À propos de Jean Vigo

You look in the past and your eyes take time to adjust. You dive underwater and after a while you see through the blurred undercurrents of history...

It was a beautiful evening on the 31 of July 1914, when Jean Vigo, aged 9, sat with his father at the Café du Croissant, at the corner of the rue du Croissant and rue Montmartre in Paris. Jean adored and idolised his father who at the time went also by the revolutionary name of Miguel Almereyda (an anagram of y’a (de) la merde–”there is shit”).

His real name was Eugene Bonaventure de Vigo. He was a former aristocrat, a free spirit and revolutionary, a radical anarchist, then later socialist, but always a pacifist. He was also the editor of the radical weekly journal "La Guerre Sociale" (1906 to 1913) and then the satirical socialist daily "Le Bonnet Rouge"(1913 to 1917)". For little Jean, he was Don Quixote in the flesh. In 1914, Almereyda added his voice to the call for desertion from 1st World War general military conscription. In the middle of a french patriotic and nationalistic frenzy he had the guts to go against the tide. Inevitably he made many enemies in the French government and fell in and out of fortune as much as he was in and out of prison for his beliefs. Little Jean was always a part of this militant life, following his parents in demonstrations as well as anarchist meetings and confrontations with the police.

But that warm night in Paris in 1914, Almereyda drew the attention of his son to a table just a few feet away. It was occupied by a rather fat gentleman with a beard. That was none other than the famous socialist politician and first editor of L'Humanité, Jean Jaurès. Jaurès was admired by Almereyda because he had openly condemned the injustice of the Alfred Dreyfus affair and was a committed anti militarist who tried to use diplomatic means to prevent what eventually became the First World War. He tried to promote an understanding between France and Germany. As conflict became imminent, he struggled to organise general strikes in France and Germany in order to force the governments to back down and negotiate. Alas, this proved very difficult because the French people, in their majority, seemed convinced at the time to seek revenge for their country's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the return of the lost Alsace-Lorraine territory. On July 31, 1914 Jean Jaurès was assassinated in a Paris café by Raoul Villain, a young French nationalist. Villain was tried after World War I and acquitted.

Just a few minutes after Almereyda had drawn his son's attention to the table nearby where the socialist politician was sitting, at approximately 21h.30, two pistol shots were heard and Jean Jaurès fell to the ground heavy and lifeless pushing the little metal table in front of him and spilling his absinthe extracted Pernod liqueur glass which fell and broke with a terrible noise on the cobble stones.

Little Jean Vigo never forgot this scene in which he and his father were direct witnesses of a political assassination. But then, Jean Vigo's life was full of the twists and turns of fate and it would get a lot more personal.

On August 6, 1917, Almereyda himself was arrested for treason, allegedly for receiving funds from Germany in exchange for taking an anti-war position in his newspaper. One week later on the 13 of August, he was found dead in his jail cell, strangled with his own shoelaces. Authorities ruled his death a suicide but it is clear that this was one more political assassination.

Jean Vigo inherited the anarchic spirit of his parents. Many times in his young age he would roam all day and sleep rough under the milky way in abandoned ruins. He disliked authority and revolted against a cruel and far from pedagogical educational system. In his twenties, while convalescing in Nice for tuberculosis, he managed to get his hands on a camera. It was a revelation. With the help of his good friend Boris Kaufman(of "On the Waterfront" fame later on) , he set on to put down on film, everything he saw and felt about society in the 20s and 30s.

In his first film, the silent 25 minute documentary of 1930 "À propos de Nice", the innovative and surreal camerawork coupled with his brilliantly imaginative editing, bring to life the inequality between rich and poor in a society dazzling its citizens with vain spectacles. An unbalanced and decadent society full of superficial optimism after the end of the 1st world war. But there is also humour and irony in the contradiction between the new found speed and technology and the persisting human frailty.

Jean Vigo went on to become one of the very first revolutionary and experimental film directors. With only around 3 hours length of film in total, he is today acknowledged as one of the true innovators and the definitive poète maudit of cinema. Unfortunately at the time, his provocative work, heavily cut, censured and under appreciated was a commercial failure and was quickly buried and forgotten. How could it have been otherwise? He completed another 3 films after "À propos de Nice", before he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 29 in 1934. His last one, "L'Atalante" (1934), is a masterpiece of social comment, raw lyricism and ethereal beauty. In the film there is one scene where the skipper of the barge "L'Atalante" is told that he will be able to see the one he loves (if the link between them is still strong) underwater. He dives into the river and there he has a vision of his loved one floating in her wedding dress. It is in moments like this, when poetry becomes film and dream becomes a conviction, that we are struck by how extraordinary was the small contribution of Jean Vigo in the art of cinema but also in humanity's heritage.

