Complex consciousness

The street was very alive for this time of day. They were still there wandering from one band to another, watching the different performances. But she wanted to be home. She had her pockets full of stollen belongings and was only longing now for her baby waiting in the dark room of the first floor. She could imagine the cries of her infant and the shouts of the nanny, and during one moment they joined the rumbling noise of the street. She then realized she could actually hear the complaints coming from her left and spotted a young woman, struggling with her own child. She knew her: she went to her house a couple of times. A two-floors mansion with more doors than in a castle. She remembered the smell of grilled meat and the green stairway carpet that softened the sounds of the footsteps. She wanted to have it for her; the baby wouldn't wake up each time her husband come home late in the evening with his large black boots.

But it was out of reach of her thief's talents.

The enraged musician

People where everywhere in the street. The music was flowing from all sides, each "musician" trying to make more noise than the one next to him. A real madness. It was nearly too easy for her then, every single one distracted by the cacophony.

She had beautiful black gloves, but no one looked at them. Not even when she slipped a graceful, tiny hand into some old woman pocket. Not much, a couple of rusty coins. She said hello to a baby while taking a few ribbons out of his mother's dress.

She stood paralyzed half a second when a young boy ran into her, but he continued his way purchasing some ill-looking dog.

She wore her most beautiful dress and lots of jewelry that once belonged to someone else. The perfect camouflage. The man at her arm, her fiancée, had no idea of what was going on right before his eyes. And he never questioned her obvious wealth: she was after all a very busy woman.

Skilled.

What is a skill ?

I never gave much thoughts to this question before. I am a partisan of every kind of learning and a fierce believer that the mere notion of talent, that some people confuse with skill, is an aberration. Some people have biological abilities toward some technics, and some have learning at ease, thanks to some DNA segment of theirs chromosomes. But nothing compared to what is the common understanding of the idea of talent, which appears as some kind of fate-given mastering of a skill. The few times I heard someone saying “You are talented” to someone else, it made me mad. That some people choose to deny the tremendous amount of time and energy put into training is only an excuse for themselves no to try mastering this specific skill, would it be cooking or painting or singing. You just have to pay the price.

Mastering a skill requires time. Training period. Sometimes just a few hours, sometimes years. Is walking and standing up not a basic skill, but a skill nonetheless ? Surely everyone see babies with no capacity of commotion, and then see them crawling, then standing, then walking and running. Those who deny walking as a skill should be reminded not only of disabled people, but of other species. Each species masters its own skills according to their biological capacities. This obvious example raises some questions and answers that stand for the accepted idea of skill.

There are at least two kinds of skills: the job-related ones, that you have to learn to “survive” in the society, and the ones people develop as hobbies, out of a passion that grew inside them for some reason. I believe that one interesting achievement in someone's life would be that both those kinds connects in a way: being more and more passioned about your work or turning your mastering of your favorite skills into a job. This is certainly why I am studying painting, and arts more generally speaking.

One obvious aspect that stands out after discussing with people about their skills is the pleasure that accompanies the fact of being particularly skilled in something. You became passionated about something by discovering, studying its details and controlling them. Mastering a skill is a personal achievement that people are proud of. Indeed, it makes us more unique, since everyone does not share it and can not possibly do it because of the time and physical abilities it can require. Even though some people might be better at it or simply as good as you are, it makes you belong to a certain category, a class of people with specific abilities thus a better, more renowned, recognized social status. It is a competition, some being more aware of it and paying more attention to their entourage appreciation than others.

I often wondered if it would be better to be really skilled in one specific field, or have a wide range of skills less developed. Tricky, right ? I suppose there is some in-between level, and that is what I am personally looking for. The danger is to be carried away by a large number of interests which require appropriated skills. But the pleasure of being skilled lies in its very details, that one can aim to acknowledge and control only through a close and long relationship with it.

