I Want Security!!! - I NEED SECURITY - What Is Security?!?
It’s been a refreshing time for me ever since I set foot in Mexico. Reflecting by water has always been my muse… but also sharing deep conversations with Jeff, laughing with strangers-turned-friends for an instant, and witnessing happiness, tenderness, and craziness. It’s all wonderfully inspiring for me. Humans being humans. No “uniforms”, no political agendas, no social distrust… just people being people. I like that. I missed it pretty much actually, so it’s truly a blessing for me to be here for a couple of days. As so many are excited about the eclipse, I’m on the contrary fascinated by the radiating lights individuals can shine. That’s what I’m seeing over here. Of course, it’s a vacation destination and sadness would be kind of out of place, but what I’m contemplating is genuine… a snippet of benevolence. It’s enough pure-hearted fragments to feed my otherwise skeptical nature about who we are as a species and what feels like a grimmer and bleaker future from one day to another. Seeing a man wearing a cap featuring “Trump Save America 2024” having fun with an Iraqi descendant boosts faith in a better tomorrow I guess. It reminds us that once we are deprived of the false security of our self-designed environment, we mostly tend to go back to the fundamental essence of life, which for me could be described in one single word, “relationship”.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “security” recently and how much of a daily element it has become over the last decade. For me, and for so many as well, it’s almost a necessity now. And I’m not talking about primary needs but about emotional and spiritual ones. How we like to pretend we are open while being entirely shut down. It’s tough not to be cynical nowadays, especially when common sense is portrayed as extremism and every call to violence is perceived as a noble act of righteousness when committed for the right cause of the moment. Dead persons do not require passports anymore. Whatever the country you were originally from, someone will cry. Mourning pain is a universal condition, something we can all relate to, no matter what you believe, stand or live for. Again, it brings us back to the fundamental essence of life… relationships. That’s why I’m so heartbroken and soul-wrenched by the present state of the world, and even more so about the massive wave of anger, bitterness, and frustration that will hit every one of us someday. How will I react when it does? What will my “security” be when I’m confronted with my own measure of darkness? We’ll all face it somehow… it’s how we react to it that defines who we want to be as a person, a friend, a lover, a community, a collectivity, and so on.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “security” recently and how much of a daily element it has become over the last decade. For me, and for so many as well, it’s almost a necessity now. And I’m not talking about primary needs but about emotional and spiritual ones. How we like to pretend we are open while being entirely shut down. It’s tough not to be cynical nowadays, especially when common sense is portrayed as extremism and every call to violence is perceived as a noble act of righteousness when committed for the right cause of the moment. Dead persons do not require passports anymore. Whatever the country you were originally from, someone will cry. Mourning pain is a universal condition, something we can all relate to, no matter what you believe, stand or live for. Again, it brings us back to the fundamental essence of life… relationships. That’s why I’m so heartbroken and soul-wrenched by the present state of the world, and even more so about the massive wave of anger, bitterness, and frustration that will hit every one of us someday. How will I react when it does? What will my “security” be when I’m confronted with my own measure of darkness? We’ll all face it somehow… it’s how we react to it that defines who we want to be as a person, a friend, a lover, a community, a collectivity, and so on.
I read a wonderful passage from Paul Bowles’ book “The Sheltering Sky” this morning. I must be missing Tangier a little too much these days. 😉
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it?
Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
I immediately thought about the underlayers of my ongoing album. How do you share about death, survival, grief, pain, denial, anger, bitterness, frustration, and on and on and on… all of this without losing yourself in an endless abyss of self-desperation or even worse; lead a multitude with you in the process. Honesty is cruel and brutal, just as much as time is… it’s implacable. In so many different ways, it’s always unfair for being so terribly fair. We all have a day to define, and another to keep on doing it, if we are fortunate enough. So many are trying to look young, to defy their own personal hourglasses, and to reverse their time clocks, all without “living” a single moment of freedom. I’m generalizing, obviously. But as an artist, the point for me is to get so close to that transcending and impalpable invisibility to feel its radiating hollow, just like feeling the waving modulation of electricity’s magnetism. We don’t see it but we can feel its vibration when getting close. We can feel its electromagnetic force. We would like to touch it, but we know we would risk severe physical consequences if we did so. But there’s an unbelievable attraction to it.
