Missing Others

OPINION COLUMN #1

– Don’t those people need that money?
– Maybe, but they need football too.
The English Game (TV Show)

This morning, I started watching a Netflix TV Show, one I had missed out until then – although there has been plenty of time to watch TV Shows for a year! – and here I am, a few hours later, writing a column completely out of the blue. Nothing to do with travel but everything to do with life and worlds going through you.

And, opinion columns have seemed to be very fashionable lately.

You must acknowledge there are no open bars to spend your life in and share your opinions and world’s theories on the edge of a good German, Belgian or Irish beer (even that kind of escape is forbidden!) or above a glass of Chardonnay if you are fancier; then you must write!

Therefore I was watching my TV show about soccer’s beginning in England – yes, for those who know me, it is a bit disturbing! Let me explain: I didn’t really care about the soccer part, I was charmed by the 19th century British atmosphere (a lot more like me!) – and a tiny tiny saying moved me. Stroke me. Underlined how unbearable it has been not to be able to be part of the crowd for more than a year. To meet new people. To make the world a party no matter what partying means to you.

I must confess I have been especially sensitive to that idea lately.

Sensitive with a very universal feeling.

Reason why I don’t want this column to reflect a bad mood. I am not being Christic, huh? I too am revolted, upset, questioned, laughed, mad and all other adjectives, by this endless situation. But I am writing today because I want to share bubbles of light which make my days. Which make my weeks.

It’s a fact, we have been locked down for more or less a year, we have been deprived of a type of life : socialization. Except, paradoxically, especially because we have been deprived, we recreate socialization in places at least some of us had forgotten to make it be before.

For instance, the way you had to ask Others how they were doing without really listing the answer nor even expecting an answer. Now you linger. You do ask to the cashier, the flower girl, the baker, the teacher, the paper boy, the bookseller how they are doing. And when they thoroughly answer – because, like you, they need this missing human contact -, you listen to them. Sincerely. You want to know you are not alone in the storm. You enjoy this fleeting feeling of being part of the same something. You show the same kindness you want to receive, the same kindness you need and the big shots in charge of cleaning this fucking mess don’t care about.

You experience more vividly the feeling of solidarity.

Thus, yesterday, I spent almost one hour over the phone with a teacher. I didn’t really know her. We met a few years back as I performed for her students. She was not a pal. And for one hour, we didn’t talk about work. No, work talks only last three seconds. No yesterday, for one hour, we chatted. Like friends. We chatted about the world. We chatted about that. Our vital need to socialize. (In a way, that conversation inspired me at least as much as my soccer TV show!) That teacher – my new friend then! – described me the same unexpected exchanges over a farmer market or a sidewalk, those exact ones we now allow to cut our daily life for a precious moment. She also shared how people had new compassion towards teachers when, a year ago, those “public service shirker always on holidays” were called by names. Now we praise them, we thank them.

A new feeling of solidarity, I am telling you.

Of course, Marion (my new teacher friend) still warned me about my new world utopia: first, while we gawk our dreams, we are disgustingling being put together in the House (I won’t linger, I will stick to my happy thoughts); then, that transformation doesn’t touch us equally (in roughest word: assholes will remain assholes!). And she was proved right only this morning at the pharmacy when a customer was complaining about her daughter’s teachers who mustn’t have worked really hard on her students’ remote homework. I don’t know that lady teacher, and she might be very bad at her job; but we all have experienced remote work’s technical nightmares and a bit of indulgence wouldn’t be too much in my opinion.

In a way, it is almost comforting, realizing you can’t get rid of misconceptions in a glimpse…

Anyway. Yesterday, I hung up a smile in my heart.

And I have plenty of such examples. Marion is not the first teacher I lingered over the phone with, out of professional reasons, creating a new vibration of hope. And there was also Jardin de Lucette‘s flower girl. And there was also that farmer market lady and her laugh because of the men wearing his wife’s bra for a mask. Those lingering exchanges, like a sweet reminder of how you open up when you travel, are a tiny piece of my world subtly changing and giving sense to all that mess.

Because I too experience a different solidarity.

Of course, this common solidarity was born of a feeling of discontent, but since it is so difficult to get rid of misconceptions, why wouldn’t the saying work for good habits sprung with our human and incompressible need to socialize?

Because you can’t lie anymore. As solitary as you might be, you miss Others.

Since the first lock-down’s beginning, you have done all the introspection you could. Today, for this introspection to be efficient, you need to face your new version of yourself to Others. True and real “Others. Not the one you reed on a screen. Not the one you pixelatedly look. Not the one you roboticaly listen to. The one you haven’t met yet. For one hour or one life. On the edge of a beer. In a stadium. In front of a masterpiece. Above a scene.

Today, you are amputated of how encounters with Others give you a way to new parts of yourself. And it is killing you.

Not a ventilator in the esophagus. But killing you nonetheless. You are out of breath. You don’t have ressources left for accidental theater claim in between two screens, Piña Sleepovers starting at 6pm, speak easy nights until crack of dawn. You need air. You need to life, hell. Not only being alive but feeling alive. In all your body. You need joy. You need excess. You need to be irrational. You need to be touched. You need to get lost in the crowd. You need to get drunk and go home completely hammered after setting the world right with total strangers you will probably never see again. You need to get smacked upside the head with 10, 100, 1000 other spectators, by an actor’s performance whose you don’t always understand the words but, god, he spoke to your humanity. You need to get deaf after listening and dancing to the concert that will change your life for ever. You need to be rocked in front of a master or unknown art piece which will, hell fuck, finally make you understand Modern Art. You need a World Cup. Soccer, Rugby, Tennis, Ice Skating, who cares. Not because you like sports nor even understand what “offside” means, but because it brings us all together – on a living-room couch, a stadium bench or a pub chair – with unspoken beauty. Even if you don’t care. Especially when you don’t care.

Then yes, this morning, I was moved for, like those English workers, I felt deep in my heart I needed football. Not because I like sports nor even understand what “offside” means, but because I feel the incompressible desire to be brought together with the rest of humanity in unspoken beauty. I want to make my world a party no matter what partying means to me.

Therefore, in the meanwhile – or at least until last week – since pubs were closed, I experienced teachers rooms crawl.

Therefore in the meanwhile, to start with this beginning of the world party, I cheerfully listen to my French friends, the Nonnes essentielles (- Essential Nuns – non-essential shops and part of the economy has been closed for a long time in France and they made a pun of it) and the Irish group Foil Arms and Hog‘s song. Because they made me laugh. Because they fed my exhilarating feeling of being part of the world. Because they too belong to my week’s universality.

Cheers my friends!

When you realize how important encounters are, you look differently at important masterpiece, at your life itself. You depend on others. Encounters are not accessory, they are essential for you, they shape your personality; they are the life adventure’s heart. They are not only a way to discover love, friendship or to lead you to success, they are revelation for yourself and open you to the world. Here lay their strength and mystery: I need others, to meet others to meet myself. I need to meet what is not me to become me.
Encounters, A Philosophy – Charles Pépin

Justine T.Annezo – April, 10th 2020