The wind is rising! We must try to live.
Paul Valéry, The Graveyard by the Sea.
How many up there think themselves great kings,
who down here will lie like pigs in filth,
leaving behind a horrible contempt.
Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto VIII.
I wish to speak of his habit of denying what is,
and of explaining what is not.
E. A. Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the empty space on the wall attracted more visitors than the painting ever had before.
Paul Valéry, The Graveyard by the Sea.
How many up there think themselves great kings,
who down here will lie like pigs in filth,
leaving behind a horrible contempt.
Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto VIII.
I wish to speak of his habit of denying what is,
and of explaining what is not.
E. A. Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the empty space on the wall attracted more visitors than the painting ever had before.
Self-portrait in the form of an alphabet book.
(originally in French)
(originally in French)
LOVE - (A)mour
At the heart of romantic feeling lies a mysterious certainty around which a purely random narrative unfolds. What remains of oneself is the love one has been able to give. It is the only gift everyone is always capable of offering.
Personal ethics, universal morality, humanism, and human rights are directly connected to the founding message of Jesus, without any need to be a believer in order to draw inspiration from it.
Love has an objectively absolute value rooted in its unconditional nature (unlike freedom, for example, which is always subjective, since for each of us it ends where another’s begins).
Saint Francis of Assisi is the perfect embodiment of renunciation of the material world in the name of love (for God and His creatures, in this case)—as depicted in Giotto’s frescoes at the Basilica of Assisi.
With love and peace as its banner, the Hippie movement was the last lucid moment in the West to proclaim the primacy of being over having.
Empathy, tenderness, and love seem more logically to be “female inventions,” since males are constantly driven by competition supposedly meant to designate the alpha male.
The third and final part of Albert Camus’s unfinished body of work was meant to be devoted to the people he loved.
At the heart of romantic feeling lies a mysterious certainty around which a purely random narrative unfolds. What remains of oneself is the love one has been able to give. It is the only gift everyone is always capable of offering.
Personal ethics, universal morality, humanism, and human rights are directly connected to the founding message of Jesus, without any need to be a believer in order to draw inspiration from it.
Love has an objectively absolute value rooted in its unconditional nature (unlike freedom, for example, which is always subjective, since for each of us it ends where another’s begins).
Saint Francis of Assisi is the perfect embodiment of renunciation of the material world in the name of love (for God and His creatures, in this case)—as depicted in Giotto’s frescoes at the Basilica of Assisi.
With love and peace as its banner, the Hippie movement was the last lucid moment in the West to proclaim the primacy of being over having.
Empathy, tenderness, and love seem more logically to be “female inventions,” since males are constantly driven by competition supposedly meant to designate the alpha male.
The third and final part of Albert Camus’s unfinished body of work was meant to be devoted to the people he loved.
Fresco by Giotto in the Basilica of Assisi
I have had the great fortune to love and to be loved by three essential female figures:
Mom.
It is said that a man who has been loved by his mother can never be entirely unhappy.
Isabelle.
Thirty-eight years of life together in 2026 (!). The ultimate romantic adventure is to live together for as long as possible.
Solène.
My beloved daughter…
Mom.
It is said that a man who has been loved by his mother can never be entirely unhappy.
Isabelle.
Thirty-eight years of life together in 2026 (!). The ultimate romantic adventure is to live together for as long as possible.
Solène.
My beloved daughter…
text about Mom
Ginette
I was loved by my mother so unconditionally that, deep within my being, a certain idea of the happiness of living took shape and became fixed.
Mom possessed a rare gift: the ability to slip spontaneously into a state of euphoria for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of laughter—those uncontrollable fits with no identifiable cause. In those intense moments, I felt a strange blend of pure bliss and slightly anxious amazement at the absurdity of the situation.
All her life, she wavered between two extremes: that radiant joy rooted in the fleeting magic of the present moment, and the constant effort not to be overwhelmed by sorrow.
She never spoke of her youth except through the lens of the original trauma—the premature loss of her parents and of a beloved grandfather, all before she was twenty. As a child, I was afraid of hurting her with a careless word or an awkward gesture, the way one hesitates to catch a butterfly by its wings, fearing one might irreparably damage the fragile film of pigments so delicately arranged.
I could not understand how one could survive the pain of losing one’s parents, when my entire universe revolved around her and Dad. That mystery deepened whenever Mom would turn toward me and smile tenderly just as my thoughts drifted into those liminal spaces where the ghosts of my maternal grandparents whispered to me the secret story of their daughter’s childhood.
One day, I seriously suggested that I take notes while she finally allowed herself to talk about the past. She seemed genuinely tempted by the idea but always postponed it to “another, quieter time.” Then Alzheimer’s disease slowly made the hope of traveling back through memory without losing one’s way impossible.
Only once did we have the chance to return together to the Yonne, to the Auberge des Sept Écluses, once owned by her parents. She seemed simply very happy that sunny day, yet also lost in thought, without the need—or perhaps the strength—to share her memories.
With so few elements available to reconstruct the fabric of her life, I am left with no more than the bare outline of a chronological plan for a biography I will never be able to write.
She liked to remind us that she had been first violin in the Fontainebleau orchestra at eighteen—though while the instrument did indeed exist in the house long ago, I cannot recall ever hearing a bow glide across its strings.
The exodus of 1940, fleeing along the roads of France with her mother, was a terrible ordeal. “Once you’ve survived the exodus, you can endure anything,” Mom would sometimes say, even half a century later, when facing hardship. When I watch archival footage of that dark chapter, I still search—of course in vain—for the fleeting glimpse of her young face passing before the camera.
Her father reportedly died years later from complications caused by poison gas exposure during World War I; her mother succumbed to grief not long after the exodus. Yet the most traumatic loss of all was that of her beloved grandfather. She once confessed how close she came to a kind of gentle madness, wandering alone for entire afternoons on her bicycle along a country road leading to the Fontainebleau cemetery, stopping to pick flowers in the fields, speaking aloud to hold back her sobs.
Aside from one or two family photo albums and perhaps a few pieces of jewelry, Mom owned no objects from her past—a troubling fact that leaves room for grim conjectures in those chaotic years of defeat and occupation. The war itself was never discussed.
After the liberation, she married a man I know nothing about. The twins she was expecting died at birth, and that tragedy likely caused the separation.
Then came her relationship with Raymond, a married man who never considered divorce, yet who fathered Ginette’s first three children. It is difficult to imagine what it meant socially, in the 1950s, to be what was still called an unwed mother, but it was surely no easy path. She raised her children alone in the Paris suburbs with very limited means, as the few surviving photographs of that time seem to confirm.
Roger would ultimately be the great love of her life, beginning with love at first sight in 1953, followed by a very traditional honeymoon in Italy, immortalized in a touching photograph in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Michaël was born in 1957 after a legendary journey by small bush plane to the hospital in Ambovombe, for it was in southern Madagascar that Roger chose to expatriate himself in order to help modernize the country. He indeed initiated remarkable projects—such as building a hospital and raised river crossings of which he was quite proud. Four years later, back in Paris, I arrived in this already large family to assume the enviable—or not—role of the youngest child.
For me, the years between 1961 and 1975 were the happy days: Christmas as the high point, Sunday rituals as the steady rhythm, and summer holidays by the sea as the jubilant climax. These were undoubtedly Mom’s finest years, a true moment of grace that did justice to her beauty, her humor, her kindness, and her joy in living for the sake of loving us.
Slowly but surely, Roger was drawn into Parisian social life, driven by his desire to climb ever higher on the social ladder, particularly through politics. The adventure ended in a double failure—first at the ballot box, then in his marriage, which did not survive an extramarital affair begun during the campaign and serious enough that he later formalized it with a second marriage.
Crushed by the separation, Mom went back to work the very next day after the man of her life left for good, driven by a survival instinct that likely saved her from depression. For months, however, she needed consoling as we lived together in a suddenly cramped space, having left the large apartment on rue Lacordaire where I had lived from the age of four to eighteen—in other words, my entire childhood.
Eventually, Mom more or less exhausted her supply of tears and chose to remain faithful to that love until the end, forbidding herself to imagine another life.
Ironically, the roles would later reverse. Mom became, in a way, Roger’s (platonic) mistress after his remarriage, for it was at her place that he would come once a week to recharge, sipping his whisky, the bottle carefully stored in the living-room cabinet as in the old days. Sometimes I was there too, with my small glass of port—its bottle also always in its place—and the three of us shared pleasant, slightly surreal, but never awkward moments.
If my father’s condemnable defeatism in the face of Micou’s “problems” remained incomprehensible, one could nonetheless understand Mom’s weariness after having spent so much energy in vain trying to save her child.
I will always remember Mom wearing her inevitable red—or cream—raincoat, her indestructible handbag under her arm, high heels, and eternal retro-dynamic hairstyle, spending almost an entire night leaning against a pillar outside the Paradiso, the famous punk club in Amsterdam. That trip with Michaël was ostensibly about Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
Her immutable elegance was equally out of place in the dilapidated Paris squats she wandered through in search of the corner where Micou had temporarily scattered his small collection of heterogeneous objects meant to mark an ephemeral private territory. Years earlier, Mom—still in high heels—had dragged a stolen moped by its lock across half of the fifteenth arrondissement. One could endlessly list the stations of the calvary of a courageous mother along the Via Dolorosa leading inexorably to the Père Lachaise crematorium.
Michaël was also the one who, despite holding a sad record for disrespectful behavior during frequent altercations, knew better than anyone how to offer her a form of spontaneous tenderness. Let us keep the best, not the worst.
The deepest wound, the one for which no balm exists, was undoubtedly the premature loss of that son.
Aging and inconsolable, she often wept compulsively, and during my sometimes unexpected visits, her eyes bore that crimson outline betraying recent tears. Her hypersensitivity was her strength in loving us—and also her greatest weakness.
Without question, Mom’s greatest joys were those brought by her two grandchildren—Lola, Micou’s daughter, and Solène—rays of sunshine whom she knew how to spoil without spoiling, and love without smothering.
The promise of a Wednesday dawn allowed “Grandma” to rise with a light heart, spend the day floating on a cloud with Solène, and fall asleep at night still feeling on her cheek the lingering softness of kisses from an adorable princess no taller than three apples.
“The time it takes to learn how to live, it is already too late,” wrote Aragon—and I sense the force of that truth when I regret what I failed to share with Mom while it was still possible.
We admired together the Flemish Primitives in Bruges, The Night Watch in Amsterdam, Botticelli at the Uffizi, the Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay—and the list goes on—but I wish I had built a deeper complicity based on our shared love of art, guiding her curiosity toward contemporary painting, her favorite medium. Strangely, it never occurred to me to suggest we see, for instance, the Gerhard Richter retrospective at Beaubourg, whose works would surely have awakened new and subtle emotions in her.
I did not do all that I now see could have been done. Too often, I was content to let the state of things continue indefinitely—an unconditional, reciprocal love forged in childhood, reassuring in its tenderness and sensitivity.
My first fit of laughter with Mom dates back a long way—to when I was five or six. I was playing with a Telecran (an Etch A Sketch), trying to understand its mysterious workings by letting the powder fall onto a large surface. When I spotted the cone-shaped drawing tip, I showed it to Mom, who insisted it was merely a reflection. Suddenly, without knowing why, we burst into such unforgettable laughter that decades later we could not mention the moment without rediscovering that shared complicity before an incomprehensible reality.
I must have been eight or nine when I received a memorable slap in front of my friends at the candy store on rue Saint-Charles, after helping myself to sweets paid for with loose change stolen from Mom’s purse. It was the only time she loved me well by punishing me well; nothing else in my upbringing resembled harshness, except perhaps the ridiculous riding crop she threatened us with but never used—we systematically cut the leather straps whenever we found a new one. A few well-placed slaps on the thigh remain a painful memory, but nothing remarkable given the disciplinary methods still common in the 1960s. Let us say two percent punishment to ninety-eight percent tenderness.
When my brother and I were too unruly, Mom had a mysterious expression of her own: chameau d’ours! Instantly we knew we had crossed a line, without understanding what sort of chimera we were being compared to. When a pout or childish sadness loomed, she could reverse everything with another magical, equally enigmatic phrase, asking me to produce “a little smile at 4.95.” I never asked about the meaning of that number, but I like to think these expressions had been passed down through generations, their origin forgotten, yet always used with disarming naturalness at just the right moment.
Mom often complained about pain in her ankle after a simple accident—she had slipped on an overly polished office floor. Barely four years old, I was saddened to see her lying in bed during the day, her face veiled with pain or fatigue, opening her arms for a kiss while I burst into tears, understanding nothing at all.
This was in the house in Thiais, before our move to Paris in 1965, in a bedroom that seemed immense to me, split in two by winter sunlight in which tiny golden dust particles floated weightlessly.
Half a century later, I kissed Mom on the cheek without knowing it would be the last time. Her mental state left room for doubt as to whether she recognized me, but I have no choice except to believe that in that big kiss, she recognized all the tenderness she had given me.
Mom possessed a rare gift: the ability to slip spontaneously into a state of euphoria for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of laughter—those uncontrollable fits with no identifiable cause. In those intense moments, I felt a strange blend of pure bliss and slightly anxious amazement at the absurdity of the situation.
All her life, she wavered between two extremes: that radiant joy rooted in the fleeting magic of the present moment, and the constant effort not to be overwhelmed by sorrow.
She never spoke of her youth except through the lens of the original trauma—the premature loss of her parents and of a beloved grandfather, all before she was twenty. As a child, I was afraid of hurting her with a careless word or an awkward gesture, the way one hesitates to catch a butterfly by its wings, fearing one might irreparably damage the fragile film of pigments so delicately arranged.
I could not understand how one could survive the pain of losing one’s parents, when my entire universe revolved around her and Dad. That mystery deepened whenever Mom would turn toward me and smile tenderly just as my thoughts drifted into those liminal spaces where the ghosts of my maternal grandparents whispered to me the secret story of their daughter’s childhood.
One day, I seriously suggested that I take notes while she finally allowed herself to talk about the past. She seemed genuinely tempted by the idea but always postponed it to “another, quieter time.” Then Alzheimer’s disease slowly made the hope of traveling back through memory without losing one’s way impossible.
Only once did we have the chance to return together to the Yonne, to the Auberge des Sept Écluses, once owned by her parents. She seemed simply very happy that sunny day, yet also lost in thought, without the need—or perhaps the strength—to share her memories.
With so few elements available to reconstruct the fabric of her life, I am left with no more than the bare outline of a chronological plan for a biography I will never be able to write.
She liked to remind us that she had been first violin in the Fontainebleau orchestra at eighteen—though while the instrument did indeed exist in the house long ago, I cannot recall ever hearing a bow glide across its strings.
The exodus of 1940, fleeing along the roads of France with her mother, was a terrible ordeal. “Once you’ve survived the exodus, you can endure anything,” Mom would sometimes say, even half a century later, when facing hardship. When I watch archival footage of that dark chapter, I still search—of course in vain—for the fleeting glimpse of her young face passing before the camera.
Her father reportedly died years later from complications caused by poison gas exposure during World War I; her mother succumbed to grief not long after the exodus. Yet the most traumatic loss of all was that of her beloved grandfather. She once confessed how close she came to a kind of gentle madness, wandering alone for entire afternoons on her bicycle along a country road leading to the Fontainebleau cemetery, stopping to pick flowers in the fields, speaking aloud to hold back her sobs.
Aside from one or two family photo albums and perhaps a few pieces of jewelry, Mom owned no objects from her past—a troubling fact that leaves room for grim conjectures in those chaotic years of defeat and occupation. The war itself was never discussed.
After the liberation, she married a man I know nothing about. The twins she was expecting died at birth, and that tragedy likely caused the separation.
Then came her relationship with Raymond, a married man who never considered divorce, yet who fathered Ginette’s first three children. It is difficult to imagine what it meant socially, in the 1950s, to be what was still called an unwed mother, but it was surely no easy path. She raised her children alone in the Paris suburbs with very limited means, as the few surviving photographs of that time seem to confirm.
Roger would ultimately be the great love of her life, beginning with love at first sight in 1953, followed by a very traditional honeymoon in Italy, immortalized in a touching photograph in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Michaël was born in 1957 after a legendary journey by small bush plane to the hospital in Ambovombe, for it was in southern Madagascar that Roger chose to expatriate himself in order to help modernize the country. He indeed initiated remarkable projects—such as building a hospital and raised river crossings of which he was quite proud. Four years later, back in Paris, I arrived in this already large family to assume the enviable—or not—role of the youngest child.
For me, the years between 1961 and 1975 were the happy days: Christmas as the high point, Sunday rituals as the steady rhythm, and summer holidays by the sea as the jubilant climax. These were undoubtedly Mom’s finest years, a true moment of grace that did justice to her beauty, her humor, her kindness, and her joy in living for the sake of loving us.
Slowly but surely, Roger was drawn into Parisian social life, driven by his desire to climb ever higher on the social ladder, particularly through politics. The adventure ended in a double failure—first at the ballot box, then in his marriage, which did not survive an extramarital affair begun during the campaign and serious enough that he later formalized it with a second marriage.
Crushed by the separation, Mom went back to work the very next day after the man of her life left for good, driven by a survival instinct that likely saved her from depression. For months, however, she needed consoling as we lived together in a suddenly cramped space, having left the large apartment on rue Lacordaire where I had lived from the age of four to eighteen—in other words, my entire childhood.
Eventually, Mom more or less exhausted her supply of tears and chose to remain faithful to that love until the end, forbidding herself to imagine another life.
Ironically, the roles would later reverse. Mom became, in a way, Roger’s (platonic) mistress after his remarriage, for it was at her place that he would come once a week to recharge, sipping his whisky, the bottle carefully stored in the living-room cabinet as in the old days. Sometimes I was there too, with my small glass of port—its bottle also always in its place—and the three of us shared pleasant, slightly surreal, but never awkward moments.
If my father’s condemnable defeatism in the face of Micou’s “problems” remained incomprehensible, one could nonetheless understand Mom’s weariness after having spent so much energy in vain trying to save her child.
I will always remember Mom wearing her inevitable red—or cream—raincoat, her indestructible handbag under her arm, high heels, and eternal retro-dynamic hairstyle, spending almost an entire night leaning against a pillar outside the Paradiso, the famous punk club in Amsterdam. That trip with Michaël was ostensibly about Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
Her immutable elegance was equally out of place in the dilapidated Paris squats she wandered through in search of the corner where Micou had temporarily scattered his small collection of heterogeneous objects meant to mark an ephemeral private territory. Years earlier, Mom—still in high heels—had dragged a stolen moped by its lock across half of the fifteenth arrondissement. One could endlessly list the stations of the calvary of a courageous mother along the Via Dolorosa leading inexorably to the Père Lachaise crematorium.
Michaël was also the one who, despite holding a sad record for disrespectful behavior during frequent altercations, knew better than anyone how to offer her a form of spontaneous tenderness. Let us keep the best, not the worst.
The deepest wound, the one for which no balm exists, was undoubtedly the premature loss of that son.
Aging and inconsolable, she often wept compulsively, and during my sometimes unexpected visits, her eyes bore that crimson outline betraying recent tears. Her hypersensitivity was her strength in loving us—and also her greatest weakness.
Without question, Mom’s greatest joys were those brought by her two grandchildren—Lola, Micou’s daughter, and Solène—rays of sunshine whom she knew how to spoil without spoiling, and love without smothering.
The promise of a Wednesday dawn allowed “Grandma” to rise with a light heart, spend the day floating on a cloud with Solène, and fall asleep at night still feeling on her cheek the lingering softness of kisses from an adorable princess no taller than three apples.
“The time it takes to learn how to live, it is already too late,” wrote Aragon—and I sense the force of that truth when I regret what I failed to share with Mom while it was still possible.
We admired together the Flemish Primitives in Bruges, The Night Watch in Amsterdam, Botticelli at the Uffizi, the Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay—and the list goes on—but I wish I had built a deeper complicity based on our shared love of art, guiding her curiosity toward contemporary painting, her favorite medium. Strangely, it never occurred to me to suggest we see, for instance, the Gerhard Richter retrospective at Beaubourg, whose works would surely have awakened new and subtle emotions in her.
I did not do all that I now see could have been done. Too often, I was content to let the state of things continue indefinitely—an unconditional, reciprocal love forged in childhood, reassuring in its tenderness and sensitivity.
My first fit of laughter with Mom dates back a long way—to when I was five or six. I was playing with a Telecran (an Etch A Sketch), trying to understand its mysterious workings by letting the powder fall onto a large surface. When I spotted the cone-shaped drawing tip, I showed it to Mom, who insisted it was merely a reflection. Suddenly, without knowing why, we burst into such unforgettable laughter that decades later we could not mention the moment without rediscovering that shared complicity before an incomprehensible reality.
I must have been eight or nine when I received a memorable slap in front of my friends at the candy store on rue Saint-Charles, after helping myself to sweets paid for with loose change stolen from Mom’s purse. It was the only time she loved me well by punishing me well; nothing else in my upbringing resembled harshness, except perhaps the ridiculous riding crop she threatened us with but never used—we systematically cut the leather straps whenever we found a new one. A few well-placed slaps on the thigh remain a painful memory, but nothing remarkable given the disciplinary methods still common in the 1960s. Let us say two percent punishment to ninety-eight percent tenderness.
When my brother and I were too unruly, Mom had a mysterious expression of her own: chameau d’ours! Instantly we knew we had crossed a line, without understanding what sort of chimera we were being compared to. When a pout or childish sadness loomed, she could reverse everything with another magical, equally enigmatic phrase, asking me to produce “a little smile at 4.95.” I never asked about the meaning of that number, but I like to think these expressions had been passed down through generations, their origin forgotten, yet always used with disarming naturalness at just the right moment.
Mom often complained about pain in her ankle after a simple accident—she had slipped on an overly polished office floor. Barely four years old, I was saddened to see her lying in bed during the day, her face veiled with pain or fatigue, opening her arms for a kiss while I burst into tears, understanding nothing at all.
This was in the house in Thiais, before our move to Paris in 1965, in a bedroom that seemed immense to me, split in two by winter sunlight in which tiny golden dust particles floated weightlessly.
Half a century later, I kissed Mom on the cheek without knowing it would be the last time. Her mental state left room for doubt as to whether she recognized me, but I have no choice except to believe that in that big kiss, she recognized all the tenderness she had given me.
Writing without betraying is impossible. Words petrify an infinitesimal part of a being while inevitably softening it. But the dead are not readers, and I feel no anxiety about what Mom, for instance, might think if she were to discover the sketch of her life and what might unintentionally hurt her. With the living, it is another matter altogether to paint a portrait fixed in time at the moment of writing, knowing it will have real effects once it is read. That is why I can only evoke the essential—beautiful oxymoron!—to bear witness to my deep and unwavering love for Isa and Solène…
.
Isabelle.
Beauty, charm, humor on many levels, a double intelligence (of the mind and of the heart), tenderness.
True love at first sight is the kind that sets one ablaze forever (not the blinding flash of a brief affair). Daily love, sustained for nearly forty years, is the ultimate adventure worth living. If I am the architect and builder of the structure symbolizing my destiny, Isabelle is unquestionably its keystone—the one that allowed it to stand and the antidote to the void of insoluble existential questions.
Solène.
Beauty, charm, humor on many levels, a double intelligence (of the mind and of the heart), tenderness.
The same qualities as her mother’s—what a coincidence!
Her appearance, as if by enchantment, was the sublimation of a great love into a promise of eternity. Since then, I have lived in the ever-renewed joy of being a father, proud to witness her progress all the way to the conquest of independence and the experience of the total freedom that follows.
Deep in her heart, Solène knows how to distinguish the ephemeral from the timeless, so as always to protect, share, and cherish the precious treasure of our complicity.
.
Isabelle.
Beauty, charm, humor on many levels, a double intelligence (of the mind and of the heart), tenderness.
True love at first sight is the kind that sets one ablaze forever (not the blinding flash of a brief affair). Daily love, sustained for nearly forty years, is the ultimate adventure worth living. If I am the architect and builder of the structure symbolizing my destiny, Isabelle is unquestionably its keystone—the one that allowed it to stand and the antidote to the void of insoluble existential questions.
Solène.
Beauty, charm, humor on many levels, a double intelligence (of the mind and of the heart), tenderness.
The same qualities as her mother’s—what a coincidence!
Her appearance, as if by enchantment, was the sublimation of a great love into a promise of eternity. Since then, I have lived in the ever-renewed joy of being a father, proud to witness her progress all the way to the conquest of independence and the experience of the total freedom that follows.
Deep in her heart, Solène knows how to distinguish the ephemeral from the timeless, so as always to protect, share, and cherish the precious treasure of our complicity.
BEAUTY - (B)eauté
Beauty rather than the beautiful.
Beauty consoles us for the world.
Art reveals the hidden beauty of poetic reality, which is everywhere present at every moment (epiphany).
Beauty is immanent when I choose to perceive it in reality according to my subjective criteria (Marcel Duchamp), and transcendent when it appears to me ex abrupto, self-evident.
A work of art is not an object but a moment—the moment of encounter with the viewer (the most beautiful statue still buried beneath the sands of Egypt does not exist).
The pleasure provided by beauty is an oasis of the present moment in the desert of boredom.
The beauty of the world is the antidote to the poison of nihilism.
The aesthetic quest replaces the quest for God, whose invention once allowed hope for a paradise beyond the hell that exists on earth (the damned being those who are reincarnated).
Art rather than science without conscience, to found a new hope for humanity.
Euphoria often presides over the creative act, yet sometimes it appears only in the relief of having finished.
The total absence of pleasure before, during, or after creation is a serious symptom of melancholy.
Kafka acknowledged that his torments existed only in relation to fleeting moments of ecstasy (in his letters to Milena).
The constant imbalance between suffering and pleasure is both the beginning and the end of all creative inspiration.
Beauty rather than the beautiful.
Beauty consoles us for the world.
Art reveals the hidden beauty of poetic reality, which is everywhere present at every moment (epiphany).
