In the morning, upon waking
When I was a kid, waking up in the morning, especially in winter, was a repetitive chore, a difficulty that I overcame only in adulthood, although…
My mother had advised me to get into the habit of preparing my clothes and my schoolbag the day before, a practice I did only occasionally; most mornings, after hearing countless times:
“Samuel, you are going to be late for school!”
I got up very slowly, opened one eye, took from my wardrobe a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie of the same color or of colors in the same hues, I put them on, then quickly went to the bathroom, I put my schoolbag on my back, looked at the breakfast left on the table, I always chose the additional half-sleep over it, without ever regretting it. I put on my sneakers carefully, which I wanted to keep clean and white for as long as possible, to impress my classmates, and voila!
Silent during the car ride to school, I consciously took advantage of these last minutes of freedom, before those eight hours of noise, prayers, daily obligations, submissions, exams and religious restrictions: the primary Jewish school.
At the very start of the 1990s, fashion, clothing brands, and sneaker brands had not yet captured our minds and attention as they do today; in this school located in a renowned Parisian suburb, which had the reputation across the country for being poor, dangerous, multicultural, and multiethnic, there were only faint signs of wealth. It wasn't so important that we wore brand logos on our clothes, which conveyed a good style, a decent look, and a slight, petty sense of superiority that boosted the ego for a day. In fact, in this relationship with brands—today a symbol of social status, good taste, elegance, identity, and individuality—we were just beginning, at the very start of what would grow increasingly important over the next two decades, eventually leading to an obsession with displaying brands and expressing oneself through them, which exploded exponentially into realms of futility and superficiality.
The community of little Supermen
In 1995, in this small Jewish enclave, families would meet at school, then find themselves again a few hours later at the kosher supermarket; they would part for the space of a few moments to see each other again in the town centre gardens or not far away, at restaurants run by some parents. We lived in the world, while being separated from it, as in a hermetic village, an enclave impermeable to the world, 15 km north of the city of light, the one that attracted all gazes.
My classmates and I did not grow up carrying this circumstantial weight, this automatic complex of inferiority, like a ball and chain that many suburbanites develop quite early and continue to nourish afterward, to their detriment, like a continuous and senseless flagellation, because they grew up apart, on the periphery of a rich, famous and lively city: Paris (at least, at that time).
It must also be said that Parisians consider the commuters who live 30 minutes away by train as country bumpkins.
Our small egos of fragile and innocent children were inflated with “religious Helium”
On the contrary, every day, our professors had eyes full of wonder while looking at us, they transmitted to us drop by drop, constantly, this insane and detrimental feeling of superiority, of omnipotence, of magnificence, our small egos of fragile and innocent children were inflated with “religious Helium”, a sort of drug that made the ankles and the head swell. We were the children of the chosen people, the new desired generation of the all-powerful god, we were particular, but not in the sense of different, singular, apart, but rather in the sense of rare, precious, superior, out of the ordinary, like numbered diamonds of an inestimable value, we were budding “Merlin the Enchanter”, miracle workers, half human, half angel, divine supermen, our heroes were old characters who gathered the secrets of god and of the end of times, during secret discussions with the angels; Thanks to them, we were ahead of the world, above all peoples, of all nations, because we knew more.
If there is one thing to never underestimate, it is indeed the strength and the impact of storytelling and of tales on the psychological construction of children, because later, in adulthood, they defend these beliefs to the contempt of common sense and of respect for the human being…
The absence of human idols
At that time, we had no human idols, certainly we adored the boy bands, which were born like mushrooms, the new starlets, blonde and pulpy who knew in turn the joys of a gigantic attention then the oblivion and the denial and the players of our soccer teams, besides the walls of my room were covered with posters of the latter, which I cut out from those newspapers for teenagers, which nourished the erotic fantasies of young men and made the young girls in bloom shudder, sweating with an uncontrollable desire.
I listened on loop to these hits on the radio, these easy melodies, these marshmallow-esque lyrics, but these “artists” whose glory was as short as a cloud passage in a summer sky, were not the object of a cult, of a boundless, unhealthy, and uninhibited adoration, there were no worshippers who idolized celebrities, actors, singers, fanatics who venerated them as superior beings, like what globally happens today; all these puppets of the established power, obeying the cultural directives of governments or dominant small communities, accomplices of sociopathic billionaires, of institutions necrosed by corruption, often infiltrated by members of influential networks or malevolent sects.
