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Where's Charlie? | David Noir

Where's Charlie? Or cheap solidarity.

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I am not Charlie. I am black.

That's why I replaced my FB profile picture with a square of this colour for a while, on 7 January 2015. But not only that. Also because it is a symbol, simplistic as all symbols are, that represents for us, in certain circumstances, mourning.

I am not a Charlie Hebdo reader. I must have flipped through one once in all. I found the covers sometimes funny or at least cheeky, but from there to reading the articles... I wasn't interested. I often find a self-satisfied cleverness in humorists that I don't like. That's just the way it is; it's just my feeling. However, today I was more shocked by this multiple execution than by other equally atrocious events that are constantly in the news around the world. The proximity of Paris where it happened does not help. I think what really shocked me and put me in a particularly dark state since this morning's news was the punitive aspect of these murders.

I felt the same horror and the same sense of necessary mourning when I heard the news of the murder of Theo Van Gogh, a film director and great-grandson of the painter Vincent's brother. His provocative statements about Islam, among other things, had made him the target of his assassin, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan origin.

Yes, "punish" is truly an atrocious idea in my eyes. I say idea, not act, because it is the thought that infuses it that makes the punishment odious. I am well aware that in the very hypothetical expectation of a peaceful and united world, solutions must be found to criminal violence and other human exactions. In organised states, as well as among fanatics who believe themselves to be the saviours of the world, punishments are handed out, more or less effectively. But to punish is to add a moral to the sanction and in this case, a moral to the death sentence, arbitrary as they all are.

Faced with such an event, which particularly touches me through the sympathetic figure and childlike smile of Cabu, I do not want tobe Charlie as I, or anyone else, is asked to do, but simply I, overwhelmed and saddened by the summary execution, ugly and ugly as all the executions that states or individuals allow themselves to perpetrate in the name of all possible pretexts, throughout the world.

Condemning another person to death is a vile act wherever it comes from, whether it is from the jurisdiction of an American state, Egypt, China or a cellar where people meet to train with Kalashnikovs. Faced with the odious thought that arrogates this right to itself, whether it claims to be religiously, politically or socially inspired, I believe that one can only be oneself, as fully as possible, and that's already not so bad.

In my opinion, there should be no amalgam in any sense. Neither to point the finger at or challenge populations or social groups on the basis of a small number of self-proclaimed fanatics, nor to mass under the banner of a well.

To be there, to express oneself, to say one's sorrow, one's spite, to shout one's horror, one's pain, yes, but in the name of a unique individual thinking exclusively and originally for himself. The notion of common thought, of common feeling, always proves to be false, dangerous, unrealistic and simplifying.

Young men who were made to vibrate with the powerfully emotional beauty of patriotism once left, it is said, with flowers in their hands, only to return one day, when they had survived, haggard and fatally aged, their eyes petrified by the spectacle of blood and atrocities, sprouting before their eyes like monstrous flowers. Elsewhere, a few decades later, others greedily believed that a little man with a moustache would lead their people to the celestial glory of a superior race.

The truth is that most of us who think we are demonstrating conviction and commitment are children, as were the toy soldiers of 1914, the self-revealed Nazis, the fundamentalists of all stripes, the illusory united mobs and so many other groups who tirelessly seek the radiant union.

So I wouldn't bluster, even to say "let's not be intimidated; to give in to fear is to give reason to the terrorists... blah blah blah". Because it would be indecent for me to wave "Freedom, freedom dear..." at this moment when I feel so sad for our beautiful and stupid world.

I have a sincere admiration for these cartoonists who, knowing, I imagine, the risk they were taking, continued in this way. But if they were there, it was because they were strong individuals, certainly attached to the same editorial team, but united by a certain very personal love of impertinent fun.

Yes, ideological groupings, even the most pacifist ones, scare me and I prefer to try to be a person who tries to reach his depth awkwardly on his own, rather than being a link in a weave knitted at the beck and call of anyone whose real personality I don't know.

Solidarity has nothing to do with the display of a single thought.

Nor are the tributes. I want to be sure that no slogan will be shouted at me that is not mine on this or any other day.

So I am not Charlie I'm not David tonight, nor will I be any other name any other day. I'm not even David, or any of the bullshit symbols that designate us socially. No, what I am, and I'm quite sure it's the same for all of us, I can't name; I can only describe it, because it's so shifting and lacking in easily identifiable boundaries.

Wars are also the result of populations who, united under the same symbol, believe they are thinking the same thing and sharing the same future. A certain form of rugged individualism is not to be confused with the mercantile egoism of liberalism. It is, on the contrary, a deep listening to the human being through the closest thing we can fathom, ourselves.

The only demonstration I could join with feeling would be one in which each person marched with their own name on a placard. Human individualities, that is the truth of who we are. It is also, and so much the better, the only state that unites us. It is thanks to it that we can put forward expressions that are potentially so nuanced and different from each other. No slogan is needed to bring them together. One hour, one place is enough to invite us to gather to stand together. Each person should do the rest, without the need for a banner to effectively express the strength and substance of what characterises him/her so uniquely.

David Noir

David Noir, performer, actor, author, director, singer, visual artist, video maker, sound designer, teacher... carries his polymorphous nudity and his costumed childhood under the eyes and ears of anyone who wants to see and hear.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Le fantôme de la MPPD

    Thank you David for this reflection.

    I am Sonia.

    1. Franck

      Hi David
      I am Franck
      and I agree with you wholeheartedly
      and thank you very much for bringing your thoughts
      off the beaten track
      To us.
      But sometimes we have
      in certain circumstances
      Need to be a whole
      To become one
      the time to recognize each other
      To give oneself a name
      even briefly
      A face
      One colour
      A symbol.
      As you say, by wearing black
      You do nothing else
      Saying your piece
      And by the same token
      Calling on others to accompany you
      Yes you are you
      You are alone
      you were born alone
      You will die alone
      In the sense that you describe
      Being an individual
      With his body
      His feelings
      His pains
      His desires
      His names....
      But you can't
      like all of us
      Stop you from saying it
      to pass it on
      to assert it
      to identify yourself
      to separate you
      To be with
      Across the street.
      in that
      You are like me
      you are like us
      we are similar
      Set
      alone together.
      we are
      among others
      In this Dark Moment
      ....Charlie.

      1. David Noir

        Thank you very much.
        I believe that humans would not experience the bitterness of their condition in the same way if they knew - above all - how to be alone, in the dark and silent. I say first and foremost. Yet this is the situation we all faced originally in our mothers' wombs. We should remember this. Knowing how to be a foetus that waits, rather than taking oneself for an adult who knows. Emotion takes precedence over reflection and is as much on the side of the pacifists as the warriors. They mirror each other and think they recognise each other in horror, deformed. The ignorance is total. Screaming your pain like an animal, of course if you need to, but only speak out when you should. This is my feeling anyway, about people and politics, about artists, commentators, people who talk in cafés ... including those who think with themselves. This world is like a placenta. We should have a permanent awareness that we are all swarming inside with no other substratum than this biological and metaphysical soup; that there will be no afterlife or birth in the light of another day, both from the religious point of view and from the point of view of the secular idealists.

  2. VIP

    I am one of the secular idealists and I often claim it. If I like to believe that a better world is possible, I am sure, as history and current events around the world show, that a much worse one is possible.
    However, in the face of the pseudo-single-mindedness of the moment, I will finally be satisfied with being Viviane.

    1. VIP

      ... and so I will march against barbarism, without slogans and without too much naivety

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