What is Improvisation (1)

Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker had been talking for a while now backstage just before the concert which would take place at the underground cavern in Chicago. They were discussing Zen and the principles of Buddhism. Arguments and explanations came fast from both sides. Charlie "the Bird" Parker was in the middle of explaining a concept to Mingus when the two musicians were interrupted by the Club owner who informed them that it was time to get on the stage and play.

- "Let's continue our discussion on the bandstand" said Bird.

All things shining

The following passages were extracted from the script of Terence Malick's 1998 film "The Thin Red Line".

What's this war in the heart of nature ?
Why does nature vie with itself?.
The land contend with the sea?
Is there an avenging power in nature?
Not one power, but two?
I remember my mother when she was dying.
Looked all shrunk up and gray.
l asked her if she was afraid.
She just shook her head.
I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her.
I heard people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it.
I wondered how it'd be when I died.
What it'd be like to know that this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw.
I just hope I can meet it the same way she did.
With the same... calm.
Cos that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen…
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Who are you to live in all these many forms?
Your death that captures all.
You, too, are the source of all that's gonna be born.
Your glory. Mercy. Peace. Truth.
You give calm a spirit, understanding,courage.
The contented heart.
- Get a medic here!
Maybe all men got one big soul who everybody's a part of.
All faces of the same man. One big self.
Everyone looking for salvation by himself.
Each like a coal drawn from the fire…
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We.
We together.
One being.
Now together like water, till l can't tell you from me.
l drink you. Now.
Now. You're my light. My guide…

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This great evil. Where's it come from?
How'd it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us? Robbing us of life and light.
Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.
Does our ruin benefit the Earth?
Does it help the grass to grow or the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?...

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Each standing in the other's light.
How did we lose the good that was given us?
Let it slip away? Scatter it careless?
What's keeping us from reaching out?
Touching the glory?...
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America.
Where's your spark now?...
Everything a lie…
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Everything you hear and see…
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You're in a box.
A moving box…
This war is not gonna be over by next Christmas.
It's gonna be a long time before we get home...
They want you dead.
Or in their lie.
Only one thing a man can do.
Find something that's his.
Make an island for himself.
lf I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack.
A glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.
Somethin' I can come back to. Some kind of foundation.
I mean, I don't know what, you know, what your plans are, but... I'm determined now.
I've been through the thick and thin of it.
You know, I may be young, but I've lived plenty of life.
I'm ready to start living it good.
You know, my daddy always told me it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
You know, cos life ain't supposed to be that hard when you're young.
WeII, I figure after this the worst is gonna be gone.
It's time for things to get better. That's what I want.
That's what's gonna happen.
I'm getting older now.
By no means old, but older.
Where is it that we were together?
Who were you that I lived with?
Walked with?
The brother.
The friend.
Darkness from light.
Strife from love.
Are they the workings of one mind?
The features of the same face?
Oh, my soul, let me be in you now.
Look out through my eyes.
Look out at the things you made.
All things shining.

The loss of the old and wise

In the past, the role of the older generations in society, was an important one. They were connected to the past but they were also very much a part of the present. Their accumulated experience allowed them to distill the essence of knowledge and gave them a bird's eye view of life with the wisdom and the capacity to foresee, to heal, to guide and lead the young and inexperienced. They were able to relate directly to the younger generations through a high level of consolidated experience which led to simplicity and being able to consciously return and tap into the powerful innocence and clarity of a child. They were the "Elders". The guardians of the truth, the all understanding, the open minded and fearless problem solvers that were respected and cherished by society.

I very much fear that all of this has now been irrevocably lost. The tenuous links of family and society due to life debilitating work hours and the relentless pursuit of profit, the brave new world of the Internet and the gaming industry, the enthronement of television as the new and influential member of a dysfunctional family, are probably just few of the causes. Old people now carry their past like a burden. Instead of opening up as they grow older, they hide in the tortoise shell of their frigid and obsolete opinions. Too fearful to shed light in the dark closets of their minds, they are false, wasted and hollow. They sit motionless in front of the moving images of television, their only place of comfort and oblivion. They fall asleep and their retired dreams, when not blank, are filled with gambling, greed and illusions of vanity. Spoiled and senile children they have become, keeping up appearances to extend their fast approaching deadline.

T.S. Eliot once said :"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates." In these dangerous times, everything seems to be pushing you towards immobility and stagnation. It is the young of today that have to understand this now before they eventually morph into the old of the future.

