Lignes de vie
A promenade through the ages of life, time and space through six genealogical trees
(Genealogical tree of a man)
Why does life pass over certain branches while others only have a heritage of melancholy? The child carries the name of the father, but the genes and the history of both parents. It is only a name, a simplified identity hiding hundreds of patronymics.
Additions, sawed branches, others tied up or cut, sometimes patched up. Like our history that constructs our selves, invents itself, knows itself and then forgets.
Made of cracks and happy coincidences, it remains that Man is constructed of all these little stories, a living, unsettled and moving unity.
(Genealogical tree of a family)
What do we claim to be? In this tree where the past and present mingle, truth and falsehood are both hidden and disclosed.
Who are we and who are they? Does the plaster camouflage for appearance or does it repair and solidly link two branches to one another? On occasion, they detach themselves, allowing the bare wood to appear.
Certain lines seem as though they did want to, could not, or did not know how to conceal or adorn themselves. Are they more real, more natural, or more ignorant? In any case, they are more visible and allow the moss to colonize them.
And the branches of life, red, make this family possible.
(Genealogical tree of a place)
It follows that countries, like individuals, are made up of current and additional influences.
Those who are there, those who have been, those who build, and those who take over. Can we return to the places of our history; do they keep a trace of our passage, humble though it may have been? I have long searched for an attic where the fragments of a past happiness would be gathered. I was searching for the location of a possible memory.
There, in that land where they read from right to left, the passage of different people has been inscribed. The fractures and the mixtures gave it its colours. In the red branches beats the heart of all; life is a human event. The nest sets down on the life lines.
Memory is possible, and life as well.
(Genealogical tree of memory)
They are here and they accompany us. If memory is again possible, then we need to give it its place. A majestic centenarian tree that catches the sun in its branches nourishes the birds with its fruits and, with its leaves, transforms the wind into music.
Pruned branches forming nothing more than the memory of a tree, dried buds that will never produce fruit or leaves. Representing nothing but the misery of humanity. And all the other branches of other trees, from other places and times, precipitated with them. And then, against all expectations, a bud flowers, finding enough sap to give itself life once again.
Hence remaking the tree, in homage, in memory, as a sepulchre, and blessing it. Engraved in its trunk is the prayer of their salute, again and again. Placing a stone as a witness to our passage, our recognition, and honouring life.
(Genealogical tree in becoming)
And when all is said, when the memory has surfaced and we can tame it, comes the time to continue on our path.
But where to go, which path to take? Long shaken by the past, by desires that we believed were our own, deciding to become who we are.
Making the wish, the promise to oneself, and admitting what holds us back in the past in order to be able to detach ourselves from it.
On the crossed tree, the mystical tree that dances with life, facing ourselves in an enclosed space, a forest of possibilities, tying a ribbon that will dance as well.
(Genealogical tree of life)
Alone at birth and alone at death, alone in the crowd and the only one knowing of himself. Solitude may have seemed to a man as his only companion.
Meanwhile, sometimes, he recognizes in others a part of himself, is united by thought with souls that he may not always know. He believes that he has a destiny, and through this, he knows. Finally on his path, man can see himself as a part of whole.
A ma mère oeuvre son