03-01-2025
At this point in my reading of Simone Weil’s biography by Simone Pétrement, available in English, we are in 1938. Just before World War 2. It is fascinating to see how this young philosopher is haunted by the dehumanization brought about by the violence of war. She has seen the Spanish Civil War and drawn some conclusions. One of them is so strikingly principled and uncompromising that it keeps me wondering how loud it would echo in the hypothetical negotiation chamber where all parties to a coming conflict would meet before the first shot is fired! I imagine TINY Simone, with all her natural, daring authority, asserting that, in a world respectful of what is human in each of us, no concession required from whichever party in order to keep peace alive can be as destructive as war itself, (not a word-for-word quote).
To me, this is pragmatism for peace.
All her choices between war or peace are predicated on saving people’s lives from misery, from pain, from blind violence and death; on saving humanity from its own dehumanization.
There is such a dark and almost hopeless side to her reason why she would, indeed, concede to her enemy rather than risk dehumanization. She believes that as soon as any political, temporal or religious authority has designated a group as ‘the other’, the outcast, the enemy, it has signed off on a license to kill without merci, remorse or punishment. And she adds that, although the rationale for such violence is the enjoyment of peace by the victors, there being so much death can only mean that human life is valueless.
03-03-2025
One and a half hour of an interview of Fareed Zakaria by Erza Klein, a rather lofty and documented session of geopolitical considerations.
One and a half hour without a single mention of the climate change reality.
I am not offended, I am not surprised, I am not even affected anymore by this absence.
I am only further encouraged to push for TINYisPOWERFUL to seriously review its vision and mission statements in order to place the subject of climate change at its core. Because the triad ‘extractivism, pollution, social misery’ form a model intersectional ensemble of universal importance, it should have been part of the Erza Klein/New York Times show and listed as global influencing forces, were it only to stress its absence from the vocabulary of the powerful men who are running the world to its grave.
Many examples come to mind, of artists/activists or other creatives who genuinely ask themselves, or are asked by others, questions like: Should I insist on this or that issue? Does this art piece bring understanding to this event? Would it make sense to keep silent about that? Relevance, timing, depth, intent … all concerns which should feed creativity in/with community(ies) as small as TINYisPOWERFUL, as large as a neighborhood, a city, a country, the world.
There is one question in particular, that, now deceased and much regretted playwright, and a founder of Alternate ROOTS – Nayo Watkins – would consistently ask the folks she was working with, referring to the art at hand: WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR MY PEOPLE? When asked that very question, Gwylène, who did work with Nayo often, says that she would freeze every time, intimidated. She did not have an answer then … I suppose her frightened silence triggered in her a process which eventually changed her whole approach to art making. I can remember that a few years back, I too was changed by Nayo’s question. It directed me onto the path I am still walking every day concerning, not the strength, not the beauty, not the value of my production, not any of that but – singularly – how much, with my work, can I transform a disposition into a practice: a disposition towards others becoming the reason for doing what I do. And I venture that Zakaria and Klein, had they been more cognizant of whatever is most concerning about the future of the people, they would have bumped into the issue of climate change. But, in fact, they mostly talked about the the two characters least concerned with it: Putin and Trump.
This is a problem.
Of course, Simone Weil’s fingerprints are all over today’s entry. The more I learn about her, the more familiar I am with her deep intelligence and her risky excesses, the more humanity I find in her, the more humanity I want to deliver to everyone I frequent or think about. She is radiant to the point of being contagious. Yet she arrives at a time when, for me, the next step depends entirely on how I wrap up ‘a Tale for Reparations’. This is not helpful!
—–
At the moment I have no idea what this all means, past the necessity to illuminate the inevitable link between climate change and global solidarity. These are precisely the two paradigms most vilely undercut by the Putin-Trump alliance. No way either one will snuff the gas flare of power and greed that escapes from each abandoned oil well of theirs.
03-04-2025
An other example of setting priorities for one’s art projects.
