Behind my mask, Your Reflection

I have never stopped searching for the origin of my being, tracking the reasons that shaped my current identity. It is a constant obsession. Is it not yours as well? Our actions sometimes escape us, becoming senseless, and we turn our gaze toward others in an attempt to translate ourselves. Sometimes, we go as far as seeking our own reflection in another, hoping finally to find that understanding which the silence of our soul denies us. We all go through trials and joys that shape us, experiencing feelings we believe to be unique. But deep down, are we not all seeking the same thing? To find that other person who, through their own experience, shares the same emotional frequency and finally gives us the feeling of being understood.

The understanding of life’s mechanisms came late for me. I had to wait until I read C. Jung to validate my own intuitions and finally name the invisible. What a dizzying thought that if the film of my life could have been projected in reverse, the knowledge of our energy cycles would have spared me many storms. No doubt the deep meaning of this work would have appeared more clearly if I had started from the end. It is this culmination, this wisdom of energy acquired through my trials, that I now wish to analyze in your company. I decided to write because there are destinies so incredible that they cannot remain silent. Through these extraordinary stories, I wish to offer you a mirror: you will undoubtedly find fragments of your own story and those emotions that, although personal, unite us all.

The last-born of a sibling group with marked gaps, twenty years separate me from my eldest brother and ten years from the younger one. I was the unforeseen, that "accident" occurring while my parents were already aging. My mother dreamed of a girl; she saw a little boy arrive, but her desire to live was already well anchored. To soothe her disappointment, she chose to dress me as a little girl for the first three years of my life. Fortunately, I have kept no apparent scars from it. My childhood oscillated between Parisian tumult and the serenity of our country house. There, almost every weekend, I escaped into a universe that became my true passion: that of animals.

At five years old, my playground was my father’s workshop. Between the sparks of welding, the rigor of electricity, and the manipulation of metals, I tamed technology long before understanding its theories. This early and atypical know-how became one of the foundations of my journey. There was a particular resonance for music within me. My mother surprised me one day reproducing, from memory and with two fingers, the musical themes of daily life. Observing that I possessed perfect pitch, she saw a talent to be exploited.

Between a father absorbed by his business and a mother exhausted by household chores and the management of the company, the affection I so desperately needed was lost in the whirlwind of daily life. She did not realize the void she left in me; a void that was added to the generational abyss separating me from my brothers. In the heart of this family agitation, I was, in reality, profoundly alone. My true childhood companion was this solitude.

Then came the time for schooling in a boys' school. For my parents, it was inconceivable that I should associate with the opposite sex, a compartmentalization that would certainly mark my future life as a teenager. Driven by the need to belong to a clan, I began to discreetly steal a coin or two from my mother’s purse. This stolen money was not a whim for me, but my entry ticket to camaraderie. It was my first rebellion, my first strategy to buy myself a social life. As I grew older, my quest for resources became more systematic, making the slightest misplaced change disappear. But that year, my interest shifted toward a saving figure: my schoolteacher. I never stopped showering her with gifts, bringing her delicately embroidered handkerchiefs and flowers chosen from the local shopkeeper. But this escalation stopped abruptly when my mother and my teacher met after school. My teacher poured out thanks for this generosity, to the point of feeling embarrassed herself. My mother immediately understood my scheme and chose not to breathe a word of it to my father.

My punishment was immediate: I was torn from the secular school to be sent to a much more rigorous religious institution. My master, a man in a black beret and grey smock, hid behind his joyful mood an implacable severity toward me. An invitation one Thursday afternoon to my teacher’s home was decisive: the contact of my hands with the organ and its harmonies transported me. But this was not my only love at first sight. I also succumbed to the charm of the sixth-grade teacher, a pretty blonde with a perfumed trail whose sweetness captivated me.

Sent to boarding school like one enters prison, I first felt lost facing the demands of the place. But this carceral regime was the spark of my personal revolution. By learning to navigate between harsh teachers and classmates with broken lives, I paradoxically discovered the meaning of the word "freedom."

My father’s announcement, refusing to support my medical studies because of his advanced age, had killed my ambition. From then on, I lived only for the harmonies of the piano and the organ, largely encroaching upon my school time.

I granted myself every hour spent at the organ, transforming my cell into a private academy. I ask you: faced with parents who refuse to let you become who you are in the name of their own aging, would you not have felt that same desire to slip into secrecy? To cut short my ambitions, my parents moved me to a technical school, an education completely opposed to my professional goals.

Through a client of my father, I had the privilege of approaching the great organ of Saint-Eustache, an absolute masterpiece of global instrumental art. The shock was immediate. Before the majesty of this grandiose instrument, I lived a spiritual experience transcending everything I had known until then. My spirit was literally transported, finally finding a resonance equal to my wildest dreams of freedom. In my misfortune, luck placed me in the presence of an organ builder. A strong bond was quickly established between us, woven through our exchanges on the art of craftsmanship.

