"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you want, you want what you imagine, and then finally you create what you want." Georges Bernard Shaw
I'm not what I am.
At this particular time when everyone is summoned to return home, to stay there and to keep company to yourself, we live a kind of collective hypnosis session ! Indeed, what greater exploration than this return to oneself ? Of course, in the beginning, we will soon have to get organized, to simply transpose all the usual activities outside the family cocoon by striving to pursue as many activities as a human being's day can count. Being human, really ? Or "human-made" ? That's easy for you to say. In these moments of loss of reference points, of equilibrium, of adjustments with a new context, on unknown equations, in an uncertain future, here we are nestling against our buried fears, cowering in the folds of our unconscious for the next few weeks. A good start to a hypnosis session !
It is that this journey, the greatest journey that there is, that of life, deep down, will never be lived by you and you alone. We use to hear that the body has a consciousness. In reality it is the consciousness that includes a body by identifying with it and including many other presences. Everything that is not perceived by this same consciousness is, by definition, non-existent.
Knowledge is tiny but ignorance is infinite... So do not identify with your knowledge ! (Sadguru)
Until then, the human paradigm was to learn, study, and then to embark, as they say, on active living. So we started by gathering a certain amount of information and then we looked for experience. Today, even at the time of what is called spirituality in its development, we seek Knowledge and we are right to feel that it has never been as palpable through all possible means (youtube, google, internet in general) as it is today. Paradoxically, where the truth has never been so close to us, what do we really know about ourselves ?
On this March 16, 2020, it is the whole of humanity that rings out in unison while being more compartmentalized than ever. Each one at home with the feeling of a common tuning fork: the heart. The deserted streets, while Italians are confined while singing to their balconies, while the sky and the highways empty and Parisians stay at home, the earth has never been better! Everyone is purging, collectively and individually. It is the moment to sit down and accept to see one's life, one's history, present or past, to welcome the emotions that are still there, some more striking than others, the desires or dreams that could still make each moment not be lived as a nugget of eternity and readjust accordingly, with benevolence and gentleness.
Throughout a life, with a curious mind, equipped with a certain intelligence, one seeks information, knowledge, guides, teachers or even sharing of experiences. And then one learns by interacting with each other, feeling sometimes useful, sometimes useless, sometimes loved, sometimes unloved, sometimes understood, sometimes misunderstood. From there, we try to draw up a kind of internal mapping of the surrounding world. The biggest paradigm shift at the moment is to realize that there is no other source of knowledge than oneself. The greatest master, the best teacher, alas or so much the better, is oneself ! When one assists a healer, a shaman, a sorcere as well as being in contact with an animal, one understands only one thing : the truth is in oneself. Very grandiloquent when he says so. And yet right, without a word to touch.The feeling only comes through yourself.
Without conscience, living on earth is hell !
The retreat (let's rather talk about retreat in the manner of meditators than "confinement" like tins !), is an experience that everyone will live in a unique way ! Even with five or eight or twelve people in an apartment, even alone in a house, each one will live his or her own path that no one else will be able to guide or truly explain. He belongs to his own universe and that is the privilege, the marvellous. All the wisdom and knowledge that will emerge will be unique to this experience of life, of being human. And already, as we feel, being separated from each other, we have never felt so connected, on another plane. Mystery...
For a long time I despaired of the impossibility of totally merging in the understanding of two beings. Today I understand the illusion! The other is not to be sought outside of me but within me. All source is not outside but within me. Besides, at a certain moment, there is neither outside nor inside. There is only the consciousness that encompasses everything and whose ego identifies itself at times to a thing or to an inside.
For a long time I despaired of the impossibility of totally merging in the understanding of two beings. Today I understand the illusion! The other is not to be sought outside of me but within me. All source is not outside but within me. Besides, at a certain moment there is neither outside nor inside. There is only the consciousness that encompasses everything and whose ego at times identifies itself with one thing or another. Is it a solitary odyssey for all that ?
Passion focuses on one thing, it burns out quite quickly. Compassion, on the other hand, is inclusive, so it always has fuel.
I remember a novel by Chaim Potok, The Chosen One, in which he portrayed a young Yeshiva* student from a very orthodox family where the father never answered the son's questions, so the son had to learn to find all the answers on his own. In our time, curiosity is a concept that is often directed outwards, by looking for information that is already established on some website. When this outward movement ceases, when the noise slows down and space becomes silent, then it is possible to question oneself and above all to learn by oneself... And what a discovery ! What an infinite jewel! Impossible to do otherwise than to take this path, this door with direct access !
Musicians know this in their solitary tête-à-tête with the instrument from a very young age. One learns by experience, by doing and redoing tirelessly. Then you're in contact with nothing, trying to reach a certain level, no longer to do but to undo, to interfere as little as possible. To erase oneself. But who (or what) fades away? And above all, what remains ?
A hypnotist is an influencer.
It is in this sense that I wanted to envisage another form of concert in order to propose to the public, no longer to come and sit down to hear someone's story, to contemplate the beauty of an external work, but rather to come and live one's own experience, one's own story through the mirror of the other. Art is only a way - a necessary way - to enter through all the possible prisms of the dream. By dream, of course, I mean the state that Native Americans talk about when they describe reality, as opposed to the waking state, which would be pure illusion ?
Hypnosis is not a state of sleep but an awakening - to oneself.
"We live in socially programmed hypnosis !" says Deepak Chopra. And in reality we are constantly oscillating from one state to another, more or less conscious or unconscious. Art - or these grandiose moments of space as we are currently living it -, like a gigantic psychomagic act**, are tools to enable us to become aware of our inner world, of the life that passes through us and which we experience in every moment.
Coming to the concert is not, in my opinion, a cultural act. It's an experience that we come to live, a knowledge that we come to experience from one self to another, as a catharsis to emotions within us that are only asking to be freed in order to widen our field of consciousness even more. Like a midwife, like a midwife, the artist as well as the therapist is only a facilitator who allows the other to allow himself, to free himself from his own truth. This way, the public doesn't come to see me play. They come to play with me.
And as the inspiring Muniba Mazari said, "In order to heal, you need to feel."
Freedom invents itself !
So I wish you a symphony of all the senses at this time when we are led to be the guides of ourselves, independently of all external stimuli, of our habits of responding to the injunctions of the Other or of the world without first hearing our own inner voice (and way), like the rhythm of the Earth. Beyond the waves, beyond discomfort, illusion, impatience, desire, fear, anxiety, emptiness, nothing, laughter and tears... Let's play our melody !
Drop of water among the drops of the ocean, indispensable and transparent, I connect to each one of us by playing the harmonies of the heart too, from far or near.
See you soon
See you soon
Right down to your fingertips !
Musically yours,
Hélène Tysman
*Yeshiva is a center for the study of Torah and Talmud in Judaism...
** Psychomagic Act was invented by Alexandro Jodorowsky