Yesterday I met with Abriel at the studio, for the first time since I left for France, 5 weeks ago. We agreed that her work was developing in the direction she wanted and that she is comfortable trying new techniques and materials on her own. We predicted that this would be a successful piece! Yet, in my experience, I told her, it is her next project which will be the real test. She will know so much more for having gone through the process, that she may start asking herself questions for which the answers will come only as she advances further. This is one of the quandaries of any creative process, including art making. Here, I was warning her about her ‘loss of innocence’ and the appreciation she should cultivate for incertitude.
This morning, I know what I will tell her next time: keep asking yourself, at each moment of choice and hesitation: what does this do for my people ? You had a strong motivation when you started this piece: to expose the social injustice that the Gadsden Green exemplifies. You stayed with it. It is successful and you have learned to look past your own expression and satisfaction. Keep it going this way.
—–
Should I go back to Simone Weil now and again?
When WW II started, the Weil family left Paris, went with the flow of refugees and ended up in Marseilles, the place to be if you intended to catch a ship and leave the country. There she met with a number of her old friends and former students. All supported her in her efforts to either ask government officials for paperwork or to have her writings published. Her aim was to get a new teaching job, this time in Algeria, to study first hand the impact of colonialism on Algerian populations and, ultimately, to reach England and to be an actor in the war effort against Germany. As I tried to explain earlier, Simone Weil had determined that to combat an enemy successfully, one had to have a clear understanding, as clear as the enemy’s own, of the ways, means and reasons for engaging in said war. At that time, the issue of conscience she saw as most relevant for pushing back against Germany’s imperial impulse was how France treated its own colonial populations, conquered against their will. As an issue of social justice and respect of others, it was equal in importance to the way Germany was treating its own racialized populations.
Wouldn’t, applying this mode of equivalency to one’s own daily work, force one to never forget one’s purpose and, as far as art is concerned, shift the focus of art-making from self-expression to social justice?
03-06-2025
It has been quite a long time since I posted a site concerning urban farming. This very modest project (on a 25 sqmeters surface), is an example of how little it takes to launch a sustainable TINY climate-conscious enterprise.
—–
There was a Creative Sync yesterday. I joined in for the first time in 6 weeks. It looked so familiar, the way the screen showed the usual six members, all black except for me, yet my image stuck right at the center of the screen, as if I were the head of the gang! No one but me seems to be shocked by the implication. What stopped me from making a remark? My partners are much more mature than I with DEI-related matters. Otherwise, how could they not be shattered by what is happening right now with the Trump agenda? And if they are, where do they find the strength to keep a cool head? A warm heart? Their dignified demeanor resembles that of the Palestinian doctors, or poets we see often on Democracy Now or Mediapart, who carry the wholeness of their people on their shoulders.
For sure, Al Green was not waxing poetic when he interrupted Trump the other day. He was right to protest. No one else did or would have done it for him … This morning, when I see that he may be censured for his action, and that his democratic colleagues are not unanimous against this condemnation, I wonder: how far apart are our congress members from their constituents? How much representation is there left in our representatives? Or does Al Green’s Blackness illustrate, once again … and again, the story of a helplessly racist America where ‘decorum’ is still a cover for hypocrisy? And why doesn’t decorum apply to Donald Trump as well? So many inconsistencies point to a very hollow and irrelevant political system where politics is but a pretext, a cover, for a latent war of chapels and groupies against other chapels and groupies, which is about to explode. This is the real subject. Trump is entertaining his audience with pretend institutional reforms at the same time he pushes all sorts of christian tropes of domination, empire, destiny, which make up the agenda of his clan of donors!
—–
Although I did not watch the whole speech to the joint session of Congress, I believe climate change per se was not a topic touched on by Trump, except to reiterate the ‘Drill Baby Drill’ and related campaign slogans.