Beauty is immanent when I choose to perceive it in reality according to my subjective criteria (Marcel Duchamp), and transcendent when it appears to me ex abrupto, self-evident.
A work of art is not an object but a moment—the moment of encounter with the viewer (the most beautiful statue still buried beneath the sands of Egypt does not exist).
The pleasure provided by beauty is an oasis of the present moment in the desert of boredom.
The beauty of the world is the antidote to the poison of nihilism.
The aesthetic quest replaces the quest for God, whose invention once allowed hope for a paradise beyond the hell that exists on earth (the damned being those who are reincarnated).
Art rather than science without conscience, to found a new hope for humanity.
Euphoria often presides over the creative act, yet sometimes it appears only in the relief of having finished.
The total absence of pleasure before, during, or after creation is a serious symptom of melancholy.
Kafka acknowledged that his torments existed only in relation to fleeting moments of ecstasy (in his letters to Milena).
The constant imbalance between suffering and pleasure is both the beginning and the end of all creative inspiration.
From the Ideal city, Plato excludes artists: unlike the craftsman who makes a chair one can sit on, the one who draws it merely deceives the senses and thus moves away from the beautiful, which is the true (the example of the fresco of cherries that fooled birds into smashing their beaks against the wall).
The tyranny of beauty standards.
The injustice of physical ugliness.
The enhancement of human beauty
through technological innovation.
Aesthetic eugenics.
The tyranny of beauty standards.
The injustice of physical ugliness.
The enhancement of human beauty
through technological innovation.
Aesthetic eugenics.
CHAOS
My four horsemen of the apocalypse: boredom, suffering, mourning, and chaos.
Chaos is the fear of losing control, of madness, and of nothingness.
My four horsemen of the apocalypse: boredom, suffering, mourning, and chaos.
Chaos is the fear of losing control, of madness, and of nothingness.
Entropy is the inexorable and irreversible increase of disorder (the drop of milk in coffee will never return to its original form).
In a chaotic and infinite universe, an infinity of self-contained life cycles unfolds: emergence – growth – interaction – senescence – reconfiguration.
To find meaning in existence is to think the world and to think oneself thinking the world.
Avoid binary logic as much as possible by adopting the principle of gauges for all aspects of our relationship to internal and external reality.
Evaluate and compare gauge levels while integrating, if possible, dialectical fluctuations (unfolding over time).
For example: do I believe in God?
At twenty, I would say 50%; at forty, 5%; at sixty, still 5% (I now believe in a post-mortem continuity of consciousness, but without a Creator).
The three primordial processes:
1 – Action
Daily work: artistic research and writing.
(see PROCESS).
2 – Contemplation (which is not inaction)
Perceiving the world as it presents itself, always as an inexhaustible source of learning combined with infinite possibilities for the appearance of beauty.
The necessarily sublime experience of nature.
The extraordinary spatiotemporal beauty of the Grand Canyon (as well as Niagara Falls, when one realizes that erosion is slowly but surely pushing the entire site upstream).
The experience of art.
Admiring ancient and contemporary works implies living where they are most often accessible (museums, temporary exhibitions, galleries) — essentially New York, Paris, or London.
Only regular attendance at exhibition spaces allows one to refine discernment in the sensory acquisition of artworks (on a screen, it is impossible, for example, to judge properly a retrospective of a sculptor like Thomas Schütte or a photographer who favors very large prints such as Wolfgang Tillmans).
Lifelong intellectual education.
One may choose knowledge—it is difficult; one may prefer ignorance—it is even more difficult.
It is better to know a little about everything than everything about one thing.
One does not end up an expert, merely a little less stupid.
As young adults, we are defined by what we know; as old ones, by what we lack.
List one’s ignorances rather than what one believes one knows, to draw a hollow self-portrait—certainly less flattering (even discouraging), but far more accurate.
If you hold a big hammer, everything looks like a nail; or if triangles created a god, they would give him three sides (Montesquieu, Persian Letters).
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed are kings.
The most insidious cognitive biases: confirmation bias (of one’s own ideas or hypotheses) and normalcy bias (minimizing warnings).
Never abandon a dialectical approach: this may be true—but for how long?
A primary source of knowledge: others.
The intellectual friendship between Étienne de La Boétie and Montaigne.
A student is never submissive when the teacher inspires respect.
Educate oneself throughout life with great thinkers—those who teach us how to think well—in order to pursue and enrich one’s own philosophical inquiry, always unique in its kind.
3 – Introspection
The classic injunction “know thyself” passes through lived experience combined with a perpetual philosophical quest.
Evaluate oneself without lying to oneself.
Wittgenstein’s truth: language games (see GAME).
In a chaotic and infinite universe, an infinity of self-contained life cycles unfolds: emergence – growth – interaction – senescence – reconfiguration.
To find meaning in existence is to think the world and to think oneself thinking the world.
Avoid binary logic as much as possible by adopting the principle of gauges for all aspects of our relationship to internal and external reality.
Evaluate and compare gauge levels while integrating, if possible, dialectical fluctuations (unfolding over time).
For example: do I believe in God?
At twenty, I would say 50%; at forty, 5%; at sixty, still 5% (I now believe in a post-mortem continuity of consciousness, but without a Creator).
The three primordial processes:
1 – Action
Daily work: artistic research and writing.
(see PROCESS).
2 – Contemplation (which is not inaction)
Perceiving the world as it presents itself, always as an inexhaustible source of learning combined with infinite possibilities for the appearance of beauty.
The necessarily sublime experience of nature.
The extraordinary spatiotemporal beauty of the Grand Canyon (as well as Niagara Falls, when one realizes that erosion is slowly but surely pushing the entire site upstream).
The experience of art.
Admiring ancient and contemporary works implies living where they are most often accessible (museums, temporary exhibitions, galleries) — essentially New York, Paris, or London.
Only regular attendance at exhibition spaces allows one to refine discernment in the sensory acquisition of artworks (on a screen, it is impossible, for example, to judge properly a retrospective of a sculptor like Thomas Schütte or a photographer who favors very large prints such as Wolfgang Tillmans).
Lifelong intellectual education.
One may choose knowledge—it is difficult; one may prefer ignorance—it is even more difficult.
It is better to know a little about everything than everything about one thing.
One does not end up an expert, merely a little less stupid.
As young adults, we are defined by what we know; as old ones, by what we lack.
List one’s ignorances rather than what one believes one knows, to draw a hollow self-portrait—certainly less flattering (even discouraging), but far more accurate.
If you hold a big hammer, everything looks like a nail; or if triangles created a god, they would give him three sides (Montesquieu, Persian Letters).
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed are kings.
The most insidious cognitive biases: confirmation bias (of one’s own ideas or hypotheses) and normalcy bias (minimizing warnings).
Never abandon a dialectical approach: this may be true—but for how long?
A primary source of knowledge: others.
The intellectual friendship between Étienne de La Boétie and Montaigne.
A student is never submissive when the teacher inspires respect.
Educate oneself throughout life with great thinkers—those who teach us how to think well—in order to pursue and enrich one’s own philosophical inquiry, always unique in its kind.
3 – Introspection
The classic injunction “know thyself” passes through lived experience combined with a perpetual philosophical quest.
Evaluate oneself without lying to oneself.
Wittgenstein’s truth: language games (see GAME).
What truly matters to each of us is our own path (Montaigne describing his relationship to death as necessarily shaped by the experience of having come close to it after a fall from a horse).
Each destiny must realize itself freely.
For Nietzsche, individual freedom lies in the vital impulse, compared to a jungle vine inexorably climbing toward the canopy in search of light.
The eternal return is the acceptance that each moment has already been lived and will be lived infinitely many times.
For Albert Camus, the absurdity of existence (illustrated by the myth of Sisyphus endlessly repeating the same futile task) leaves only the alternative of suicide or struggle.
(To pursue introspection further, see MEDITATION and STOICISM.)
Each destiny must realize itself freely.
For Nietzsche, individual freedom lies in the vital impulse, compared to a jungle vine inexorably climbing toward the canopy in search of light.
The eternal return is the acceptance that each moment has already been lived and will be lived infinitely many times.
For Albert Camus, the absurdity of existence (illustrated by the myth of Sisyphus endlessly repeating the same futile task) leaves only the alternative of suicide or struggle.
(To pursue introspection further, see MEDITATION and STOICISM.)
DRAWING
The lost paradise of childhood.
It probably all began with the ritual of Sunday mornings in my childhood, when Dad would prepare the living-room table to indulge his passion for drawing, lining up pencils, brushes, pens, India ink, tubes of paint, cups, rags, and stacks of assorted paper (including the indispensable Canson pads).
I would sit beside him to draw—and I never stopped.
After a hurried, improvised move, nearly all of my work was lost, including the large raisin formats (50 × 65 cm), on which I had pushed to an extreme efficiency a way of mechanically drawing a small, easily duplicated figure, allowing entire armies to clash in the most famous Napoleonic battles.
At Penninghen (the graphic arts school in Paris), I was taught instructive academic techniques based on Antiquity (plaster casts of classical statues) and through weekly life-drawing sessions (four years!). It was a genuine pleasure to achieve a certain mastery of realism—but above all, it clarified what I did not want to do.
Later on, the most enriching experience of drawing was the daily use of a portable sketchbook, which eliminated the vertigo of the blank page by allowing quick sketches from life, imaginary drawings, mysterious doodles, early comic strips, writing drafts, “best of” lists, to-do lists, sketches for sculptures, installations, object-design ideas, and so on to coexist. (I later scanned all the pages of these notebooks to assemble them into large, unprecedented compositions.)
The lost paradise of childhood.
It probably all began with the ritual of Sunday mornings in my childhood, when Dad would prepare the living-room table to indulge his passion for drawing, lining up pencils, brushes, pens, India ink, tubes of paint, cups, rags, and stacks of assorted paper (including the indispensable Canson pads).
I would sit beside him to draw—and I never stopped.
After a hurried, improvised move, nearly all of my work was lost, including the large raisin formats (50 × 65 cm), on which I had pushed to an extreme efficiency a way of mechanically drawing a small, easily duplicated figure, allowing entire armies to clash in the most famous Napoleonic battles.
At Penninghen (the graphic arts school in Paris), I was taught instructive academic techniques based on Antiquity (plaster casts of classical statues) and through weekly life-drawing sessions (four years!). It was a genuine pleasure to achieve a certain mastery of realism—but above all, it clarified what I did not want to do.
Later on, the most enriching experience of drawing was the daily use of a portable sketchbook, which eliminated the vertigo of the blank page by allowing quick sketches from life, imaginary drawings, mysterious doodles, early comic strips, writing drafts, “best of” lists, to-do lists, sketches for sculptures, installations, object-design ideas, and so on to coexist. (I later scanned all the pages of these notebooks to assemble them into large, unprecedented compositions.)
Drawing and modeling (with clay or modeling dough) are the arts of childhood.
The economy of means required by these two practices, and the infinite possibilities offered by such simple media, explain why they were among the first to be used at the dawn of humanity and why they are universally practiced by children.
Everyone experiences these innate creative actions: smearing a blank sheet, kneading a shapeless mass of clay.
This pleasure of producing instantly gratifying results is gradually abandoned, mistakenly considered too simple, too childish.
The few doodles and rare little sculptures that sometimes escape spring cleanings or household moves are true survivors of the lost paradise of early childhood.
They bear witness to an imperative desire to express oneself—one we all once shared, but that only the lucky or the stubborn manage to preserve against the productivity demands of the educational system and the relentless necessities of adult life.
As adults, through drawing and modeling—self-hardening clay perhaps replacing modeling dough—it is possible to rediscover a form of innocence by considering everything one has learned as a burden to be forgotten, in order to uncover secret passages back to the authenticity of origins.
This is not about feigning naivety, but simply about resuming things at the point where they were abandoned in childhood.
As certain children’s works demonstrate—rare, admittedly, but undeniably real—the value of a work does not depend on the age of its author, nor on any acquired technical dexterity.
Amateur drawings can sometimes be exceptional, rivaling those of professional artists—except, of course, for the latter’s ability to repeat the feat.
The economy of means required by these two practices, and the infinite possibilities offered by such simple media, explain why they were among the first to be used at the dawn of humanity and why they are universally practiced by children.
Everyone experiences these innate creative actions: smearing a blank sheet, kneading a shapeless mass of clay.
This pleasure of producing instantly gratifying results is gradually abandoned, mistakenly considered too simple, too childish.
The few doodles and rare little sculptures that sometimes escape spring cleanings or household moves are true survivors of the lost paradise of early childhood.
They bear witness to an imperative desire to express oneself—one we all once shared, but that only the lucky or the stubborn manage to preserve against the productivity demands of the educational system and the relentless necessities of adult life.
As adults, through drawing and modeling—self-hardening clay perhaps replacing modeling dough—it is possible to rediscover a form of innocence by considering everything one has learned as a burden to be forgotten, in order to uncover secret passages back to the authenticity of origins.
This is not about feigning naivety, but simply about resuming things at the point where they were abandoned in childhood.
As certain children’s works demonstrate—rare, admittedly, but undeniably real—the value of a work does not depend on the age of its author, nor on any acquired technical dexterity.
Amateur drawings can sometimes be exceptional, rivaling those of professional artists—except, of course, for the latter’s ability to repeat the feat.
Drawing by Solène, 7 years old.
You can tour preschools or ask amateurs to draw every day and be sure to collect a few successful drawings. But you cannot obtain a similar result by visiting a single school daily, or during one evening among friends suddenly armed with pencils.
And yet, a group of Homo sapiens, brought together by chance in the Paleolithic, drew on the walls of the Lascaux cave without producing a single bad drawing. Why is there not at least one awkwardly sketched horse, or a bull with ridiculous proportions? The consistently perfect harmony between intention and execution is the true enigma of cave art. One might argue that Lascaux is a unique place, like the Sistine Chapel or any singular masterpiece—but in fact, the exception is the rule. The mystery of the absence of sloppy or failed images is just as striking at Chauvet or Cosquer.
What is a good drawing? The right question… and a trap.
Child’s drawing, madman’s drawing, amateur drawing—the fact remains that we are all potentially capable of producing (at least once) a “successful” drawing.
For a long time now—perhaps forever—the quality of a drawing has not resided solely in virtuosity.
The strength and truth of a drawing lie in an evident adequacy between a mysterious intention and its formal expression.
And yet, a group of Homo sapiens, brought together by chance in the Paleolithic, drew on the walls of the Lascaux cave without producing a single bad drawing. Why is there not at least one awkwardly sketched horse, or a bull with ridiculous proportions? The consistently perfect harmony between intention and execution is the true enigma of cave art. One might argue that Lascaux is a unique place, like the Sistine Chapel or any singular masterpiece—but in fact, the exception is the rule. The mystery of the absence of sloppy or failed images is just as striking at Chauvet or Cosquer.
What is a good drawing? The right question… and a trap.
Child’s drawing, madman’s drawing, amateur drawing—the fact remains that we are all potentially capable of producing (at least once) a “successful” drawing.
For a long time now—perhaps forever—the quality of a drawing has not resided solely in virtuosity.
The strength and truth of a drawing lie in an evident adequacy between a mysterious intention and its formal expression.
ENIGMA
It is one of the most fascinating phenomena of inner combustion that drives a creator to devise, with watchmaker precision, certain procedures; to privilege the use of a specific medium; and to be fascinated by rigorously delimited subjects—without necessarily being able to explain the origin of these choices, let alone justify them.
Mystery must not be confused with opacity: darkness is nothingness, whereas mystery exists only when surrounded by stimulating clues of varying but very real intensity.
Across an entire body of work, enigma takes the form of a labyrinth offering an infinite number of possible paths. To lose one’s way is to knowingly produce incomprehensible complexity.
Believing that a successful work requires consulting a thick instruction manual is as mistaken as believing that a work requiring explanation is a failure.
The two pitfalls are, on the one hand, sinking into obscure intellectualism, and on the other, delivering a message that is too explicit.
To allow the transmutation of lead into gold, it is counterproductive to try to control everything.
Mystery is indispensable: it preserves an opening through which another subjectivity—the viewer’s—can slip in unnoticed.
A work open to interpretation triggers a creative process in the viewer as well, and it is precisely in this activated in-between space—shaped by the negative form of real and mental space—that the living reality of the work’s truth resides.
An enigmatic work contains as many solutions as there are investigators.
Each viewer can combine with the work by bringing their sensitivity, intelligence, knowledge, and experience—thus exercising their own capacity to invent, imagine, extrapolate, to add poetry and the unpredictable.
The starry vault of a summer night is objectively magnificent, but it reaches the sublime when the observer assigns one of those points of light the name of a loved one, or a hope nestled deep in the soul, or any other radically subjective projection.
Creation exists only through the unveiling of the work to others, not in the secrecy of the solitary artist’s brain in its ivory tower.
In Goya’s magnificent black paintings, one senses the presence of a truth about the human soul without being able to reveal its exact nature.
Faced with this mysterious aesthetic complexity, a wave-like phenomenon ripples across the surface of our consciousness, revealing the contours of a previously unknown continent between dream and realism—one whose exploration we can begin to imagine.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826), who built nothing but imagined, in his large drawings, an architectural universe of rare beauty and a series of striking allegorical portraits, is the perfect example of the genial artist who produced a body of work both sublime and enigmatic.
The Origin of the World, Gustave Courbet’s provocative painting, was undoubtedly inspired by the erotic (sometimes pornographic) prints of Jean-Jacques Lequeu.
The famous canvas was once owned by Marcel Duchamp, allowing us to imagine a secret, fascinating, and fertile intellectual lineage.
It is one of the most fascinating phenomena of inner combustion that drives a creator to devise, with watchmaker precision, certain procedures; to privilege the use of a specific medium; and to be fascinated by rigorously delimited subjects—without necessarily being able to explain the origin of these choices, let alone justify them.
Mystery must not be confused with opacity: darkness is nothingness, whereas mystery exists only when surrounded by stimulating clues of varying but very real intensity.
Across an entire body of work, enigma takes the form of a labyrinth offering an infinite number of possible paths. To lose one’s way is to knowingly produce incomprehensible complexity.
Believing that a successful work requires consulting a thick instruction manual is as mistaken as believing that a work requiring explanation is a failure.
The two pitfalls are, on the one hand, sinking into obscure intellectualism, and on the other, delivering a message that is too explicit.
To allow the transmutation of lead into gold, it is counterproductive to try to control everything.
Mystery is indispensable: it preserves an opening through which another subjectivity—the viewer’s—can slip in unnoticed.
A work open to interpretation triggers a creative process in the viewer as well, and it is precisely in this activated in-between space—shaped by the negative form of real and mental space—that the living reality of the work’s truth resides.
An enigmatic work contains as many solutions as there are investigators.
Each viewer can combine with the work by bringing their sensitivity, intelligence, knowledge, and experience—thus exercising their own capacity to invent, imagine, extrapolate, to add poetry and the unpredictable.
The starry vault of a summer night is objectively magnificent, but it reaches the sublime when the observer assigns one of those points of light the name of a loved one, or a hope nestled deep in the soul, or any other radically subjective projection.
Creation exists only through the unveiling of the work to others, not in the secrecy of the solitary artist’s brain in its ivory tower.
In Goya’s magnificent black paintings, one senses the presence of a truth about the human soul without being able to reveal its exact nature.
Faced with this mysterious aesthetic complexity, a wave-like phenomenon ripples across the surface of our consciousness, revealing the contours of a previously unknown continent between dream and realism—one whose exploration we can begin to imagine.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826), who built nothing but imagined, in his large drawings, an architectural universe of rare beauty and a series of striking allegorical portraits, is the perfect example of the genial artist who produced a body of work both sublime and enigmatic.
The Origin of the World, Gustave Courbet’s provocative painting, was undoubtedly inspired by the erotic (sometimes pornographic) prints of Jean-Jacques Lequeu.
The famous canvas was once owned by Marcel Duchamp, allowing us to imagine a secret, fascinating, and fertile intellectual lineage.
FEMINISM - Féminisme
Feminism is the greatest anthropological revolution since the advent of sedentary life 10,000 years ago. From the outset, the masculine has created and imposed an unbalanced society—too much in its own image—thus privileging aggression within competition driven by the mimetic desire to be the alpha male. Power (real or symbolic) and money are elevated to ultimate criteria of success in a phallocentric and patriarchal system that persists.
Men should finally acknowledge the failure of their deadly model of civilization, rooted in archaic behaviors that involve eliminating rivals at the risk of the species’ extinction.
We should not expect men to “deconstruct themselves” (as demanded by extremists in an ambiguous quest for purity), but it is time for them to relinquish real power—at least for a while—by dissociating it from masculine values.
Virility can remain in the realm of seduction, just as femininity can for women.
Women do not have a monopoly on so-called “feminine” qualities, but they are naturally better endowed with them: empathy, compassion, communication, emotional intelligence, patience, nonviolence, collaboration.
In their usual propaganda, men belittle and downgrade these qualities as useless accessories—when they are precisely what we urgently need to save humanity.
The pursuit of equality (unfortunately still necessary) by historical feminism within a society designed by men has become a trap for women.
Feminism is the greatest anthropological revolution since the advent of sedentary life 10,000 years ago. From the outset, the masculine has created and imposed an unbalanced society—too much in its own image—thus privileging aggression within competition driven by the mimetic desire to be the alpha male. Power (real or symbolic) and money are elevated to ultimate criteria of success in a phallocentric and patriarchal system that persists.
Men should finally acknowledge the failure of their deadly model of civilization, rooted in archaic behaviors that involve eliminating rivals at the risk of the species’ extinction.
We should not expect men to “deconstruct themselves” (as demanded by extremists in an ambiguous quest for purity), but it is time for them to relinquish real power—at least for a while—by dissociating it from masculine values.
Virility can remain in the realm of seduction, just as femininity can for women.
Women do not have a monopoly on so-called “feminine” qualities, but they are naturally better endowed with them: empathy, compassion, communication, emotional intelligence, patience, nonviolence, collaboration.
In their usual propaganda, men belittle and downgrade these qualities as useless accessories—when they are precisely what we urgently need to save humanity.
The pursuit of equality (unfortunately still necessary) by historical feminism within a society designed by men has become a trap for women.
The Invention of Art
It is more logical to imagine that women invented art, simply because they had the time— before and after childbirth. Like all members of the tribe, they were constantly engaged in many activities, including hunting, but they also experienced that singular moment which could be devoted not only to thinking about the world within the collective primitive gynaeceum, but also to representing it — by drawing on cave walls (or sculpting what were likely self-portraits, such as the Venuses of Laussel, Willendorf, Brassempouy, and others).
It is more logical to imagine that women invented art, simply because they had the time— before and after childbirth. Like all members of the tribe, they were constantly engaged in many activities, including hunting, but they also experienced that singular moment which could be devoted not only to thinking about the world within the collective primitive gynaeceum, but also to representing it — by drawing on cave walls (or sculpting what were likely self-portraits, such as the Venuses of Laussel, Willendorf, Brassempouy, and others).
Perhaps it all began like this:
Forty thousand years ago, two Neanderthal women balance on a rock in the middle of a torrent, trying to catch salmon. This acrobatic fishing amid the roar of rushing water creates a joyous and unprecedented complicity between X and Y. Suddenly Y slips and falls. Her head strikes the bottom; it reappears far downstream, bloody, then vanishes into the churning water. A point of terrible pain pierces X’s heart. Heavy with grief, she returns to the cave on the cliffside that shelters the tribe.
All night long, pain crushes her mind. The next day, standing at the edge of the precipice, she scrutinizes the landscape before her with unprecedented acuity — every detail of the vast panorama revealed to eyes fatigued by insomnia. In the distant plain, the strongest and most skillful, male and female alike, hunt animals, while others, frozen in the landscape, gather sweet red berries. X feels the strange sensation of no longer belonging to this outer world. She prefers to withdraw into the cave, dedicating herself to a new activity inspired by the boredom of sorrowful solitude.
She now spends most of her time drawing lines with charcoal on the mineral walls. She is sharply reproached for it, for she had not been the clumsiest hunter, and for days now the tribe has returned empty-handed.
Then X stands up and, before an assembly of astonished australopithecines, draws a magnificent life-size antelope, truer than nature. The very next day, a slew of antelopes is trapped, and she is left in peace, as a vague connection is made.
X continues calmly covering every corner of the cave with drawings, diversifying her techniques—but alone, she begins to tire.
One fine morning, Z — a pregnant woman who has been observing her for days — draws the small figure of a human running behind a bull drawn by X. For X, it is a revelation.
The weeks that follow are lived in the shared pleasure of a frenzied dual production. But as the cave becomes almost entirely covered with paintings, creative activity gradually wanes and then stops. One cannot blame them—at that age, there were still plenty of wild cats to whip, and many absolutely useful things left to invent.
That year (–38,000), winter was harsh, and Z, fragile by nature, did not survive. She was found completely frozen in a narrow passage where she had squeezed herself to draw a tiny bison exactly at a bulge in the wall that would enhance the realism of its silhouette. Z was undoubtedly a perfectionist.
The ordeal of this second loss was devastating for X. At nightfall, she lost herself in contemplating Z’s drawings, which had the strange power to console her absence by coming to life on walls lit by the trembling firelight. Z had not truly disappeared: her deep black lines and her negative handprints (one of her inventions) in intense red ocher recalled the moment of creation, magnificently frozen for eternity.
This awakened in X an irrepressible desire to seek out a virgin cave, where she would later initiate other apprentices in search of immortality…
Like hunting, fire, or mating, the function of art had, since that distant time, been perfectly understood by our ancestors—no less intelligent than we are.
Forty thousand years ago, two Neanderthal women balance on a rock in the middle of a torrent, trying to catch salmon. This acrobatic fishing amid the roar of rushing water creates a joyous and unprecedented complicity between X and Y. Suddenly Y slips and falls. Her head strikes the bottom; it reappears far downstream, bloody, then vanishes into the churning water. A point of terrible pain pierces X’s heart. Heavy with grief, she returns to the cave on the cliffside that shelters the tribe.