Bursting with musical energy, I decided with Father Dominique, a close friend of my brother who had entered the Capuchin order, to form a vocal and instrumental ensemble. This project marked a turning point, not only for my artistic practice but also for my personal life. There I met a young girl, Catherine, a member of the choir, who stirred an unprecedented emotion within me. By breaking my piggy bank for a moped, I offered myself much more than an engine: I offered myself the Parisian night. My parents remained calm, convinced of my presence at the church, while I was already venturing into the wild streets of Les Halles. From Rue du Cygne to Rue Saint-Denis, the spectacle of these "beautiful creatures" in their finery fascinated me. It was my first confrontation with a plural and carnal femininity, far from the unique and sacred image of the mother. I burned to understand this world that had been so carefully hidden from me. I felt the brutal decompression of a spring compressed for too long; my desire for freedom became insatiable.

I was in search of love; I thought I had found the way to offer myself what I had never received, making a grave mistake by associating the physico-emotional aspect with love. Around one in the morning, the silence of the nave was broken by the five keyboards of the instrument. In that darkness, I lived an experience of pure transcendence. Carried away by the music, I was transported into an unknown dimension, a divine place where my thoughts created matter. It was neither an illusion nor a dream. This incursion into the sacred gave me a new strength, an inner certainty that neither betrayals nor the aggressiveness of my environment could ever totally erase again.

While my relationship with Catherine remained platonic, it was no less of an absolute force: she represented my first love. However, her parents' concern came to break this momentum. Through Father Dominique, during a family lunch, religious authority intruded into my private life. His advice to break up, motivated by Catherine’s studies, was felt as a betrayal. It was a deep wound, a violent halt at the very moment I was finally beginning to exist on my own.

The arrival of summer vacation was my lifeline to withstand the shock of this imposed breakup. I found refuge in my uncle and aunt’s estate, a four-star hotel-restaurant in Cannes. My aunt’s volcanic temperament eventually caused an earthquake: pushed to the limit, her head chef resigned loudly in the middle of the tourist season. It was in this prestigious wake that my project matured: to make artistic production my profession.

I had completed, unbeknownst to me, the most radiant period of my life. The spotlights of Cannes were fading to make way for a completely different setting. Without transition, I was preparing to leave the peaks of my burgeoning freedom to begin a dizzying plunge into the abyss. My adventure as a boarding school supervisor, a job allowing me to pursue my studies, ended abruptly because of what I then considered my asset: my mature appearance. This dismissal only reinforced my desire to become a producer. But the announcement of my project triggered a panic fear in my father regarding legal consequences. To protect himself, he had my emancipation pronounced.

The judgment was not a liberation for me, but a banishment. In the living room, my father informed me that by becoming an adult by law, I lost my right to the home. "You leave today," he decided. He handed me three hundred one-hundred-franc bills as the price for my silence and my absence. Although I replied with contempt that I was not begging, reality forced me to take the sum. I went toward that hotel in the 15th arrondissement, paid two months in advance, with a heavy heart, understanding that my father had just gotten rid of his last son. My brothers had known this fate, but my father had chosen to inflict this "wisdom" on me much earlier than expected.

Try to imagine the distress of a seventeen-year-old adolescent, suddenly orphaned by his living parents. Alone in the heart of the Parisian jungle, projected into adulthood without transition, I felt the violence of a rupture I had never wished for. The family cord, which I had never dared to cut, had just snapped under the weight of a cold paternal calculation. I went from the splendor of Cannes to a makeshift room with faded curtains, where luxury was reduced to a small hotel soap on the edge of the sink.

It was in this absolute urgency that a providential friend allowed me to finalize my production budget. This project under a big top was no longer just a boy’s dream, but my life buoy. I learned brutally that to create, one sometimes had to start by losing everything. My "beer festival" was turning into a financial fiasco. The temporary workers I had hired were stealing from the till in plain sight of everyone, except me, for I was too trusting.

The maturity of my face was no longer enough; I needed legal proof of my adulthood: I decided to falsify my passport by correcting my birth date on an identity card that I had intentionally torn. Armed with this new "me," I set out in search of financial support. Imagine yourself alone in the jungle of Paris, with the void as your only horizon, both before and behind you. It was in this state of psychological deprivation that a man named Jacques, a film producer, opened the doors of his office in the 17th district to me. In a few words, the scale of my ambitions shifted: it was no longer about small productions, but a project of international scope with Morocco, supported by the Moroccan Crown.