At this very moment, most world leaders are pocketing, for themselves, and taking in, on behalf of their country, huge sums of money from the oil, coal and similar industries. At the same time, we, the consumers, are facing just as huge increases of our energy bills, to the point where many must choose between paying for food, or school, or healthcare, or … energy. At the same time, although science is proving every day that climate change is, in big part, driven by the use of fossil fuels, excractivist corporations receive both major tax cuts and tax incentives to drill and further explore the oceans and the untouched land of our National Parks.
The Maga cohort knows we know. The Maga cohort is scared of the issue of climate change. That is why Trump does not mention it in his speeches. Trump has many issues with climate change: One – it is true, the climate is changing. Two – the climate is changing because of adverse environmental policies. Three – environmental policies are adverse because the elected official in charge of environmental policies are picked and payed by the extractivist multinational industries themselves: oil, gas, mineral and affiliates. Four – extractivist multinational industries openly corrupt elected officials with oil and gas money.
In American politics,
And the world over,
Money is more than speech.
Money is gold,
And gold beats speech every time!
But now, the peoples know.
How many of us, around the world,
Die in hurricanes, floods, fires or droughts?
More and more of us
Die in hurricanes, floods, fires or droughts?
We know why.
There is no denying.
Yet, there is so much silence.
Why so much silence?
Silence around climate change?
There is silence because big oil, big gas, all their political supporters are ALSO scared.
Because the head honcho, the president of the United States himself is ALSO scared.
If he was able and willing to remedy climate challenges, would he not boast about it?
WHERE AUTHORITARIANS CANNOT CONVINCE, THEY REPRESS.
—–
I so much want to see TINYisPOWERFUL’s mission updated to integrate climate in it!
Ecopolitics is it.
03-09-2025
This morning, I was making bread. Looking out the kitchen window I saw a dove, on the ground, sorting through the dry leaves of winter. It flew away with a long twig, sharp as a needle. And I wondered. Who invented sewing? Who built the first tree house?
I also wondered: would this be a good approach to a QuestionRelay about the disappearance of species? To a climate change awareness session? To a review of how much of human knowhow belongs somewhere between earth and the heavens, acquired way before mud is said to have morphed into man, somewhere uncertain. Universal gratitude, individual modesty, a dose of science and lots of foresight may still spark into respect, a deep sense of reciprocity with and reverence for Gaia. Or is it time, again, to fear the wrath of nature as did our ancesters’ ancesters? For such a long time they built alters tall as mountains to show their veneration or their submission to mother earth. Why then did they turn around, and proceeded to its unconscionable destruction? Why did Nature keep feeding them reliable seasons, lush forests and surfable tides? Until today that is. Because today, neither the adoration of a cyber-Golden Calf nor the rule of techno-fascism will suffice any longer.
03-10-2025
This morning, I should really have made an effort and taken notes from the Creative Sync Zoom session. There were two good bits of news that Victoria shared: One was about a seizable sum granted by Donnelly for operational expenses. The second concerned the contacts she had consolidated with three Black, young, local, movie makers who have been interacting with TINYisPOWERFUL lately. And then, this afternoon, Marcus had organized a Zoom meeting with a group of Latino artists for future collaborations.
Three occurrences and yet, in my eyes, not a shared sense of how TINYisPOWERFUL
differs from other groups in its approach to in/with community work. To be fair, Victoria has defined for herself a very clear path to present the collective’s approach to art in/with community. Yet, she still has to pass her clarity on to other members of the collective. As for my part in the group, I have marginalized myself at this point, because it is obvious that it has become and needs to be a mostly women-led, Black-oriented, still intergenerational, inter-racial and grassroots collective of artists, activists and educators, which does not need an old white guy to constantly brings his two cents worth everywhere he is invited! All I really can do for the group is to give away my experience and my passion for coherent thinking, to claim a peaceful role for art, art making and the spirit of the arts in the strengthening of all cultures.
This morning, I insisted that, with all these connections with other artists or groups of artists, the role of Victoria in TINYisPOWERFUL is not to “do all the admin work” (as I suspect she sometimes is afraid to be left with), but to find and define a strategic space and modus operandi specific to TINYisPOWERFUL.