We had no idol, neither of stone nor of blood, just a vague idea of the divine, which resembled an all-powerful bearded man in the sky who saw everything, knew everything and rewarded the good and docile children, who obeyed the divine law, the only true one that of Judaism.
A life in the moment, devoid of any hindsight
At school, we bathed in a state of generalised unconsciousness, which protected us like a veil. Stranger to drugs, alcohol, theft and crime or harassment, far from all vulgarity, wrapped in a thick woolen suit, which made our purified reality appear as completely normal and at home, all that we saw, lived, experienced, from the most innocuous to the most bizarre, seemed acceptable to us, in any case, we did not have access to another reality, coming from the outside world, which could help us to compare ours. We grew up without any tool to decipher our lives, to understand our exchanges, to analyse our choices, to decrypt our parents, our families, our relationships with one another and our relationship to the world; We were at the mercy of the adults in this headlong rush, without any proper manual to speak of, in hand.
Whatever happened, we managed with it; we reacted without asking ourselves any questions.
Later, some of us realised that they were the veritable parents in their houses
Without any perspective on ourselves and our close ones, we were like toys, little boats navigating by sight in the middle of a tumultuous ocean, without knowing the risks, the maps, the winds and the storms. We loved our mothers, feared our fathers and whatever happened, we were the children of our parents, who had a divine authority over us; besides, all our professors spent their days reinforcing parental authority, and the state had no right of oversight over the private sphere; it was absent, silent and powerless.
Later, some of us realized that they were the veritable parents in their houses; looking closely at the memories in the rearview mirror of life, we were adults very young, invested with responsibilities early, had an almost innate sense of justice, a sense of duty and of sacrifice even before adolescence, we reproduced the gestures and the decisions of our progenitors by mimicry; filling the absences of our parents who worked late, we were also the parents, the educators and the guardians of our little brothers and sisters.
I did not have a phone in my hand on the public bus I took home from school. Neither worry, nor anguish, nor misplaced curiosity, nor any image in my head. No personality from the world of cinema or of sports whose private life I would have wanted to know, the behind-the-scenes of a ludicrous filming, or the juicy anecdotes of a luxurious and crazy life: no, I had gotten into the habit of sitting down near the window, on the side opposite to the sliding doors, so as not to be disturbed by the comings and goings, like most people, and of pressing my head against the pane to dream for 40 minutes, to daydream about all sorts of things, that I would like to have, often electronic toys, or places where I would like to go, I often dreamed about the end of school, about my 18 years, about that distant horizon, that Eden, when I would be Big, about that long-awaited moment, that grail which would crown my childhood, where I would no longer be obliged to obey, to acquiesce and to undergo that implacable routine.
Homework. One spends one's entire life doing homework, at every age, at all hours, in every place.
In my eyes, adults were free from all my childhood obligations. I would sometimes observe my parents or other grown-ups in inextricable situations. I had not yet verbalised or conceptualised their confusion, doubt, misunderstandings, their communication through hints meant to replace clear explanations, their heavy silences and secrets, which I interpreted as a simple inability or lack of will. I had not yet grasped that they, too, had their obligations, their schedules, their duties, their teachers, their principal; they too, would go to school, a different kind of establishment where the rules were often unspoken, a sort of human jungle where classmates did not play fair at all, did not share their information, they would segment their minds, their lives, led secret existences, had extramarital affairs; adults were complex beings driven by an intrinsic selfishness.
Exactly like us, they too had their hopes and dreams; they would wait for the right moment, the opportunity, the next month, the next paycheck, the following season, and in the meantime, they would endure life with bits of exasperation and desperation, some would keep praying to God—the god of religions, the creation of humankind, the inheritance of time, the god of Abraham: the external god—to grant their wishes, like my teacher at school who was about 28. Pretty and well-proportioned, with a dark complexion, she had a beautiful smile, but could not find a suitable husband. Demanding in matters of religious practice, she would jump from one acquaintance to the next. As the seasons passed, she could hear the whispers: “Past the age of 30, who would want her?”
Around me, women of that age already had several children, like my mother, who had my little brother, her 4th child, during her 30th year.
This teacher, according to the hearsay that I relay to you, while being opposed to all forms of gossip which are primarily the lot of the feminine domain, remained a virgin until her marriage that took place after her 33rd year, deprived until then of sexuality, a need, a desire, a pleasure, an ecstasy, an epiphany, an awakening, a revelation and a psychological and physical transformation that was vital because of a “religious” indoctrination in the name of the external god, the one that absorbed our own divinity. Sad.