You could also dissociate technical abilities and intellectual ones. They complete each other and should be developed as such to obtain maximum self-satisfaction. It is great to sing really well, but wouldn't it be better – on a personal angle – to write yourself the songs you want to sing ? Not doing so can result in frustration regarding an incomplete pair of skills. Maybe this applies for myself only and can't be widespread. I am sure that a lot of strictly “intellectual” people and as least as much “manuel workers” are quite happy with their skills the way they are. I must be greedy.

Time and passion.

10 steps masterpiece !

1) Take a bunch of random pictures in your daily life. Take some more during your travels.

2) Select the pretty ones, and those other ones you like but you have no idea why. You can print them if you want, doesn't really matter. The laptop screen is fairly enough for the next steps.

3) Look into your neighboorhood garbages for flat surfaces: wood panels, cardboards (ligther than wood: remember that you have to carry them !). Grab that rag too, you don't want to use your old t-shirt that you don't wear anymore.

4) Put one or two layers of white gesso to make the viewer (and yourself) believe it does not come from a trash-basket and, more importantly, it won't end there neither.

5) Let it dry, you don't want to rush things, you are an artist. Watch some TV shows to kill time. Pretend you are doing research.

6) Choose one of the pictures, some flat brushes and a couple of tiny pointy ones; set up some oil paint on your palette (you don't need so much white, don't waste !)

7) Reproduce the picture onto the surface with the tools listed in 6).

8) Struggle.

9) Stop when you can't take it anymore. It looks unfinished to you, but everyone loves it that way.

10) Wait a few weeks (watch movies), and look at it again: it is perfect after all.

Royaume d'Adria - WIKI

Les collines étaient insensibles à la bataille qui faisait rage sur ses flancs. Les maisons de Marino se moquaient bien des femmes de toutes âges et des enfants apeurés qu'elles abritaient.

Les troupes du pape consommaient leur foi inépuisable dans un combat gagné d'avance.

Les troupes du duc se battaient avec la promesse d'un royaume qui n'existera jamais.

L'antipape avait promis des terres riches. Riches de blés et de rivières, de belles italiennes et de maisons blanches où le vin coulait à flot. Le duc combattait avec l'espoir; le pape combattait avec la certitude.

La guerre débuta dans une magnifique organisation de part et d'autre dans le creux de la vallée.

Cela ne dura pas.

Les croix furent tachées de sang, les blasons souillés dans la boue.

Le royaume d'Adria n'existera pas.

Pathologie professionnelle - WIKI

La lumière n'éclaire pas bien loin. Fixée sur son casque, elle se fraye un chemin à travers la poussière qui enveloppe la scène. Une main crispée, immobile, émerge du bas de l'éboulis. Il faudra plusieurs heures pour récupérer ce qu'il reste de Stenson.

Un bruit surgit du néant. Des bruits. Pete se rend compte que le souffle de l'explosion a surement dû lui couper l'audition durant un court moment d'éternité. Il est toujours à terre, contre la parois, là où il fut projeté. Il n'a pas envie de se lever. Il n'en aura jamais plus l'envie, au cours des brèves années qu'il lui restait à vivre. Des échos cherchent les voix des blessés. Des blessés il n'y en a qu'un: Pete. Les trois autres membres de son équipe de forage furent blessés seulement une demi-seconde, la mort fut trop rapide.

Sa lumière en rencontre d'autres. Alors ces lumières l'immergent tout à fait, le vacarme des pas et des voix, l'assome, des mains - vivantes - le soulèvent, le touchent, le blessent. Les parois de son nez sont recouvertes d'une épaisse couche de poussière noire, même poussière qui recouvre les traits fins de son visage, ne laissant apercevoir que son dur regard de tristesse. Sa bouche est sèche comme s'il avait essayé d'ingurgiter tout le charbon de la mine.

Il survivrait, il n'en avait aucun doute maintenant qu'il voyait les morts. Il survivrait, et ne remettrai jamais les pieds sous terre, pas même lorsqu'il mourut quelques années plus tard.

Il fut incinéré - poussière - et dispersé sur le lac, là-haut.

Nosferattus occultus - WIKI

Présentation du projet: chaque jour, utiliser la fonction "un article au hasard" de Wikipedia.org pour trouver de l'inspiration hasardeuse quotidiennement.