03-12-2025
Just ended a long walk with Gwylène. We rarely walk together. She prefers biking and I would rather walk alone! In Paris however, we constantly strolled around the city together. Back in Charleston, we are keeping up the spirit of Paris.
For the last few days, Gwylène seemed to be having a hard time coming up with a revised narrative for ‘Evanescence’. She needed to write new grants requiring insights not quite tackled yet. So, during our walk we talked. At one point we sat on the retaining wall of a near creek and we talked further. When it was time to go back she asked me to write down some of our thoughts. Here they are, in the relatively free form of separate
sentences, linked only by a discrete underlying logic and a pseudo-poetic/epic language:
Reenactment?
Ritual
On Earth,
Everywhere there is ice, everywhere there is snow, at some point there snow on ice
Everywhere there is snow on ice, someone has taken a stick and made a drawing
And every time the drawing has be swept away by wind or rain, by time
Thousand of years ago it was just a winter game to draw on ice
For sure, there would be snow again, and ice, next year
Today we may have doubts whether next year …
There will be snow
There will be ice
Will there be Earth, still, next year?
Today, to draw on snowy ice may be
The reenactment of a ritual as old as the human race
An affirmation of the presence of snow and ice
A praise of snow, a praise of ice,
A celebration of the Earth
A wish that it be for ever
To draw the way-oversize portrait of a dead human on snow, on ice
Today?
It is a celebration of the dead – a memorial for a loved one
It is an understanding that the drawing will vanish
It is the cry of horror in the face of the vanishing Earth
It is a deadly warning to climate skeptics
Every time a child draws on ice
May be the last time
A child draws on ice
03-13-2025
With Neruda on my mind, the exercise of finding different formats to verbalize thoughts is recurring. Canto General, long ago, was my hope for what this here diary would look like! At this point, wanting to transform a diary into an incantation would take a life time. And … what good would it do me to face my shortcomings this way? How could I use my acceptance of them to keep me going?
This sounds very much like something Simone Weil would say. Not that I measure my incompetence against her genius. But there is something to say about steely lucidity. This opposite to self-indulgence is good for creativity.
Speaking about ‘a Tale’, it is taking too long to finish it. I am stuck in a self-dug rabbit hole due to the belief that the visual vocabulary developed so far in the piece should be carried along to its very end. In the name of what? For what purpose? Consistency is a deadly reason in that it does not prepare for the future, which will be necessarily different. Otherwise we would live in the past, like the rabbit, fixated inward, ass up in the air ready to be kicked! Yes, to live in the past and to repeat the mistakes of the past, this is conservatism. This is reaction. This is not art or science or any cognitive endeavor worthy of our humanity.
—–
Here is a quote by Simone Weil which made me laugh like nothing short of genius would, unless it were delusional:
“I must say that for me, the thought of transforming the efforts of my body and soul into potatoes and things of that sort among people who may go hungry, is the only thing that can excite me at this moment …”
How a single sentence covers the whole purpose of a philosopher morphing into a farm hand, were it only for a few month, shows how clear minded and purposeful she is. I actually believe that a plagiarized version of it could be a possible slogan for TINYisPOWERFUL! Something like:
“Transforming the efforts of our bodies and souls into artful thinking, art objects and the art of sociability, among people of the Low Country” .
—–
And then, there is this written piece by sociologist Hugues Bazin about spaces of socialization he refers to as ‘third spaces’. A third space is where diverse groups, with varied histories and experiences, meet and, as they learn from each other through collaborative projects, challenge traditional, institutional learning, and prime existing social networks for further collective imagining.
