Hi Fred,
every time you mention that you studied art in Paris I get an jalousie attack. I want to cry if I hear about the job you had as a student. The only thing that comforts me is that after all that live only can become worse.
Best,
Johannes
Hi Johannes.
Well, when I was in Paris I wanted to be in New-York, when I was in England I wanted to be in Spain, and when I was in Madrid I wanted to be in Japan...
It took me many many many years, tons of break-up with my girlfriends, suffering of all kinds, years of yoga and meditation to understand that the very best place to be is the one you are at the moment
and the very best person to be with is your self.
As for the student job, it was really a student job, no glamour. I was sorting the internal letters for displaying in the offices...
And don't think that being a student in fine arts was always a fun experience...you should see that, a bunch of problematic existentialists childrens with no humour and intelectual posers.
it was very far from sex drugs and RnR. (maybe Alain Briot that also was in the Paris fine arts a generation before mine had more fun)
At that time I was involved in fashion, couture, in part because a woman I was going out with was working in a high fashion brand as a seamstress, and
I learned a lot from her. I wanted to be a fashion photographer and ended painting with very little success. As for everything in life, there was lights and shades, things that were working well, others that didn't at all etc...
The first movie I was involved in at that time ended in a complete disaster. It was a 16mm b&w filmed with an Arri in a little studio rive gauche. I couldn't stand the 2 actors and I had to live.
I was so shy and unconfident that I ended periodically destroying my productions to make sure nobody see them. In Paris I met people like Lagarfeld, talking about unsignificant topics but I wasn't able to use those contacts for my own purpose. So you know a little more about the real story.
In fact, I'm older and much happier now, maybe because I know a little bit more about this journey call life. I'm just starting to enjoy it fully and it gives me great satisfaction.
So you see Johannes how the mind works and invents its own scenario that has very little to do with the reality lived by each individual.
Not a long time ago I was invited to a shooting party at the house of a big photographer. But then, the models that were supposed to come canceled and we ended alone watching the formula one gran prix while eating crabs.
Then we went to swim in the house's pool and in this relax atmosphere I took the oportunity to ask him about how he started etc...how does one reach to work with the best models in the world etc...
I was expecting the big story, the Hollywood's version. The guy started to talk about his life, the real one, not the one I had constructed in my mind...and all the glamourous ideas I had vanished. He went through a lot of harsh things, included death of a son, sordid assignements at the beginning, humiliations etc...then also good time.
This afternoon I learned a lot more about the aparences and the surface. Our minds fool us, reality is never that good nor that bad.
Watch the movie Lawrence of arabia, then read the Book of Lawrence, the 7th pilars of wisdom (the truth story). Big difference!
Cheers.