My ruse regarding my age had finally led me to where history was being written on a grand scale. Jacques proposed that I take over the leadership of his company, on the sole condition that I finance his mission expenses in Morocco. The situation was one of cruel irony: how could I help him when, stripped of everything, I was scouring Paris in search of my own funding? I found myself facing a man offering me a paper throne in exchange for money I had not yet found for my own survival. It was a total impasse, a distorting mirror of my own distress. Without any experience in the banking world and armed only with my naivety, or perhaps my audacity, I considered the unthinkable. A bank assured me that a loan was possible based on my income. Jacques provided me with fictitious pay stubs for the preceding months, a subterfuge that, against all odds, worked: my application was accepted, and I received the funds ten days later, equivalent today to approximately 34,500 Euros.

Bolstered by my success, I went to a travel agency I had spotted during my commutes. I explained the situation to the agency manager, who, convinced by my projections, opened an account for us and issued our first tickets to Rabat. I had just financed my own boss... My life turned upside down. Consider this: one day you have nothing, you are nothing, and the next you are at the Tour Hassan hotel, in the midst of princes. This meteoric rise took me as far as Rome, before the trap snapped shut during that burning summer of 1976. Sick from Whisky, I was sent away like a useless burden by a Jacques who had already consumed my services.

I indicated to Jacques my need for stability, which he resolved provisionally by having me live in hotels at the company’s expense, favoring four-star establishments for their dining services. A simple telex was enough to request that the bill be sent to the company. The airfare invoices were coming due, threatening the travel agency. I could not hide. My responsibility, though moral, was engaged. I had to find a quick solution to settle these unpaid debts that Jacques ignored. It was a race against time to save the agency and preserve the honor I had left, no matter the price.

An idea came to me: to find the seller of a valuable car and pay for it with staggered installments. The seller, having no immediate need for money, accepted the transaction, and I drove away from Blois behind the wheel of a magnificent Maserati, even though I was not yet old enough to obtain a driver’s license... It was sold, allowing me to settle the outstanding invoices.

My next challenge was clear: the production of a film. I wanted to leave nothing to chance and set out to assemble a first-rate team, pairing an experienced director with actors of international stature. This project was the synthesis of everything I had learned until then: the audacity of my seventeen years was being put to the service of a demanding artistic creation, aiming for the heights of the film industry.

One morning, while I was enjoying my breakfast at the Hotel Nikko, my world collapsed. An inspector from the judicial police came to tear me away from my luxury to take me into police custody. The truth came out coldly: Jacques had not settled any of the bills from my stays. In the eyes of the law, I was the only one responsible and was charged with fraud .To top off the misfortune, the first installment intended for the vehicle seller was returned unpaid, triggering a new complaint. My "strategy" for stability had transformed into a legal trap with no way out. In a matter of hours, all my projects shattered. The investigating judge decided to place me in detention for about ten days; I was devastated.

Faced with the impasse of my case, my lawyer played an unexpected card: he presented me with the project of a sixty-year-old algorithmic mathematician. This man of science claimed to have discovered a mathematical flaw in the game of roulette. My mission? To put my moral principles to the service of applying his system in the field. I remained stunned, a smirk on my face, unable to conceive that a calculation could subdue the ivory ball. It was the world turned upside down: after the film swindler, I was meeting the man of rigorous demonstration. The experiment began in a derisory manner: a board game roulette on a living room table. Yet, the result was strikingly real.

Jean-Michel, my lawyer, took the leap: he would finance the operation in Baden-Baden. Held back by his professional obligations, he delegated his power to me. I became his sentinel, tasked with guarding the capital and executing the method in the most prestigious casino in Germany. For 500 francs net per day, about 380 euros today, I became the executor of high mathematical works. I showed up at Gare de l’Est with 70,000 francs (more than 53,000 current euros) in my luggage. Mr. Raymond welcomed me. Far from the image of a scholar, he had the look of an English gentleman, jovial and neat. The alliance between this improvised English Lord and the young man I was, entrusted with a fortune, was not without its charm. We settled into a hotel overlooking the Black Forest, located about a twenty-minute walk from the casino, offering an absolutely marvelous view of the landscape. I discovered Baden-Baden with amazement and wonder.

Meanwhile, my bond with Ulrike, the hotel employee, was turning into an increasingly deep intimacy. Taking advantage of Mr. Raymond’s trip to Paris, I enjoyed a few well-deserved days of rest. It was during one of these evenings that someone scratched gently at my door: it was Ulrike coming to join me, marking the beginning of an enchanted interlude.

After a stay with her parents in Germany, I invited Ulrike to Paris to meet mine. When I announced our decision to get married to my parents, the news was met with a tense silence. My father took me aside for an unequivocal warning: "You are much too young, you are only nineteen; this girl is not right for you."

However, Ulrike’s disagreement with her environment in France was becoming unbearable; she yearned to return to her homeland, promising me that her network would allow us to bounce back. I eventually gave in to her request.