Our Sex Education
In my class, made up entirely of boys, we were all of Sephardic origin, meaning we had typical North African faces, olive skin, black eyes and hair, features close to those of our Maghrebi or Arab cousins. As for those with lighter faces, they had Algerian roots (because it was colonised by France…), and the blond, fair-skinned, light-eyed Ashkenazis, heirs to the genetics of the countries of the ex-USSR, were seen as anomalies in the school, somewhat like albinos in Africa.
Some fathers of my classmates, who were originally from Tunisia, had the habit, after the Bar Mitzvah, of taking their sons to lose their virginity with prostitutes, “to teach them about life.” Some of my classmates would proudly come to school, look at the female teachers with a knowing smile, share every detail of their exploits, even though their fathers would have warned them to shut up about it. They had made a gigantic leap towards a mysterious virility, an unexpected maturity; they knew much more than we, the majority of boys who hid behind their mothers' skirts and their fathers' muscles, all while masturbating to the lingerie pages of the thick clothing catalogues sold by mail order.
Too bad for me, my parents were of Moroccan and Algerian origin, and this custom was foreign to them; I was only entitled to fantasy, erotic daydreams, sexy fairy tales, to poetry born from my illusions, the romanticism of suggestive scenes in Hollywood films and to the weekly erotic film shown on television, like Emmanuelle.
In the 90s, these erotic films were, to our immeasurable advantage, our primary source of sexual education, because neither at home nor at school was the subject ever broached. There was a real wall of silence on this topic.
These erotic films, with enchanting poetry lost nowadays, often told the same story: a woman found herself for a few weeks alone in a country house, a widow, or awaiting the return of a husband who didn't care about her or mistreated her, while she loved him sincerely and was devoted to him, somewhat like in Barry Lyndon; she waited naively for him to become the man she had fallen in love with years before once more; she gave signs here and there of despair, ate less, drank more, slept all day, sank deeper into her sadness, and then, without any warning, suddenly, a handsome and charming young man happened to pass by, chatted with her for a few minutes, fed her a few comforting words, she would resist a little, refuse him, push him away but not too far, kept him at a distance, then she softened, let him get closer to her, and ended up letting herself be seduced and succumbing to the charms of this handsome stud, with his broad shoulders and Latin face.
This was followed by long, slow, gentle, and tender erotic scenes where we never doubted the authenticity of the cries of pleasure she uttered in that country house forgotten by the world. I had to see When Harry Met Sally to understand the deception into which the male half of humanity had fallen. What a revelation!
I’ll have what she’s having!
These scenarios would later serve as foundations, alphabet, and grammar for us to construct our own fantasies throughout our adult lives. I remember that quite often, when I saw a pretty girl who pleased me and whom I could not talk to or approach, I would make her the object of a sexual fantasy; I would construct a whole story in my head, with locations, plots, and at the end of each daydream, we would kiss, I would take off her clothes, one after the other; I would enrich these scenes with numerous details, like the colors of her dress, of her underwear, the scents of her perfume, the location, the temperature sometimes summery, sometimes springlike, sometimes freezing outside and burning hot in the bedroom, the intense silence full of desire, the fear of being discovered, the happy “coincidence” that placed us face to face in the middle of this no-man's-land, without a dwelling or a living soul for miles, but, by chance, a large, white, comfortable bed had appeared in the middle of this wheat field a few meters from us.
“Wasn't it crazy? You and me, here, alone? What could we possibly do?”
Yes, fairy tales and erotic films built and wired our relationships to love and to sexuality, but in my case, it is possible that these fantasies led me further than expected.
At the age of 17, I decided to become a film director; I imagined my name next to the greatest Hollywood filmmakers, and at 21, I studied video editing in a film school. I cannot deny the share of responsibility that this poetic and secret sexual education, due to censorship or taboo, had in this career choice. Perhaps Sigmund has an answer, or perhaps it is wise not to uncover everything.
Intense love, above all
In the 90s, we were all wired in the same way. For us, sex and love were undeniably linked like the fingers of the same hand, like the pinky and the ring finger.
Love relationships were, above all, a matter of the heart, where we first had to love each other –feel that deep feeling that we were the two parts of a single soul, the two soulmates reunited on earth by God himself–with a full heart, flooded with love to the brim, to the point of being unable to contain it anymore, to the point of obsession, of shedding tears, of swearing to oneself and to the world that it would be this person and no other, we would be together from the beginning of our love to the grave and even beyond.
