A utopian is not one who believes in something impossible or unrealistic. He is not a gentle dreamer who fantasizes on the countercurrent. Etymologically speaking, the utopian speaks or sees what has not yet been found. As an explorer of modern times, he allows to widen the cartography of his unconscious. When people began to imagine that there might - surely - have been other inhabited or habitable lands in the time of Christoph Columbus, new perspectives came into view. The boundary between the visible and the invisible is so thin that when he arrived, the Indians did not see him first, not having the inner cartography capable of analyzing this information. They had never seen such ships floating on the water and were therefore unable to perceive the existence of this reality which did not exist until the moment they really found themselves face to face with the explorer's ship ! Human to human then, they understood.
"Utopia is simply that which has not yet been tried !" Theodore Monod
As a child, I never heard the idea that we can do otherwise. In this hyper vigilance of every moment, I would respond to any outside injunction almost before it was issued. This skill forged by age had created a certain character in me. A kind of jet-powered battery ! Hyper connected to the outside world. Absolutely not connected to the inside. My body was doing the relay for the others. As a good pianist, I had heard enough that we were playing for others and that it was good for them. If I didn't feel anything of myself, I told myself that I simply didn't have the talent to connect to the right places. A bit like a young player who is still new to the instrument believes that he doesn't have the talent to play it well when he just needs to experiment and explore by ear, by heart, by touch, all the nuances and all the possibilities that make the instrument sound right.
The very first instrument is us. We are strings that vibrate here and there, but have we ever really learned how to play it ? What do we know about this instrument ? We believe we possess it, but it possesses us until we know it.
We say "to have" a body, "to have" a name, "to have" an identification, "to have" a family, and finally we no longer know what we are - really. From the head to the feet, going through one's being can be the greatest of expeditions.
I have searched for so many years with boundless obstinacy all over the outside world to find a path that makes me feel more "right". Like a tuning fork that would tune all this machinery... Then I discovered that the path - still so inexperienced - was from me to me. No one or nothing could really help me at this depth. Echoing it, inspiring it, offering it to connect to other edges, yes.
What the shamans, healers, magicians, have taught me as essential, if there is only one thing to remember, it is that our path can only be one's own. As a diver goes deep into the depths of the oceans guided by his flippers and his momentum, he discovers treasures, fears, fish, gleams, black holes... all of this from him to him, like a solitary face to face. All that is lived will be only in connection with his sole presence. Returning to the surface, his head out of the water, he exchanges again with the outside world, discussing, telling, transmitting, exchanging.
The master has that in common with the "joker" that he can only be self-taught. Who could grant him a sufficiently valid diploma other than his own conscience ? All that is not known to oneself can, at best, only be a reproduction of an external fact, a tracing that will make us risk a lifetime of carrying the frustrating sensation of not being quite oneself without ever knowing the flavor of being oneself.
In our society, we have created a certain tendency to unify, to homogenize. What I live, what I feel, what I think, would then come from a traceable path as on a road map where all the possibilities have already been laid out on paper. From the history of our family to the history of the world, Freud would then have described the alpha and omega of our psyche and we would be either this or that ?
"The map is not the territory." Alfred Korzybski
This is called conditioning. As in computer science, all these programs are pre-programmed to allow the system to respond. However, you just have to change the program and all the answers will be different...
On a certain level, there is everything that brings us together and resembles us. More than a system : our breath. On another plane, each path, each exploration, each discovery from the tiniest to the most gigantic, is our path, our creation, our "America". This country exists for no other like it. And there are as many possibilities as the space around - and within - a body. That is to say, infinity.
Then we can come back to the surface, like this diver, and become aware, not of the objects that have been seen in depth, but of what they have done to us, what they have taught us, moved us, created us... It is all that we are allowed - and even necessary - to transmit to the world, no matter by what means, to find ourselves like those billions and billions of infinite little drops that form the ocean, beyond the waves, the storms or the glittering sun.
These months of isolation and a certain prism of reality can give the impression of shrinking possibilities. By dint of being kept at home, masked and relatively limited in one's professional and personal movements or actions, one could quickly sink into the illusion that there is only one path, and what's more, a rather narrow one...
In reality, this conditioning does not date from the isolation period. The latter has only had the wisdom to reveal where we are with our own symphony. Is it balanced ? Does it lack freedom ? Of lyricism ? Of poetry ? Rhythm ? Polyphony ?
This world is only one world among others. It is enough to be the explorer of prisms, the utopian of the invisible. Space is everywhere, so is calm, like the air here on earth and in us. As the interpreter-creator that we are at every moment of our presence, here and now, all paths are open : in front, behind, to the right, to the left - and how many multitudes of left and right ?
If something seems impossible to you, then change the programming ! You'll get other answers. When you hear music on the radio, it is not precisely contained in that radio. Even if we dissected the radio set, we would never find the musicians in it ! However, just change the antenna or the frequency and other music will be picked up. Magic will you say ? One among other in our lives.
Music gives us the privilege to feel like touching the stars, connecting us to the divine. Yet beyond this divine is... the Human.
Neither divine nor earthly. We are humans ! Planet among the planets, instrument among the great symphony of the world, I wish us to enjoy our necessary vibration to the wind, the tides, the laughter and the soul of the world.
May this month of October be full of beauty : yours !
Infinitely,
Hélène Tysman
