Je ne suis pas Charlie. Je suis Saman.

© Saman Giraud

Je ne suis pas Charlie. Je suis Saman.

I am deeply saddened by the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris and I too, like all of you, condemn any terrorist attack and any form of violence towards another human being. 

The attacks in Paris are profoundly shocking and it took me a few days to process the news. My thoughts are with the families of the victims and the people of France ever since. Acts of violence are not a solution and they will never be. 

To my friends I'd like to say that hate speech is not a solution either. It is a form of violence on its own. We all, religious and non-religious people are upset, angry and hurt yet remember that we are better than the product of our anger. We are smarter. We have the luxury to access information and enjoy education and we have the means to make our voices heard and speak up. 

I condemn any extremism comments, be it on Facebook or spoken out loud, as extremism leads to extremism and I will not support any form of hate or generalization especially not when we're talking about nearly 2 billion people globally. 

Remember that there is no or very little real depth analysis in the media and that the issue is broken down into a recipe based on three ingredients: a satire, a religion and a gun. Remember that there is more to it. 

Therefore it is important to ask the right questions and I'd like to ask all of you to take the time, even when upset, to question everything you read in the media. Do your research until you find answers for yourself that you can represent and argue for. If you take a step back you might even see that history is simply repeating itself. 

We should remember that these terrorist acts are an aberration of people's faith.
We should remember more than ever to respect and protect our friends and people who are faithful and innocent as they have been and will be the target of hatespeech, insult, violence and discrimination. 
Remember to call for reason.

We should stand united against terrorist attacks and any form of extremism. We should stand united against polarization and hate. We should stand for mutual respect and love for those who are innocent. 

Je ne suis pas Charlie. Je suis Saman.

The Writer's Block Virgin

Every writer has made the acquaintance or has at least heard of the oh-so-legendary 'Writer's block'. And just like many others, I suddenly found myself unwillingly hurled at a place that I didn't like and therefore a place I urgently needed to leave. Welcome to the journey of a Writer's block virgin.

1) JUST RELAX
The exit door leading straight to creative wonderland seemed at first logical if not to say easy: Relaxation. Therefore I took a deep breath with my eyes gently closed like in those generic yoga ads. I tried to relax for hours, days, weeks, even for months. Yet the durability of trying to relax combined with the nonexistence of any satisfying results whatsoever, made me add an extra effort to it, which on the other hand resulted in nothing but additional stress: the stress over not being able to relax. And there I was back to exactly where I had started: stiff, tense and wordless. Clearly I was running in circles - running far away from relaxation. But I had gained one thing: a special form of a slight passive aggression towards any remotely human being trying to be 'helpful' and asking me to 'just relax'. Even though it is certainly questionable whether or not this state of mind can be described as a 'gain' at all. But that's a different story.

2) BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE
Plan B was to write about something beautiful. Beauty can be incredibly disgusting when you're forced to it. Nonetheless, I decided to intensely seek inspiration as at that point the nausea of looking at a blank piece of paper forced me to scale down my expectations from 600 words down to one single sentence. Talk about being desperate. I sat down over and over again, thinking of the past few months, my eyes still closed, seeing the incredible collection of breathtaking impressions and emotions I had been blessed with and that I had stored in my head. A wonderful place thus far far away from my fingertips. You would think that any writer would be able to fulfill the task of writing a single sentence. But nowadays more than ever a single sentence is under a constant serious life threat by being just one click away from trash and two clicks from forever gone.

3) ANY TOPIC IS A GOOD TOPIC
I ended up gazing shyly at good old Google, like a little girl who is well aware that she's not supposed to look at the soon to follow sex scene on TV but somehow can't help it. Google is naked knowledge combining the good, the evil and the idiotic and therefore it has an answer to almost every question I can possibly think of. I was looking for the famous advice of famous authors- famous as in folks who actually get paid for a sentence. I can tell you that any hint of possible embarrassment over myself googling 'Writer's block' vanished within 0,35 seconds. That's how long it took Google to give me more than 75 million results on this topic. Clearly I was not the only one and needless to say that I never made it past page 1 of my search results.  Now some of these famous authors suggest to write about something. Anything. Whatever.  Obviously I gave it a shot. Who wouldn't? Their financial life depends on writing so whatever advice they have to offer must work, right? Wrong. 

I found myself trying to write about the daily news, orphans in Syria, hope and death in Lampedusa, water on Mars, global warming and other serious topics. I quickly switched to fashion week, people, couples,weirdos or nerdos before getting to good food, bad food, a skirt, a plant, love, a piece of art - even dirt. I was  drifting from topic to abstract and steering from a state of being desperate towards madness. What was missing was my inner glue on which words would simply stick and the fun I used to feel when writing.