Inevitably, the tradition or a moment of weakness would allow sex to enter the pre-marital relationship. The fact that a woman remained a virgin until marriage was common, widespread, accepted, and valued. If she saved herself until the first night, she was considered a saint. Yes, nowadays, that seems crazy! Yet, such were the customs and practices of many religious communities that had infiltrated and defined the common morality for centuries, and we were its heirs.
Where there's a will, there's a way
At home, my mother would constantly repeat to me to do my homework, to get good grades, because one day I would get my high school diploma, then I would study for a long time; it was a song that looped and never stopped, “one day, you will have a real job and a good salary” implying: “you won't struggle like us, from one job to another”– a well-founded certainty since university education to become a doctor, lawyer, or accountant was free in France, so I only had to study and be docile.
When my mother left the apartment, she had the habit of taking the TV antenna with her, the long white cable that connected the television to the antenna socket; she would put it in her bag, and there you go! I was deprived of stupid sitcoms, of senseless, dumb programs like those game shows that rewarded luck and chance instead of knowledge and logic:
“Fortune favors fools and feeble-minded!”
But this technological barrier, like all barriers in life, had a flaw that I was not long in discovering.
In 1998, I was 13 years old. Sitting on the sofa, motionless, frustrated, arms crossed, a little annoyed, I got up and ran my finger along the shelves of the immense bookcase of VHS tapes that my stepfather had carefully arranged, he who was an inveterate cinephile who never failed to talk to us about cinema, music, travel, and foreign languages, (Was he that great door to the outside world in our lives? Certainly.)
Did I absolutely need the antenna to watch TV? The only way to know was to try. I pushed a VHS tape chosen at random into the VCR, looked up, and a few hopeful heartbeats later, I saw the first image appear on the cathode-ray television screen; the sound worked too. Aha! (One of the happiest “aha!” moments of my life.)
I smiled with my teenage face, delighted to have won a battle against the supreme authority of an adult. Without knowing it, I had won a long-term victory.
My mother took several weeks to realise that I was watching movies every time she went out. She deduced it from my lack of reaction or my total silence when she would repeat, almost shouting, before leaving: “Samuel, I'm taking the antenna, no need to come into the living room, finish your homework first!”
She could do nothing, given the size and weight of the object; she wasn't going to take the VCR with her!
In short, it was a happy coincidence, because instead of watching mind-numbing programs, sometimes worse than those of today, I was gorging myself on cult films.
Big, Gremlins, E.T., Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Karate Kid, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Dr No, Crocodile Dundee II. I saw these films countless times, until I knew the funniest scenes by heart.
A small choice of films and a lot of happiness
In our pyjamas, my elder sister and I, like all children at that time, couldn't stop replaying on a loop the funniest scenes that triggered repeated fits of laughter in us. To do this, one of us, often me, would kneel facing the TV stand, fingers on the rewind and play buttons, with my head slightly tilted back, my face a few centimeters from the screen that projected its white light into my eyes; I would replay the same comedic gags dozens of times until we could no longer bear the laughter, until we were euphoric!
- If you are Scottish Lord, then I am Mickey Mouse!
- How dare he!
On weekends, we had our Netflix evening; There was a programming block on the 6th French channel called The Saturday Night Trilogy with an episode of each series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Pretender, and Charmed; we were addicted to these series that we all watched together at the same time.
The Pretender was my favorite; intelligent, brilliant, extraordinary, he had been raised partly in a laboratory, from which he had escaped and which hunted him relentlessly in his adulthood. This centre, twisted and resourceful, was a US-style Machiavellian space for “scientific research,” a sort of factory for the weaponisation of human intelligence.
Jarod led the life of a spy, a vagabond; he switched from one identity to another, all while pursuing this imperturbable quest: to help people and make a difference in this world, without, however, reaping the laurels in front of an audience. Jarod would be relentlessly chased by Miss Parker, the revolver bullet, fast, powerful, and intrepid, one of the most arousing actresses of my teenage years, the blue-eyed brunette, about whom one couldn't help but shout paradoxically: “For God’s sake! Leave him alone!” and “Keep hunting him, we want to see you on screen.”
The series Charmed was a clever, always-renewed mixture of spiritual education and suggestive sensuality, which never fell into vulgarity, a fine line that the creators never crossed.
In Charmed, many spiritual themes were simply introduced to us, like the guardians or the angels on the side of Light and Darkness, the magical formulas or the power of words over reality, karma or the responsibility for one's actions, reincarnation or unfinished business in our lives, the spiritual gifts like clairvoyance, white and black magic, the notion of balance between the two forces, loved ones in the afterlife who watched over and guided us, and romantic dilemmas (like falling in love with a person from the other side of the force). It was like a map of spirituality for kids, which was given to all of us and often differed from the poison we learned at school, which can be summarised as: “Spirituality is religion.”
