ATHE – Marie Brassard keynote address | Shedding Skins
Excerpt from Me talking to Myself in the Future
The narrator
After a sleepless night,
I walk through my hometown, the city streets
In the morning before the sun rises,
My mind sharpened by my last excess.
One has to reach a certain pace, a high velocity,
To shift faster than normal human beings
As they move through their everyday life,
And then the brain gets efficient.
It’s a matter of speed.
Not that the mind is running,
but it exposes its innermost thoughts and feelings in layers.
Spectral voices make themselves heard
And their language becomes familiar.
And in that shapeless territory called the mind,
Another observes the one who talks,
Who is observed by another one, observed by another, observed by another one.
Who’s at the end of the observer’s line?
(…)
Sun rises
In the schoolyard
Where I used to play
I see myself: a child.
On a paper I draw a ballerina wearing a red dress.
She is blindfolded.
Her arms stretched in front of her
She is holding something in one of her hand
Morpheus asks me:
Morpheus
What does she hold in her hand?
The narrator
I invent an answer.
The child
An earthworm or it could as well be a tiny snake.
Morpheus
What is she doing?
The child
She is taking the snake back into the forest, where it belongs. Then, she’ll lose herself into the woods.
Morpheus
She is blindfolded. She can’t see.
The child
Someone guides her.
Morpheus
She might get lost
The child
She will get lost.
Morpheus
This is not possible. This doesn’t exist.
The child
If I invent it, does it exist?
Morpheus
If you invent it, it does exist.
The child
It exists.
(End of excerpt)
In my reality, the farthest memory I have is when I was a year and a half. I was standing in my crib, hearing my older brother telling my mother that he was thirsty. I remember wondering what the feel of thirst might be. I knew it meant some wants to drink, but I didn’t know what was the physical feeling, how it felt. I remember shouting to get my mother’s attention. I thought: she will come and give me something to drink and maybe it will help me to understand how it feels. I didn’t have the words to express these thoughts. I forgot how the story ended. I did probably shout and my mother didn’t understand what my request was… or maybe she did and did give me water. Maybe I drank and still, didn’t get my answer. What I remember clearly is that I wanted so much to feel the need.
What fascinates me about that story is although I was a small child with a limited range of words and experience, I could elaborate complex questions in my mind.
What is the feeling of thirst? It was a wise question.
What is desire without the need?
Children are often strangely clever. As if they arrive in this world already filled with some sort of knowledge. They are in a constant state of observing and listening, as if they were aliens coming from another planet.
My goddaughter Léone is two and a half years old. A few months ago, I came back from a trip to Tokyo and brought her a gift. It was a book filled with beautiful illustrations. As we were going through the pages, commenting on the drawings, she pointed to a very small bright dot in the sky of a landscape and told me: “Look there! It looks like a Japanese flower that hasn’t been born yet”.
A whole world could be imagined from that short sentence. It is so rich of underlying possible meanings. It talks about death, about existence. It suggests that there could be a world, a sort of antechamber where a soul awaits the moment when it will take shape and become visible in this world. It implies the possibility of a plant having a consciousness. It raises philosophical questions about where we come from and who we are.
Wisdomsometimes comes before experience and true knowledge is sometimes ruined by it.
As a child, I would often play strange games by myself. I would for example, walk in the house while looking in a handheld mirror, to see the world unfolding in a different way. It made me feel as if I was evolving in a parallel world. As if the mirror was a door that gave me access to a plane normally invisible to the majority.
Or I tried to count how many levels of thoughts there were in my head. I was thinking: I’m the one who thinks, but as I am thinking, there is another one observing the one who thinks and another one is observing me as I imagine this and so on. I sometimes envisioned my consciousness as if it was a little dog, a driver dog. The dog was driving my consciousness, as if my mind was a machine. One day I thought about myself in the future. I tried to imagine who I would be and I sent a sort of message to that woman. I thought: one day I’ll be twenty years old. And that day will happen for sure unless I die before. And that day, I will think of me as I am today. I used these games as a mean to help me see what was behind the apparent untroubled surface of things.
Peepshow excerpt
Beautiful
A long time ago, I was six years old and was going to school and we were learning how to read and write. One day, the teacher suggested we play a game.She said: There’s a word written on each of the cards in front of me. When I point to a word, tell me whether it’s a word for a person, an animal or an object.
The teacher
Now, make two rows in front of me, boys here and girls there, the smallest in front and the tallest in back. If your answer is correct, you go to my right, and stand in a line against the wall, with the clever ones. If your answer is wrong, you go to my left, and stand along that wall, with the not-so-clever ones.