Distracted by life and the passage through the Symplegades(*) of history

Moses Joseph Roth. Famous journalist and writer extraordinaire, alcoholic orphan of the Habsburg Empire, Roth died down and out in Paris in 1939. He was the author of the famous "Radetzky March" and many other novels and stories written in a style of distilled economy. One of his last works was “Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker” (The Legend of the Holy Drinker) which he wrote in that last year of his life where one can imagine that the inspiration for his fiction came directly from his own experiences living almost as poor and destitute and drunk as Andreas Kartak, the tramp protagonist of this beautiful novella. In the story, the life of Andreas the tramp is suddenly transformed by a series of miracles and the promise of redemption. The illumination of Andreas’ life in these last days and the squaring up of the will against life's distractions brings to mind the myth of Sisyphus. And when redemption comes, it is all in the mind and not in reality, as Andreas mistakens a paris café for a chapel and a young girl for the saint. This wonderful novella ends with the phrase “May God grant us all, all of us drinkers, such a good and easy death”. It was not to be for Joseph Roth and his friends, Ernst Toller, Ernst Weiss and Stefan Zweig.

They grew up between the centuries. When empires crumbled and ideologies were still something worth fighting for. Having already experienced the massacre of the first world war, they were then caught in the historical turmoil of the period brooding the second. The 20s and 30s. They were all writers and jews. They all suffered and had to flee from Germany with the rise of Nazism and the long descent into madness.

Ernst Toller, playright and revolutionary was detained by the Nazis in Germany in 1933. Whilst in the concentration camp he was tortured by the guards who made him eat a complete volume of one of his novels and force fed him castor oil. Ernst Weiss, a doctor and good friend of Franz Kafka wrote many works in many different styles and remains underappreciated. Stefan Zweig, a pacifist, is rightly considered one of the most famous writers of the 20s and 30s.

Disillusioned and broken by tragic events in their own lives and by re-living the depresive ravages of war, they all ended up commiting suicide. What precipitated Joseph Roth's final collapse was hearing the news that his friend, Ernst Toller, had hanged himself in New York. Ernst Weiss commited suicide in Paris in 1940, just before Hitler marched victorious into the city. Stefan Zweig commited suicide in Brazil with his wife in 1942, refusing to be a part of a world that gave birth to such attrocities. Their lives were crushed but their spirit lost only a few tail feathers and their work safely sailed through the symplegades of time and history.

(*) Symplegades were the Clashing Rocks, which smashed together upon any ship passing between them. Jason and the Argonauts had been advised to avoid this trap by causing a bird to fly ahead of their vessel. The Symplegades clashed together on its tail feathers, then drew apart in readiness to clash again. At this moment, the Argonauts sailed through safely, with only minor damage to the stern of their ship.

Paco de Lucia and the quest for perfection

One day, Paco de Lucia was driving his car listening to a football match on the car radio. At the half time interval of the match, a flamengo song was played on the air and, for a few seconds, Paco de Lucia was amazed by the beauty of the piece and by the brilliance of the interpretation. In the next instance, like an electric shock, he realised that it was himself who was playing. Immediately the piece sounded to him unbalanced and the guitar playing full of faults and weaknesses. He switched off the radio.

One of the most difficult things in artistic creation is to put a full stop. To say the work is finished. Perfection is a very personal thing. Assuming of course that you would want to stop when you reach it. But as the possibilities for expanding and enriching a creation are infinite, perfection becomes an utopia. A way out of this ad infinitum puzzle is to distil. So to take a backwards and forwards journey to expand improve and explore on the one hand and to distil and create "zip files" of creative steps on the other.

"Sometimes I think that I would like to work on just one record. To record and correct and re-record and to perfect and re-visit continuously until I die. It would be a record that would be completed with my death. A true life's achievement."

Paco de Lucia

Inspired from a tv documentary about the life and music of Paco de Lucia

Andrey Tarkovsky and the Happy Prince

" On the set of the film The Mirror, Andrey Tarkovsky included himself in one scene, lying in a hospital bed and holding a tiny bird on his right hand. And this is what happened to him at the end of his life: in his sick-room in Paris, the room where he died, a little bird would fly every morning through the open window and come to light on him."

From the book "Instant Light - Tarkovsky Polaroids"

"...Then the Swallow came back to the Prince.

"You are blind now," he said, "so I will stay with you always."

"No, little Swallow," said the poor Prince, "you must go away to Egypt."

"I will stay with you always," said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.

"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there..."

From Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

I am leaving because I am bored

George Sanders was a very talented actor who starred in films for almost 40 years (from the 30s to the 70s). Who can really forget his acting as Lord Henry Wotton in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” of 1945 or even more, the way he interpreted the role of Addison DeWitt in “All About Eve” (1950) for which he won a best supporting actor Academy Award.

George Sanders committed suicide in Castelldefels (a coastal town near Barcelona, Spain) by an overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a suicide note that read:

"Dear World,

 I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

I have always been fascinated by the contents of this suicide note. How can somebody, at one point in his life, say, well, I am bored of my existence. I don’t want to play “life” anymore. As if suddenly, he could see through all of our supposed worries and all of our supposed happiness as just the illusions that they are. As if he could stare “being” in the face and stop pretending. Martin Heidegger in his book “ What is Metaphysics?” (1929) says at one point: "Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it, into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole."

How long have you got to live to have lived long enough? In this “sweet cesspool” we breathe and we fight and we play hide and seek. Generation after generation we take our turn and swirl around to the dance macabre in our fancy dress costumes. We are closely involved in our lives and constantly in motion like buzzing flies. We invent the new but the cycles remain the same. Form changes but not substance. And boredom, in revealing this nakedness of being, becomes the instigator of existential angst.

In Chapter 18 of the novel  “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), it is written; "The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness".

I can actually picture George Sanders as Lord Henry Wotton in glorious black and white, having just said that.

Peter Kuper’s “The System”

For Max

Rarely in comics has something so powerfull been created. Peter Kuper of course has been around for quite a while and his work has always been top notch. But in “The System” he really surpassed himself. Wordless stencil images that tell the story of urban decay, corruption and multiple ordinary lives that interact, overlap and in the décor of a metropolis such as New York, people get lost, get killed, get saved, get entangled in the city grind. Follow this imaginative trail of multiple lives and it will eventually lead you to a conclusion which is as much a product of hidden interests and coincidence as it is of choice. Nothing is simple in a city. Everything is connected with invisible threads. Whatever you say or do will eventually have a consequence somewhere or on someone. And we are all into this game without exceptions. Politicians and terrorists, strip artists, taxi drivers, blacks, whites, serial killers, pakistanis, everybody. We are the system.   

Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road

This is a Robert Wyatt song found in his first solo release after the demise of Soft Machine entitled “Rock Bottom”. Enlisting friends and luminaries such as Fred Frith, Ivor Cutler and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason (who would end up producing the album), Wyatt recorded most of the album shortly after his release from hospital. It is track n°3 in the album that I consider a masterpiece. The song is revisited in track n°6 of the album but the title changes to Robin instead of Riding Hood. The song is 7.39 minutes long. Take the journey with me… 

0.00 Chaos and excess, noise and rhythm. Mongezi Feza's multi-tracked and tape-looped trumpet, creates an ethereal multi-layered sound; also present are piano and bass.

0.53 Cries are being heard for the first time and continue to be heard for a while periodically through the chaos. 

1.20 There is light that slowly creeps into the darkness. 

1.43 The trumpet drives the music to a crescendo. 

1.53 Everything fits like a heavenly puzzle and order is magically restored. Constant beat. 

2.17 A further restoration of order and return to wholeness. 

2.30 Vocals are sung over this order. They talk of desperation and regret. (The song was composed after the accident)    

“Orlandon't tell me, oh no.

Don't say, oh God don't tell me.

Oh dear me, heaven's above.

Oh no, no I can't stand it.

Stop please, oh deary me.

What in heaven's name?

Oh blimey. Mercy me. Woe are we.

Oh dear. Oh stop it, stop it.

You've been so kind,

I know, I know.

So why did I hurt you?

I didn't mean to hurt you.

But I'll keep trying,

and I'm sure you will too.”

4.20 Music seems to be played backwards. 

5.24 Ivor Cutler's performance (reciting a semi-nonsensical narrative halfway through "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" and playing the harmonium. He intones the same poem in a flat baritone voice at the end of "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road" to close the album).

“I lie in the road trying to trip up the passing cars,

I fight with the handle of my little brown broom,

Yes, me & the hedgehog we bursting the tyres all day,

I give it you back when I finish the lunch-tea".

 5.40  Slipping into chaos. The sound of the late South African Mongezi Feza's trumpet continues its reversed loops and leaps into chaos trying to get unstuck. Alas, Mongezi Feza sadly died not long after Rock Bottom's release, making this track even more poignant.

6.20 The bass of Richard Sinclair is heard prominently and everything fades as noise in the distance. 

7.39  End.