Speaking only for myself, I do not want TINYisPOWERFUL to project the image of a “collaboration proselyte”. Our sense of autonomy should protect us from this. At the same time, I can imagine funders observing TINYisPOWERFUL and wondering why we are so discreet, why we are so picky in our choice of partners, (although we actually love to welcome newcomers and often invite them to stay!). I believe that this has to do with the ambitiousness of our goals regarding Hugues Bazin ‘third spaces’. Although we are not all productive artists – some of us are (also) activists or educators – I believe we all dream of collaborating with other individuals or groups, were it for one project only, long or short! But not ‘by all means’. For us, collaborating entails weaving significant links with individual and groups and seeing all these links morph into a local network of diverse, mindful folks whose commonality lies in their shared humanity. In other words, we are extremely political in that we believe all social activities, from art to politics, are to be aimed at cherishing, enriching and building on our humanity.
In our quest for local networking Art (making) is our toll of choice
Equity and Access are our goals.
03-14-2025
I better sharpen my pen and inflate my most grandiose style!
The mailman just delivered a copy of Homer’s Iliad, Emily Wilson’s version.
Simone Weil’s unending source of inspiration. It exudes humanity, she claims.
Humanity
The state of being human
Of sharing this Earth
With all other beings
… And doing such a poor job of it.
Learning to be human
Is an art in progress
Now I cannot wait to finish Simone’s biography by Simone Petrement, her faithful friend.
Still fascinating but, I must say … some of her more mystical trends don’t interest me as much. I will definitely go to the end, her bitter end, to understand what took her away. So far, all I know is that she was afflicted with tuberculosis. Although she was quickly losing strength, she refused to increase her food portions in solidarity with the dying victims of the war, the camps, ordinary war-induced famine.
In an interview, Emily Wilson (Iliad translator) says that, although the poem is full of bloody scenes, it still speaks of the humanity of some of its heroes! I will find out.
03-15-2025
Yesterday, between Gwylène and I, we must have covered fifty miles, just to bring Rayn and Marcus to Arianne’s magnificent place of (art) residency: the art cottage at Magnolia Plantation. On a bend of the Ashley river, separated from it by a shallow pond which could have been a rice field, this 1950’s-like wooden cabin with its vast porches, some covered, some not, and its full exposure to crosswinds and sun rays, yet shadowed by a canopy of giant trees … is a perfect dream-come-true for its present resident, who also happens to live on a piece of land, along a river and marsh – like Magnolia – but in a trailer. Yes, Arianne also lives on a piece of dream-land but is struggling to find a way to build her dream-house on it! We wish her the best.
I suppose the beauty of the setup slowed the urge to do indigo with Arianne. Most of the afternoon was spent by our companions eating, napping, conversing. Not much work was accomplished but we decided to convene again soon. Of course, this work assessment is by an old grouch who would like to see the young follow his trail of sometimes futile efforts!
No judgement then. Just a sense of urgency due to age and circumstances.
—–
In the meantime, I devour the last 100 pages of Pétrement’s biography of Simone Weil. Her mystical temperament invades her whole. It captures all her attention. Such mysticism is not impressing me as much as her political thinking, yet there are terribly powerul moments. And some priceless quotes.
One from Simone Pétrement:
– she was very pessimistic about the future of civilization. She foresaw a long period of decadence, she said to me “There will be no hope for men until they return to the caves.”
And from Gustave Thibon:
– “Her mouth uttered thoughts as a tree gives out fruit.”
A sense that the struggle, at this point, is elsewhere. Why attempt to generate hope now, if it will take a huge collapse of history (all the way to the caves) before we can hope again? And, why should her tree of wisdom retain its fruit? Just give them away now, … they may rot otherwise.
In her thirst for Jesus, as she debates whether to be baptized or not, there is one remarkable stand she takes against catholic dogma and which consolidates the substance of her beliefs: her refusal to accept god’s violent wrath against all enemies of the Jewish people, with which the Old Testament is replete. Also, her refusal to strictly follow many of the catholic rituals. They take away from the limpid genuineness of faith, she thinks. She is not a doctrinarian! Good for her, I say. Even when some of her stands seem to verge on fanaticism. She is such a humane human creature, concerned with the humanity of humanity, that I blame her excesses on the sense she had of her own finitude. Two years before she dies, she already knows to get ready. Her excesses are like pre-expressions of her passing: loud exhalations. If I remember correctly, the last exhalation of Jesus was loud enough to shake the earth and generate thunder!