4)FUN
Ray Bradbury, what would I do without you? I found a video of the Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea in 2001, where Ray talked about writing and simultaneously rocked my world. That's when he unknowingly became my writer friend. And here's an excerpt of smarty pants Ray:

“Well, it’s obvious you’re doing the wrong thing, aren’t you? Hm? You're in the middle of writing something, you go blank and your mind says: “No, that’s it.” Huh? Ok. You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious is saying “I don’t like you anymore. You’re writing about things I don’t give a damn for.” Huh? You’re being political or you’re being socially aware. You’re writing things that will benefit the world. To hell with that! Huh? I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell! I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun. Huh? I’ve never worked a day in my life. I’ve NEVER worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: ‘Am I being joyful?’ And if you’ve got a Writer’s block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you’re writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject.”

Cheers to you Ray.  May your wonderful soul rest in peace.





 

Festival De Cannes

 

    ©Saman Giraud

Wisdom of a Cookie

©Saman Giraud

A Love Letter by Count Tolstoy

 

I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that 
which is eternal and ever precious - your heart, your soul. 
Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour 
and cease to love it as speedily; 
but the soul 
one must learn to know. 
Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, 
even love, 
the most beautiful and natural of feelings.

Inspiration

It was a cold November night a few years ago; one of those nights whose whispers, announcing the approaching snowfall, become louder and inevitably reach my ears, where the air is crisp, almost razor-sharp, cracking like a whip, where the smell of pure, chilled air fills my warm summery lungs and where the empty streets of New York City are filled with the sudden void of in between seasons.

I gently pulled my bed sheets, wakening the mild perfume of detergent, and laid my heavy head on the pillow, evenly spreading out my thoughts. With each passing moment, my body started to descend into the mattress while the day began its surrender - leaving me to the mysterious nothing yet to come...

My eyes were closed when the serenity was interrupted: a fast pacing storm of distinct pictures and vivid colors, of unique characters and dialogues, of old french music and moods as diverse as only a human soul can be, invaded my mind. Dense Inspiration at its purest hit me like a thunderbolt and took over everything that is me: It spread from my eyes to the tip of my fingers, adhered to my bones until they merged and rushed through my blood in a state of urgency, pushed its way through my veins and pumped up my heart.

I glared at the ceiling, gasping for air, pushed away the bed sheets I had wrapped myself in only moments earlier - its cozy warmth suddenly an obstacle. I jumped out of the bed, ran to the kitchen to prepare fresh coffee only to run immediately back to my bedroom where I slid the heavy window with all my strength and as fast as I could to let all the air in that I could possibly inhale while still surrounded by darkness. The light switch seemed to be yet another obstacle, but one I could live without overcoming.  I prepared my desk that was facing the open window with the one thing that would be needed for the moments to come: a blank page on my laptop's screen. And when I finally sat down I looked up into the dark blue sky , greeted the moon and started to write. 

I remember how I tried to write as fast as possible, led by the fear of losing the pictures in my head at any moment, led by the rage that my fingers could not type as fast as I could see and led by the rush of Inspiration still running through my veins that made my heart beat so fast that I would not breathe but gasp for air. 

Four hours later: 'M4 - My Many Married Men' was born and I sat there in the darkness, my inspiration looking right at me.

Favorite Quotes

 

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you learn to appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself...and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."

Marilyn Monroe

The Idiot

Once upon a time a mother gave birth to an irresponsible, innocent, depending child. Year after year the child developed physically and therefore, year after year, the parent, or in the best case scenario the parents, would guide the child and teach him to become somewhat responsible, less innocent, but above all self-sufficient. In other words they would help him to develop mentally too.

In New York, a parent has exactly 18 years to prepare his child at his best for the 'Age Of Majority', in other words, the age of becoming a legal 'Adult': responsible for himself when it comes to almost everything but death, disease and alcohol. 

To be more specific, according to the law a child needs 18 years to be mature enough to have a credit card, sex, a wedding AND the right to vote. But according to some other law, this very same adult needs an additional 3 years of life experience and turn 21 before being considered mature enough to drink alcohol in public. Vodka beats President 3:0.

Please note that Mother's 99% adult can indeed drink, drive and marry under legal age as long as under 'supervision'. But that's a different story...

Discrepancies aside, one way or the other,  most children make it to the legal term of an 'adult' which is certainly more a matter of one way rather than the other; the inexorable march of time rather than the result of maturity.