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Elle n'était pas bien grande, mais cela suffisait amplement à l'horrifier. Elle-même n'était pas bien grande, bien que géante - comparativement - : cela ne suffisait pas à la calmer. Augusta était figée dans son action, telle une statue du Musée Grévin égarée de l'autre côté de l'équateur. La cire n'aurait pas garder les traits durs du visage de la fille longtemps ici, le toit en tôle n'aidant en rien la chaleur humide de la jungle. Elle étouffait. De panique. D'angoisse.

Une araignée sauteuse. Le genre d'araignée que personne n'aime, les bonds représentants une variable bien trop aléatoire pour nos cerveaux de mammifères. Mais celle-ci n'était pas dangereuse, ou du moins, pas mortelle: elle en était sûre. Pourquoi alors cette peur profonde ? Cette sensation que son coeur s'est arrêté mais qu'il bat plus vite que jamais en même temps ?

Elle l'ignorait. Tout le monde dans le village se moquait d'elle, mais qu'y pouvait-elle ? Elle porta sans réfléchir sa main sur son épaule, cachant inconsciemment la double cicatrice, minuscule. Elle ne s'en souvenait même pas, de ce jour où elle faillit partir rejoindre les anciens. Ni de ce jour, ni de tous ceux d'avant. Elle avait alors neuf ans, et perdit toutes ces années dans ce traumatisme.

Il ne lui restait que la peur.

Destruction. - 30 min

They went up there, in the mountains, with the small car empty but for the two of them.

They parked right next to the lodge, alone in the woods above the village.

They started by emptying the rooms of the few furnitures that were there. A couple of stuffed chairs smelling of dead ashes, no space for a couch. A table that could be unfolded to support eight plates full of potatoes, cheese, ham and the same amount of wine glasses. They smashed the glass plates in the backyard, the pieces bursting without harming the old tree that stands there, isolated from his ones by a patch of yellow grass. They will cut him down too, eventually, when they re done with the house.

The large bed of the main bedroom, with its mattress too soft, his ugly cushions, went through three doors before reaching the fore that was awaiting him out in the garden. They started it like any regular chimney-fire, using the logs they had to get rid of. A sort of last minute hommage. They threw by the window and through the upper-access door (it was built in the mountain slope) the few mattresses that were lying directly on the floor. Some sleeping bags followed, souvenir from the grand-parents hikes, when they were still alive.

The fire outside was getting bigger. The pillows thrown in were spitting small white and brown feathers in the warm air above the flames. Last snow on the house.

The rooms were empty, the air smelled more smoky than usually.

They went onto the roof and took of one by one the stales they stood on, making exploding noises on the floor that lingered in front of the house as they were thrown there.

The flames were reaching the branches of the old tree. It bursted in flames in a few minutes thanks to his dead automnal leaves.

They jumped of the roof. Nothing more to do but to wait. They got into the car, stepped back.

The burning giant felt onto the roof-less house, smashing it, sharing its flames with the wooden frame that held the house in one piece.

It was gone.

Silent dialogue. - 10 min

"I forgot the next line" whispers Anna.

Lucy can't believe what she just heard. All those months of rehearsing, all those people in front of her, waiting for something to happen, to be said. This can not be real.

Anna is starting to look pale. This is it, she thought, she is going to kill me after the show. No, she's going to kill me right here, right now, on this stupid stage.

She can hear the other's mind saying Say something, anything, improvise ! But her eyes only reply: I am sorry, I am so sorry.

Anna can feel the grip of Lucy's hands onto hers, saying, shouting her rage. She can only reply with a shiver going through her whole body, communicating it to the other actress with her hands, her trembling fingers.

Helicopter. - 15 mins

He has been waiting for forty-five minutes. Alone on this side of the island, he could feel the cold slowly getting into him, his strength diminishing with each move he was trying to make. His leg was torned in some uncanny shape after his fall of the small cliff. Hopefully some tourists finally saw him, them at the top, him at the bottom. But it would all be ever now. The helicopter was here.