For me, creation is the same phenomenon, on an emotional and spiritual level. You dare get closer and closer on every occasion you have to find the source, each time losing your sense of security to get just a little closer than the previous time you found it… Until it “zaps” you entirely, knocking you down out of your brain, out of gravity even. You are in complete suspension. And for a slight fraction of a millisecond, you can see the glorious aspect of the universe, as if you had managed to stop time itself because there’s no more insecurity, no more pain or sorrow. There’s only such a complete and incredible sense of wholeness that when you wake up from that dreamlike experience you remember hours of elements that have been less than a whisper long. That’s what I’m looking for and didn’t even come near to experiencing when we almost convinced ourselves that we could give life to that type of consequential record by going fast, fast, and faster like we did. Momentum is great, but I’d rather be slow and steady toward a meaningful destination than go nowhere as fast as possible. A journey as deep within takes time.
It’s funny because that’s what I told Jeff earlier today while watching the horizon. I said: “Look at the jet skis. They’re going super fast, repeatedly back and forth, and faster as they go. But look further down, there’s a sailboat. It looks so tiny to our eyes. It’s going slower than the jet skis, but so much further.” That’s exactly how I felt about what we did in the studio; back and forth, faster and faster… But we haven’t been elsewhere than visiting and revisiting the very same edge of our departure line. It’s the sailboat approach we need to have when we start the album over. Staying closer to the land feels safer and secure, just like death itself. But I want offshore. I want danger. I want real. I want brutally scary. I want high waves and life-threatening overboard catastrophes. That’s art to me. And I’m glad I’m not into cookie-cutting formats because, quite honestly, I badly suck at it. Therefore, I’ll opt-in for the non-secure destinations from now on.
For me, creation is the same phenomenon, on an emotional and spiritual level. You dare get closer and closer on every occasion you have to find the source, each time losing your sense of security to get just a little closer than the previous time you found it… Until it “zaps” you entirely, knocking you down out of your brain, out of gravity even. You are in complete suspension. And for a slight fraction of a millisecond, you can see the glorious aspect of the universe, as if you had managed to stop time itself because there’s no more insecurity, no more pain or sorrow. There’s only such a complete and incredible sense of wholeness that when you wake up from that dreamlike experience you remember hours of elements that have been less than a whisper long. That’s what I’m looking for and didn’t even come near to experiencing when we almost convinced ourselves that we could give life to that type of consequential record by going fast, fast, and faster like we did. Momentum is great, but I’d rather be slow and steady toward a meaningful destination than go nowhere as fast as possible. A journey as deep within takes time.
It’s funny because that’s what I told Jeff earlier today while watching the horizon. I said: “Look at the jet skis. They’re going super fast, repeatedly back and forth, and faster as they go. But look further down, there’s a sailboat. It looks so tiny to our eyes. It’s going slower than the jet skis, but so much further.” That’s exactly how I felt about what we did in the studio; back and forth, faster and faster… But we haven’t been elsewhere than visiting and revisiting the very same edge of our departure line. It’s the sailboat approach we need to have when we start the album over. Staying closer to the land feels safer and secure, just like death itself. But I want offshore. I want danger. I want real. I want brutally scary. I want high waves and life-threatening overboard catastrophes. That’s art to me. And I’m glad I’m not into cookie-cutting formats because, quite honestly, I badly suck at it. Therefore, I’ll opt-in for the non-secure destinations from now on.
I told you, water has that impact on me, and it’s magnificently dangerous once it’s paired with enough of a moment to reflect on my inner voyage. What is security in the end, if not a mirror projecting the lies we finally believe we need to kneel to, and why the ultimate act of defiance is to stand up and take a chance with every single step further we make…