Beautiful
I was in front because I was the smallest. She was holding two cards. One of them had the word “hen” written on it, the other one the word “dad”. She hid the card with the word hen and showed me the one with the word dad. And she said…
The teacher
Tell me: is this a word for a person, a word for an object or is this a word for an animal?
Beautiful
I thought, wow… This question is pretty strange … I mean… The answer is so obvious. It can’t be that simple… So, I thought, there must be something hidden. Maybe the teacher knows something I don’t and she’s going to show it to me. Maybe I’m going to learn something important. Something I don’t know. Maybe she’s going to open a door to a world I don’t even know exists. And at the end of the day, I’ll be a better person.
I wasn’t sure I was right. But… I mean… It couldn’t be that obvious, could it?
I was thinking too much. The teacher was getting impatient. The other kids were making fun of me. The teacher repeated the question, still holding the card with the word dad.
Teacher
Is this a word for a person, a word for an object or a word for an animal?
Beautiful
I answered: an animal.
The other kids laughed, the teacher said:
Teacher
WRONG.
Beautiful
She pointed to her left. So I had to go and stand there, along the wall where the not-so-clever ones were supposed to stand. I felt humiliated. I was so angry. I felt like I’d been promised something I didn’t get. I felt like I’d been betrayed.
The next day at school I understood the game and from then on, when I was asked a question, I’d answer the obvious answer. And everyone was happy, except for me. Because deep inside, I knew I was right. I knew there must be a door somewhere.
A door leading to another strange, hidden reality…an exciting world most people don’t even know exists. And since then, I’ve been looking for this door. When I became a teenager, sometimes at night, I’d go out and wouldn’t come home … I’d go out all night and I wouldn’t come home…
(End of excerpt)
My past. I try to revive it. I try to go back in my head to this childhood, so far away but still feeling so close. I think of my lack of knowledge at the time, my instinct prevailing. That strong instinct I had. I remember as a child feeling like I was someone coming from another world (I wouldn’t say planet, I would think: world).
I have a vivid memory of a conversation I had with my father on the front porch of our home. I was seven years old then. I remember that, for they called it ‘the age of reason’ at the time. The age of wisdom they meant.
It was early that night. My father asked me what I wanted to do when I grow up and I remember answering that since I was like a guest in this world, since I was given a chance to live here for a while, to be a visitor on planet earth, I wanted to see all of it.
I remember telling him that I wanted to be a great guest. I wanted to see as much as possible of that huge planet. My ultimate and strongest desire was to travel. I said: I don’t want to get married and have children. I won’t have time for that. I want to be free.
I want to travel and see as much of the world as I can.
My father was proud of me. I could sense it then. I remember he answered: “This is your life Marie. And you can do whatever you want with it.”
I loved my father. He was an open-minded man. He didn’t go to school for long: at fourteen, he was already the family support with my grandmother, for my grandfather spent many years in the hospital. So my father quit school early. But he was very intelligent, very honest. His name was Marcel.
Excerpt from The Invisible
At the end of the field close to our house there were train tracks. At night, before falling asleep, I used to listen to the trains passing at the railway crossing. My mind would transform their sirens into a howl.
I imagined that right there, right where that howl came from, a very tall man stood, holding a hunting rifle in his hands. Next to him was a dog. It was not the man howling, but « it » that was screaming behind him. He was standing on the frontier between the world and the void. If by misfortune someone ventured beyond where the man stood, he was condemned to float in limbo for all eternity.
That vision did not horrify me. I was fascinated. I was curious to know what there was beyond the man; in that space that ignorance did not allow me to name.
I imagined that the earth was very small. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the tininess of my body. And I thought I could feel the presence of the dead, gigantic, as they watched over me.
(End of excerpt)
As a child, I loved to be alone. I loved to create things. I was a curious child. I expected a lot from life.
My mother was an artist. I always wondered how that miracle had happened, since no one else in the family was. She was what we call in French a modiste, a hat creator. Françoise Dugré was her name. She was Françoise Dugré, modiste. Although I don’t come from a family of artists, the arts were very respected at home. Being an artist was perceived as being a very good thing. My parents were proud to have a daughter who was an artist. They knew I was, since I was a baby. As a child I often draw with my mother, sitting next to her.I vividly remember one of the firstdrawings I made ofa dancer, a ballerina with a red dress, her arms stretched, holding something in one of her hand. My mother kept it for a long time, as a precious treasure.From her I think, I inherit this necessity, this need to create that is part of me since as far as I remember. My mother Françoise passed away when I was still very young. She died of cancer at the age of fifty-one. I was fifteen. I remember the day she died for I was there, standing next to her.