All night long, pain crushes her mind. The next day, standing at the edge of the precipice, she scrutinizes the landscape before her with unprecedented acuity — every detail of the vast panorama revealed to eyes fatigued by insomnia. In the distant plain, the strongest and most skillful, male and female alike, hunt animals, while others, frozen in the landscape, gather sweet red berries. X feels the strange sensation of no longer belonging to this outer world. She prefers to withdraw into the cave, dedicating herself to a new activity inspired by the boredom of sorrowful solitude.
She now spends most of her time drawing lines with charcoal on the mineral walls. She is sharply reproached for it, for she had not been the clumsiest hunter, and for days now the tribe has returned empty-handed.
Then X stands up and, before an assembly of astonished australopithecines, draws a magnificent life-size antelope, truer than nature. The very next day, a slew of antelopes is trapped, and she is left in peace, as a vague connection is made.
X continues calmly covering every corner of the cave with drawings, diversifying her techniques—but alone, she begins to tire.
One fine morning, Z — a pregnant woman who has been observing her for days — draws the small figure of a human running behind a bull drawn by X. For X, it is a revelation.
The weeks that follow are lived in the shared pleasure of a frenzied dual production. But as the cave becomes almost entirely covered with paintings, creative activity gradually wanes and then stops. One cannot blame them—at that age, there were still plenty of wild cats to whip, and many absolutely useful things left to invent.
That year (–38,000), winter was harsh, and Z, fragile by nature, did not survive. She was found completely frozen in a narrow passage where she had squeezed herself to draw a tiny bison exactly at a bulge in the wall that would enhance the realism of its silhouette. Z was undoubtedly a perfectionist.
The ordeal of this second loss was devastating for X. At nightfall, she lost herself in contemplating Z’s drawings, which had the strange power to console her absence by coming to life on walls lit by the trembling firelight. Z had not truly disappeared: her deep black lines and her negative handprints (one of her inventions) in intense red ocher recalled the moment of creation, magnificently frozen for eternity.
This awakened in X an irrepressible desire to seek out a virgin cave, where she would later initiate other apprentices in search of immortality…
Like hunting, fire, or mating, the function of art had, since that distant time, been perfectly understood by our ancestors—no less intelligent than we are.
GO
The game of Go differs radically from chess through the inversion of the relationship between tactics and strategy. After only a few moves on the sixty-four squares of a chessboard, the game becomes an inextricable congestion of tactical skirmishes from which a strategy must later be inferred—often through sacrifice in local duels.
On the 361 intersections of a Go board, the first stones played are occupations of strategic points meant to control the vast empty spaces of the goban (the board), in order to secure later superiority in the many tactical confrontations that will arise along the “borders” of territories.
The best moves in Go are therefore those that anticipate a position’s future importance by privileging a global, long-term view (among the qualities required to prevail, a form of visual acuity is far from negligible).
Rather than fighting day after day in the present, the game consists in taking risks through large strategic time leaps whose justification will appear only later—sometimes at the very end of the game.
In life, decisions such as expatriating, committing to a project whose outcome requires years of effort, or having a child, are choices of the same nature: they favor the long term over the short term.
It is interesting to associate this strategy with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold (which brings together two points initially unreachable) and with quantum entanglement, the manifest interaction between two particles regardless of the distance separating them.
Although there are more possible games of Go than grains of sand on the planet, the AlphaGo program defeated the world champion in 2016 (the Korean player Lee Sedol) by innovating strategically with a move no human player would have considered—provoking laughter in the audience—yet which proved to be the decisive masterstroke that turned the game. Lee Sedol later declared: “I have never learned so much in such a short time.”
Go is one of the most beautiful gateways into Japanese culture: the sublime aesthetic refinement of the goban’s asymmetric grid, designed to account for perspective (thus creating the illusion of perfect squares)*; the matte black stones set against the glossy white ones (balancing the visual “presence” of each side); all within a traditional setting such as Kyoto’s Golden Pavilion. Games can last a long time—three hours, for example—without boredom ever intruding.
* Which requires positioning the board correctly before playing face to face.
The game of Go differs radically from chess through the inversion of the relationship between tactics and strategy. After only a few moves on the sixty-four squares of a chessboard, the game becomes an inextricable congestion of tactical skirmishes from which a strategy must later be inferred—often through sacrifice in local duels.
On the 361 intersections of a Go board, the first stones played are occupations of strategic points meant to control the vast empty spaces of the goban (the board), in order to secure later superiority in the many tactical confrontations that will arise along the “borders” of territories.
The best moves in Go are therefore those that anticipate a position’s future importance by privileging a global, long-term view (among the qualities required to prevail, a form of visual acuity is far from negligible).
Rather than fighting day after day in the present, the game consists in taking risks through large strategic time leaps whose justification will appear only later—sometimes at the very end of the game.
In life, decisions such as expatriating, committing to a project whose outcome requires years of effort, or having a child, are choices of the same nature: they favor the long term over the short term.
It is interesting to associate this strategy with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold (which brings together two points initially unreachable) and with quantum entanglement, the manifest interaction between two particles regardless of the distance separating them.
Although there are more possible games of Go than grains of sand on the planet, the AlphaGo program defeated the world champion in 2016 (the Korean player Lee Sedol) by innovating strategically with a move no human player would have considered—provoking laughter in the audience—yet which proved to be the decisive masterstroke that turned the game. Lee Sedol later declared: “I have never learned so much in such a short time.”
Go is one of the most beautiful gateways into Japanese culture: the sublime aesthetic refinement of the goban’s asymmetric grid, designed to account for perspective (thus creating the illusion of perfect squares)*; the matte black stones set against the glossy white ones (balancing the visual “presence” of each side); all within a traditional setting such as Kyoto’s Golden Pavilion. Games can last a long time—three hours, for example—without boredom ever intruding.
* Which requires positioning the board correctly before playing face to face.
Maschinengewehr 08
HONOR
In the early weeks of the First World War, before the front had solidified into trench lines separated by no man’s land, offensives took place in open terrain against temporary defensive lines formed by thickets, hedges, or brush at the edge of forests, behind which enemies were cut down by machine-gun fire.
On the German side, the famous Maschinengewehr 08 suffered from a problem of radiator overheating, releasing steam through a valve—making the gunner easy to spot. His life expectancy rarely exceeded half an hour, as he became the target of a French sniper. Yet, considering it a privilege and an honor to serve such a modern and powerful machine, soldiers lined up to take the position.
Honor tied to the nation did not survive two world wars launched in the name of nationalism, and the notion of individual honor seems to have followed the same path into oblivion.
One gave one’s word of honor as an absolute guarantee of good faith—to keep a promise or guard a secret.
Out of a certain idea of oneself, rather than endure dishonor, one was ready for the ultimate sacrifice, whether in a duel or even through suicide.
It was a way of distinguishing oneself from baseness or weakness of character. A given word carried certainty, unless one was willing to lose one’s irreplaceable reputation as an honest person.
To avoid wrongdoing, one was expected to conduct an examination of conscience, hoping to find that honor had remained intact in every situation.
“All proper and honorable,” one gained self-esteem and the respect of one’s contemporaries.
In the name of honor, the worst crimes were certainly committed—but how many lives, conversely, were guided upward by this inner compass?
Perhaps we would benefit from reactivating the powerful notion of individual honor to redefine a harmonious relationship with the world, with others, and with our deepest self.
Honor should not be confused with pride or arrogance.
In the early weeks of the First World War, before the front had solidified into trench lines separated by no man’s land, offensives took place in open terrain against temporary defensive lines formed by thickets, hedges, or brush at the edge of forests, behind which enemies were cut down by machine-gun fire.
On the German side, the famous Maschinengewehr 08 suffered from a problem of radiator overheating, releasing steam through a valve—making the gunner easy to spot. His life expectancy rarely exceeded half an hour, as he became the target of a French sniper. Yet, considering it a privilege and an honor to serve such a modern and powerful machine, soldiers lined up to take the position.
Honor tied to the nation did not survive two world wars launched in the name of nationalism, and the notion of individual honor seems to have followed the same path into oblivion.
One gave one’s word of honor as an absolute guarantee of good faith—to keep a promise or guard a secret.
Out of a certain idea of oneself, rather than endure dishonor, one was ready for the ultimate sacrifice, whether in a duel or even through suicide.
It was a way of distinguishing oneself from baseness or weakness of character. A given word carried certainty, unless one was willing to lose one’s irreplaceable reputation as an honest person.
To avoid wrongdoing, one was expected to conduct an examination of conscience, hoping to find that honor had remained intact in every situation.
“All proper and honorable,” one gained self-esteem and the respect of one’s contemporaries.
In the name of honor, the worst crimes were certainly committed—but how many lives, conversely, were guided upward by this inner compass?
Perhaps we would benefit from reactivating the powerful notion of individual honor to redefine a harmonious relationship with the world, with others, and with our deepest self.
Honor should not be confused with pride or arrogance.
ATEMPORALITY - (I)ntemporalité
Nietzsche’s eternal return: every instant of our lives has been and will be lived an infinite number of times.
The phoenix rising from its ashes.
The endless cycle of reincarnation.
To be present is to remain in balance between the memory of past experience and anticipation within the branching of possibilities.
The work of art is the universal passport to atemporality.
The present moment of creation only finds meaning in the revelation of a beauty that may be incorruptible.
The ultimate goal is beauty that endures.
Ephemeral art is the void of sterile pleasure, immediately forgotten.
By nurturing the hope of permanence at the very moment of creation, one escapes the contingencies of one’s era and the aesthetic injunctions of fashion.
To think of art as essentially timeless does not defeat death—but offers the magnificent illusion of doing so.
(See Metabox in PROCESS.)
The disappearance of the sacred and of mystery in the modern world.
The disenchantment of the world, as expressed by Max Weber in his opposition between religion and science.
In a prose text by Baudelaire, a traveler on a train crossing a forest at night glimpses through the window the improbable, fleeting light of a fire. This event, lasting only a fraction of a second, embodied the vibrant reality of a mysterious enchantment of the world—a world once inhabited by dreams and myths. Baudelaire paradoxically invents modernity by radically criticizing it as a probable decadence.
Rather than inventing new gods, let us once again sacralize nature, drawing inspiration from animism (notably Japanese Shinto or Native American traditions), a form of spirituality opposed to scientistic, anthropocentric transhumanism, which triumphs by ravaging the planet.
Nietzsche’s eternal return: every instant of our lives has been and will be lived an infinite number of times.
The phoenix rising from its ashes.
The endless cycle of reincarnation.
To be present is to remain in balance between the memory of past experience and anticipation within the branching of possibilities.
The work of art is the universal passport to atemporality.
The present moment of creation only finds meaning in the revelation of a beauty that may be incorruptible.
The ultimate goal is beauty that endures.
Ephemeral art is the void of sterile pleasure, immediately forgotten.
By nurturing the hope of permanence at the very moment of creation, one escapes the contingencies of one’s era and the aesthetic injunctions of fashion.
To think of art as essentially timeless does not defeat death—but offers the magnificent illusion of doing so.
(See Metabox in PROCESS.)
The disappearance of the sacred and of mystery in the modern world.
The disenchantment of the world, as expressed by Max Weber in his opposition between religion and science.
In a prose text by Baudelaire, a traveler on a train crossing a forest at night glimpses through the window the improbable, fleeting light of a fire. This event, lasting only a fraction of a second, embodied the vibrant reality of a mysterious enchantment of the world—a world once inhabited by dreams and myths. Baudelaire paradoxically invents modernity by radically criticizing it as a probable decadence.
Rather than inventing new gods, let us once again sacralize nature, drawing inspiration from animism (notably Japanese Shinto or Native American traditions), a form of spirituality opposed to scientistic, anthropocentric transhumanism, which triumphs by ravaging the planet.
Carved by the erosion of the Colorado River over six million years—made visible through geological strata across an immense panorama—the Grand Canyon is an incomparable spatiotemporal experience, providing the feeling of being in one’s rightful place in the universe, whose center is potentially everywhere, and thus possibly here, at the edge of the precipice, facing mineral splendor consumed by the setting sun.
An agnostic concedes the impossibility of accessing ultimate knowledge, yet may think it most likely that God exists.
As an atheist, my sole and intimate conviction is that God is an invention—but that beyond death there exists a possibility of reuniting with the loved ones I mourn. Without wishing to shorten the waiting—mine or theirs—I imagine the inevitable moment of reunion.
If this hope were to fade, the choice of struggle advocated by Albert Camus to confront the absurdity of existence (and not commit suicide) would not be sufficient.
An agnostic concedes the impossibility of accessing ultimate knowledge, yet may think it most likely that God exists.
As an atheist, my sole and intimate conviction is that God is an invention—but that beyond death there exists a possibility of reuniting with the loved ones I mourn. Without wishing to shorten the waiting—mine or theirs—I imagine the inevitable moment of reunion.
If this hope were to fade, the choice of struggle advocated by Albert Camus to confront the absurdity of existence (and not commit suicide) would not be sufficient.
The precious objects found in early Neolithic burials testify to a spiritual desire directly linked to a post-mortem promise.
Since the dawn of humanity, the death of another has been unbearable in the absence of a perspective of immortality. Predicting an afterworld partially resolves the problem of mourning—and ipso facto that of one’s own death. I fear only the death of those I love.
Since the dawn of humanity, the death of another has been unbearable in the absence of a perspective of immortality. Predicting an afterworld partially resolves the problem of mourning—and ipso facto that of one’s own death. I fear only the death of those I love.
Immortality would imply being constantly immersed in the present.
ATARAXA
A novel without a pre-established plan, like a solitary exquisite corpse, whose content and form are created either according to the intrinsic necessities of narrative (characters, causality, plot twists, etc.) or through controlled slips into a form of poetic prose entirely free of contingencies. Karl, the “hero,” travels to the far end of the world to write a science-fiction novel whose central theme is immortality—a story that will paradoxically insert itself into the very conditions that allowed it to be written. Of the most classical construction, the narrative of Karl’s life contradicts the experimental freedom of the speculative novel.
Excerpt:
001
Entity 200015031961 – 80,513 years old
Ignorant of the past, never anxious about the future, his consciousness—conceived as a combination of immutable truths—floated in an eternal present. Having swallowed the notion of temporality as an academic soft pill, he found absurd the alternative chronological system of thought whose inevitable return some Entities were now proclaiming. How could one defend a theory as illogical and depressing as the claim that Time can be lost and then recovered, along with other deliriums of the same kind? Who had originally introduced this speculation into the Whole?
ATARAXA
A novel without a pre-established plan, like a solitary exquisite corpse, whose content and form are created either according to the intrinsic necessities of narrative (characters, causality, plot twists, etc.) or through controlled slips into a form of poetic prose entirely free of contingencies. Karl, the “hero,” travels to the far end of the world to write a science-fiction novel whose central theme is immortality—a story that will paradoxically insert itself into the very conditions that allowed it to be written. Of the most classical construction, the narrative of Karl’s life contradicts the experimental freedom of the speculative novel.
Excerpt:
001
Entity 200015031961 – 80,513 years old
Ignorant of the past, never anxious about the future, his consciousness—conceived as a combination of immutable truths—floated in an eternal present. Having swallowed the notion of temporality as an academic soft pill, he found absurd the alternative chronological system of thought whose inevitable return some Entities were now proclaiming. How could one defend a theory as illogical and depressing as the claim that Time can be lost and then recovered, along with other deliriums of the same kind? Who had originally introduced this speculation into the Whole?
GAME- (J)eu
The luminous clarity of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein pursued a radical, honest, and courageous intellectual path.
At first, he believed that reason could describe the relationship between reality and language in his major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Language is the logical mirror of reality—but it cannot account for reality in its entirety; philosophical discourse itself belongs to what cannot be fully expressed, including aesthetics and ethics.
There is no objective language, for a word such as truth, for example, will not mean the same thing when used by a philosopher, a scientist, or a child.
At the end of his life, Wittgenstein questioned everything, proposing that there exist only language games governed by an infinite number of specific rules, since exchanges between two interlocutors depend not only on their respective characteristics but also on context (speaking “lion” is not enough to be understood by a lion).
All reality reduces itself to what two defined entities say about it within an environment governed by specific rules—rules that cannot be transgressed without risking misunderstanding.
Is language the final word (!) of the story, or does reality command us while we chatter away in vain?
The luminous clarity of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein pursued a radical, honest, and courageous intellectual path.
At first, he believed that reason could describe the relationship between reality and language in his major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Language is the logical mirror of reality—but it cannot account for reality in its entirety; philosophical discourse itself belongs to what cannot be fully expressed, including aesthetics and ethics.
There is no objective language, for a word such as truth, for example, will not mean the same thing when used by a philosopher, a scientist, or a child.
At the end of his life, Wittgenstein questioned everything, proposing that there exist only language games governed by an infinite number of specific rules, since exchanges between two interlocutors depend not only on their respective characteristics but also on context (speaking “lion” is not enough to be understood by a lion).
All reality reduces itself to what two defined entities say about it within an environment governed by specific rules—rules that cannot be transgressed without risking misunderstanding.
Is language the final word (!) of the story, or does reality command us while we chatter away in vain?
Joseph Beuys in 1965 during a famous performance in which he explained artworks to a dead hare.
K
The main character in Franz Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle.
Near the town hall in Paris’ 15th arrondissement stands the Vaugirard Municipal Library, a building of alternating bricks and dressed stone set on an iron frame typical of late 19th cent. republican architecture (1891).
I must have been twelve or thirteen when I decided to enter it, feeling the special thrill of a first experience.
In the joy of a freedom I believed owed to me as an aspiring citizen, I wandered silently through this new sacred territory, guided by some unknown inspiration to choose a book—here a ray of sunlight on the spine of a volume, there an enigmatic title…
I let chance guide my hand toward a small paperback, not too thick, without the slightest idea of what I was about to discover.
Seated at one of the large wooden tables, exuding the scent of old varnish that enhanced the quaint charm of the nearly empty library that early afternoon, I read the first sentence:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect."
Reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was, of course, a colossal shock, a revelation that writers would become invaluable witnesses and guides for understanding one’s own existence.
"He who does not read condemns himself to live only one life—his own" (attributed to Umberto Eco).
In The Trial, K becomes lost and exhausted in the maze of judicial procedures, never learning what he is accused of, and eventually convinces himself of his guilt.
In The Castle (unfinished), K never succeeds in entering it to officially register as a surveyor with the officials.
Faced with the evident absurdity of existence, the desperate quest for meaning, reasons for being, philosophical explanations of why there is something rather than nothing, becomes a trap preventing action, struggle, or writing.
Daily writing is an essential intellectual exercise to achieve any result, as the difficulty of resuming after even a brief pause in routine attests.
Experiment with all forms of writing—why deprive oneself of diversity? Aphorism, poetry, short or long essays, novels, short stories, letters, predictions, art criticism, philosophical quests, testimonies, free thoughts, lists, project notes, manuals, etc.
Write to avoid self-deception, as rereading one’s work—even years later—reveals unique, specific insights into one’s intellectual and cultural journey.
Write to avoid going mad, lost in a labyrinth of half-formed thoughts that have never been clearly articulated and committed to paper with the formality and honesty required.
Write for the joy of words falling magically and spontaneously into place.
Write for the opposite satisfaction: revising and correcting endlessly, only to decide whether to preserve or erase a text forever.
The main character in Franz Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle.
Near the town hall in Paris’ 15th arrondissement stands the Vaugirard Municipal Library, a building of alternating bricks and dressed stone set on an iron frame typical of late 19th cent. republican architecture (1891).
I must have been twelve or thirteen when I decided to enter it, feeling the special thrill of a first experience.
In the joy of a freedom I believed owed to me as an aspiring citizen, I wandered silently through this new sacred territory, guided by some unknown inspiration to choose a book—here a ray of sunlight on the spine of a volume, there an enigmatic title…
I let chance guide my hand toward a small paperback, not too thick, without the slightest idea of what I was about to discover.
Seated at one of the large wooden tables, exuding the scent of old varnish that enhanced the quaint charm of the nearly empty library that early afternoon, I read the first sentence:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect."
Reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was, of course, a colossal shock, a revelation that writers would become invaluable witnesses and guides for understanding one’s own existence.
"He who does not read condemns himself to live only one life—his own" (attributed to Umberto Eco).
In The Trial, K becomes lost and exhausted in the maze of judicial procedures, never learning what he is accused of, and eventually convinces himself of his guilt.
In The Castle (unfinished), K never succeeds in entering it to officially register as a surveyor with the officials.
Faced with the evident absurdity of existence, the desperate quest for meaning, reasons for being, philosophical explanations of why there is something rather than nothing, becomes a trap preventing action, struggle, or writing.
Daily writing is an essential intellectual exercise to achieve any result, as the difficulty of resuming after even a brief pause in routine attests.
Experiment with all forms of writing—why deprive oneself of diversity? Aphorism, poetry, short or long essays, novels, short stories, letters, predictions, art criticism, philosophical quests, testimonies, free thoughts, lists, project notes, manuals, etc.
Write to avoid self-deception, as rereading one’s work—even years later—reveals unique, specific insights into one’s intellectual and cultural journey.
Write to avoid going mad, lost in a labyrinth of half-formed thoughts that have never been clearly articulated and committed to paper with the formality and honesty required.
Write for the joy of words falling magically and spontaneously into place.
Write for the opposite satisfaction: revising and correcting endlessly, only to decide whether to preserve or erase a text forever.
LABORATORY
Fundamental artistic research.
The ambivalence of creative activity.
For a creator, virtues and flaws do not necessarily carry the positive or negative values commonly attributed to them: skill, courage, and perseverance may produce tedious academicism, while laziness, lack of reflection, and outrageous egocentrism can sometimes give rise to works of astonishing economy, rare spontaneity, and profound introspection.
Arthur Rimbaud definitively demonstrated that “for well-born souls, talent does not wait for years”—time spent on a task may be irrelevant. A highly elaborate work or a single stroke on paper can represent the entire universe. Sincerity is the cardinal value for an artist; talent partly consists in not deceiving oneself.
Anyone hoping to belong, in their own eyes, to the long lineage of worthy artists must risk the totality of the meaning they wish to give their life in the tangible materialization of a lasting trace. The only limits to creation are lack of originality and imagination.
An artist enjoys the rare, exorbitant privilege of choosing the constraints to which they will submit themselves. This freedom carries traps, which must be identified to avoid wasting effort through clumsiness or naivety.
The swamp of false aspirations.
One may wallow here indefinitely, even never escaping, mistaking the pursued goals. A common trap is corrupting one’s work by caring too much about external influences laden with aesthetic or philosophical norms. Like a mountaineer in ascent, the artist does not need critics’ approval or public admiration to tackle their peaks.
Only future generations will determine what is incidental and what will endure posthumously. Many artists scorned in their lifetime were later re-evaluated, while others celebrated during their era vanished from collective memory. Aspiring to posterity is not vanity but a compass for evaluating one’s work. The ultimate criterion for judging art is its durability.
The pursuit of timeless revelation of exemplary singularity pushed to its extreme. One must thirst to reach the oasis. Many believe themselves intelligent or talented without being so, sincere without being so. A clear declaration of intent is necessary; self-examination without it often leads to further error.
Practical application is simpler than theory suggests. Over decades of production, boundaries emerge between perseverance and laboriousness, between charm and gimmick, originality and showmanship. Some flaws appear slowly but inevitably reveal themselves.
The never-before-seen is essential to aesthetic research; why exhaust oneself imitating the familiar?
In the old hierarchical system of artistic values, most artists felt doomed to affirm themselves through a single recognizable style. Like Sisyphus with a palette, the artist repeatedly strives to outdo themselves with visible obstinacy to earn respect. Hoping to stand out with old propaganda tricks—frequent repetition of a single message—is anachronistic.
No matter the strength of a formally singular artistic proposal, hypertext and scrolling resist it. Two visually similar works, even distinct, create instant déjà-vu and are swiftly dismissed. While focus on one individual’s work is possible, why linger when thousands of others are equally worthy?
Every artistic image should stand alone, representing the creator’s vision in full, or be understood as such, without reference to prior laborious drafts or subsequent sterile repetitions. The aim is not to impose a closed aesthetic system but to spark investigation in the viewer, free from simplistic like/dislike binaries.
Artistic progress is both real and illusory. Existential and tautological questions endure, while progress occurs in formal aesthetic revolutions—Piero della Francesca’s spatial perspective, Picasso’s temporal fourth dimension in Cubism, Duchamp revealing beauty in unexpected places. Such seismic shifts are rare but spectacular. Progress also arises through technical innovation: computer use in the 21st century offers new expressive possibilities. Familiar media grow tiresome; digital exploration allows for infinite creative branches.
Neuroscience shows we manipulate memories unconsciously. Distinguishing past reality from imaginative reconstruction is nearly impossible. How, then, does free will function in creation if one strives not to illuminate what’s already been seen? Artists’ inspirations—often chaotic, associating images, concepts, emotions, dreams—may unknowingly influence production.
The ultimate freedom is choosing to stop creating before decay constrains you. Past a certain age, creative fire may not reignite; works risk self-caricature, redundancy, or senility. Rare geniuses may continue productively until death; ordinary yet talented artists must consider ending their story before twilight impairs it. Believing retirement is irrelevant is a mistake; one risks chaos under the illusion of perpetual necessity.
Exponential evolution thinking is paradoxical: life’s work cannot endlessly improve; death ensures the always better will never exist. After conquering writer’s block and filling a page, one must accept that excellence lies behind. Stepping back preserves time for loved ones, philosophical reflection, others’ art, nature, meditation.
Fundamental artistic research.
The ambivalence of creative activity.
For a creator, virtues and flaws do not necessarily carry the positive or negative values commonly attributed to them: skill, courage, and perseverance may produce tedious academicism, while laziness, lack of reflection, and outrageous egocentrism can sometimes give rise to works of astonishing economy, rare spontaneity, and profound introspection.
Arthur Rimbaud definitively demonstrated that “for well-born souls, talent does not wait for years”—time spent on a task may be irrelevant. A highly elaborate work or a single stroke on paper can represent the entire universe. Sincerity is the cardinal value for an artist; talent partly consists in not deceiving oneself.