03-17-2025
This past Sunday morning, after a short night caused by my avid reading of Simone Pétrement’s biography of her friend, I woke up and the following sentence rose from my mental fog:
– Avant de mourir, je veux savoir tellement de choses que tout me surprendra
I wrote it down right away. Unusual for me to do this in the morning. I mostly write comments in the margins of books or … build up ‘this here’ diary! In this case, this bit of early thinking – obviously inspired by Simone’s Weil’s constant outpouring of notes, essays and article + the urgency of my own on-time note taking – ends up here because, if I come up with a good translation for it, it will contribute to a Canto General format!
– Before I die, I want to acquire so much knowledge that everything will surprise me.
—–
Last night, again, I read until midnight. I want to finish this book!
Simone Weil is sliding into mysticism, as she seems to sense that death is at her doorstep. She is weak, often exhausted and obsessed with her ‘Plan for Frontline Nurses, which would bring her closer to the possibility of her own martyrdom. Obsessed also with baptism, although she has long ago decided it was not for her. Both, martyrdom and baptism, clearly concern her destiny, not the working class or the humanity of humanity! Here, she is not as compelling. But I cannot agree more with her when she rejects a god whose book of books preaches death for her/his/their enemies. In my opinion, there is no return from this extreme. What I keep from Simone’s thinking here, is that the notion of one universal god is the exception which defines the global catholic/christian dogma. She demands to remain free to choose from (an) other god(s). For this, she is called a heretic by some anathema-brandishing clergy. What else? Had her life crossed that of el Grand Inquisitor, she would have been declared a sorceress and burned at the stake. She may have loved her god the more for it.
This kind of dogmatic brawls got to me … around three o’clock in the morning. I closed the Pétrement book and opened the ‘Reflexions on the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression’, which had not even been opened yet! Why? Would it have extinguished the urge and the need for Pétrement’s introductory biography? For sure I would not have developed such a familiarity with this unmatched, woman philosopher and would have found myself in front of yet an other faceless book to read! But the Reflexions happen to be as clear and to the point as the best foreword of a French Enlightenment classic. Clear, to the point, and accessible, to the end. And the most concise critique of marxism as a dogma. Simone Weil will not be denied her autonomy – by Marx or by Jesus.
03-25-2025
Important changes of plan concerning ‘a Tale of Charleston/for Reparations’! It all started after I decided to iron the material Saleha brought back from Algeria for me. A 10 foot length of white tulle, covered with pale, delicate, pastel flowers, the size of an Oreo cookie, attached with a simple stitch at the center of the pistil. Very festive and in full contrast with the cold, formal ‘Chamber’ which is part of the Sedan Chair piece. Even before the trip to France, I had been planning on using this flowery material as the ridiculous, cute and silly opposite of a gilded drape, to mock the heavy-handed decorum of any Chamber. But something was stopping me. Cute and silly as it was, the curtain was still limited to its literal function of separating, hiding, closing, covering, or decorating. It would have been the only element in the whole installation for which I had not successfully attached a metaphorical meaning to enlighten the purpose of the actual story being told here.
Months ago, I had found images of eighteen century play and opera stage sets. They consisted of successive props representing trees and foliage on either side of the stage, whose purpose was to create a sense of depth and direct the focus to a far away halo of light, in otherwise crepuscular surroundings. I understood their meaning to evoke the Enlightenment era, still low tech but with an obvious reverence for nature and the powerful presence of a light at the end of a tunnel of trees – trucks and limbs – modeled by some magic topiary artist. In my mind, it also related to the times of the American revolution, when the Constitution was written by powdered-wigged gentlemen in classic Jeffersonian surroundings, inside and out, which gave birth to a nation of law and order, symbolized, in the installation, by the severe formalism and temple-like furniture design chosen for the Chamber of the Sedan Chair…
I could go on and on deciphering the sense behind each of my sculptural choices in the Tale. I suppose this arcane messaging could explain the time it has been taking me altogether to be sure the story thread does not get lost or distracted. And all this without the support of one single word, as I had promised myself to do the day Morgan dismissed the work we were doing together – full of words – for being too CONCEPTUAL. That was 2021. This is 2025. Seasons pass not memories!