To embody these stories: three women, three flowers, three flavours: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. If you know the show, you can easily match the character with the flavour.
What was he eating for dinner when he was not with her?
Probably pasta with tomato sauce and a glass of human wine!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to my great surprise, was never forbidden from watching by our parents; they considered it normal for teenagers to be obsessed for hours with vampires who sucked the blood of human prey, then be killed with stakes through the heart, by a chosen one.
Once again, the rather ordinary lives of these characters had become extraordinary, and thus, we can also be heroes through them.
Buffy, far from being the ugliest of actresses, was supported by her friends and the librarian who knew where to investigate in those esoteric books.
Then came her lover, straight from hell to tempt her, necessarily a vampire, again this theme of the romantic dilemma with a person who works for the other side of the force, with the difference that he knew how to restrain his thirst. Aha!
What was he eating for dinner when he was not with her? Probably pasta with tomato sauce with a glass of human wine! Quite a program, my dear children!
Perhaps, repeatedly watching a small group of rebels fight against hordes of vampires, sent by the forces of evil, had an impact on our education, our mentality, our tenacity, and our ability to safeguard our values, like friendship, love, and the unwavering fight for good, like a preparation for the future world, the one that would drain our energy, our attention, our lives from all sides, through work, success, societal and religious expectations, the triumph of the ego, and the technological enemy, which is, without a doubt, the number one vampire today.
Music was sacred, cinema was a celebration
The Cinema Was a Celebration
On Sundays, when my stepfather took us to the movies, it felt like attending an annual festival, an immense collective joy. We would arrive early at the Grand Rex in Paris, to ensure we secured tickets, eager to experience something new and sensational. I remember that impatience, that thrill, and that frenzy in the queue.
When we entered the mythical hall with its vaulted ceiling, it was like passing through a temporal gateway; we changed space-time and travelled to new horizons. In the corridors, we felt the thick red carpet under our shoes, which muffled the sound of footsteps. We stopped to get popcorn and a drink. We entered the cinema auditorium as if crossing a threshold to the stars. Inside, we were amazed by its grandeur, its elegance, its luxury. We walked as if in a temple, silent and respectful. We sat down without making a noise, removed our coats gently, without disturbing anyone. We looked at the unfamiliar faces of the people around us, on which we could sense a contained tension, just minutes away from a sensory journey to a unique and unforgettable destination.
On one side, there was the average quality of a VHS tape watched on a small television screen, and on the other, a giant cinema screen with high-quality sound. Our enjoyment and wonder were equal to the distance that separated the two technological media. It was like driving a Ferrari at full speed on an empty highway, when the only means of transport we knew was the bus, moving cautiously, stuck in traffic jams.
I remember going with my father to see GoldenEye at the cinema on a Saturday night in Montparnasse, a famous area in Paris. The auditorium was so packed that people were sitting on the floor on the stairs. During the opening shots, as James plunged into the void, a religious and intense silence fell; the room was breathless! The intensity of the sounds—the shattering glass, the screams, the Kalashnikov bullets, the tank chase through the streets of St. Petersburg with that music in the background—was insane! It was a grand spectacle, a celebration! Back then, people used to applaud at the end of the movie.
GoldenEye was a sensory orgy that felt absolutely nothing like it had come out of a film studio; it was as if those scenes were real. We felt we were inside the film, somewhat like in The Last Action Hero, where the characters cross through the screen to find themselves in the movie.
Music was sacred
Music held a paramount place in our daily lives. I remember that having a car radio-cassette player was a luxury, a clear sign of wealth and immeasurable pleasure. It might seem silly today, but they were often stolen and resold; there was a real black market for car stereos. Thieves would sell them and install them in the new cars.
Convinced that technological advances were synonymous with progress and improvements, we never imagined that one day they would take over every part of our existence, to the point of becoming our enemy.
In my father's car, on the road trip for our holidays, heading to the campsite, he would blast the music—I'm Still Standing by Elton John. He drove fast, and to add an extra layer of madness to our excitement, he would slam on the brakes to send us lurching forward. We had little room for our legs; it was so packed with bags, cooking pots, and blankets, not to mention the little cooler that plugged into the cigarette lighter.
