5 RUE LEON BLOY, FONTENAY-AUX-ROSES

       « Think of the man who invented this crazy idea.»  I think of the man, I think of your hands, I think of your self-enforced silence, I think of you in every street corner, in every night, in every sun, in every song,  in the wide expanse of the desert, in every fertile conversation with my creative team.

                 Of course I feared that this personal note would turn the work into some sort of « Lettres d’amour en Somalie »-bis, or the accented mumblings of that certain documentalist redeeming his white guilt over much of his oeuvre about the "Dark Continent".   Is it inadvisable, then, to mix personal sentiments and intimate impressions, with the documentary - the supposedly objective view ?  I think that the confrontation with a wildly alien culture, the shock in the face of so much poverty and so much suffering, the pure physical sensations of different heats and different smells, the constant and incredible efforts needed to summon the intellectual will to absorb and adjust, could only be profound and fruitful if pushed into sharp contrast with, or mis en relief because of, deeply-rooted memories as well as strong present and past emotional ties.  Without that anchor and that catalyst for intellectual analysis and understanding, the journey could become a tourist’s heaven, simply drinking in colours and flavours and occasionally conjuring up the image of a next-door neighbour’s garden at home for comparison.

                And that the thought flies to you is a matter of comfort, and inspiration.  And that the story cannot be told without your presence, or your absence, is a matter of fact.  I can imagine that you will be flabbergasted and dismayed to have to endure personal musings in this context, and yet you, of all artists, have made your life the fibre of your creative work.  In fact, how common that is.  Comes to mind the French documentary lady who mutters out loud in her film her love for her man, the Senegalese sculptor ; or the South African poet who puts his lady-wife’s toe and other presence in every work.  Comes to mind, also, that as moving and grand and widely accepted of a lady’s presence as muse in a man’s creations, we, and I must admit, I too, tend to cringe when a man, object of a lady’s affection and most of all, of desire, is exhibited proudly as muse in a woman artist’s work.

               Perhaps because the lady muse in a man’s creation stays the man’s invention, and his work remains auto-biographical, i.e. mainly about himself ; while a work by a woman artist about the man who inhabits her tends to become an ode to the object, with the author more-or-less hiding behind the model.  Or am I being generalist ? 

(April 4, 2001)