And while parents and educational systems do as much as they can to raise a self-sufficient, independent thinking individual, laws nowadays shifted from protecting the individual from the harm of others to protecting the individual from himself - with the very best intentions in mind.

Wholefoods doesn't sell Diet Coke because it is not healthy for you. Try to find full fat yogurt, a never-ending Odyssey, because it is not healthy for you. In the midst of worldwide political crisis, somewhere between correction rape in South Africa and never ending unnecessary wars, Mayor Bloomberg has the glorious idea to ban supersize sodas because it is not healthy for you either. Smoking is banned from so many places, that it would be easier to designate the few one or two places where you can enjoy smoking. Same here: it is not healthy for you. 

In a country that is known for both, its consumerism and its freedom, we suddenly find ourselves not free to consume as we please. 

And while the marketing screams that the state cares for you, reality makes the city resemble more and more to an overbearing Chaperone who fines you, fights you in court and puts you behind bars if necessary - once more: with the best intentions in mind.

The latest addition to the Chaperone's resume being an ad I noticed in the subway station: A campaign that aims to shield youths from tobacco displays. Meaning: stores should hide the cigarettes they intend to sell, because according to a non specified research "...kids who shop at stores with tobacco marketing two or more times a week are 64% more likely to start smoking than their peers who don’t." Needless to say that questions about validity and research forms arise en masse. 

I was on my quest for my own little test research. Being a legal adult for a few decades now, I decided to get in touch with the average New York 'minor' and catch up on my reading by purchasing the latest 'Star' Magazine. The 'Star' magazine being a celebrity news magazine in the same style as 'People' or 'US Weekly'. The sad truth, like it or not, is that gossip replaced Victor Hugo a long time ago. 

Fact is that out of 74 pages, 23 pages are full page ads. And out of the 23 ads, two winners were crowned easily: TV shows advertising on 8 full pages followed very closely by 'How to drop 1 jean size in 2 weeks' ads on 7 full pages.

Let's assume for a short half minute that the laws I mentioned above are truly acting in our best interest. Let's assume the laws are right: If we see something we buy something. I can probably speak only for myself but I would definitely buy Starbucks coffee only, as I can see it on each block. I would also eat tons of street food and spend half of my paycheck on H&M before joining the US army as I am sure that deep inside of me, I am a hero too. I would also end up watching those TV shows like Tia & Tamera or Chicagolicious, with their complicated titles that invite for misspelling or copy/pasting and offer zero educational background. I would also believe that these reality TV shows are reality. And all the time I would be enjoying loosing fat at the speed of light. On the couch. But at least I would be a non smoker who doesn't drink diet coke.

  

At the end of the day, the more laws we allow to pass that take over our own responsibilities and consumer preferences,  the less we will find ourselves responsible for our own lives. Incapable in the long run to be self-sufficient or act independently when not under Chaperone's protective wings. We would be more prone to manipulation before slowly but surely finding ourselves walking backwards, debase the parent and the education we enjoyed by becoming minors again trapped in the body of an adult. But isn't it marvelous that we are still granted the right to vote the next president?


 .

In someone else's shoes...

©Saman Giraud

Mud

How I despise the words of those who accused me of being happy
Accused as if it was simply a mark given by birth
Accused as if it was simply a seed of luck growing on my earth
Accused, accused, accused as if it was not me who turned happy
But happiness turned to me

Mud, mud, mud it was
Mud all over me

How I despise the words of those who accused me of being happy - as if by chance
Judgements of those too blind to see - kings and queens of ignorance
Bathing in the velvet throne of comfort, in a dark room separated from hope
Surrounded by a wall built by the sad remains of the hand cut last rope
Efforts unborn, already dead
Buried deep in muddy earth, left alone, they fled
Their hands seemed clean from mud, but their skin was dyed in red

Mud, mud, mud it was
Mud all over me

It was at dawn when fear came over you
When shadows grew tall and sight was taken from you to seek truth
When roads behind you suddenly disappeared
And in a starless night the endless unknown neared

It was at night when mud grabbed your feet
When each step ahead was one step too deep
When happiness you thought you know well
Was made of words you could not spell

And while you buried hope right there and then
I walked the road not knowing of its end
I walked the road in darkness, blind and by myself
With no hand to hold and fear my only friend

I sank, I sank, I sank my friend
Buried in mud, I died, it was an end
But darkness passed like a seasons change
My skin a crispy desert, newborn and strange

Murder, you who killed your spirit
An empty shell of life is what remained!
You who dress in life and judge is you who should be ashamed.