They’d picked me up at school in the middle of the afternoon and drove me next to her. My family wanted me to be there for the farewell. I remember when I arrived at the hospital. Her eyes half shut, she seemed almost already gone. I took her hand and someone in the room asked: “Françoise, look who just arrived. Do you recognize her?” in a beat, as if she was coming back from dreamland, her eyes were wide open and she answered with a clear voice: “Of course I do remember her. She is my daughter”. Those were her last words partly addressed to me. Hours later, she passed away. I remember feeling the “breath” coming out of her. As if we were made out of air. I didn't feel it physically, but I knewthat thisbreath, this very light air, was exhaled for the last time. Then, the body lying on that bed felt empty.
I remember this feeling of my mother’s departure through air, her becoming a ghost made of this very light wind. I imagined there was this invisible wall one could only cross if made out of air… Death: this silent whisper.
There was a moment of suspension and I remember one of my auntssaying: “Close her eyes Marie. You will remember that moment all your life long.” I did. I still remember that moment with acute precision.
I don’t know if anyone in the audience has ever had the opportunity to shut the eyes of a freshly departed person. It is not what one would expect… There is no resistance. I did this with my hand, (I make this gesture)hardly touching the black lashes. I remember thinking that it felt like doll’s eyes. Her eyelids followed the movement of my hand and shut very delicately, very elegantly. My mother was elegant. She liked all that was eccentric, strange, and beautiful.
She transmitted me that longing. Longing for the strange, the unusual, the singular.
When I think of that moment, that moment when my mother left, it makes me reflect upon this creative energy, the mysterious inspiration we feel when we create something.
Where do these impulses come from?
What is it that triggers something inside, inciting us to create? What is that breath that flows through us and then, takes us, leaving an empty corpse behind as we fly elsewhere?
Maybe to this garden of Japanese flowers waiting to be born, as Leone my goddaughter, so gracefullysuggests?
Excerpt from Me talking to myself in the future
Desire, pleasure, love, pain, drugs, fear, night and day dreams excite my imagination and shift my consciousness and the world exposes itself to me, naked, and what was hidden from my view is once more revealed.
Time ceases to appear linear and I find myself there, in a circular landscape, an infinite plane, there, alone and unprotected.
Here I am, Iwho struggle to remember my own name as the outline that separates me from the surrounding set becomes fluid and permeable.
I think: fragility is strength and I allow the wind to blow through me.
The color of my identity transforms itself like the skin of a chameleon and there is nothing wrong with that.
I wonder… the fragility of the night that always surrenders to the day, is that a weakness?
I will die. I am sure of that. Nothing else seems important or even real.
And, drawing on the poetry of fictional things, Isketch out the imaginary reality of my life. The wind, the sky, the rain, the blood of people and essence of things, friendship, love and music, all these will endure long after Iam gone.
And at the thought that my traces will be erased, something spits itself out of me: poetry perhaps, absence of meaning or excess of meaning; that’s the same.
I invent it and it does exist until it gets broken, then, created again.
(End of excerpt)
After my mother Françoise left, I lived mostly alone with my father Marcel. Sometimes one of my brothers was there too. I quit school around that time and I took day jobs. I was already performing in theatre then, with a local theatre company in my hometown, Trois-Rivières. People in the company were extraordinary people, quite older than me. I was participating in the creation of theatre plays that were often adaptations of novels. We were presenting them in a cultural center that was located downtown. I was very secretive about my theatre activities and never spoke about them while at home. Somehow, I thought that it didn’t concern my family and it was a necessity for me to have a private life, so I kept it secret. Most of the nights, after dinner, I would take the bus that brought me to the theatre to perform or rehearse. I would pretend I was going to hang out with my friends.
Once, shortly after my mother’s death, we were performing an adaptation of a novel from Alexandre Kalda. It was titled Le Vertige, Vertigo. The audience was onstage with us. Surrounding us. We performed in the middle, dressed in quite provocative colorful costumes. The piece was very daring. It talked about sex, drugs, and love in all its declinations. At one point, the main character, Laurent, is being shot while dancing:
Excerpt from Vertigo by Alexandre Kalda
«He began to dance again, alone in the middle of the street, at the heart of the night, he was dancing in the face of death and he was like a wild horse and he reared himself up and it looked as if he was racing on site, his face offered to the sky, his arms stretched, and the air he swallowed punctured his chest and his heart exploded and his blood roared and he went on dancing and his heart was beating so violently, hurling the night through his limbs, hello the night, and the night that finally ceases to be the night, and the heart that finally finds a way to escape and the body that breaks free as well and flies away …»