03-26-2025
Simone Weil is 34 and she knows she is dying. She has left New-York which she thought was a good stepping stone for going back to Europe. Via London, where she was intent on promoting her plan for a Corps of Frontline Nurse, or being sent on a parachuted mission to France, with the Resistance. Either way she was seeking mortal danger because this was the only way she knew to share the burden of war with occupied and massacred populations of the world. None of her death plans worked out though. Was she left to waste away in England then? This would never be. Simone, in the few months she spent there, managed to excerpt herself from the jaws of her religious contemplation and to be given the task of reading and commenting on lots of research papers and drafts from the Conseil de la Résistance whose ultimate goal, once France would be liberated, was to establish a new French political régime, based on a very progressive Constitution with powerful democratic principles of social and economic justice.
In my reading, last night, Simone’s latest work concerns [quote from Pétrement’s biography of Simone Weil]:
<< ... on one hand the structure of the government and on the other the creation of a party that would be called the 'Revolutionary Group of French Republicans' and would have been composed solely of people from the Resistance. Consider that the chart for the government's structure is very good, but as for the rest, "these people are completely, exclusively, and consciously Fascists. ... unadulterated fascism." ... They admit that they want to seize power by violence ... The cynicism with which all this is presented is scarcely believable ... >>
Let’s say that here Simone is describing developments as the Second World War is ending and the world is in ned of a lot of care. But she is also showing that a similar situation is developing today, where politicians intend to push their own program regardless of circumstances, which makes them ideologues in a time when their country requires principled creatives. That is why, 80 years after WWII and after Simone, one can affirm that Trump and every member of his government are self-serving, unadulterated fascists!
03-29-2025
Simone Weil has died!
At Grosvenor Sanatorium in Ashford, where she had been transported from Middlesex hospital in London. She entered into a coma on August 22, 1943 around 5:00 pm, did not regain consciousness and expired at 10:30 pm, Simone Pétrement reports in her biography. She quotes Doctor Broderick, who was treating her then:
“Her death must have been calm”.
In one of the last conversations they had, Simone told Broderick, who believed she had
“… achieved complete detachment, knowing that she was going to die” … “She told the doctor that
“… she was a philosopher and interested in humanity.”
At the bottom of the last page of Simone Weil’s biography by Simone Pétrement, last night, just past midnight, I scribbled that I could not believe I would ever be so moved by the long past death of a person I have never met. But this person happens to be SIMONE WEIL, one extraordinary philosopher aged 34 – on August 22nd, 1943.
To say that I never met her is not true. I actually lived with her for the 539 pages of Simone Pétrement’s book. Much more than a book. An intimate filing of thousands of loose leaves of paper and manuscripts. Intimate and trustworthy because one could not be close friend with Simone Weil without being intimately trusted by her. And vis-versa. I am not sure she uses the word Reciprocity as a component of trust. I do. This reading confirmed me in the necessity of reciprocity in seminal dialogues.
This book was a shared work!
Yesterday, Gwylène and I had a shopping day. We went to our favorite superstore, (one where employees are all treated as essential workers and where DEI remains an internal policy) and loaded up for a month-or-so. As our cart was being checked out, the attendant congratulated us for its fullness! I replied that it had, indeed, to last a month. “No, she argued, you can do much better than that!” Her perfidious (playful) language and the irony in her voice inferred that we had such a good time shopping for such good products that … we would surely have to be back before a month!