Anyone hoping to belong, in their own eyes, to the long lineage of worthy artists must risk the totality of the meaning they wish to give their life in the tangible materialization of a lasting trace. The only limits to creation are lack of originality and imagination.
An artist enjoys the rare, exorbitant privilege of choosing the constraints to which they will submit themselves. This freedom carries traps, which must be identified to avoid wasting effort through clumsiness or naivety.
The swamp of false aspirations.
One may wallow here indefinitely, even never escaping, mistaking the pursued goals. A common trap is corrupting one’s work by caring too much about external influences laden with aesthetic or philosophical norms. Like a mountaineer in ascent, the artist does not need critics’ approval or public admiration to tackle their peaks.
Only future generations will determine what is incidental and what will endure posthumously. Many artists scorned in their lifetime were later re-evaluated, while others celebrated during their era vanished from collective memory. Aspiring to posterity is not vanity but a compass for evaluating one’s work. The ultimate criterion for judging art is its durability.
The pursuit of timeless revelation of exemplary singularity pushed to its extreme. One must thirst to reach the oasis. Many believe themselves intelligent or talented without being so, sincere without being so. A clear declaration of intent is necessary; self-examination without it often leads to further error.
Practical application is simpler than theory suggests. Over decades of production, boundaries emerge between perseverance and laboriousness, between charm and gimmick, originality and showmanship. Some flaws appear slowly but inevitably reveal themselves.
The never-before-seen is essential to aesthetic research; why exhaust oneself imitating the familiar?
In the old hierarchical system of artistic values, most artists felt doomed to affirm themselves through a single recognizable style. Like Sisyphus with a palette, the artist repeatedly strives to outdo themselves with visible obstinacy to earn respect. Hoping to stand out with old propaganda tricks—frequent repetition of a single message—is anachronistic.
No matter the strength of a formally singular artistic proposal, hypertext and scrolling resist it. Two visually similar works, even distinct, create instant déjà-vu and are swiftly dismissed. While focus on one individual’s work is possible, why linger when thousands of others are equally worthy?
Every artistic image should stand alone, representing the creator’s vision in full, or be understood as such, without reference to prior laborious drafts or subsequent sterile repetitions. The aim is not to impose a closed aesthetic system but to spark investigation in the viewer, free from simplistic like/dislike binaries.
Artistic progress is both real and illusory. Existential and tautological questions endure, while progress occurs in formal aesthetic revolutions—Piero della Francesca’s spatial perspective, Picasso’s temporal fourth dimension in Cubism, Duchamp revealing beauty in unexpected places. Such seismic shifts are rare but spectacular. Progress also arises through technical innovation: computer use in the 21st century offers new expressive possibilities. Familiar media grow tiresome; digital exploration allows for infinite creative branches.
Neuroscience shows we manipulate memories unconsciously. Distinguishing past reality from imaginative reconstruction is nearly impossible. How, then, does free will function in creation if one strives not to illuminate what’s already been seen? Artists’ inspirations—often chaotic, associating images, concepts, emotions, dreams—may unknowingly influence production.
The ultimate freedom is choosing to stop creating before decay constrains you. Past a certain age, creative fire may not reignite; works risk self-caricature, redundancy, or senility. Rare geniuses may continue productively until death; ordinary yet talented artists must consider ending their story before twilight impairs it. Believing retirement is irrelevant is a mistake; one risks chaos under the illusion of perpetual necessity.
Exponential evolution thinking is paradoxical: life’s work cannot endlessly improve; death ensures the always better will never exist. After conquering writer’s block and filling a page, one must accept that excellence lies behind. Stepping back preserves time for loved ones, philosophical reflection, others’ art, nature, meditation.
The philosopher, Rembrandt.
MEDITATION
The cult of the present is glorified by consumer society propaganda: every day must capture ever more remarkable, monetizable moments.
Money is the supreme value in the materialist pursuit of happiness here and now.
Yet the present, heightened in perception, rarely delivers intellectual, spiritual, or existential answers. Pareidolia may suggest a magnificent quadriga of white horses in clouds, but reality often offers mere cumulus.
Perpetual immersion in the present must not distract from our true destiny: memory for wisdom, action for experience, imagination for projection.
Synchronizing past and future within the present is possible through meditation in solitude. Wisdom is not measured by hours of practice, but by the ability to extract instructive essence from each day, year, or decade.
Withdrawal without engagement is futile; meditation depends on real-world experience. Meditating is synchronizing past, present, and future. In this spatiotemporal balance, our best selves may emerge, generating existential, intellectual, or sensory revelations.
What surfaces spontaneously in consciousness can transform perception of one’s existence. Personally, I’ve realized that the dead await us with as much impatience as we have to reunite with them. Recognizing that death unites rather than separates gives meaning—not as absolute concept, but as author of my own truth in a changing context.
The cult of the present is glorified by consumer society propaganda: every day must capture ever more remarkable, monetizable moments.
Money is the supreme value in the materialist pursuit of happiness here and now.
Yet the present, heightened in perception, rarely delivers intellectual, spiritual, or existential answers. Pareidolia may suggest a magnificent quadriga of white horses in clouds, but reality often offers mere cumulus.
Perpetual immersion in the present must not distract from our true destiny: memory for wisdom, action for experience, imagination for projection.
Synchronizing past and future within the present is possible through meditation in solitude. Wisdom is not measured by hours of practice, but by the ability to extract instructive essence from each day, year, or decade.
Withdrawal without engagement is futile; meditation depends on real-world experience. Meditating is synchronizing past, present, and future. In this spatiotemporal balance, our best selves may emerge, generating existential, intellectual, or sensory revelations.
What surfaces spontaneously in consciousness can transform perception of one’s existence. Personally, I’ve realized that the dead await us with as much impatience as we have to reunite with them. Recognizing that death unites rather than separates gives meaning—not as absolute concept, but as author of my own truth in a changing context.
Basic method for full conscious meditative synchronization.
Basic breath exercises.
No required posture or environment.
Feel life’s energy flow through you.
Heighten perception of bodily life.
Reduce attention to external stimuli without eliminating them.
Eyes open or closed, as desired.
Accept all thoughts, in order or disorder.
Suspend judgment, maintain discernment.
Drift into wakeful reverie without falling into half-sleep or partial dreams.
Existential inquiry is in recognizing coincidences between past, present, and future, situating oneself in space somewhere between atom and black hole. Wander, shortcut, lose oneself, deepen—every mental path is valid.
Lose your way by forgetting the path, not direction. Control fear, including death; channel impulses. Be in the world, not possess it. Focus on details, imagine omnipotence, experience the invisible, ephemeral, ghostly, other lives or dimensions. Detect fleeting or lasting positive waves.
Meditation is a tool, not a goal, supporting balance between subjectivity and objective reality. Over a lifetime, discern what is worth living and thinking.
Basic breath exercises.
No required posture or environment.
Feel life’s energy flow through you.
Heighten perception of bodily life.
Reduce attention to external stimuli without eliminating them.
Eyes open or closed, as desired.
Accept all thoughts, in order or disorder.
Suspend judgment, maintain discernment.
Drift into wakeful reverie without falling into half-sleep or partial dreams.
Existential inquiry is in recognizing coincidences between past, present, and future, situating oneself in space somewhere between atom and black hole. Wander, shortcut, lose oneself, deepen—every mental path is valid.
Lose your way by forgetting the path, not direction. Control fear, including death; channel impulses. Be in the world, not possess it. Focus on details, imagine omnipotence, experience the invisible, ephemeral, ghostly, other lives or dimensions. Detect fleeting or lasting positive waves.
Meditation is a tool, not a goal, supporting balance between subjectivity and objective reality. Over a lifetime, discern what is worth living and thinking.
NO SENSE
While 18th-century France prized wit and language play, the English invented humor (humor), which led to absurd humor (no sense) and eccentric singularity.
Key references:
Alphonse Allais
(The Incoherent Arts - early humorous monochromes)
Alfred Jarry - The Collège de ‘Pataphysique (likely connected to my family: Angers for my father, Laval for Jarry)
André Breton’s anthology of black humor
Hellzapoppin (1941 cult film)
Ionesco, The Bald Soprano
Monty Python
Kamagurka, Pierre La Police, Anouk Ricard
While 18th-century France prized wit and language play, the English invented humor (humor), which led to absurd humor (no sense) and eccentric singularity.
Key references:
Alphonse Allais
(The Incoherent Arts - early humorous monochromes)
Alfred Jarry - The Collège de ‘Pataphysique (likely connected to my family: Angers for my father, Laval for Jarry)
André Breton’s anthology of black humor
Hellzapoppin (1941 cult film)
Ionesco, The Bald Soprano
Monty Python
Kamagurka, Pierre La Police, Anouk Ricard
Roger Jarry, drawing, china ink.
ONTOLOGY
Little manual of practical ontology.
The consciousness of existence.
Innate, evident, permanent, the awareness of being alive manifests spontaneously in a four-dimensional space. We walk the ridge path between the abyssal depths of the psyche and the limitless complexity of the external world.
Primordial reality.
The world exists as it presents itself objectively, prior to any interaction. When we observe effects in reality caused by our actions, what exists is necessarily defined subjectively.
Perpetual confinement in the body.
Driven by a self-generating vital energy, the body is a fragile container immersed in a dangerous, hazardous, and incomprehensible reality. Our physical abilities may deceive us, but our vulnerabilities to disease, aging, and death primarily define this ephemeral aggregate of atoms, which will then disperse randomly, since nothing is created ex nihilo and everything transforms (98.5% of human body mass is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus). The body, daily subjected to trivial and routine imperatives to ensure its survival, regularly encounters the two antagonistic extremes: pleasure (from the simplest to ecstasy) and suffering (from minor discomfort to excruciating pain). Physical exercise or a display of dexterity produces an illusory and fleeting sense of mastery.
Instinctive self-awareness.
We constantly update a mental self-portrait composed of the fundamentals of what each person believes themselves to be as a unique individual. As experience accumulates, a clearer self-image emerges, and our ability to assess its credibility improves. Like a pendulum, the ego swings between denial and acceptance of the personality reflected in the inner mirror. This opposition finds balance in self-esteem, whose key is sincerity—never lying to oneself. Embodying a persona that is not oneself, an invented impostor, is a confinement close to mental illness.
The eternal inner monologue.
In constant relation with the outside world or in introspective dives, thought manifests as a wave-like flow, oscillating between control and chaos, which ceases only during dreamless sleep. Wandering or focused, thought crystallizes through language or by juxtaposition of feelings beyond semantic elaboration.
The reign of reason.
Reality offers itself to our understanding through logical reasoning: every effect has its cause, which we must identify. Our inability to do so consistently does not invalidate this assumption, which underlies everything humanity has accomplished to rise above primitive animal existence.
The freedom of imagination.
The outside world also presents itself as a stage capable of hosting all representations of the world born from our imagination, freed from rational constraints.
The temporal trap.
The past cannot be changed but can be reinterpreted. The future is rarely predictable, though some certainties exist in the short and sometimes long term (like the end of the day or the inevitable death). The perception of time’s passage in the present is subjective: boredom stretches it, contentment contracts it. As we age, time tends to pass faster.
The sixth sense of intuition.
Nothing can validate or refute this particular perception, but intuition seems to be the ultimate recourse when reasoning reaches its limits. Inexplicable and irrational, intuitive insight can be so intense that disregarding it feels like violating a law of nature. Science shows that trusting one’s intuition is genuinely effective, but only in areas where one already has expertise.
The dream trip.
Each night continues the mysterious and fantastic adventures of another self, where the laws of reality—time, death, causality, the body, the cosmos, the smallest details of daily life—are abolished. Everything is reformulated without revealing the founding principle at work. Is it random creation, training for future challenges, a safety valve for repressed trauma, a factory of false memories, or a communication system with another world or multiverse dimension?
The solution of spirituality.
Countless spiritual systems were devised to reveal the invisible presence of abstract energy flows maintaining cosmic balance. To ease the anxiety of existential questions, why not rely on supernatural postulates? God, an omniscient, omnipotent creator, is the transcendent solution of the Abrahamic religions, contrasting with religions emphasizing immanence (e.g., Buddhism) or polytheism (e.g., Hinduism). Animism, in which all living beings—and sometimes objects—possess consciousness, spirit, or soul, coexists with these universal spiritual currents.
Modulable reality.
Acting in reality is using past experiences stored in memory to control (as much as possible) the present and project into the immediate or distant future. Life experience is dominated by causality, enabling the pursuit of objectives, whether trivial for survival or complex like work, creation, or communication.
Fear of madness.
Being or becoming insane—especially without realizing it—is the ultimate curse, the nightmare from which there is no awakening, the most profound dehumanization and perhaps the greatest threat to an individual, a tribe, a people, or all humanity.
Artificial paradises.
Forcibly altering consciousness through natural or synthetic substances allows access to heightened egocentric experiences rather than knowledge. LSD or natural equivalents (e.g., ayahuasca) simulate cosmic connection, but benefits are limited to immediate pleasure. Cultural effects are often disappointing: creative conformity, shallow philosophy, diminished empathy. Mild substances and moderate alcohol, by contrast, are often associated with conviviality and empathy.
The salvatory alter ego.
If Robinson Crusoe had never escaped his prison, he likely would have descended into madness. Salvation came through unexpected encounters, demonstrating that others are not necessarily hell. Otherness prevents one from getting lost in the inner labyrinth, its walls lined with mirrors.
The destructive alter ego.
Hell, however, is sometimes clearly embodied by others, given humanity’s capacity for limitless cruelty. The mystery lies in the total absence of mercy among beings who nonetheless consider themselves superior to all other life forms.
Existential questions.
Besides death, primary sources of anxiety include the lack of justification for existence and discouragement in the face of the world’s unintelligible complexity.
The programmed end.
Death can be seen as either a passage to another world or the definitive exhaustion of the vital spark animating consciousness once the body’s particles disassemble. It may seem unjust when premature or a relief for the very old. A fundamental dichotomy lies in contemplating one’s own death or that of loved ones.
Facing the void.
Some endure lifelong traumatic loss, while others never experience unbearable grief. One may believe the dead await us, or that they exist only virtually in dreams.
Intellectual nourishment.
Art, literature, philosophy, music, and knowledge allow us to transcend individual limits and apprehend the world from infinite perspectives.
Artistic creation.
A often solitary vocation, consuming a lifetime, like Saturn devouring his children, but promising eternity through the trace left on the path. Monumental works may fall to the smallest breeze; art survives by sublimating chaos, creating dialogue with both time and audience.
The Ambivalence of Nature.
Threatening and untamable, yet sublime to behold, nature is something to which we belong, even though we mistakenly believe we own it. Full immersion in the natural world has become so rare an experience that it now seems our species might one day manage without it, living instead in a fully artificial environment coupled with an omnipresent, unlimited virtual space.
The Gregarious Instinct.
To live in society is our irrevocable destiny. To feel in harmony with the current social project at any cost, or to choose dissidence through a struggle without violence—such is the inescapable choice.
Changing Society through Political Engagement.
With Thomas Hobbes comes the possibility of a social contract, one that may be revised if necessary, whereas for Jean-Jacques Rousseau the corruption of the noble savage—prior to sedentarization—has already frozen the rules in place. The globalization of ultra-liberal capitalism defeated its worst enemy, communism, and afterward left ecology with no real chance. Materialism claims it can promise the return of its opposite, a form of spirituality, with techno-scientism serving as the cornerstone upon which the transhumanist religion is built, guiding us toward immortality—pitting anti-system catastrophists against survivalist elites.
Contextual Reality.
Work, encounters, all predictable or unpredictable events, family, one’s intellectual tribe, centers of interest, a project at various stages of completion, a commitment, a struggle, an irrepressible desire for absolute freedom, for anarchy—understood as the ultimate stage of individual mastery, rendering laws unnecessary through the absence of crime—a journey, exile, adventure, serious illness, panic, and all other circumstantial contexts influence, encourage, or hinder discernment in the search for meaning or for truth. To be or not to be—that is the question… depending on the context.
The Duality of the Chronic State of Things.
The presence of love or its absence. Independence or submission. Fulfillment or incompletion. Illness, melancholy, depression, addiction. Nihilism, boredom, jadedness, misanthropy, fatigue. Precarious or comfortable living conditions. Recent hardships or not: mourning, trauma, disease. Crushing absurdity or tedious banality, and so on.
The Vertigo of Virtuality.
Virtual worlds have always existed: literature, the arts, madness. Schizophrenia arises between oneself and one’s avatar, whose personality it is useful to understand by observing the time devoted to each on-screen activity. The atomization of each individual, each one creating a personal and irreducible vision of the world.
Little manual of practical ontology.
The consciousness of existence.
Innate, evident, permanent, the awareness of being alive manifests spontaneously in a four-dimensional space. We walk the ridge path between the abyssal depths of the psyche and the limitless complexity of the external world.
Primordial reality.
The world exists as it presents itself objectively, prior to any interaction. When we observe effects in reality caused by our actions, what exists is necessarily defined subjectively.
Perpetual confinement in the body.
Driven by a self-generating vital energy, the body is a fragile container immersed in a dangerous, hazardous, and incomprehensible reality. Our physical abilities may deceive us, but our vulnerabilities to disease, aging, and death primarily define this ephemeral aggregate of atoms, which will then disperse randomly, since nothing is created ex nihilo and everything transforms (98.5% of human body mass is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus). The body, daily subjected to trivial and routine imperatives to ensure its survival, regularly encounters the two antagonistic extremes: pleasure (from the simplest to ecstasy) and suffering (from minor discomfort to excruciating pain). Physical exercise or a display of dexterity produces an illusory and fleeting sense of mastery.
Instinctive self-awareness.
We constantly update a mental self-portrait composed of the fundamentals of what each person believes themselves to be as a unique individual. As experience accumulates, a clearer self-image emerges, and our ability to assess its credibility improves. Like a pendulum, the ego swings between denial and acceptance of the personality reflected in the inner mirror. This opposition finds balance in self-esteem, whose key is sincerity—never lying to oneself. Embodying a persona that is not oneself, an invented impostor, is a confinement close to mental illness.
The eternal inner monologue.
In constant relation with the outside world or in introspective dives, thought manifests as a wave-like flow, oscillating between control and chaos, which ceases only during dreamless sleep. Wandering or focused, thought crystallizes through language or by juxtaposition of feelings beyond semantic elaboration.
The reign of reason.
Reality offers itself to our understanding through logical reasoning: every effect has its cause, which we must identify. Our inability to do so consistently does not invalidate this assumption, which underlies everything humanity has accomplished to rise above primitive animal existence.
The freedom of imagination.
The outside world also presents itself as a stage capable of hosting all representations of the world born from our imagination, freed from rational constraints.
The temporal trap.
The past cannot be changed but can be reinterpreted. The future is rarely predictable, though some certainties exist in the short and sometimes long term (like the end of the day or the inevitable death). The perception of time’s passage in the present is subjective: boredom stretches it, contentment contracts it. As we age, time tends to pass faster.
The sixth sense of intuition.
Nothing can validate or refute this particular perception, but intuition seems to be the ultimate recourse when reasoning reaches its limits. Inexplicable and irrational, intuitive insight can be so intense that disregarding it feels like violating a law of nature. Science shows that trusting one’s intuition is genuinely effective, but only in areas where one already has expertise.
The dream trip.
Each night continues the mysterious and fantastic adventures of another self, where the laws of reality—time, death, causality, the body, the cosmos, the smallest details of daily life—are abolished. Everything is reformulated without revealing the founding principle at work. Is it random creation, training for future challenges, a safety valve for repressed trauma, a factory of false memories, or a communication system with another world or multiverse dimension?
The solution of spirituality.
Countless spiritual systems were devised to reveal the invisible presence of abstract energy flows maintaining cosmic balance. To ease the anxiety of existential questions, why not rely on supernatural postulates? God, an omniscient, omnipotent creator, is the transcendent solution of the Abrahamic religions, contrasting with religions emphasizing immanence (e.g., Buddhism) or polytheism (e.g., Hinduism). Animism, in which all living beings—and sometimes objects—possess consciousness, spirit, or soul, coexists with these universal spiritual currents.
Modulable reality.
Acting in reality is using past experiences stored in memory to control (as much as possible) the present and project into the immediate or distant future. Life experience is dominated by causality, enabling the pursuit of objectives, whether trivial for survival or complex like work, creation, or communication.
Fear of madness.
Being or becoming insane—especially without realizing it—is the ultimate curse, the nightmare from which there is no awakening, the most profound dehumanization and perhaps the greatest threat to an individual, a tribe, a people, or all humanity.
Artificial paradises.
Forcibly altering consciousness through natural or synthetic substances allows access to heightened egocentric experiences rather than knowledge. LSD or natural equivalents (e.g., ayahuasca) simulate cosmic connection, but benefits are limited to immediate pleasure. Cultural effects are often disappointing: creative conformity, shallow philosophy, diminished empathy. Mild substances and moderate alcohol, by contrast, are often associated with conviviality and empathy.
The salvatory alter ego.
If Robinson Crusoe had never escaped his prison, he likely would have descended into madness. Salvation came through unexpected encounters, demonstrating that others are not necessarily hell. Otherness prevents one from getting lost in the inner labyrinth, its walls lined with mirrors.
The destructive alter ego.
Hell, however, is sometimes clearly embodied by others, given humanity’s capacity for limitless cruelty. The mystery lies in the total absence of mercy among beings who nonetheless consider themselves superior to all other life forms.
Existential questions.
Besides death, primary sources of anxiety include the lack of justification for existence and discouragement in the face of the world’s unintelligible complexity.
The programmed end.
Death can be seen as either a passage to another world or the definitive exhaustion of the vital spark animating consciousness once the body’s particles disassemble. It may seem unjust when premature or a relief for the very old. A fundamental dichotomy lies in contemplating one’s own death or that of loved ones.
Facing the void.
Some endure lifelong traumatic loss, while others never experience unbearable grief. One may believe the dead await us, or that they exist only virtually in dreams.
Intellectual nourishment.
Art, literature, philosophy, music, and knowledge allow us to transcend individual limits and apprehend the world from infinite perspectives.
Artistic creation.
A often solitary vocation, consuming a lifetime, like Saturn devouring his children, but promising eternity through the trace left on the path. Monumental works may fall to the smallest breeze; art survives by sublimating chaos, creating dialogue with both time and audience.
The Ambivalence of Nature.
Threatening and untamable, yet sublime to behold, nature is something to which we belong, even though we mistakenly believe we own it. Full immersion in the natural world has become so rare an experience that it now seems our species might one day manage without it, living instead in a fully artificial environment coupled with an omnipresent, unlimited virtual space.
The Gregarious Instinct.
To live in society is our irrevocable destiny. To feel in harmony with the current social project at any cost, or to choose dissidence through a struggle without violence—such is the inescapable choice.
Changing Society through Political Engagement.
With Thomas Hobbes comes the possibility of a social contract, one that may be revised if necessary, whereas for Jean-Jacques Rousseau the corruption of the noble savage—prior to sedentarization—has already frozen the rules in place. The globalization of ultra-liberal capitalism defeated its worst enemy, communism, and afterward left ecology with no real chance. Materialism claims it can promise the return of its opposite, a form of spirituality, with techno-scientism serving as the cornerstone upon which the transhumanist religion is built, guiding us toward immortality—pitting anti-system catastrophists against survivalist elites.
Contextual Reality.
Work, encounters, all predictable or unpredictable events, family, one’s intellectual tribe, centers of interest, a project at various stages of completion, a commitment, a struggle, an irrepressible desire for absolute freedom, for anarchy—understood as the ultimate stage of individual mastery, rendering laws unnecessary through the absence of crime—a journey, exile, adventure, serious illness, panic, and all other circumstantial contexts influence, encourage, or hinder discernment in the search for meaning or for truth. To be or not to be—that is the question… depending on the context.
The Duality of the Chronic State of Things.
The presence of love or its absence. Independence or submission. Fulfillment or incompletion. Illness, melancholy, depression, addiction. Nihilism, boredom, jadedness, misanthropy, fatigue. Precarious or comfortable living conditions. Recent hardships or not: mourning, trauma, disease. Crushing absurdity or tedious banality, and so on.
The Vertigo of Virtuality.
Virtual worlds have always existed: literature, the arts, madness. Schizophrenia arises between oneself and one’s avatar, whose personality it is useful to understand by observing the time devoted to each on-screen activity. The atomization of each individual, each one creating a personal and irreducible vision of the world.
PROCESS
The artist reveals and crystallizes, in a lasting form, the hidden beauty of the world. He cannot claim—nor should he wish—to compete with the Buddha, Buddha meaning literally “the awakened one” in Sanskrit, an emblematic figure of the thinker who reaches the ecstasy of explicit self-revelation, whereas the artist devotes himself to unveiling what is implicit in the world.
Posterity is the only goal truly worth pursuing, and no artist genuinely wishes to be content with the enjoyment of the present moment alone, despite the intoxication often produced by the precise instant of creation. Otherwise, a painter, for example, would only need to acquire a single canvas once and for all, upon which he would accumulate, in successive layers, all the paintings he wished to create.
Let us combine chaos theory, which predicts that through a succession of effects followed by causes the beating of a butterfly’s wings can generate a cyclone on the other side of the planet, with the parable of the hummingbird whose solitary efforts to extinguish a forest fire seem futile, yet at least it will have done its part. In this association lies a simple but true idea: each of us acts without being able to anticipate the potentially decisive impact of individual action on the order—or disorder—of the world. To create is to clear a path with broad machete strokes through an inextricable inner jungle, in order to reveal unprecedented viewpoints over ever-expanding territories to be explored.
The map of this mental space will remain incomplete, yet it reveals a chaos that is the only true reality, one that only the work itself manages to sublimate through its ability to travel through time. Rather than the often laborious demonstration of endlessly polishing the same stone, one may prefer the uncertainty of wandering through a network of multiple experiences, striving toward the quintessence of existence without ever reaching it, so that desire remains forever incandescent.
