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Mobil'Homme (Slideshow) | Courage or absence | Photo © David Noir

Courage or absence

One thing matters. Only one thing. The only reality that would change the world. Courage. Not the courage that is limited by being characterized: political, of opinion, of ideas... Not the "good" courage that is desired between the shopkeeper and the customer as a courtesy, or between employees at the change of station in the metro, to help them face a day of work that looks tedious. No, courage without anything else in its wake other than what its sole meaning presupposes: overcoming the fear of defending what one is, what one believes, what one aspires to save in the face of a determined threat.

The rest comes a long way behind or from it. It is the primary virtue without which our world is what it has always been: a chaos of injustice, violence and terror, made up, hysterised from scratch, as if the mere realities of death and disease, the mere necessities of warmth, protection and nourishment were not enough to make life difficult for us.

Courage is a taboo, and everyone has their own way of convincing themselves that they are not completely devoid of it.

The greatest of taboos, in fact, so shameful is it not to show it.

A taboo so immense that it covers the entirety of the lies that allow us to live each day. Modifying its meaning is already weakening it and is a crime in itself.

Few are those who naturally carry it, often without having knowingly sought it out, by dint of mistreatment, almost desensitised to the mortal risk of danger. The lucky ones! They are too tired of it and risk everything every day, even if death, crime or murder is at the end.

For the others, we will have to learn. It has to be learned, but can it be learned without the terrible pain of the negation experienced before, on many occasions, and against which one has found the strength to resist, perhaps with fatigue? An embryo of this courage was undoubtedly already there then; perhaps at the price of the unsuspected death of a being that we will not have had the time to see appear.

All these others, those, us, have nothing to say. Especially not to make ourselves exist with comments of encouragement for those who have paid for the audacity of their courage with their lives. What could be more disgusting than to sympathise when one has risked nothing? On stage and off, the commentary disgusts me. It's the coffee shop of those who will always be spectators of the world they contribute to making even more morbid through their twaddle.

Better to observe a deferential silence and look at the mirror. No, nothing will change in this world because we are not capable of having courage, eternally and in all circumstances. We are therefore worth nothing compared to what we claim to be. We do not even legitimately deserve this language that allows us to utter words and ideas that are so twisted that we could not in truth transform them into actions even if we wanted to. In the age of social networks, the world should be silent. Make a great beach of silence to never express itself again.

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.

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