languor of death; an invincible disgust, an eternal boredom, would succeed extinguished love, and we would not know how to live long after ceasing to love. [...] My friend, one can have the sublime feelings of a strong soul without love : but a love such as ours animates and sustains it as long as it burns; as soon as it is extinguished, it falls into languor, and a worn-out heart is no longer fit for anything. Tell me, what would we be if we no longer loved ? Wouldn't it be better to cease to be than to exist without feeling anything, and could you resolve to drag through the earth the insipid life of an ordinary man, after having tasted all the transports that can ravish a human soul ? [...] I am convinced that it is not good for man to be alone. Human souls want to be coupled to be worth all their price; and the united strength of friends, like those of the blades of an artificial lover, is incomparably greater than the sum of their particular forces. [...] O what men we would all be, if the world were full of Julies (Gabis) and hearts that knew how to love them!“
Momentary thought : Although love has been the great business, or rather expectation, of my life, I don't think I've been loved by the few women I've been able to love, as much as I've been able to love them, because they've never yet wanted to commit to me. I've become nothing more than a homeless person, a beggar or a Kleenex of love in a consumer society, where commitment over time is difficult to maintain, or at least I've never succeeded in doing so to this day. We're all just hopes, which rarely come true. I can partially thank life for having met some wonderful people, but I'll never fully thank life for not having had the opportunity to be with them for a long time. To my loneliness in love, I've sometimes been awkwardly told to get a cat to compensate for the lack of tenderness. To this unsuitable proposal, I can retort ironically in the same vein that some cats or animals receive more love and tenderness from their owners than some men. While I may love animals, I surely focus too much on the human race, also for its complexity, although it can hurt. I would never say that I prefer animals to people, because it's simply not comparable, partly because animals are generally at our mercy... As the song says, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love“.
- From an interview with Wolf Biermann :
“The song Und als wir ans Ufer kamen is not just about the dialectic between two people, but also between world politics and this personal love story ?“
“Yes, I was brought up to believe that I had to save humanity. And I agreed to do it. And then I translated Shakespeare's famous sonnet. He wrote 154 of them, and to my mind they're just as important as his plays. And the most famous of Shakespeare's sonnets is the 66th : “Tired with all these, from these would I be gone.“ And now I'm going to tell you why. It's because it has taught me what the people of the West surely knew long ago. They didn't need Shakespeare to discover it. But, for me, it was an emergency. Why ? A sonnet has 14 lines. In Shakespeare's case, they are not constructed in two quatrains and two tercets, as in Petrarch's, but in three quatrains and a distich. It's like a good joke, with an unexpected punch line that makes the reader laugh out loud. Shakespeare says the same thing a dozen times, but with variations to keep us awake : the world is ugly, the world is ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly; I cannot live in this horrible world; I wish I were dead already. And it ends with a punchline, the unexpected opening of the last two lines :
“Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.“
And here he says : I would like to be dead in this terrible world, in other words, I would like to commit suicide, in other words, I would like to get the hell out, go off on a tangent, desert, extract myself from what Heinrich Heine called the war of liberation of humanity. But I can't, because if I leave this world, I'll have to leave you, my darling. But it doesn't matter... you, the loved one, the unique and irreplaceable being, I'll leave you stranded in this dreadful world... I would never do that. It's this unique being who can't be replaced by anyone else, it's this love that gives me the strength to endure humanity, i.e. human quarrels, life. For people like you, who have been shaped in the West, this may not be too bad, but it's not very original either. You already knew about it, but I didn't know about it. For someone like me, who's been educated, it's mind-boggling. So that's it : I have to love a unique and irreplaceable being and keep him by my side for life and death in order to be able to put up with humanity. Well, for me, strange as it may seem, it was a revelation.“
Attempt at a momentary question : Have I found or will I find that unique being who will keep me going in this world ?
- From an interview with Martin Walser on the afterlife :
“I've never asked myself : Where is my afterlife ? What does it look like ?“
“My afterlife is a frequency. It's not a (concrete) place, but a vibration, a capacity that's not always present. But when it is, it's very good. [...] These images create impressions. [...] They are mental images, but deep down in our minds, they never reach that degree of materiality or concrete reality... You could say a state of mind. [...] So we're really alone, I can tell you. We had a monologue for two. Several together in a monologue.“
Attempt at a momentary response : My personal beyond is mainly in the intimate, bodily relationship with a unique being and to a lesser extent in the sharing of experiences with others. Without this main beyond, my here below is only dust unable to vibrate with the other grains of dust.
Xon - ChristOn - Live 4 Life
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