The absolute mystery of the human soul resists all attempts at enclosure, including the sometimes sublime attempt made by art. Many works that aspired to be monumental, monolithic, and definitive proved to be nothing more than fragile structures, carried away into oblivion by the slightest breeze.
A work of art is the counter-form that comes into being within a dual space, both real and mental, at the moment it encounters the viewer. Robinson Crusoe in his ivory tower. Isolation within that famous structure becomes problematic when one ignores what others are producing in their own towers. To avoid museums, major contemporary art exhibitions, and galleries in Paris, London, or New York would be like dying of thirst on the bank of a river.
The artist reveals and crystallizes, in a lasting form, the hidden beauty of the world. He cannot claim—nor should he wish—to compete with the Buddha, Buddha meaning literally “the awakened one” in Sanskrit, an emblematic figure of the thinker who reaches the ecstasy of explicit self-revelation, whereas the artist devotes himself to unveiling what is implicit in the world.
Posterity is the only goal truly worth pursuing, and no artist genuinely wishes to be content with the enjoyment of the present moment alone, despite the intoxication often produced by the precise instant of creation. Otherwise, a painter, for example, would only need to acquire a single canvas once and for all, upon which he would accumulate, in successive layers, all the paintings he wished to create.
Let us combine chaos theory, which predicts that through a succession of effects followed by causes the beating of a butterfly’s wings can generate a cyclone on the other side of the planet, with the parable of the hummingbird whose solitary efforts to extinguish a forest fire seem futile, yet at least it will have done its part. In this association lies a simple but true idea: each of us acts without being able to anticipate the potentially decisive impact of individual action on the order—or disorder—of the world. To create is to clear a path with broad machete strokes through an inextricable inner jungle, in order to reveal unprecedented viewpoints over ever-expanding territories to be explored.
The map of this mental space will remain incomplete, yet it reveals a chaos that is the only true reality, one that only the work itself manages to sublimate through its ability to travel through time. Rather than the often laborious demonstration of endlessly polishing the same stone, one may prefer the uncertainty of wandering through a network of multiple experiences, striving toward the quintessence of existence without ever reaching it, so that desire remains forever incandescent.
The absolute mystery of the human soul resists all attempts at enclosure, including the sometimes sublime attempt made by art. Many works that aspired to be monumental, monolithic, and definitive proved to be nothing more than fragile structures, carried away into oblivion by the slightest breeze.
A work of art is the counter-form that comes into being within a dual space, both real and mental, at the moment it encounters the viewer. Robinson Crusoe in his ivory tower. Isolation within that famous structure becomes problematic when one ignores what others are producing in their own towers. To avoid museums, major contemporary art exhibitions, and galleries in Paris, London, or New York would be like dying of thirst on the bank of a river.
The programmatic trilogy of my creative process:
METAMNESIA
HYPERIMAGE
METABOX
METAMNESIA
HYPERIMAGE
METABOX
METAMNESIA presents the entirety of the artistic production up to 2005 originating from a virtual world created in 1995. Technically, my work consists in producing a large number of images for each specific series and then extracting a best-of selection, which is subsequently re-evaluated continuously—sometimes years later.
HYPERIMAGE is a foundational concept marking the impossibility of distinguishing a single image within the myriad of files now universally visible across the infinite network of hyperlinks (hyperlinks symbolized by the virtual tracing of the eye’s pursuit as it moves across a mosaic of images).
Finishing with style.
The ultimate images are produced with artificial intelligence to mark the end of an era and the advent of a radically different age. What artist has not dreamed of transforming words into static or animated images? This is one of the oldest dreams—to merge language and image—which has now become a reality across all cultures for the millions of users of AI generating visuals from prompts. The phenomenal creativity of innumerable posts constitutes the major (and unprecedented) aesthetic event of the present, in 2025.
Finishing with style.
The ultimate images are produced with artificial intelligence to mark the end of an era and the advent of a radically different age. What artist has not dreamed of transforming words into static or animated images? This is one of the oldest dreams—to merge language and image—which has now become a reality across all cultures for the millions of users of AI generating visuals from prompts. The phenomenal creativity of innumerable posts constitutes the major (and unprecedented) aesthetic event of the present, in 2025.
METABOX gathers about thirty models (unique or in series) of boxes containing a condensed summary of the research I decided to conclude on March 15, 2026 (age 65). Videos showing the contents will be available at the end of 2026.
How will these boxes travel through time?
They are bequeathed to the family heritage or given to a friend, or even buried in the desert. To consider that art is, above all and by essence, timeless, allows one not to defeat death, but to enjoy its fantastical illusion. Long after the disappearance of the creator and all that constituted his world, forever past, the Metaboxes will remain mysterious objects, between artwork and time capsule, passing from one household to another, rediscovered generation after generation… They may be lost, and their contents damaged, scattered, or destroyed, but I believe their destiny is to endure, traversing the ages through the bonds of kinship or friendship that ensure continuity. Some boxes buried in the desert may eventually be discovered in.
How will these boxes travel through time?
They are bequeathed to the family heritage or given to a friend, or even buried in the desert. To consider that art is, above all and by essence, timeless, allows one not to defeat death, but to enjoy its fantastical illusion. Long after the disappearance of the creator and all that constituted his world, forever past, the Metaboxes will remain mysterious objects, between artwork and time capsule, passing from one household to another, rediscovered generation after generation… They may be lost, and their contents damaged, scattered, or destroyed, but I believe their destiny is to endure, traversing the ages through the bonds of kinship or friendship that ensure continuity. Some boxes buried in the desert may eventually be discovered in.
Letter for Solène
“Objects inanimate, do you then have a soul?”
This famous quotation by Alphonse de Lamartine expresses a Romantic sensitivity in reflecting on the relationship between objects and human beings, suggesting a possible spiritual connection. My particular affinity with material belongings is temporal and, more precisely, transgenerational.
An ideal at the end of life would be to possess nothing but the bare minimum, like a desert hermit, having previously taken care to preserve a precious collection of series of boxes, unique objects, and collections (comics, toys, books) destined for future generations who may consult, preserve, and perhaps augment this heritage. It is important that I make myself perfectly clear: the idea of constituting a legacy whose foundations are nothing less than art, philosophy, and poetry has been a dream that kept me awake, and this alone justified it. Consequently, I leave you free to decide among the following options. You may store everything in a corner without concern other than transmitting it to the next generations. You are not obliged to preserve the entirety; you may give away a box, an object, or sell a collection at any time. You may keep everything in a storage space (accessible if possible), potentially adding your own acquisitions, and then pass the legacy on to descendants or to the closest of friends. The mission not to be neglected is to distribute boxes numbered 003 to 008, destined for friends (or their children).
Metabox ALPHA, numbered 001 to 008, must remain intact: the two large boxes 001 and 002 are never to be separated and stay within the family. Boxes 003 to 008 are intended for friends, the names marked on the backs of the boxes.
Metabox DESERT, numbered 009 to 014, is to be buried in a desert according to the established protocol, with two exceptions: box 009 is to be kept as proof of the existence of the other DESERT series boxes, and box 012, containing Mamie’s sulfur, is to remain within the family.
Metabox BOX de 015 à 030
À transmettre soit à la famille soit à des amis.
015 – L’architecte – appartient déjà à Solène
016 – L’artiste – pour Andrew
Les grandes boîtes rectangulaires :
017 – Survivors
018 – Hypermnesia
019 – Secret
025 – Ultima
026 – Timebomb
028 – Kolektor
Les boîtes plus petites :
020 – Master = reste dans Ultima
021 – Hermits = reste dans Ultima
022 – Random
023 – Hyperlink
024 – Triptyk
027 – Binôme = pour Lola
“Objects inanimate, do you then have a soul?”
This famous quotation by Alphonse de Lamartine expresses a Romantic sensitivity in reflecting on the relationship between objects and human beings, suggesting a possible spiritual connection. My particular affinity with material belongings is temporal and, more precisely, transgenerational.
An ideal at the end of life would be to possess nothing but the bare minimum, like a desert hermit, having previously taken care to preserve a precious collection of series of boxes, unique objects, and collections (comics, toys, books) destined for future generations who may consult, preserve, and perhaps augment this heritage. It is important that I make myself perfectly clear: the idea of constituting a legacy whose foundations are nothing less than art, philosophy, and poetry has been a dream that kept me awake, and this alone justified it. Consequently, I leave you free to decide among the following options. You may store everything in a corner without concern other than transmitting it to the next generations. You are not obliged to preserve the entirety; you may give away a box, an object, or sell a collection at any time. You may keep everything in a storage space (accessible if possible), potentially adding your own acquisitions, and then pass the legacy on to descendants or to the closest of friends. The mission not to be neglected is to distribute boxes numbered 003 to 008, destined for friends (or their children).
Metabox ALPHA, numbered 001 to 008, must remain intact: the two large boxes 001 and 002 are never to be separated and stay within the family. Boxes 003 to 008 are intended for friends, the names marked on the backs of the boxes.
Metabox DESERT, numbered 009 to 014, is to be buried in a desert according to the established protocol, with two exceptions: box 009 is to be kept as proof of the existence of the other DESERT series boxes, and box 012, containing Mamie’s sulfur, is to remain within the family.
Metabox BOX de 015 à 030
À transmettre soit à la famille soit à des amis.
015 – L’architecte – appartient déjà à Solène
016 – L’artiste – pour Andrew
Les grandes boîtes rectangulaires :
017 – Survivors
018 – Hypermnesia
019 – Secret
025 – Ultima
026 – Timebomb
028 – Kolektor
Les boîtes plus petites :
020 – Master = reste dans Ultima
021 – Hermits = reste dans Ultima
022 – Random
023 – Hyperlink
024 – Triptyk
027 – Binôme = pour Lola
QUALIS PATER, TALIS FILIUS (?)
Like father, like son (?)
The destiny of my father and my own.
Roger.
I sometimes suspected that my father felt as though his life was slipping away. He assumed, successively or simultaneously, different personas, none of which, it seems to me, perfectly coincided with the destiny that should have been his.
The pragmatic Rastignac.
In his youth, he displayed genuine academic talent, and his modestly situated parents no doubt early on hoped for the social ascent of their son, which he indeed achieved in Paris. He left provincial Angers to conquer the capital, where his intellectual abilities, during the early years of the postwar boom, allowed him to earn a good living with relative ease. Having graduated in law and letters, he did not seem to choose his professional path with any more complex intention than to meet his material needs as quickly as possible.
At the moment of the legendary coup de foudre, my mother lived alone with three children, whom Roger officially adopted, and together they had two more children: my brother Michael and myself, four years later. He abruptly became the head of a large family for whom he nurtured the hope of a certain form of tribal happiness, one requiring undeniable financial security.
He was therefore never able to question his position as a property administrator, a profession not particularly prestigious but one that guaranteed a high income. Considering the milieu from which he came, his path might appear exemplary, yet the itch to distinguish himself lingered…
The dilettante politician.
Not lacking charisma, an excellent orator, cultured, witty, and long fascinated by history, Roger threw himself into politics, thinking he had found the perfect arena in which his true nature could express itself. It was a fiasco: though he could, with a witty remark, eliminate an opponent with a knockout blow, his defensive armor had fatal flaws. His hypersensitivity sometimes overcame the cool-headedness so indispensable in political jousts, and he was repeatedly wounded in his pride by the attacks of rivals or betrayed by false friends of the party he had joined out of conviction.
Yet, when he ran as a novice in the first round of legislative elections in our district (15th arrondissement of Paris, designated by the reformist center-right party), he forced the sitting deputy, who had always been elected in the first round for fifteen years, into a runoff. Unfortunately, a shadowy story of pressure to withdraw for the second round turned the half-success into total failure. This pressure was allegedly applied through blackmail by the head of the company that employed him.
Disappointed by the lack of support from his own party, he definitively abandoned political action, pressed by the urgent need to restore a catastrophic financial situation caused by an overly costly electoral campaign.
The fallen patriarch.
The separation, though foreshadowed by his chaotic behavior and numerous domestic quarrels, was a painful shock for my mother. He did everything possible afterward to maintain good terms with her, probably driven by a sense of guilt incompatible with his sense of honor.
On a gray Sunday in late November, he rose from his armchair and went out in slippers into the street, never to return. One can imagine him crossing the neighborhood toward rue de l’Université, to arrive later, fully equipped, in his new apartment. Two weeks earlier, we had been in Norway. I was the only child invited, and the only one to accept this northern excursion, which promised to be rather melancholic. In reality, everything went quite well, as we were captivated by the breathtaking beauty of the landscapes, magnified by the brilliance of autumn colors. I even thought that my enthusiasm (I was seventeen) might help dispel what I believed to be a fog of misunderstandings into which they had gradually wandered through endless quarrels. A sort of truce settled between them, and moments of happiness were shared, notably when we visited the extraordinary museum devoted to Edvard Munch in Bergen or at random along the fjords, where the perfectly still, mirror-like waters split the world horizontally into two strictly identical halves.
For a long time, my father seemed unable to make the fateful decision to leave the mother of his children. Perhaps it was this extraordinary event during the trip that finally pushed him to cross the Rubicon, as we paused by a torrent, unaware of the warning against approaching the banks suddenly flooded by upstream releases of dam water, as sometimes happens in the mountains. My father stood on a rock when he was swept away like a mere twig by a very large wave, sudden and unexpected. Stunned but saved, he eventually washed ashore in a calmer stretch downstream. He, whom I had never seen in water other than grimacing at a drop in his eyes, found himself nearly drowned, having swallowed water, soaked, dripping, fully clothed, looking dazed and foolish, traumatized.
From this lost Norwegian valley to Paris, including the boat crossing to Amsterdam and the highway back to the périphérique, he did not utter a single word. I have long resented him for this muteness, which made enduring him unbearable. It is easy to imagine that, seeing a version of his life flash before his eyes during those few seconds of near-drowning, he realized definitively that it was missing a chapter, which he immediately began to write the following Sunday, without taking the time to remove his slippers.
The separation was poorly endured by the three “adopted” children, who decided, with a certain cowardice, to cut ties permanently. The blood ties being, perhaps, stronger, Michael and I chose to continue seeing the designated culprit, whatever it cost us. It was no easy task, for his new household dozed in the unexciting milieu of the old bourgeoisie of the seventh arrondissement. Apparently satisfied, despite everything, with the renewal of his domestic life, Roger floated, like a newborn, in a second existence, yet remained saddened, considering the terrible ingratitude of those who had renounced him.
Unable to improve Michael’s situation, definitively marginalized and already in poor health, he waited for the day he could claim his retirement rights. Yet, in the year he departed for a well-earned rest, it was at the cemetery that he found Michael.
Concealing his illness, he passed away in Nice three days after I was informed of his suddenly desperate condition. I could hold his hand in his final moments, yet we could not communicate; he was either agitated, in a trance, or heavily sedated. I was the only family member present at this premature, tragic end. Michael was hospitalized in Paris, while the others, by their absence, completed their resentment.
One cannot help but wonder how he spent his time in this house in the Creuse, of which he was proud to have recently acquired. He certainly devoted himself to his passion, which had never waned throughout his life: plastic arts, and more particularly drawing.
The virtual artist.
Roger never had the opportunity to pursue an artistic career for which he had the talent, a talent that could have been dedicated to a free and inspired mind. Yet I never heard him express the slightest regret, nor bitterness that might have betrayed the intimate suffering of not being what he could have been. Every Sunday morning, always in the best of spirits, he maintained his ritual of creation, laying out on the living room table all the necessary materials: pencils, chalks, India ink, small tubes of highly liquid yet very opaque oil paint, used to finalize models, scratch boards, sheets of various sizes and textures, etc.
My childhood years were marked by these Sunday sessions, simultaneously creative and playful, in which I participated on the corner of the table—and I grew fond of it. It was in this school of freedom of expression that a unique combination of pleasure and application was formed early on, which endures to this day. My most memorable exploit was recreating Napoleon’s most famous battles on large sheets of paper (50 x 65 cm), which were lost in the rush of the move following the separation. I possess only a very limited number of Roger’s own works for the same regrettable reason.
One can infer that his relationship with art was complicated by the repetitive pattern imposed on him by having two sons, one well-behaved, the other less so. Roger’s elder brother pursued a modest but real sculpting career alongside a day job, which determined the tragic fate of Uncle Claude: divorce, precariousness, illness, death in his fifties, and alcoholism.
Michael, whose dissolute life was also marked by various addictions, considered himself primarily, like his father, an artist from early childhood; his beautiful drawings were pinned to the walls of his room. Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, and Hundertwasser were his idols in adolescence. Later, he spent most of his time in Parisian squats, torn between his desire to create and his tendencies toward self-destruction.
Roger had to see in his first son a reflection of his own elder brother, from whom he had eventually broken ties after various scandals. Logically, I therefore unwittingly occupied the place of the mirror reflection when Roger gazed upon me with paternal tenderness, his second son, never happier than on Sunday mornings.
My father belonged to a generation that had naturally integrated the avant-gardes of the early 20th century (such as Dadaism, which he adored for its dark humor), yet he held classical art in superior regard. Rather than engaging with contemporary art in the logical continuation of modernism, he returned ceaselessly to the pleasures of visiting museums or retrospectives celebrating great masters of the past. Together, we traversed the major museums of Paris and some in Europe, including Italy and Amsterdam.
At home, I remember long discussions in the library, where beautiful art books, “classical and modern,” stood like new worlds to conquer, many monographs on artists and works by connoisseurs such as Elie Faure or André Malraux.
There was the memorable visit to the 1974 Venice Biennale, of which an emblematic photo miraculously survives.
Roger, this mysterious man.
By a strange coincidence and cruel irony, his passing preceded the birth of his little daughter, Solène, by only a few months; he knew her only through the imprecise image of a business-card-sized ultrasound printout. Once, I invited him to lunch for a tête-à-tête, during which he revealed nothing of the illness that would claim him a few weeks later. He merely smiled, saying nothing about my impending fatherhood, nor uttering the phrase that would have been etched in my mind as the final grains of his hourglass slipped away.
Our relationship had mysteriously deteriorated, and unspoken words had gradually replaced the esthetic chatter. Even now, I struggle to understand his behavior, for I was a nearly perfect son—perhaps too perfect. I had graduated top of my class from Paris’s most demanding graphic design school, experimented with salaried work, and gained independence as a freelancer, chaining assignments that promised the best prospects for my career. I devoted time to my mother and helped Michael whenever possible.
Deeply hidden within his thoughts about me, there must have existed missions I was to fulfill, not for love—since he undoubtedly loved me deeply from my earliest years—but to be estimated at my proper worth.
Had I known his health condition, I would have ardently desired a long philosophical conversation, one worthy of his intelligence and culture. Unable to complete this brief paternal portrait with what might appear as reproach, however justified, I must insist on his primary quality: his humor, serving a certain art of living in the present. I can only be grateful that he made me laugh so much, guiding me toward the path of subtle, refined, and lighthearted perspective on the more difficult moments of life. His humorous drawings remain like a vaccine against gloom.
Did I unconsciously feel compelled to do better than my father? This thought—that my destiny might have been traced in the drawings I made as a child on my corner of the table—crossed my mind, prompting a questioning of free will. Over time and with work, this question became merely accessory.
Like father, like son (?)
The destiny of my father and my own.
Roger.
I sometimes suspected that my father felt as though his life was slipping away. He assumed, successively or simultaneously, different personas, none of which, it seems to me, perfectly coincided with the destiny that should have been his.
The pragmatic Rastignac.
In his youth, he displayed genuine academic talent, and his modestly situated parents no doubt early on hoped for the social ascent of their son, which he indeed achieved in Paris. He left provincial Angers to conquer the capital, where his intellectual abilities, during the early years of the postwar boom, allowed him to earn a good living with relative ease. Having graduated in law and letters, he did not seem to choose his professional path with any more complex intention than to meet his material needs as quickly as possible.
At the moment of the legendary coup de foudre, my mother lived alone with three children, whom Roger officially adopted, and together they had two more children: my brother Michael and myself, four years later. He abruptly became the head of a large family for whom he nurtured the hope of a certain form of tribal happiness, one requiring undeniable financial security.
He was therefore never able to question his position as a property administrator, a profession not particularly prestigious but one that guaranteed a high income. Considering the milieu from which he came, his path might appear exemplary, yet the itch to distinguish himself lingered…
The dilettante politician.
Not lacking charisma, an excellent orator, cultured, witty, and long fascinated by history, Roger threw himself into politics, thinking he had found the perfect arena in which his true nature could express itself. It was a fiasco: though he could, with a witty remark, eliminate an opponent with a knockout blow, his defensive armor had fatal flaws. His hypersensitivity sometimes overcame the cool-headedness so indispensable in political jousts, and he was repeatedly wounded in his pride by the attacks of rivals or betrayed by false friends of the party he had joined out of conviction.
Yet, when he ran as a novice in the first round of legislative elections in our district (15th arrondissement of Paris, designated by the reformist center-right party), he forced the sitting deputy, who had always been elected in the first round for fifteen years, into a runoff. Unfortunately, a shadowy story of pressure to withdraw for the second round turned the half-success into total failure. This pressure was allegedly applied through blackmail by the head of the company that employed him.
Disappointed by the lack of support from his own party, he definitively abandoned political action, pressed by the urgent need to restore a catastrophic financial situation caused by an overly costly electoral campaign.
The fallen patriarch.
The separation, though foreshadowed by his chaotic behavior and numerous domestic quarrels, was a painful shock for my mother. He did everything possible afterward to maintain good terms with her, probably driven by a sense of guilt incompatible with his sense of honor.
On a gray Sunday in late November, he rose from his armchair and went out in slippers into the street, never to return. One can imagine him crossing the neighborhood toward rue de l’Université, to arrive later, fully equipped, in his new apartment. Two weeks earlier, we had been in Norway. I was the only child invited, and the only one to accept this northern excursion, which promised to be rather melancholic. In reality, everything went quite well, as we were captivated by the breathtaking beauty of the landscapes, magnified by the brilliance of autumn colors. I even thought that my enthusiasm (I was seventeen) might help dispel what I believed to be a fog of misunderstandings into which they had gradually wandered through endless quarrels. A sort of truce settled between them, and moments of happiness were shared, notably when we visited the extraordinary museum devoted to Edvard Munch in Bergen or at random along the fjords, where the perfectly still, mirror-like waters split the world horizontally into two strictly identical halves.
For a long time, my father seemed unable to make the fateful decision to leave the mother of his children. Perhaps it was this extraordinary event during the trip that finally pushed him to cross the Rubicon, as we paused by a torrent, unaware of the warning against approaching the banks suddenly flooded by upstream releases of dam water, as sometimes happens in the mountains. My father stood on a rock when he was swept away like a mere twig by a very large wave, sudden and unexpected. Stunned but saved, he eventually washed ashore in a calmer stretch downstream. He, whom I had never seen in water other than grimacing at a drop in his eyes, found himself nearly drowned, having swallowed water, soaked, dripping, fully clothed, looking dazed and foolish, traumatized.
From this lost Norwegian valley to Paris, including the boat crossing to Amsterdam and the highway back to the périphérique, he did not utter a single word. I have long resented him for this muteness, which made enduring him unbearable. It is easy to imagine that, seeing a version of his life flash before his eyes during those few seconds of near-drowning, he realized definitively that it was missing a chapter, which he immediately began to write the following Sunday, without taking the time to remove his slippers.
The separation was poorly endured by the three “adopted” children, who decided, with a certain cowardice, to cut ties permanently. The blood ties being, perhaps, stronger, Michael and I chose to continue seeing the designated culprit, whatever it cost us. It was no easy task, for his new household dozed in the unexciting milieu of the old bourgeoisie of the seventh arrondissement. Apparently satisfied, despite everything, with the renewal of his domestic life, Roger floated, like a newborn, in a second existence, yet remained saddened, considering the terrible ingratitude of those who had renounced him.
Unable to improve Michael’s situation, definitively marginalized and already in poor health, he waited for the day he could claim his retirement rights. Yet, in the year he departed for a well-earned rest, it was at the cemetery that he found Michael.
Concealing his illness, he passed away in Nice three days after I was informed of his suddenly desperate condition. I could hold his hand in his final moments, yet we could not communicate; he was either agitated, in a trance, or heavily sedated. I was the only family member present at this premature, tragic end. Michael was hospitalized in Paris, while the others, by their absence, completed their resentment.
One cannot help but wonder how he spent his time in this house in the Creuse, of which he was proud to have recently acquired. He certainly devoted himself to his passion, which had never waned throughout his life: plastic arts, and more particularly drawing.
The virtual artist.
Roger never had the opportunity to pursue an artistic career for which he had the talent, a talent that could have been dedicated to a free and inspired mind. Yet I never heard him express the slightest regret, nor bitterness that might have betrayed the intimate suffering of not being what he could have been. Every Sunday morning, always in the best of spirits, he maintained his ritual of creation, laying out on the living room table all the necessary materials: pencils, chalks, India ink, small tubes of highly liquid yet very opaque oil paint, used to finalize models, scratch boards, sheets of various sizes and textures, etc.
My childhood years were marked by these Sunday sessions, simultaneously creative and playful, in which I participated on the corner of the table—and I grew fond of it. It was in this school of freedom of expression that a unique combination of pleasure and application was formed early on, which endures to this day. My most memorable exploit was recreating Napoleon’s most famous battles on large sheets of paper (50 x 65 cm), which were lost in the rush of the move following the separation. I possess only a very limited number of Roger’s own works for the same regrettable reason.
One can infer that his relationship with art was complicated by the repetitive pattern imposed on him by having two sons, one well-behaved, the other less so. Roger’s elder brother pursued a modest but real sculpting career alongside a day job, which determined the tragic fate of Uncle Claude: divorce, precariousness, illness, death in his fifties, and alcoholism.
Michael, whose dissolute life was also marked by various addictions, considered himself primarily, like his father, an artist from early childhood; his beautiful drawings were pinned to the walls of his room. Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, and Hundertwasser were his idols in adolescence. Later, he spent most of his time in Parisian squats, torn between his desire to create and his tendencies toward self-destruction.