We liked the back and forth. It even got us going about mass consumption and the predictability it entails. How is it though that we can speak of predictability in human behavior when we know that the thousands of cars we are on the road with at this moment, all come from and go to different places, for different reasons, in different cars … not speaking of the diversity of the drivers, their family, their ancesters, their education, their job, age, sex, number of children, gender identity, favorite sport, first name of maternal grand-mother, immigration status, social security number! What about that? It’s a puzzle! … We reflect further … Then, Gwylène, always attentive: maybe this diversity should give us a sense of infinity, she says! Why is it that we have such a difficulty imagining an infinite universe when we can appreciate the infinity of diversity? My answer was inspired by Simone Weil, of course! It is her refusal to be limited in her thinking by anything at all, which made her what she was: a stubborn genius for clarity, clairvoyance, intellectual freedom, at a time the world was on the verge of self-destruction, precisely for having fallen under the rules of various authoritarian, mind controlling, ideologies.
I guess, from infinity, it was difficult for the two of us to self-restrict and not spill over into the topic of eternity! The non-existence of a final moment that would put an instant end to history? … I was tempted to ask myself whether daring to imagine an end to eternity or infinity constituted, in itself, a denial of both?
That’s when Gwylène wondered whether there was ‘a contradiction’ between humans who have a beginning and an end, a birth and a death – and their ability to conceive of infinity and eternity at all.
In my loose philosophy and from what Gwylène says, can I venture that …
(1) if grasping the dazzling diversity of individual destinies can give humans a sense of infinity,
(2) similarly, if considering the just-as-dazzling turns history has taken to get us where we are can give humans a sense of eternity,
(3) and considering what I now call the humanity of Humanity,
… can I venture that what ties eternity and infinity together is the humanity of Humanity?
And can I call on Simone Weil’s philosophy, whose interest lies in H(h)umanity?
03-30-2025
Check out the NewYorker Radio Hour with David Remnick, interviewing Chris Murphy, democratic senator for Connecticut and, in the second segment, Elaine Pagels, author of ‘The Devil Problem’, historian of early christianity.
So much, in this program falls at the right time in my general experience and especially that of the last few days. Some kind of a vindication, whose effect it is to soften all the blows of the daily grind! Some examples, pell-mell.
. To Remnik’s question: what do you think there is after death, Pagels’ answer is that she does not know. However, if death is a passage, she would wish for music or a nature scene, or a painting. This I refer directly to Simone Weil, yes! In her twenties already, she would travel long distances to hear Gregorian chants and get closer to her own spirituality with music. Also, on her first visit to the Assisi romanesque chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Simone reports that ” … an incomparable marvel of purity where Saint Francis often used to pray, something stronger than I compelled me for the first time to go down on my knees”. This “something stronger than I” exemplifies the power of art, the visual arts in this case. Of course, in the chapel, it is the spiritual power of art which compels Simone Weil “to go down on her knees”. Knowing her work though, the “spiritual” epithet covers more spheres than christianity. It refers to Buddhism among other creeds. It also refers to the artisan’s labor and the coherence between the physical and the spiritual.
My larger point is to underline the presence of the arts in daily experiences and certainly in the essential moments of many peoples’ life. Yes, for sure, TINYisPOWERFUL reaches to a major ‘force’ when it promotes, not only the arts but the spirit of the arts and, let me add, the spirit WITHIN the arts. A SPIRIT OF HUMANITY. Such is my conviction. The humanity of Humanity will be well served by artists and their practice
IN – WITH community when the destructive madness at work today will have passed – because it will pass – and when it will be a matter of building over what is gone and still needed.
. Chris Murphy warns about one of the most dangerous moves of MAGA : the move against VOTING RIGHTS. This is something Trump said multiple times during the last campaign: ‘ this time, people, vote for me en masse! You may never have to vote again!’
. Chris Murphy again: see how the boycott of Tesla, even in small towns, moves as many as 600 people to protest in front of a dealership. And look at the AOC/Sanders tour. 30.000 people in Denver. What we need, Murphy says though, is one hundred thousand protesters and more!