It is the mud that is my happiness
My hands are dirty for everyone to see
I am life - not more not less
The mud all over me.

The Mermaid 2

©Saman Giraud

The Mermaid

I was looking down at my necklace, holding the pendant of a little mermaid gently in the open palm of my hand.

She said: "That's cute! "

I replied: "It's a mermaid! When I was little, I used to believe that I was a mermaid. Nothing could convince me that I was not...I was never mad at people for not being capable to understand or willing to accept, so I mostly kept this precious secret to myself. Nothing could ever destroy or even touch this belief - not even the visible lack of a fishtail."

She said: "So what did finally convince you?"

"Nothing", I said and laughed.

Midnight in Paris

'All cowardice

comes from not loving

or

not loving well

- which is the same thing.'

Woody Allen

Fashion Night Out In NYC

It was one of those perfect New York City nights...The city was as bright as ever, lights in every form and every color seemed to turn even the darkest corners of the city into a living stage. Music filled the late summer air only to be carried away by a light breeze and to merge somewhere in this clear night with loud, blissful laughter and jumbled chit-chat. The meatpacking district was flooded with performers, walking in every possible direction, taking over the streets and making them their own because tonight was the night where every performer was a protagonist - it was Fashion Night Out. 

When a wave of beauty in such diversity and grandeur crosses our way, we can let ourselves be carried away or hold on for a moment and watch - be the orgiast or the voyeur.

I stopped at the corner of 13th street and Washington and the longer I stood there, the more I enjoyed what was happening around me. The protagonists of the night were dressed at their very best: high heels and higher heels were clicking their way through the cobble stone pavement. Sheer, lace and sequins were walking hand in hand with the classic black 2 button suit. Skin was everywhere: shorts and hot pants, midi and mini skirts, dresses and gowns, sleeveless tops and bustiers. There was no doubt: skin was the fabric of choice. Panama hats, top hats, cowboy hats and fedoras adorned some heads, while others had chosen luscious feathers, beaded headbands and head scarves from Gucci to Pucci. And in the midst of all the fashion was the indispensable NYC traffic consisting of cars, yellow cabs and gypsy cabs, limos and stretch limos, fire trucks and NYPD cars blinking and honking in order to make their way, even if slowly through the never-ending waves of crowds. 

It appeared to me that every thing that exists or could possibly exist was represented right here in this very moment at this very corner. Every country was represented, every style lived out, vintage and new, young and restless, male and female, heterosexual, bi, gay and transgender. It was one of those precious moments that reminded me that despite or maybe because we live on a tiny island like Manhattan that shelters almost 1,6 million people, where we feel physically constricted at times, for very obvious and legitimate reasons, we have the luxury to have the limitless space for individuality.

Fashion Night Out captures the legendary spirit of the city and all I could do was smile and think: New York, I love you.

Homework

Known amongst teachers as the great intersection between school and home and amongst almost everybody else as the largest possible detour on your way to leisure-time: Homework.


We thought it was part of school, moved forward , closed a chapter and went to college afterwards only to find Homework again. There it was 'Chapter 2'. And once college was part of our past too, once we started working, even then, Homework sticked to us and became part of our present: 'Chapter 3'.


In our private lives, figuring out who we are is strikingly similar to a school assignment: a never ending loop of never ending questions that need to be answered. 

The message that Homework would be not only an essential part of our lives but also a never ending story, got somehow lost or was simply never sent. Maybe Michael Ende was just not as famous as I thought he was...


The best intentions in mind to make our lives better, Homework can leave us confused to a point where we need private lessons. In life, the private tutor is replaced by friends, summer school by a therapist. The reluctance to deal with it, creates an importance and urgency in everything else. And suddenly we realize the significance of having an organized bookshelf by author and theme. And before we know it, we confess our love for vacuum cleaning...But nothing beats the 24/7 job, number 1 US export, widely presented as 'dedication and success' or even ' professionalism'.


But when homework is in the air, no wind is strong enough to carry it away. We can push the deadline and bend it a little bit, but at the end of the day there is no way to bypass it. And while reflection trumps denial, the latter is what is, unfortunately, written on most people's forehead. All of my friends agree, nothing written on ones forehead can look appealing.

Because life is a constant stream of changes in which we swim, constantly changing too, the easiest way to fulfill this already difficult task is taking care of it when changes happen. At the end of the day the only thing that should be written on ones forehead should be wrinkles of thoughts. And maybe we should simply ask ourselves: Do we really want to keep on repeating the same classes over and over again?