Roger had to see in his first son a reflection of his own elder brother, from whom he had eventually broken ties after various scandals. Logically, I therefore unwittingly occupied the place of the mirror reflection when Roger gazed upon me with paternal tenderness, his second son, never happier than on Sunday mornings.
My father belonged to a generation that had naturally integrated the avant-gardes of the early 20th century (such as Dadaism, which he adored for its dark humor), yet he held classical art in superior regard. Rather than engaging with contemporary art in the logical continuation of modernism, he returned ceaselessly to the pleasures of visiting museums or retrospectives celebrating great masters of the past. Together, we traversed the major museums of Paris and some in Europe, including Italy and Amsterdam.
At home, I remember long discussions in the library, where beautiful art books, “classical and modern,” stood like new worlds to conquer, many monographs on artists and works by connoisseurs such as Elie Faure or André Malraux.
There was the memorable visit to the 1974 Venice Biennale, of which an emblematic photo miraculously survives.
Roger, this mysterious man.
By a strange coincidence and cruel irony, his passing preceded the birth of his little daughter, Solène, by only a few months; he knew her only through the imprecise image of a business-card-sized ultrasound printout. Once, I invited him to lunch for a tête-à-tête, during which he revealed nothing of the illness that would claim him a few weeks later. He merely smiled, saying nothing about my impending fatherhood, nor uttering the phrase that would have been etched in my mind as the final grains of his hourglass slipped away.
Our relationship had mysteriously deteriorated, and unspoken words had gradually replaced the esthetic chatter. Even now, I struggle to understand his behavior, for I was a nearly perfect son—perhaps too perfect. I had graduated top of my class from Paris’s most demanding graphic design school, experimented with salaried work, and gained independence as a freelancer, chaining assignments that promised the best prospects for my career. I devoted time to my mother and helped Michael whenever possible.
Deeply hidden within his thoughts about me, there must have existed missions I was to fulfill, not for love—since he undoubtedly loved me deeply from my earliest years—but to be estimated at my proper worth.
Had I known his health condition, I would have ardently desired a long philosophical conversation, one worthy of his intelligence and culture. Unable to complete this brief paternal portrait with what might appear as reproach, however justified, I must insist on his primary quality: his humor, serving a certain art of living in the present. I can only be grateful that he made me laugh so much, guiding me toward the path of subtle, refined, and lighthearted perspective on the more difficult moments of life. His humorous drawings remain like a vaccine against gloom.
Did I unconsciously feel compelled to do better than my father? This thought—that my destiny might have been traced in the drawings I made as a child on my corner of the table—crossed my mind, prompting a questioning of free will. Over time and with work, this question became merely accessory.
My own professional path.
At eighteen, with no one to talk things through with at leisure about my future, I felt deeply alone when it came to choosing which higher studies I should consider.
Dad was busy leaving Mom, and as the youngest of five children I found myself alone with her, utterly shattered by the sudden separation, in a small apartment into which we had hastily moved.
Four years older than me, Micou had already been self-destructing for years, and every slightly serious conversation with him inevitably revolved around his addiction problems. His antisocial drift made him financially dependent on Roger.
A half-brother, Christian, and two half-sisters, Chantal and Catou, my elders by fifteen, twelve, and ten years respectively, cared no more about me than about Mom. Their support amounted to occasional words of comfort, while they never invested themselves in any kind of rescue plan for Micou.
In my final year of high school, I enrolled in nude drawing classes in Montparnasse, in an ancient studio with red velvet curtains from another era, run by a veteran painter of rear-guard battles who played at being a teacher, his white goatee giving him a theatrical air. He told me that art schools were accessible only through competitive exams—tests plus portfolio—and that it was essential to prepare for them through a year in preparatory studios. The most renowned was Penninghen, which prepared students for the public applied arts schools and also for portfolio-based admission to the École Supérieure d’Art Graphique within the same institution. ESAG, famously ultra-selective, offered a three-year degree backed by a network of alumni deeply embedded in the visual communication professions.
In a café on rue de l’Université, I confided in my father my intention to do the preparatory workshop in order to try for admission to ESAG, my sole motivation being the certainty that I would be practicing full-time my favorite activity: drawing. Dad did not hesitate to pull out his checkbook to pay for the preparatory year, as well as the three following years after my admission to ESAG. Yet we never discussed this orientation, chosen almost by chance, in complete ignorance of its real implications in terms of future professional activity.
Ideally—though I was unfortunately unaware of it at the time—I should have aimed for a master’s degree in philosophy or literature and then applied to the fine arts, rather than to an applied arts school like Penninghen, while freely building a personal portfolio on the side.
At twenty-two, more experienced and less impressionable than at eighteen, I would have better resisted academic pressures while envisioning a career as a visual artist with the appropriate network. But all this belongs to a story that never happened—my own small personal uchronia.
Benefiting from certain advantages, I finished the preparatory workshop at the top of the annual ranking (out of three hundred), and then, carried by my momentum, I obtained the same position (out of thirty in the class) each year at the higher school. Logically, I graduated as valedictorian.
I take no pride in this flawless trajectory, because in hindsight I also see in it a lack of lucidity caused by the frenetic pace of work at ESAG, enclosed within an unforgiving grading system.
Inevitably, at the diploma exhibition, a creative director immediately offered me a first job in an excellent and prestigious agency for the month of September, and with a light heart I left for the south for a summer close to perfection.
The first disillusionment came from my aversion—ultimately disqualifying—to a career as an art director in advertising, which appeared to me as a kind of uninteresting intellectual swindle. I was completely disgusted after a commendable two-year attempt in two different agencies.
Moreover, my almost physical rejection of the corporate world—with its demand for submission to hierarchy and the numbing routine of subway, work, sleep—forced me into freelancing.
Not taking orders, being free to alternate sleepless nights of work with nights devoted to enjoying Parisian nightlife, selling my own projects by solving visual communication problems for clients I chose, enjoying a feeling of control and independence—all this, pleasant and remunerative in the long run, came with a price I had not anticipated.
To the trivial necessity of earning a living was added the constant worry of never knowing what tomorrow would bring if commissions were to dry up.
So I doubled down on illustration and graphic design, specializing in visual identities, because I took satisfaction in touching the very heart of the matter during meetings where a logo was decided.
I never encountered any particular difficulty in conception or execution, and I did good work by imposing upon myself an unwavering discipline.
When I obtained the Villa Medici a decade later, my already solid reputation confirmed, I still felt that everything was going well. Paradoxically, it was in Rome that I truly realized I had gone astray, and that the mistake was colossal.
During that sabbatical year—both exceptional and unforeseen—I was finally able to devote all my time to purely artistic research, creating the catalogue raisonné of a virtual artist. My interest in cyberspace dated back to the late eighties; for the record, in 1995 I created the first website of the Villa Medici by establishing its very first Internet connection.
Back in Paris, I had to immediately take up again the yoke of the successful graphic designer, relegating fundamental research, as usual, to fleeting moments of free time. The irony was that just when I was supposed to benefit from increased respectability—by creating a graphic design studio with all the advantages that promised—I no longer had any motivation for the profession, having briefly tasted the divine source of absolute freedom.
I tried to outsmart myself by prospecting clients in the art world, thinking it would bring me closer to my goal, but it only reinforced my image as a graphic designer in a milieu I would have preferred to frequent more usefully in another role.
Thus I continued my artistic research drop by drop when suddenly the graphic design profession underwent a major metamorphosis. The personal computer, indispensable to me as a freelancer, soon became my worst enemy. Desktop publishing was no longer the preserve of a few pioneering designers of my kind, but an easy calling card for a crowd of new competitors whose only talent was often having bought a Mac. I still remember a rather comical evening when almost everyone claimed to be a graphic designer simply by knowing the basic functions of the XPress/Illustrator/Photoshop trilogy—layout, vector drawing, image. Novice amateurs felt entitled to offer the same services, at much lower cost of course, without worrying about legitimizing their claims with a diploma or even the slightest visible experience in a portfolio. This activity I no longer wished to practice was losing its aura, and its fundamental principles—having nothing to do with the computer tool itself—seemed like dusty, useless rules.
I had little choice but to display a pragmatism of solid gold by becoming the head of my small company, recognized for its expertise in visual communication and having refined its network in the cultural world—museums, foundations, and the like.
I resisted this temptation, because the examples of entrepreneurs around me offered nothing worth imitating unless one wished to definitively abandon artistic ambition and finally find pleasure in losing one’s life to earning it.
Then came the dramatic turn: a job offer for Isabelle that implied, financially, that I could consider stopping my hard labor in the penitentiary.
After more than twenty years of grinding away, the years of liberation that followed remain for me an ineffable memory of extreme pleasure, every moment devoted to art for art’s sake. I made it a point of honor to work intensely, in a creative frenzy in all directions, finally deepening my research and occasionally achieving the quality I had hoped for.
The fact that I fell seriously ill just when I was about to devote more time to promotion than to creation could have made me believe in some form of destiny definitively outside the system, against which rebellion was futile. In reality, it was an objective analysis of the situation that gave rise in me to skepticism about my chances of truly entering the art world beyond a certain age. Opportunities always exist, but the fact remains that there are also—fortunately—far more artists than before, all seeking the same Grail of exhibition. Galleries are flooded with requests they pay no attention to, since the Internet now allows them to scout talent at leisure.
I was exhausted in advance by this overly long obstacle course required to be exhibited: gradually building networks, assiduously frequenting the scene in search of group shows and then solo ones, creating histories of personal relationships with gallerists, curators, critics.
The METABOX series definitively freed me from the quest for meaning in my artistic approach, and, blissful in my ivory tower, I produced images and texts while feeling immense gratitude toward Isabelle, who made this adventure possible.
At eighteen, with no one to talk things through with at leisure about my future, I felt deeply alone when it came to choosing which higher studies I should consider.
Dad was busy leaving Mom, and as the youngest of five children I found myself alone with her, utterly shattered by the sudden separation, in a small apartment into which we had hastily moved.
Four years older than me, Micou had already been self-destructing for years, and every slightly serious conversation with him inevitably revolved around his addiction problems. His antisocial drift made him financially dependent on Roger.
A half-brother, Christian, and two half-sisters, Chantal and Catou, my elders by fifteen, twelve, and ten years respectively, cared no more about me than about Mom. Their support amounted to occasional words of comfort, while they never invested themselves in any kind of rescue plan for Micou.
In my final year of high school, I enrolled in nude drawing classes in Montparnasse, in an ancient studio with red velvet curtains from another era, run by a veteran painter of rear-guard battles who played at being a teacher, his white goatee giving him a theatrical air. He told me that art schools were accessible only through competitive exams—tests plus portfolio—and that it was essential to prepare for them through a year in preparatory studios. The most renowned was Penninghen, which prepared students for the public applied arts schools and also for portfolio-based admission to the École Supérieure d’Art Graphique within the same institution. ESAG, famously ultra-selective, offered a three-year degree backed by a network of alumni deeply embedded in the visual communication professions.
In a café on rue de l’Université, I confided in my father my intention to do the preparatory workshop in order to try for admission to ESAG, my sole motivation being the certainty that I would be practicing full-time my favorite activity: drawing. Dad did not hesitate to pull out his checkbook to pay for the preparatory year, as well as the three following years after my admission to ESAG. Yet we never discussed this orientation, chosen almost by chance, in complete ignorance of its real implications in terms of future professional activity.
Ideally—though I was unfortunately unaware of it at the time—I should have aimed for a master’s degree in philosophy or literature and then applied to the fine arts, rather than to an applied arts school like Penninghen, while freely building a personal portfolio on the side.
At twenty-two, more experienced and less impressionable than at eighteen, I would have better resisted academic pressures while envisioning a career as a visual artist with the appropriate network. But all this belongs to a story that never happened—my own small personal uchronia.
Benefiting from certain advantages, I finished the preparatory workshop at the top of the annual ranking (out of three hundred), and then, carried by my momentum, I obtained the same position (out of thirty in the class) each year at the higher school. Logically, I graduated as valedictorian.
I take no pride in this flawless trajectory, because in hindsight I also see in it a lack of lucidity caused by the frenetic pace of work at ESAG, enclosed within an unforgiving grading system.
Inevitably, at the diploma exhibition, a creative director immediately offered me a first job in an excellent and prestigious agency for the month of September, and with a light heart I left for the south for a summer close to perfection.
The first disillusionment came from my aversion—ultimately disqualifying—to a career as an art director in advertising, which appeared to me as a kind of uninteresting intellectual swindle. I was completely disgusted after a commendable two-year attempt in two different agencies.
Moreover, my almost physical rejection of the corporate world—with its demand for submission to hierarchy and the numbing routine of subway, work, sleep—forced me into freelancing.
Not taking orders, being free to alternate sleepless nights of work with nights devoted to enjoying Parisian nightlife, selling my own projects by solving visual communication problems for clients I chose, enjoying a feeling of control and independence—all this, pleasant and remunerative in the long run, came with a price I had not anticipated.
To the trivial necessity of earning a living was added the constant worry of never knowing what tomorrow would bring if commissions were to dry up.
So I doubled down on illustration and graphic design, specializing in visual identities, because I took satisfaction in touching the very heart of the matter during meetings where a logo was decided.
I never encountered any particular difficulty in conception or execution, and I did good work by imposing upon myself an unwavering discipline.
When I obtained the Villa Medici a decade later, my already solid reputation confirmed, I still felt that everything was going well. Paradoxically, it was in Rome that I truly realized I had gone astray, and that the mistake was colossal.
During that sabbatical year—both exceptional and unforeseen—I was finally able to devote all my time to purely artistic research, creating the catalogue raisonné of a virtual artist. My interest in cyberspace dated back to the late eighties; for the record, in 1995 I created the first website of the Villa Medici by establishing its very first Internet connection.
Back in Paris, I had to immediately take up again the yoke of the successful graphic designer, relegating fundamental research, as usual, to fleeting moments of free time. The irony was that just when I was supposed to benefit from increased respectability—by creating a graphic design studio with all the advantages that promised—I no longer had any motivation for the profession, having briefly tasted the divine source of absolute freedom.
I tried to outsmart myself by prospecting clients in the art world, thinking it would bring me closer to my goal, but it only reinforced my image as a graphic designer in a milieu I would have preferred to frequent more usefully in another role.
Thus I continued my artistic research drop by drop when suddenly the graphic design profession underwent a major metamorphosis. The personal computer, indispensable to me as a freelancer, soon became my worst enemy. Desktop publishing was no longer the preserve of a few pioneering designers of my kind, but an easy calling card for a crowd of new competitors whose only talent was often having bought a Mac. I still remember a rather comical evening when almost everyone claimed to be a graphic designer simply by knowing the basic functions of the XPress/Illustrator/Photoshop trilogy—layout, vector drawing, image. Novice amateurs felt entitled to offer the same services, at much lower cost of course, without worrying about legitimizing their claims with a diploma or even the slightest visible experience in a portfolio. This activity I no longer wished to practice was losing its aura, and its fundamental principles—having nothing to do with the computer tool itself—seemed like dusty, useless rules.
I had little choice but to display a pragmatism of solid gold by becoming the head of my small company, recognized for its expertise in visual communication and having refined its network in the cultural world—museums, foundations, and the like.
I resisted this temptation, because the examples of entrepreneurs around me offered nothing worth imitating unless one wished to definitively abandon artistic ambition and finally find pleasure in losing one’s life to earning it.
Then came the dramatic turn: a job offer for Isabelle that implied, financially, that I could consider stopping my hard labor in the penitentiary.
After more than twenty years of grinding away, the years of liberation that followed remain for me an ineffable memory of extreme pleasure, every moment devoted to art for art’s sake. I made it a point of honor to work intensely, in a creative frenzy in all directions, finally deepening my research and occasionally achieving the quality I had hoped for.
The fact that I fell seriously ill just when I was about to devote more time to promotion than to creation could have made me believe in some form of destiny definitively outside the system, against which rebellion was futile. In reality, it was an objective analysis of the situation that gave rise in me to skepticism about my chances of truly entering the art world beyond a certain age. Opportunities always exist, but the fact remains that there are also—fortunately—far more artists than before, all seeking the same Grail of exhibition. Galleries are flooded with requests they pay no attention to, since the Internet now allows them to scout talent at leisure.
I was exhausted in advance by this overly long obstacle course required to be exhibited: gradually building networks, assiduously frequenting the scene in search of group shows and then solo ones, creating histories of personal relationships with gallerists, curators, critics.
The METABOX series definitively freed me from the quest for meaning in my artistic approach, and, blissful in my ivory tower, I produced images and texts while feeling immense gratitude toward Isabelle, who made this adventure possible.
REGRET
To have no regrets is to lack imagination, because with time one discerns missed opportunities by more precisely measuring the consequences of our actions or our inaction.
The absence of risk-taking is undoubtedly the most distressing regret.
Regrets are eternal only on tombstones.
One must not confuse regret with nostalgia, for one does not regret a magical instant, a moment of happiness, a bygone happy era.
Regret must be distinguished from remorse, which corresponds to a “bad” action that degrades self-esteem—something it may be possible to rebalance with a “good” action.
My greatest regret is having lost my brother too early.
Michaël
My brother, four years older than me, inevitably had the upper hand in our incessant fights, which often degenerated dangerously, such was the fierce desire to have the last word. I compensated for my muscular weakness with cunning or endless arguments, taking care to keep my distance. Like a tiger irritated by a small monkey just out of reach, Micou looked for ways to surprise me by circling the dining table that served as my rampart, or by forcing the door of the pantry, which more than once became my ultimate refuge.
Never satisfied in his thirst for confrontation, I kept provoking him, while he displayed fertile imagination in shutting me up—such as when he smothered me by putting all his weight on a pillow, without worrying about the time passing or about the growl meant to be my dishonorable request for a truce.
Although I can truthfully say that I endured not martyrdom but a form of extreme ordeal, I was not blameless in the expression of uncontrolled violence. Once, with all the strength of a gladiator at the end of his run, I hurled at him a Malagasy spear—an authentic weapon my father had brought back from the other hemisphere—which lodged itself in his bedroom door, slammed shut at the very last moment. The gash it left remained for a long time as a trace of my determination never to admit defeat.
At times we laid down chivalric rules when fearsome weapons fascinated us with their potential. Thus beating each other with long winter socks stuffed with other socks required certain prohibitions, for anyone who has never taken a blow from behind with such an elastic club can hardly grasp the imperative need not to cross certain limits in this game of carnage.
One Sunday morning, too annoyed by our shouts punctuating an infernal racket, Dad grabbed us by our undershirts—standard attire of my childhood, invariably paired with the era’s kangaroo briefs—and placed us face to face around the living room table. Faces flushed with anger, bodies dripping with sweat, we caught our breath, ordered to explain ourselves diplomatically:
“Mr. Philou, that traitor hit me on the head with—”
“Mr. Micou, that coward forced me to—”
A dialogue of stubborn deafness, yielding no result, whose only reason for being is the memory I retain of it, for it is one of the very rare images of remarkable clarity I have preserved of my brother’s face at that distant time of my childhood.
I remember promising myself never to forget that I had cried almost every day—a vow formulated when I was hog-tied, feet bound to the window frame and hands to the handle of the closed bedroom door, left alone and tied up for what seemed to me an eternity.
Much later, I came to realize that I had taken a slightly unhealthy pleasure in my position of inferiority, as a small country can take pride in defending itself against the imperialism of a powerful neighbor. I still do not know what dark forces animated Micou, for I never had the opportunity to revisit the reasons that might explain the ultimately excessive violence of our fights. Perhaps he was captivated—as I was, though more vaguely—by that aberrant mixture of tears and hysterical laughter that left us pale and exhausted after interminable disputes.
When Micou entered middle school, abruptly propelling him into adolescence, the eight-year-old child I was suddenly found himself alone. I suffered far more from this separation imposed by the age difference than from the bruises left by fights that ceased for lack of a combatant. Thus settled a peace of the brave, full of brotherhood, for not the slightest feeling of hatred had ever infiltrated our state of permanent conflict. From then on, Micou often shut himself in his room, while I spent entire days in mine trying to convince myself that my little plastic soldiers had souls.
Before resigning myself to this unfamiliar solitude, we had often been not enemies but accomplices in many enterprises meant to circumscribe reality according to our own norms. One might recall the day Micou lay on his back, knees bent, inviting me to sit on his feet so I could play the astronaut, wearing the magnificent silver costume I had received for my birthday. When he launched me into orbit by extending his legs with all his strength, the pillow we had placed at the planned landing site on the floor was of no help, as I smashed headfirst into the opposite wall at a good meter high, falling not into feathers but truly into unconsciousness. The orange hard-plastic visor of the helmet shattered into several pieces, their sharp points grazing my eyes. I had a bruised skull, hair sticky with blood, but I could not complain, since the flight plan had been devised by mutual agreement.
One Christmas, Micou ordered a chemistry set that fascinated him immensely, and soon afterward he found the recipe for an explosive mixture—potassium chlorate and powdered sugar—which we confined in a small jar whose explosion hurled hundreds of shards of glass into the kitchen. This apprentice-chemist experiment permanently scarred the Formica table with a nasty black gash, reminding us at every meal that we had nearly disfigured ourselves. Making rockets out of cardboard tubes seemed the best way to prolong the explosive pleasure, since we had an excellent launch base on the terrace at the top floor of a friend’s building—he was as reckless and turbulent as we were. Watching the rockets ignite and trace beautiful arcs across the gray Parisian sky was a moment of great bliss, abruptly interrupted by the frantic building superintendent pounding like a madman on the apartment door. Did we then receive beatings at home for such exploits that could have set the neighborhood ablaze? No.
But our favorite two-player game—far more innocent—was trying to go unnoticed as we advanced through the apartment at night when we were officially in bed. Our commando outfit was nothing more than the classic undershirt and white briefs already mentioned. At the time, seven of us still lived in the house, so these missions were no small feat. The most perilous consisted of hiding for a long time in the entry closet, then seizing the opportunity to crawl across the parquet under the long living-room sideboard in order to watch the evening movie on TV, holding our breath and our nervous laughter whenever the famous white square appeared at the bottom of the screen indicating “not for children” programs in the 1960s.
Two remarkable and dramatic events in which Micou played a decisive role marked my childhood forever, intertwining our destinies, since my brother had the opportunity to save my life twice. In a Spanish seaside resort—whose name I have forgotten—I nearly drowned in the ocean after imprudently straying too far from shore. When my small plastic boat capsized and was blown out of reach by the wind at supersonic speed, I foolishly swam with all the strength of a six- or seven-year-old to catch it. Having quickly squandered all my energy, I clearly felt I was about to sink when Micou, miraculously nearby, shouted at me to hold on until he could grab me and bring me back to the beach using the lifeguard technique he was very proud to have mastered in its rudiments—swimming on one’s back while extending the rescued person in front, keeping their head above water by sliding a hand under the chin.
During a summer camp of the Éclaireurs de France in the Pyrenees, he intervened just in time a second time. To prepare what was meant to be a memorable lamb roast, we were to gather as much wood as possible all afternoon. Toward evening, I ended up alone in the half-darkness below the bank of a river where large branches floated—branches it would have been quite an achievement to bring back to camp. Once again, I had overestimated my strength, which abandoned me after standing too long in the icy water up to my torso. A search was launched belatedly but energetically, and it was Micou—with apparently infallible instinct—who found me in the darkness and carried me back to camp on his back. I was installed, shivering, near the large fire. The heat created swirls of steam all over my body, whose complex interweaving of shapes I admired, exhausted and somewhat dazed. I sometimes caught sight of Micou bustling about like the others with the feast preparations. He was probably no longer thinking that improbable luck had allowed him to spare me hypothermia—and perhaps once again drowning.
It was also on the last evening of that camp that an incident occurred whose gravity could later be assessed, despite its initially anecdotal character. It should first be noted that the Éclaireurs—secular—modeled their organization on that of the Scouts—Christian—without retaining the excessive strictness. Uniforms were not really mandatory, except for the scarf for various practical or playful reasons, and the almost military discipline of the Scouts was largely absent. Nevertheless, we shared the traditional and somewhat outdated promise ceremony, in which each declared themselves forever “ready”—ready to honor certain values such as helping others, friendship, keeping one’s commitments.
On the evening when novices were to make their promises, Micou, in high spirits, gave in to the temptation to show off in the required solemn silence, provoking laughter around him with remarks mocking the protocol. He was reproached for this flippant attitude on the night train back to Paris and informed of nothing less than his permanent expulsion from the Éclaireurs. I can still see his handsome but ashen face in the corridor of the car after he slammed the compartment door, suddenly realizing that his greatest space of freedom, populated by his best friends, had just vanished.
Later, his insubordination to any hierarchy made high school supervision unbearable, and he was definitively expelled before graduation. He then radically marginalized himself without becoming a loner, joining instead the tribe of eccentrics who, one may observe, often form a society of their own. Our parents were quickly overwhelmed by the deterioration of his situation, which could no longer be confined to the usual difficulties of adolescence. Dad inexplicably gave up, retreating into a counterproductive stance of being too disappointed to engage in dialogue, while Mom dragged in the upstairs neighbor—friend and accomplice of the first joint-rolling sessions—by the scruff of the neck to force him to confess before my stunned father the afternoons of smoking and many other activities that boded ill, such as preparations to run away with a third accomplice.
Thus the father never truly took the bull by the horns, later contenting himself with providing financial support that no doubt allowed him to cheaply assuage his guilt while his son was in free fall. Mom, on the contrary, fought on all fronts day by day to avert the worst, never managing to patch the breaches that eventually caused the boat to sink prematurely—often drunk, since alcohol addiction proved far more problematic than the experiments with various drugs, which remained a kind of irregular sprinkling that dwindled over the years.
From the age of majority onward, Micou embodied the classic borderline Parisian punk—always ready, but ready to screw around—brilliantly funny, yet often very hard to live with, it must be said, because too often drunk. He frequented the artist squats of the heroic era—among them those of the founders of DAL, Droit au Logement—as much as hospitals, first sporadically in emergency rooms, then regularly in various departments to treat the pathologies ordinarily resulting from repeated excesses within a state of health already degraded, notably by hepatitis B.
Between twenty and thirty, the vitality of young adulthood nonetheless prevailed, and his nonchalance, peaceful anarchism, regal indifference, and above all his completely unbridled humor appealed to me, while his health distressed me.
In the final year, I had grown so blasé about visiting him in one hospital ward or another that when I went to see him at the Pitié-Salpêtrière, I did not for a single moment imagine it was our last one-on-one meeting.
I learned of his death by phone in the days that followed.
For a long time, Mom had been clever enough to condition her financial help on visits to psychiatrists—sometimes renowned ones, like the famous Professor Rapoport—or on detox stays that ended in failure as soon as Micou returned to Parisian life with its temptations on every street corner.
When I moved into my first apartment on rue du Faubourg du Temple, I decided to house him in order to keep him under close watch between Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I had convinced him to attend. After a few weeks, the mission proved impossible, because in the neighborhood—of the 1980s—there were as many, if not more, freely circulating drugs as there was fuel to blow up blood-alcohol meters. The café owner downstairs even drilled holes in teaspoons to render them unusable by junkies shooting up in the establishment’s toilets. So, while waiting to resume his spongy habits, Micou addressed his withdrawal problems with other substances, as one can see with dismay in the film Tchao Pantin, in which he briefly appears—cast by chance—playing his own role opposite Richard Anconina, who hands him a dose in a sinister Parisian dive.
When I lapse into flashback mode, I allow myself to think of all that I did not live through with Micou, and I regret not that I failed to do enough to save him—since that task, in many respects, belonged to him alone if it was to succeed—but that I did not live more exceptional moments with him, such as traveling together or spending more time with our daughters.
It is true that I was not necessarily inclined to increase the intensity of our relationship, since it was not rare for things to suddenly go off the rails, as illustrated by the tragicomic anecdote of the skewer with which he stabbed my thigh from under the table just for the fun of fencing. As always, I did not consider the incident disqualifying, but it reinforced my conviction that a limited dose of Micou was sufficient. Even in squats, it happened that his friends lectured him or were tempted to exclude him when he crossed the line.
At one point, in desperation, I resolved to use the weapon of mass deterrence by informing him that bridges would be definitively burned if, even once, he was not “clean” when we had planned to see each other—especially when he came to my place while Solène was there. By forcing him to respect these strict rules, I took the risk of alienating him and no longer seeing him, but it was probably the greatest help I could give him, because it more or less worked, even if blackmail is, in principle, never a solution.
Gradually and paradoxically, a form of gentrification appeared in the squats—now no longer threatened by police raids by the city of Paris—combined with a hierarchical system rather incompatible with the libertarian claims that had initially prevailed. In a singular mise en abyme, Micou became the provocative free electron within a community supposedly gathering individuals emancipated from all forms of subjection to established order.
When Véronique became pregnant, it was already clear that the couple she formed with Micou would never reach a point of balance. By giving Mom the great joy of becoming a grandmother, he repaid part of his debt to her. Lola was a bright clearing for everyone under a gray sky perpetually heavy with threats. At first, I confess, I was deeply skeptical about Micou’s ability to rise to the challenge of fatherhood, but his unconditional love for his daughter allowed him to fulfill his role, even if there were inevitably lapses that his failing health makes forgivable.
For far too long, I maintained an illusion that consisted in confining Micou to the image of the brother who went overboard when the storm broke in adolescence, to whom I kept throwing lifebuoys without ever managing to haul him back onto the deck. Certainly, no one could have claimed his existence was always rosy, but one day, by chance, I found myself stuck in traffic on rue de la Roquette. I fumed at being so stupidly trapped so close to home after a long day of work and rather grueling travel, while the heatwave got on my nerves. Idle, I surveyed the patrons on a café terrace where I would gladly have had a beer, calm and carefree, instead of inching along. Among all the sunglasses-wearing drinkers basking with their beers, I recognized Micou, wearing leopard leggings and an indescribable T-shirt, in the company of one or two friends. He seemed cheerful, as if subscribed to a carefree life in perfect harmony with the universe, having found the solution to doing nothing while enjoying everything. I almost honked lightly to signal him, but I thought better of it and remained pensive. No spectacular Copernican revolution took place in my mind as a result of this chance encounter—I would not have traded our lives—but the vanishing point on the horizon had shifted enough to alter the perspective I had believed immutable.
Micou’s life was worth another, for in the end, who can claim to carry no burden? His, as heavy as it often was, had its potentially desirable counterpart in his complete emancipation from the constraining rules of confinement in the subway–work–sleep rhythm.
His destiny was to sacrifice longevity for intensity, in the name of a joyous freedom, but at the expense of those who loved him and survived him, who then had to suffer his absence for many long years.
To have no regrets is to lack imagination, because with time one discerns missed opportunities by more precisely measuring the consequences of our actions or our inaction.
The absence of risk-taking is undoubtedly the most distressing regret.
Regrets are eternal only on tombstones.
One must not confuse regret with nostalgia, for one does not regret a magical instant, a moment of happiness, a bygone happy era.
Regret must be distinguished from remorse, which corresponds to a “bad” action that degrades self-esteem—something it may be possible to rebalance with a “good” action.
My greatest regret is having lost my brother too early.
Michaël
My brother, four years older than me, inevitably had the upper hand in our incessant fights, which often degenerated dangerously, such was the fierce desire to have the last word. I compensated for my muscular weakness with cunning or endless arguments, taking care to keep my distance. Like a tiger irritated by a small monkey just out of reach, Micou looked for ways to surprise me by circling the dining table that served as my rampart, or by forcing the door of the pantry, which more than once became my ultimate refuge.
Never satisfied in his thirst for confrontation, I kept provoking him, while he displayed fertile imagination in shutting me up—such as when he smothered me by putting all his weight on a pillow, without worrying about the time passing or about the growl meant to be my dishonorable request for a truce.
Although I can truthfully say that I endured not martyrdom but a form of extreme ordeal, I was not blameless in the expression of uncontrolled violence. Once, with all the strength of a gladiator at the end of his run, I hurled at him a Malagasy spear—an authentic weapon my father had brought back from the other hemisphere—which lodged itself in his bedroom door, slammed shut at the very last moment. The gash it left remained for a long time as a trace of my determination never to admit defeat.
At times we laid down chivalric rules when fearsome weapons fascinated us with their potential. Thus beating each other with long winter socks stuffed with other socks required certain prohibitions, for anyone who has never taken a blow from behind with such an elastic club can hardly grasp the imperative need not to cross certain limits in this game of carnage.
One Sunday morning, too annoyed by our shouts punctuating an infernal racket, Dad grabbed us by our undershirts—standard attire of my childhood, invariably paired with the era’s kangaroo briefs—and placed us face to face around the living room table. Faces flushed with anger, bodies dripping with sweat, we caught our breath, ordered to explain ourselves diplomatically:
“Mr. Philou, that traitor hit me on the head with—”
“Mr. Micou, that coward forced me to—”
A dialogue of stubborn deafness, yielding no result, whose only reason for being is the memory I retain of it, for it is one of the very rare images of remarkable clarity I have preserved of my brother’s face at that distant time of my childhood.
I remember promising myself never to forget that I had cried almost every day—a vow formulated when I was hog-tied, feet bound to the window frame and hands to the handle of the closed bedroom door, left alone and tied up for what seemed to me an eternity.
Much later, I came to realize that I had taken a slightly unhealthy pleasure in my position of inferiority, as a small country can take pride in defending itself against the imperialism of a powerful neighbor. I still do not know what dark forces animated Micou, for I never had the opportunity to revisit the reasons that might explain the ultimately excessive violence of our fights. Perhaps he was captivated—as I was, though more vaguely—by that aberrant mixture of tears and hysterical laughter that left us pale and exhausted after interminable disputes.
When Micou entered middle school, abruptly propelling him into adolescence, the eight-year-old child I was suddenly found himself alone. I suffered far more from this separation imposed by the age difference than from the bruises left by fights that ceased for lack of a combatant. Thus settled a peace of the brave, full of brotherhood, for not the slightest feeling of hatred had ever infiltrated our state of permanent conflict. From then on, Micou often shut himself in his room, while I spent entire days in mine trying to convince myself that my little plastic soldiers had souls.
Before resigning myself to this unfamiliar solitude, we had often been not enemies but accomplices in many enterprises meant to circumscribe reality according to our own norms. One might recall the day Micou lay on his back, knees bent, inviting me to sit on his feet so I could play the astronaut, wearing the magnificent silver costume I had received for my birthday. When he launched me into orbit by extending his legs with all his strength, the pillow we had placed at the planned landing site on the floor was of no help, as I smashed headfirst into the opposite wall at a good meter high, falling not into feathers but truly into unconsciousness. The orange hard-plastic visor of the helmet shattered into several pieces, their sharp points grazing my eyes. I had a bruised skull, hair sticky with blood, but I could not complain, since the flight plan had been devised by mutual agreement.
One Christmas, Micou ordered a chemistry set that fascinated him immensely, and soon afterward he found the recipe for an explosive mixture—potassium chlorate and powdered sugar—which we confined in a small jar whose explosion hurled hundreds of shards of glass into the kitchen. This apprentice-chemist experiment permanently scarred the Formica table with a nasty black gash, reminding us at every meal that we had nearly disfigured ourselves. Making rockets out of cardboard tubes seemed the best way to prolong the explosive pleasure, since we had an excellent launch base on the terrace at the top floor of a friend’s building—he was as reckless and turbulent as we were. Watching the rockets ignite and trace beautiful arcs across the gray Parisian sky was a moment of great bliss, abruptly interrupted by the frantic building superintendent pounding like a madman on the apartment door. Did we then receive beatings at home for such exploits that could have set the neighborhood ablaze? No.
But our favorite two-player game—far more innocent—was trying to go unnoticed as we advanced through the apartment at night when we were officially in bed. Our commando outfit was nothing more than the classic undershirt and white briefs already mentioned. At the time, seven of us still lived in the house, so these missions were no small feat. The most perilous consisted of hiding for a long time in the entry closet, then seizing the opportunity to crawl across the parquet under the long living-room sideboard in order to watch the evening movie on TV, holding our breath and our nervous laughter whenever the famous white square appeared at the bottom of the screen indicating “not for children” programs in the 1960s.
Two remarkable and dramatic events in which Micou played a decisive role marked my childhood forever, intertwining our destinies, since my brother had the opportunity to save my life twice. In a Spanish seaside resort—whose name I have forgotten—I nearly drowned in the ocean after imprudently straying too far from shore. When my small plastic boat capsized and was blown out of reach by the wind at supersonic speed, I foolishly swam with all the strength of a six- or seven-year-old to catch it. Having quickly squandered all my energy, I clearly felt I was about to sink when Micou, miraculously nearby, shouted at me to hold on until he could grab me and bring me back to the beach using the lifeguard technique he was very proud to have mastered in its rudiments—swimming on one’s back while extending the rescued person in front, keeping their head above water by sliding a hand under the chin.
During a summer camp of the Éclaireurs de France in the Pyrenees, he intervened just in time a second time. To prepare what was meant to be a memorable lamb roast, we were to gather as much wood as possible all afternoon. Toward evening, I ended up alone in the half-darkness below the bank of a river where large branches floated—branches it would have been quite an achievement to bring back to camp. Once again, I had overestimated my strength, which abandoned me after standing too long in the icy water up to my torso. A search was launched belatedly but energetically, and it was Micou—with apparently infallible instinct—who found me in the darkness and carried me back to camp on his back. I was installed, shivering, near the large fire. The heat created swirls of steam all over my body, whose complex interweaving of shapes I admired, exhausted and somewhat dazed. I sometimes caught sight of Micou bustling about like the others with the feast preparations. He was probably no longer thinking that improbable luck had allowed him to spare me hypothermia—and perhaps once again drowning.
It was also on the last evening of that camp that an incident occurred whose gravity could later be assessed, despite its initially anecdotal character. It should first be noted that the Éclaireurs—secular—modeled their organization on that of the Scouts—Christian—without retaining the excessive strictness. Uniforms were not really mandatory, except for the scarf for various practical or playful reasons, and the almost military discipline of the Scouts was largely absent. Nevertheless, we shared the traditional and somewhat outdated promise ceremony, in which each declared themselves forever “ready”—ready to honor certain values such as helping others, friendship, keeping one’s commitments.
On the evening when novices were to make their promises, Micou, in high spirits, gave in to the temptation to show off in the required solemn silence, provoking laughter around him with remarks mocking the protocol. He was reproached for this flippant attitude on the night train back to Paris and informed of nothing less than his permanent expulsion from the Éclaireurs. I can still see his handsome but ashen face in the corridor of the car after he slammed the compartment door, suddenly realizing that his greatest space of freedom, populated by his best friends, had just vanished.
Later, his insubordination to any hierarchy made high school supervision unbearable, and he was definitively expelled before graduation. He then radically marginalized himself without becoming a loner, joining instead the tribe of eccentrics who, one may observe, often form a society of their own. Our parents were quickly overwhelmed by the deterioration of his situation, which could no longer be confined to the usual difficulties of adolescence. Dad inexplicably gave up, retreating into a counterproductive stance of being too disappointed to engage in dialogue, while Mom dragged in the upstairs neighbor—friend and accomplice of the first joint-rolling sessions—by the scruff of the neck to force him to confess before my stunned father the afternoons of smoking and many other activities that boded ill, such as preparations to run away with a third accomplice.
Thus the father never truly took the bull by the horns, later contenting himself with providing financial support that no doubt allowed him to cheaply assuage his guilt while his son was in free fall. Mom, on the contrary, fought on all fronts day by day to avert the worst, never managing to patch the breaches that eventually caused the boat to sink prematurely—often drunk, since alcohol addiction proved far more problematic than the experiments with various drugs, which remained a kind of irregular sprinkling that dwindled over the years.
From the age of majority onward, Micou embodied the classic borderline Parisian punk—always ready, but ready to screw around—brilliantly funny, yet often very hard to live with, it must be said, because too often drunk. He frequented the artist squats of the heroic era—among them those of the founders of DAL, Droit au Logement—as much as hospitals, first sporadically in emergency rooms, then regularly in various departments to treat the pathologies ordinarily resulting from repeated excesses within a state of health already degraded, notably by hepatitis B.
Between twenty and thirty, the vitality of young adulthood nonetheless prevailed, and his nonchalance, peaceful anarchism, regal indifference, and above all his completely unbridled humor appealed to me, while his health distressed me.
In the final year, I had grown so blasé about visiting him in one hospital ward or another that when I went to see him at the Pitié-Salpêtrière, I did not for a single moment imagine it was our last one-on-one meeting.
I learned of his death by phone in the days that followed.
For a long time, Mom had been clever enough to condition her financial help on visits to psychiatrists—sometimes renowned ones, like the famous Professor Rapoport—or on detox stays that ended in failure as soon as Micou returned to Parisian life with its temptations on every street corner.
When I moved into my first apartment on rue du Faubourg du Temple, I decided to house him in order to keep him under close watch between Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I had convinced him to attend. After a few weeks, the mission proved impossible, because in the neighborhood—of the 1980s—there were as many, if not more, freely circulating drugs as there was fuel to blow up blood-alcohol meters. The café owner downstairs even drilled holes in teaspoons to render them unusable by junkies shooting up in the establishment’s toilets. So, while waiting to resume his spongy habits, Micou addressed his withdrawal problems with other substances, as one can see with dismay in the film Tchao Pantin, in which he briefly appears—cast by chance—playing his own role opposite Richard Anconina, who hands him a dose in a sinister Parisian dive.
When I lapse into flashback mode, I allow myself to think of all that I did not live through with Micou, and I regret not that I failed to do enough to save him—since that task, in many respects, belonged to him alone if it was to succeed—but that I did not live more exceptional moments with him, such as traveling together or spending more time with our daughters.
It is true that I was not necessarily inclined to increase the intensity of our relationship, since it was not rare for things to suddenly go off the rails, as illustrated by the tragicomic anecdote of the skewer with which he stabbed my thigh from under the table just for the fun of fencing. As always, I did not consider the incident disqualifying, but it reinforced my conviction that a limited dose of Micou was sufficient. Even in squats, it happened that his friends lectured him or were tempted to exclude him when he crossed the line.
At one point, in desperation, I resolved to use the weapon of mass deterrence by informing him that bridges would be definitively burned if, even once, he was not “clean” when we had planned to see each other—especially when he came to my place while Solène was there. By forcing him to respect these strict rules, I took the risk of alienating him and no longer seeing him, but it was probably the greatest help I could give him, because it more or less worked, even if blackmail is, in principle, never a solution.
Gradually and paradoxically, a form of gentrification appeared in the squats—now no longer threatened by police raids by the city of Paris—combined with a hierarchical system rather incompatible with the libertarian claims that had initially prevailed. In a singular mise en abyme, Micou became the provocative free electron within a community supposedly gathering individuals emancipated from all forms of subjection to established order.
When Véronique became pregnant, it was already clear that the couple she formed with Micou would never reach a point of balance. By giving Mom the great joy of becoming a grandmother, he repaid part of his debt to her. Lola was a bright clearing for everyone under a gray sky perpetually heavy with threats. At first, I confess, I was deeply skeptical about Micou’s ability to rise to the challenge of fatherhood, but his unconditional love for his daughter allowed him to fulfill his role, even if there were inevitably lapses that his failing health makes forgivable.
For far too long, I maintained an illusion that consisted in confining Micou to the image of the brother who went overboard when the storm broke in adolescence, to whom I kept throwing lifebuoys without ever managing to haul him back onto the deck. Certainly, no one could have claimed his existence was always rosy, but one day, by chance, I found myself stuck in traffic on rue de la Roquette. I fumed at being so stupidly trapped so close to home after a long day of work and rather grueling travel, while the heatwave got on my nerves. Idle, I surveyed the patrons on a café terrace where I would gladly have had a beer, calm and carefree, instead of inching along. Among all the sunglasses-wearing drinkers basking with their beers, I recognized Micou, wearing leopard leggings and an indescribable T-shirt, in the company of one or two friends. He seemed cheerful, as if subscribed to a carefree life in perfect harmony with the universe, having found the solution to doing nothing while enjoying everything. I almost honked lightly to signal him, but I thought better of it and remained pensive. No spectacular Copernican revolution took place in my mind as a result of this chance encounter—I would not have traded our lives—but the vanishing point on the horizon had shifted enough to alter the perspective I had believed immutable.
Micou’s life was worth another, for in the end, who can claim to carry no burden? His, as heavy as it often was, had its potentially desirable counterpart in his complete emancipation from the constraining rules of confinement in the subway–work–sleep rhythm.
His destiny was to sacrifice longevity for intensity, in the name of a joyous freedom, but at the expense of those who loved him and survived him, who then had to suffer his absence for many long years.
Why write this text?
That is a question that did not arise before or during the writing, but to which I now feel almost obliged to provide an answer after the fact.
I am not certain I can.
It would perhaps be easier to reverse the question: why should I not have volunteered for this impossible mission?
It is indeed difficult not to betray the existential integrity of the beings evoked.
One must accept privileging certain memories and crystallizing them by default.
No language can exhaust reality…
That is a question that did not arise before or during the writing, but to which I now feel almost obliged to provide an answer after the fact.
I am not certain I can.
It would perhaps be easier to reverse the question: why should I not have volunteered for this impossible mission?
It is indeed difficult not to betray the existential integrity of the beings evoked.
One must accept privileging certain memories and crystallizing them by default.
No language can exhaust reality…
STOÏCISM
The long and painful experience of Lyme disease has illuminated for me the true meaning of the message of the philosopher Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism.
There exists an ultimate weapon to resist surrendering to an unbearable reality: language, to name one’s suffering (putting words on pain). A semantic coup over reality, suddenly defined not by the affliction itself but by the victim.
In his book La Question, Henri Alleg recounts his personal experience of torture during the Algerian War and compares what allowed him to endure the worst to a final flag on the top of the hill—this part of ourselves that remains incorruptible.
Each person will place on that flag the secret emblem of their inviolable intimacy, representing the part of humanity that their torturer has lost.
For Lawrence of Arabia, who extinguishes a match by pressing the flame between his fingers, naming the pain (here short but intense) is a way of preferring that something happens rather than nothing during interminable, tedious days spent in the offices of the British military administration (before his famous adventures).
Pain exists only within the framework of the representation I choose to contain it. The path from sensory stimulus to the brain is no longer one-way. To convince oneself of this superpower, imagine three people with a knife planted in the palm of their hand: one will scream, another will whimper while gritting their teeth, and the third will remain impassive, staring into the executioner’s eyes. Though each has an identical nervous system, they form different “ideas” of the unpleasant event, imprisoning it in a series of psycho-semantic devices, from simple diversion (as in distraction or avoidance) to more complex inner dialogue. None deny the objective reality (the knife is indeed there), but each tames it within a stoic subjectivity.
The Romans built an empire on the untouchable idea they had of Rome’s greatness. In its name, self-mastery to overcome adversity was literally extraordinary, as shown by the story of the legionnaire who volunteered to infiltrate the camp of barbarians besieging a Roman city to assassinate the chief. The mission failed narrowly, but when captured, he declared the siege doomed because the Romans were invincible. When asked how they differ from ordinary men, the soldier stretched his arm over a brazier and watched his hand burn without a word. The barbarians understood that leaving was wiser.
ATARAXIA (Greek: absence of disturbance)
The pursuit of inner peace is the shared goal of the three most remarkable philosophies of classical Western antiquity: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism.
Stoicism:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.” – Epictetus
“The characteristic of a good man is to love and welcome with joy whatever happens to him.” – Marcus Aurelius
Epicureanism:
Happiness results from the absence of disturbance.
For Epicureans, satisfying desires is not an end in itself. They appreciate life by prioritizing moderation, frugality, and quality rather than indulgence. True hedonism requires self-discipline, knowledge of oneself, the world, and others.
Skepticism:
Against dogmatic claims to possess the truth, skeptics remain in perpetual inquiry. Free from doctrinal conflicts, they achieve tranquility.
The long and painful experience of Lyme disease has illuminated for me the true meaning of the message of the philosopher Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism.
There exists an ultimate weapon to resist surrendering to an unbearable reality: language, to name one’s suffering (putting words on pain). A semantic coup over reality, suddenly defined not by the affliction itself but by the victim.
In his book La Question, Henri Alleg recounts his personal experience of torture during the Algerian War and compares what allowed him to endure the worst to a final flag on the top of the hill—this part of ourselves that remains incorruptible.
Each person will place on that flag the secret emblem of their inviolable intimacy, representing the part of humanity that their torturer has lost.
For Lawrence of Arabia, who extinguishes a match by pressing the flame between his fingers, naming the pain (here short but intense) is a way of preferring that something happens rather than nothing during interminable, tedious days spent in the offices of the British military administration (before his famous adventures).
Pain exists only within the framework of the representation I choose to contain it. The path from sensory stimulus to the brain is no longer one-way. To convince oneself of this superpower, imagine three people with a knife planted in the palm of their hand: one will scream, another will whimper while gritting their teeth, and the third will remain impassive, staring into the executioner’s eyes. Though each has an identical nervous system, they form different “ideas” of the unpleasant event, imprisoning it in a series of psycho-semantic devices, from simple diversion (as in distraction or avoidance) to more complex inner dialogue. None deny the objective reality (the knife is indeed there), but each tames it within a stoic subjectivity.
The Romans built an empire on the untouchable idea they had of Rome’s greatness. In its name, self-mastery to overcome adversity was literally extraordinary, as shown by the story of the legionnaire who volunteered to infiltrate the camp of barbarians besieging a Roman city to assassinate the chief. The mission failed narrowly, but when captured, he declared the siege doomed because the Romans were invincible. When asked how they differ from ordinary men, the soldier stretched his arm over a brazier and watched his hand burn without a word. The barbarians understood that leaving was wiser.
ATARAXIA (Greek: absence of disturbance)
The pursuit of inner peace is the shared goal of the three most remarkable philosophies of classical Western antiquity: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism.
Stoicism:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.” – Epictetus
“The characteristic of a good man is to love and welcome with joy whatever happens to him.” – Marcus Aurelius
Epicureanism:
Happiness results from the absence of disturbance.
For Epicureans, satisfying desires is not an end in itself. They appreciate life by prioritizing moderation, frugality, and quality rather than indulgence. True hedonism requires self-discipline, knowledge of oneself, the world, and others.
Skepticism:
Against dogmatic claims to possess the truth, skeptics remain in perpetual inquiry. Free from doctrinal conflicts, they achieve tranquility.
LYMESTORY
A testimony on Lyme disease and its revelation
Excerpt:
In the middle of the night, intense pain pierces my back and chest. Paralyzed in bed like an insect pinned in a sadistic collector’s box, I try to control inhalation and carbon dioxide exhalation, realizing I may relive a nightmare stored in the file of undeserved, severe punishments.
A testimony on Lyme disease and its revelation
Excerpt:
In the middle of the night, intense pain pierces my back and chest. Paralyzed in bed like an insect pinned in a sadistic collector’s box, I try to control inhalation and carbon dioxide exhalation, realizing I may relive a nightmare stored in the file of undeserved, severe punishments.
TRANSHUMANISM
The scientistic eschatology.
Transhumanism, elevated to a new religion, promises (and only promises) immortality through science claiming omnipotence.
At a time when the human race demonstrates boundless folly, artificial intelligence emerges as if by magic.
The scientistic eschatology.
Transhumanism, elevated to a new religion, promises (and only promises) immortality through science claiming omnipotence.
At a time when the human race demonstrates boundless folly, artificial intelligence emerges as if by magic.
Calling it “intelligence” is a linguistic abuse (in French), because in terms of discernment, complexity, and creativity, human intelligence remains incomparably superior to algorithmic feats and the primitive, albeit promising, deep learning that pretends to allow autonomous machine learning. The English word Intelligence originally meant “gathering” and later “processing” of data (as in Intelligence Services). Yet, the confused perception of an extraordinary miraculous solution spreads in collective unconscious, mixing naïve credulity and instinctive fear of Terminator-like scenarios.
Science constantly promises panaceas; AI is merely the latest false hope in a long list of unfulfilled commitments (nanotechnology and healing nanorobots, quantum computing claiming to solve climate issues for 25 years, etc.). Across the entire spectrum of urgent, even vital issues, the positive impact of science is practically nil. Meanwhile, the systematic destruction of the environment accelerates the spread of millions of pathologies.
Solutionist propaganda, serving endless greed, has found the ultimate tool of massive confusion. Because no one understands AI fully, it instinctively fascinates everyone. People are encouraged to maintain harmful habits and stop feeling guilty, because a supposedly superior intelligence is already managing the catastrophic situation, promising each augmented individual a glorious path to immortality…
Even in its simplest, most popularized application—providing answers based on statistical analysis of online content—AI produces approximations, fakes, outright lies, incoherent aggregations of stereotypes, and an infinite number of heterogeneous responses for the same question, as well as disturbing “hallucinations” (the term for AI-generated false information).
Science constantly promises panaceas; AI is merely the latest false hope in a long list of unfulfilled commitments (nanotechnology and healing nanorobots, quantum computing claiming to solve climate issues for 25 years, etc.). Across the entire spectrum of urgent, even vital issues, the positive impact of science is practically nil. Meanwhile, the systematic destruction of the environment accelerates the spread of millions of pathologies.
Solutionist propaganda, serving endless greed, has found the ultimate tool of massive confusion. Because no one understands AI fully, it instinctively fascinates everyone. People are encouraged to maintain harmful habits and stop feeling guilty, because a supposedly superior intelligence is already managing the catastrophic situation, promising each augmented individual a glorious path to immortality…
Even in its simplest, most popularized application—providing answers based on statistical analysis of online content—AI produces approximations, fakes, outright lies, incoherent aggregations of stereotypes, and an infinite number of heterogeneous responses for the same question, as well as disturbing “hallucinations” (the term for AI-generated false information).
Saving Ethics.
Morality is a set of rules understood and respected by a sufficiently large number of people to become a shared norm. Norms evolve according to the major currents of human thought or the systemic transformations of society. Certain moral injunctions formulated in the past endure, while others are softened or abandoned, and new precepts emerge, grafting themselves onto the common core.
Many historical transitions profoundly reshaped normative systems: Catholicism eclipsing Roman polytheism, or communism supplanting Confucianism in twentieth-century China, among others. One of the most spectacular revolutions in the West was the questioning of Judeo-Christian civilization during the humanist Renaissance of the sixteenth century. The moral imperatives of Catholicism were reduced to their simplest expression, to a kind of essential core that can ultimately be extracted from any philosophical current, and many of the Church’s prohibitions became obsolete because they were justified only by the announcement of a Last Judgment threatening hell or promising paradise. The believer’s life was meant to be understood as fleeting in the face of eternity, and the risk of transgressing moral orthodoxy appeared disproportionate.
The paradigm shift brought about by the humanist, positivist, and materialist revolution instituted an opposite principle: life must be enjoyed immediately and as intensely as possible, since a post-mortem destiny is, quite simply, rationally inconceivable. This mechanically generated the consumerist frenzy of the orphans of God the Father and his dusty, chimerical paradise, who therefore demand their share of immediate earthly happiness in a capitalistic, extractivist world that provides comfort and endless programs of distraction.
For the atheist scientismist, the primordial axiom is that human beings possess a superior understanding, as demonstrated by technological progress and the successes of science—irrefutable proof of the primacy of the rational approach over an improbable creator. Immanuel Kant proposed that morality be structured through a reasoned appropriation of reality, so that from a universal truth—necessarily universal because rational—there would follow a just and definitively objective norm: the categorical imperatives. The distinction between good and evil can thus rest on a radically simple injunction: the norms to be respected are calibrated by the logic that allows them to claim universality and timelessness, since two plus two will always equal four.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the transhumanist prediction has had the merit of bringing final clarification to the goal of human civilization, similar to that once pursued by religion: the denial of death. Not only does God no longer exist, but if by the greatest of chances he were to reappear with his great beard emerging from the clouds, we would no longer need his power, since omnipotence is the logical consequence of immortality.
Morality is a set of rules understood and respected by a sufficiently large number of people to become a shared norm. Norms evolve according to the major currents of human thought or the systemic transformations of society. Certain moral injunctions formulated in the past endure, while others are softened or abandoned, and new precepts emerge, grafting themselves onto the common core.
Many historical transitions profoundly reshaped normative systems: Catholicism eclipsing Roman polytheism, or communism supplanting Confucianism in twentieth-century China, among others. One of the most spectacular revolutions in the West was the questioning of Judeo-Christian civilization during the humanist Renaissance of the sixteenth century. The moral imperatives of Catholicism were reduced to their simplest expression, to a kind of essential core that can ultimately be extracted from any philosophical current, and many of the Church’s prohibitions became obsolete because they were justified only by the announcement of a Last Judgment threatening hell or promising paradise. The believer’s life was meant to be understood as fleeting in the face of eternity, and the risk of transgressing moral orthodoxy appeared disproportionate.
The paradigm shift brought about by the humanist, positivist, and materialist revolution instituted an opposite principle: life must be enjoyed immediately and as intensely as possible, since a post-mortem destiny is, quite simply, rationally inconceivable. This mechanically generated the consumerist frenzy of the orphans of God the Father and his dusty, chimerical paradise, who therefore demand their share of immediate earthly happiness in a capitalistic, extractivist world that provides comfort and endless programs of distraction.
For the atheist scientismist, the primordial axiom is that human beings possess a superior understanding, as demonstrated by technological progress and the successes of science—irrefutable proof of the primacy of the rational approach over an improbable creator. Immanuel Kant proposed that morality be structured through a reasoned appropriation of reality, so that from a universal truth—necessarily universal because rational—there would follow a just and definitively objective norm: the categorical imperatives. The distinction between good and evil can thus rest on a radically simple injunction: the norms to be respected are calibrated by the logic that allows them to claim universality and timelessness, since two plus two will always equal four.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the transhumanist prediction has had the merit of bringing final clarification to the goal of human civilization, similar to that once pursued by religion: the denial of death. Not only does God no longer exist, but if by the greatest of chances he were to reappear with his great beard emerging from the clouds, we would no longer need his power, since omnipotence is the logical consequence of immortality.
The positivism upon which the entire pyramidal edifice of the system rests has thus paradoxically transformed itself from pure materialism into a new form of belief, self-centered around a mirific, narcissistic project that justifies the wasting of the planet and the maintenance of an unequal system. While proclaiming that it works for the good of humanity, capitalist morality—an oxymoron—always consists in privileging having over being, the individual over the collective, competition over solidarity, and the acceptance of collateral damage in the name of a goal that would be foolish to question.
In the face of the dominant moral order, each person has both the power and the duty to judge themselves compatible, incompatible, or undecided by interrogating their own intimate experience of reality in order to develop a personal ethics. George Orwell called “common decency” that which prompts ordinary people to act rightly, with common sense and benevolence.
In the face of the dominant moral order, each person has both the power and the duty to judge themselves compatible, incompatible, or undecided by interrogating their own intimate experience of reality in order to develop a personal ethics. George Orwell called “common decency” that which prompts ordinary people to act rightly, with common sense and benevolence.
URBAN life.
There are four types of places in which one may live: megacities, secondary cities, then all smaller towns down to the village, and finally a solitary house in the midst of nature. In absolute terms, there is no hierarchy to be established, but each place corresponds to a specific way of life.
The international megacity is, by essence, cultural, and unequaled in both the quantity and the quality of what it offers across all domains of intellectual life—irreplaceable experiences lived in exhibition spaces as well as in the performing arts, concerts, or architecture. In these world-cities, giving up cultural outings, whatever one’s affinities or preferences, means running the risk of retaining only the drawbacks of an artificial urban environment that can at times be difficult to endure. Everything is more expensive in such cities, which moreover require a sufficient income precisely in order to be able to enjoy a cultural life that does not come cheaply.
For the inhabitant of a smaller city or of an isolated house, it is nature—more easily accessible—that becomes the primary source of pleasures and forms of enrichment, accompanying existence with an intensity equivalent to the very pinnacle of so-called intellectual culture. Moreover, even in the heart of nature one can cultivate the mind through the internet in an infinite number of fields, whereas a resident of a great metropolis cannot seriously claim to replace nature with the neighborhood park.
There are four types of places in which one may live: megacities, secondary cities, then all smaller towns down to the village, and finally a solitary house in the midst of nature. In absolute terms, there is no hierarchy to be established, but each place corresponds to a specific way of life.
The international megacity is, by essence, cultural, and unequaled in both the quantity and the quality of what it offers across all domains of intellectual life—irreplaceable experiences lived in exhibition spaces as well as in the performing arts, concerts, or architecture. In these world-cities, giving up cultural outings, whatever one’s affinities or preferences, means running the risk of retaining only the drawbacks of an artificial urban environment that can at times be difficult to endure. Everything is more expensive in such cities, which moreover require a sufficient income precisely in order to be able to enjoy a cultural life that does not come cheaply.
For the inhabitant of a smaller city or of an isolated house, it is nature—more easily accessible—that becomes the primary source of pleasures and forms of enrichment, accompanying existence with an intensity equivalent to the very pinnacle of so-called intellectual culture. Moreover, even in the heart of nature one can cultivate the mind through the internet in an infinite number of fields, whereas a resident of a great metropolis cannot seriously claim to replace nature with the neighborhood park.
TO SEE - (V)oir
Isse est percipi.
Être, c'est être perçu.
George Berkeley.
The problem with books, as an authentic lazy person would say, is that they must be read. Similarly, seeing artworks presupposes residing not far from exhibition spaces. (For the most dedicated, those with sufficient means and time, this also requires frequent travel, often from one country to another.)
Neither printed reproductions nor digital screens, even high-resolution ones, can replace the irreducible, singular experience of the spectator confronting the artwork in person.
Accumulating these unique moments of encounter with artworks throughout life allows one to speculate on the profound nature of the mystery of creation, in all its forms, across all periods, and under all latitudes. Like philosophical doubt, which consists of a comparative evaluation of different possible answers to great existential questions, art has always had the function of juxtaposing heterogeneous propositions.
For Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (the urinal), one might ask whether beauty preexists in the eye of the spectator, or whether it can only emanate from the creative process, with the artist always remaining the august initiator.
For the paintings adorning the Lascaux cave, one might wonder whether progress in art is an illusion, since these frescoes appear to us as perfect aesthetic achievements.
We are overwhelmed by prejudices stemming from misunderstandings of modern art, caused by the abrupt rupture of the 19th century (Courbet, Manet, Cézanne, the Impressionists), then by the radicalization of destabilizing avant-garde movements in the early 20th century (Cubism, Dada, Duchamp, Abstract Art), and finally by the exponentially growing diversity of practices since the 1960s (land art, conceptual art, performance, video, installation, new technologies, ephemeral art, critical devices, etc.).
These successive revolutions—occurring over very short periods in the history of art—created a gulf with the public, which has never benefited from a specialized educational system that promotes the intelligibility of art.
The most worn-out and simplistic expectations prevail: banal consumerist desire, childish pursuit of instant visual pleasure, proof that the artist works as hard as anyone else making a living, or the wish to validate what supposedly embellishes one’s surroundings according to bourgeois standards, or the desire to be slightly shaken by the old cliché of the rebellious, tormented, misunderstood, scandalous artist.
To this state of affairs must be added two perpetual corollaries of the artistic fact: the mercantile value of artworks and their use as attributes of power.
This explosive mixture greatly contributes to general disorder, subtly feeding anti-system resentment.
Certainly, the art market does not perfectly reflect what might be the conclusions of a debate led by impartial, erudite observers distilling the essence of contemporary art. But most artists endorsed by the market are ultimately rightly recognized for their brilliant contributions. A few “black sheep” are indeed unfairly overvalued, but within the art world, it is truly a waste of time to focus on hunting down impostors, whereas there are so many artists worthy of attention.
That works of art are sometimes speculative objects with seemingly astonishing prices has little to do with the pleasure of discussing their intrinsic qualities, which may endure through centuries. Who really cares about the monetary equivalent of a Rembrandt self-portrait or an Egyptian pyramid?
That the powerful appropriate artistic production for their ephemeral social prestige is indecent only when the artwork is no longer visible, confined ad vitam aeternam in a private collection. Spaces where remarkable works are displayed and accessible to all are already so abundant that a lifetime is barely enough to explore them all.
In any profession promising fame and fortune, sincere vocations can falter. The most common mistake for an artist is to orient their production not according to inspiration or imperious commands guaranteeing the coherence of their work, but according to the portion of their production that achieves success.
This is primarily an issue that the creator must resolve internally, while the receiver—the spectator—must exercise discernment by deepening their knowledge.
Isse est percipi.
Être, c'est être perçu.
George Berkeley.
The problem with books, as an authentic lazy person would say, is that they must be read. Similarly, seeing artworks presupposes residing not far from exhibition spaces. (For the most dedicated, those with sufficient means and time, this also requires frequent travel, often from one country to another.)
Neither printed reproductions nor digital screens, even high-resolution ones, can replace the irreducible, singular experience of the spectator confronting the artwork in person.
Accumulating these unique moments of encounter with artworks throughout life allows one to speculate on the profound nature of the mystery of creation, in all its forms, across all periods, and under all latitudes. Like philosophical doubt, which consists of a comparative evaluation of different possible answers to great existential questions, art has always had the function of juxtaposing heterogeneous propositions.
For Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (the urinal), one might ask whether beauty preexists in the eye of the spectator, or whether it can only emanate from the creative process, with the artist always remaining the august initiator.
For the paintings adorning the Lascaux cave, one might wonder whether progress in art is an illusion, since these frescoes appear to us as perfect aesthetic achievements.
We are overwhelmed by prejudices stemming from misunderstandings of modern art, caused by the abrupt rupture of the 19th century (Courbet, Manet, Cézanne, the Impressionists), then by the radicalization of destabilizing avant-garde movements in the early 20th century (Cubism, Dada, Duchamp, Abstract Art), and finally by the exponentially growing diversity of practices since the 1960s (land art, conceptual art, performance, video, installation, new technologies, ephemeral art, critical devices, etc.).
These successive revolutions—occurring over very short periods in the history of art—created a gulf with the public, which has never benefited from a specialized educational system that promotes the intelligibility of art.
The most worn-out and simplistic expectations prevail: banal consumerist desire, childish pursuit of instant visual pleasure, proof that the artist works as hard as anyone else making a living, or the wish to validate what supposedly embellishes one’s surroundings according to bourgeois standards, or the desire to be slightly shaken by the old cliché of the rebellious, tormented, misunderstood, scandalous artist.
To this state of affairs must be added two perpetual corollaries of the artistic fact: the mercantile value of artworks and their use as attributes of power.
This explosive mixture greatly contributes to general disorder, subtly feeding anti-system resentment.
Certainly, the art market does not perfectly reflect what might be the conclusions of a debate led by impartial, erudite observers distilling the essence of contemporary art. But most artists endorsed by the market are ultimately rightly recognized for their brilliant contributions. A few “black sheep” are indeed unfairly overvalued, but within the art world, it is truly a waste of time to focus on hunting down impostors, whereas there are so many artists worthy of attention.
That works of art are sometimes speculative objects with seemingly astonishing prices has little to do with the pleasure of discussing their intrinsic qualities, which may endure through centuries. Who really cares about the monetary equivalent of a Rembrandt self-portrait or an Egyptian pyramid?
That the powerful appropriate artistic production for their ephemeral social prestige is indecent only when the artwork is no longer visible, confined ad vitam aeternam in a private collection. Spaces where remarkable works are displayed and accessible to all are already so abundant that a lifetime is barely enough to explore them all.
In any profession promising fame and fortune, sincere vocations can falter. The most common mistake for an artist is to orient their production not according to inspiration or imperious commands guaranteeing the coherence of their work, but according to the portion of their production that achieves success.
This is primarily an issue that the creator must resolve internally, while the receiver—the spectator—must exercise discernment by deepening their knowledge.
WOKISM
Modern liberal capitalism of the 20th century, followed by its contemporary version—turbo-capitalism, due to the exponential acceleration we observe—cannot morally defend itself.
One rightly invokes the ever-growing gap between rich and poor, or the chasm separating developed countries from those shamefully exploited for their resources through inextricable neo-colonial processes.
To this evident injustice is added an equally glaring hypocrisy: claiming to want the good of humanity while only a portion of it truly benefits from progress, with little concern for those left behind by the system.
Western civilization would be permanently corrupted by an existential rust gnawing at souls, and within the convolutions of human brains would nest a formal vice consisting of always owning more than one’s neighbor, without being burdened by principles that might counteract this ultimate goal.
Proof of this primordial greed of our species can be seen in the fact that millionaires are busy hoarding ever more, even though they technically no longer have the time to spend their astronomical incomes.
Beyond a certain threshold, the goal is to possess, through money, power in all possible and imaginable forms.
Subjugating others—other people—is the real objective of those who flaunt and exploit their wealth to exercise domination.
Denunciations of a globalized, pyramid-shaped, materialist capitalist system, which only stigmatize the greed of the wealthy, are all the more futile because those being mobilized—the poor and the excluded—mostly also wish to join the club of profiteers.
It is paradoxical that immorality can suddenly change sides: the revolt of the subjugated is often motivated by covetousness, jealousy, and the desire to grab a piece of the cake, just like the greedier ones.
To fight ultra-liberalism, therefore, does not consist merely in constantly questioning the principle of enrichment, because the struggle seems lost from the start.
Ground troops will quickly disperse as soon as crumbs fall from the table, at which the same dividend-fed rentiers always feast.
Criminal communist regimes apparently definitively proved the futility of trying to eliminate private property, while paradoxically demonstrating that everyone is willing to sell themselves to possess as much as possible.
The seemingly impossible goal would be for all of us to live decently within a form of “happy sobriety,” so that a global balance finally allows the material happiness of some to no longer depend on the misery of others.
Any power exercised by one individual over another through financial transaction is the root of evil that must be uprooted.
It is almost impossible to imagine the full range of perverse pleasures that the exercise of power in all its forms provides to both the small possessors and the great ones.
We invoke grand principles to denounce abuses of power without questioning all the hidden mechanisms at play in a society entirely founded on domination.
By indignantly pointing out inequalities, we often chase shadows rather than the prey, since all power, however feeble, is corrupting. It would be preferable to finally distinguish legitimate sovereignty from arbitrary authority.
An old sage can have authority in a domain without anyone being forced to submit to his opinion, and we may then speak of reasonable influence without any violence being exerted.
We know (or perhaps not) the famous misjudgment regarding anarchy, based on a false interpretation of Proudhon’s phrase: “Property is theft.” In reality, the property he referred to is not private property (which Proudhon also defended) but the property that employers consider themselves entitled to claim, regarding the labor of their workers as theirs.
No dreadful anarchist without faith or law intends to seize anyone’s property, yet this fear inflames minds when the movement is evoked—a movement that was long a powerful and formidable competitor to communism.
This example of misunderstanding highlights the necessity of revisiting the past to understand the present, otherwise we risk being as foolish as a headless duck.
Drastically reducing screen time to regain hours devoted to reading essays on detailed political subjects is the only simple and proven antidote to forming a real, nuanced, and possibly persuasive opinion when expressing a critical viewpoint.
Since this resembles a detox from a hard drug for a reward too distant (which is actually inaccurate), everyone softens in a lukewarm bath of crude ignorance while pretending to be wiser and better informed than their neighbor.
The famous investor Warren Buffet said: “Yes, class struggle exists, and we have won (we, the rich).”
Since the fall of the Wall, the Left has not wanted to lose its intellectual authority.
Political correctness, whose moral intentions were at first not entirely devoid of sense, sought to appropriate a reality that escaped it by naming it, but it went astray into extreme wokism — a dangerous quest for purity reflecting an intellectual collapse.
Class struggle has dissolved into the atomization of minority claims, supposed to unite under the so-called and smoky intersectionality of struggles.
Social ecology against consumerism, feminism denouncing patriarchy, and more or less renovated anti-system discourses have merged to form an ideological monster, headless and tail-less, perfectly ineffectual against the rising reactionary revolutionary wave (let’s admit the oxymoron).
Modern liberal capitalism of the 20th century, followed by its contemporary version—turbo-capitalism, due to the exponential acceleration we observe—cannot morally defend itself.
One rightly invokes the ever-growing gap between rich and poor, or the chasm separating developed countries from those shamefully exploited for their resources through inextricable neo-colonial processes.
To this evident injustice is added an equally glaring hypocrisy: claiming to want the good of humanity while only a portion of it truly benefits from progress, with little concern for those left behind by the system.
Western civilization would be permanently corrupted by an existential rust gnawing at souls, and within the convolutions of human brains would nest a formal vice consisting of always owning more than one’s neighbor, without being burdened by principles that might counteract this ultimate goal.
Proof of this primordial greed of our species can be seen in the fact that millionaires are busy hoarding ever more, even though they technically no longer have the time to spend their astronomical incomes.
Beyond a certain threshold, the goal is to possess, through money, power in all possible and imaginable forms.
Subjugating others—other people—is the real objective of those who flaunt and exploit their wealth to exercise domination.
Denunciations of a globalized, pyramid-shaped, materialist capitalist system, which only stigmatize the greed of the wealthy, are all the more futile because those being mobilized—the poor and the excluded—mostly also wish to join the club of profiteers.
It is paradoxical that immorality can suddenly change sides: the revolt of the subjugated is often motivated by covetousness, jealousy, and the desire to grab a piece of the cake, just like the greedier ones.
To fight ultra-liberalism, therefore, does not consist merely in constantly questioning the principle of enrichment, because the struggle seems lost from the start.
Ground troops will quickly disperse as soon as crumbs fall from the table, at which the same dividend-fed rentiers always feast.
Criminal communist regimes apparently definitively proved the futility of trying to eliminate private property, while paradoxically demonstrating that everyone is willing to sell themselves to possess as much as possible.
The seemingly impossible goal would be for all of us to live decently within a form of “happy sobriety,” so that a global balance finally allows the material happiness of some to no longer depend on the misery of others.
Any power exercised by one individual over another through financial transaction is the root of evil that must be uprooted.
It is almost impossible to imagine the full range of perverse pleasures that the exercise of power in all its forms provides to both the small possessors and the great ones.
We invoke grand principles to denounce abuses of power without questioning all the hidden mechanisms at play in a society entirely founded on domination.
By indignantly pointing out inequalities, we often chase shadows rather than the prey, since all power, however feeble, is corrupting. It would be preferable to finally distinguish legitimate sovereignty from arbitrary authority.
An old sage can have authority in a domain without anyone being forced to submit to his opinion, and we may then speak of reasonable influence without any violence being exerted.
We know (or perhaps not) the famous misjudgment regarding anarchy, based on a false interpretation of Proudhon’s phrase: “Property is theft.” In reality, the property he referred to is not private property (which Proudhon also defended) but the property that employers consider themselves entitled to claim, regarding the labor of their workers as theirs.
No dreadful anarchist without faith or law intends to seize anyone’s property, yet this fear inflames minds when the movement is evoked—a movement that was long a powerful and formidable competitor to communism.
This example of misunderstanding highlights the necessity of revisiting the past to understand the present, otherwise we risk being as foolish as a headless duck.
Drastically reducing screen time to regain hours devoted to reading essays on detailed political subjects is the only simple and proven antidote to forming a real, nuanced, and possibly persuasive opinion when expressing a critical viewpoint.
Since this resembles a detox from a hard drug for a reward too distant (which is actually inaccurate), everyone softens in a lukewarm bath of crude ignorance while pretending to be wiser and better informed than their neighbor.
The famous investor Warren Buffet said: “Yes, class struggle exists, and we have won (we, the rich).”
Since the fall of the Wall, the Left has not wanted to lose its intellectual authority.
Political correctness, whose moral intentions were at first not entirely devoid of sense, sought to appropriate a reality that escaped it by naming it, but it went astray into extreme wokism — a dangerous quest for purity reflecting an intellectual collapse.
Class struggle has dissolved into the atomization of minority claims, supposed to unite under the so-called and smoky intersectionality of struggles.
Social ecology against consumerism, feminism denouncing patriarchy, and more or less renovated anti-system discourses have merged to form an ideological monster, headless and tail-less, perfectly ineffectual against the rising reactionary revolutionary wave (let’s admit the oxymoron).
X
Malcolm X argued that self-defense justifies the use of violence, whereas Martin Luther King was radically non-violent—and both were assassinated.
Malcolm X argued that self-defense justifies the use of violence, whereas Martin Luther King was radically non-violent—and both were assassinated.
YOUTUBE
It is the best tool dedicated to acquiring knowledge (which has replaced the old method of reading essays), provided three simple principles are respected:
Favor long videos—documentaries, conferences, interviews.
Initiate searches using the search bar, rather than relying solely on recommendations.
Subscribe to channels to remove advertising.
It is the best tool dedicated to acquiring knowledge (which has replaced the old method of reading essays), provided three simple principles are respected:
Favor long videos—documentaries, conferences, interviews.
Initiate searches using the search bar, rather than relying solely on recommendations.
Subscribe to channels to remove advertising.
ZÉBULON
Mon personnage favori des programmes pour enfants à la télé des années soixante : Le manège enchanté.
La série met en scène Zébulon, un personnage monté sur ressort qui transporte les enfants au pays enchanté grâce à une formule magique :
« Tournicoti tournicoton… »
Mon personnage favori des programmes pour enfants à la télé des années soixante : Le manège enchanté.
La série met en scène Zébulon, un personnage monté sur ressort qui transporte les enfants au pays enchanté grâce à une formule magique :
« Tournicoti tournicoton… »
Phil Jarry - New York 2026
...
Merci à Solène pour l'idée de l'abécédaire,
à Isa pour son constant soutien et aux amis dont
Catherine Aquain pour son aide indispensable.
...
Merci à Solène pour l'idée de l'abécédaire,
à Isa pour son constant soutien et aux amis dont
Catherine Aquain pour son aide indispensable.