I was amused by raising and lowering the electric windows with that new magical button—it was astonishing! No longer having to struggle with the little crank that you had to turn 7 or 8 times one way or the other to raise or lower the window, and whose direction you could never remember, was amazing! It was the arrival of technology in our daily lives. Convinced that technological advances were synonymous with progress and improvements, we never imagined that one day they would take over every part of our existence, to the point of becoming our enemy.
It was in these early moments, with this technology that delivered music and gave us such joy, that some people became obsessed with control, neurotic about pleasure, repeating things to the point of exhaustion.
Some would listen to a particular song on a loop until they couldn't stand it anymore, then move on to the next one. And back then, there was no electronic rewind button like today, that you only had to press once. No, you had to rewind the tape, sometimes listen to the end of the previous song and let the player run; and sometimes, when you pressed Play at the right moment, it was as if luck was smiling on us.
On the radio, you would sometimes hear the host announce your favorite song of the moment, the new hit of the season. To record it, we would keep two fingers—the index and middle finger—on the Play and Record buttons, which we had to press simultaneously at the right moment, just as the last advert or song ended and ours began. But often, for fear of missing the first few notes, we would start recording a little early, to be sure of getting the whole song.
In the same way that people today show off with the latest trendy phone, back then, the person showing off was the one with the biggest Ghettoblaster or portable radio-tape player. It ran on large, power-hungry cylindrical batteries and had the luxury of being able to blast loud music for dozens of people. Friends, buddies, and groups of breakdancers would gather in enclosed shopping centres or in places with a smooth floor, so they wouldn't scrape their heads.
Strangely enough, the first musical tastes of our childhood were passed down to us by our parents. They listened to French radio and the singers of their own generation and that of their parents. Songs with lyrics as well-written as the French poetry I was learning in school. We listened to Cabrel, Goldman, and Balavoine.
New singers were emerging on the scene, like Céline Dion, whose future career we could never have guessed at, alongside our favourite boy bands like the Backstreet Boys, Worlds Apart, and many others...
The first rap songs, which used samples from other songs or classical music in the background, began to appear. Two groups dominated the decade in France: NTM and IAM. They were the very first to do (authentic) rap, with real social commentary, lyrics drawn from their own lives and their situations as part of the working classes abandoned by society and politicians in the suburbs. One of the most famous of these suburbs was my own, since the “Ministère A.M.E.R” and NTM, who flooded France with their songs, came from my town, Sarcelles, and from the town right next to it, St. Denis, which I often went to, just two train stops away. It made us a little proud to know they came from the same place as us.
Music from the US was equally present on the radio and television channels. The music video shows played everything from Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise and Oasis's Whatever to songs by Jon Bon Jovi and the Spice Girls, with Alanis Morissette's Ironic on a constant loop
It was the era of the “one-hit wonder.” A singer would pop up and for a few months, be everywhere on our screens and on the radio, and then one day, they would disappear, and we would never hear about them again. Many had their fifteen minutes of fame, and we naively thought they were responsible for their own disappearance. We didn't know the rules of the game established by the major players in the music industry.
We grew up listening to two of the greatest divas the world has ever known, artists with enchanting voices from another world, whose vocal tones, techniques, and interpretations were heavenly gifts to the world. They sang touching lyrics that reflected authentic romantic relationships; their words were full of joy, faith, positivity, hope, and fighting spirit, always romantic, in the vein of that decade which put the “heart first.”
No matter our emotional state, their songs accompanied us everywhere, were a part of our lives; they consoled us, brought us comfort when we had heartaches.
When Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey sang, they dressed modestly, wore no artifice, and had no need to show skin or accentuate certain parts of their bodies to shine. It was their voices that were highlighted, above all else. We were open-mouthed listening to them, amazed by their greatness; they were so high in our esteem, holding a place entirely of their own in the public's heart.
It is not foolish to consider that a human being who spends several decades at the pinnacle of glory, with almost boundless wealth, and the constant madness and devotion of fans, might derail in their personal and professional life, change, and develop an arrogant demeanor. Anyone who experiences that kind of life is not left unscathed.
Therefore, if we are responsible for having helped build their immense success with all its consequences, why should we later complain about their lack of humility?
On television, music videos were taking over from radio stations. And in that era, one must understand that having your face on television was not an ordinary thing like it is today; in people's minds, it meant you had made it, that you had become a millionaire.
It took time for the truth to come out. Prince was the first to explain that artists were earning pennies on the dollar and were treated like shit by the majors in the music industry.
Television channels were limited to 6 or maybe 10, so the available slots and airtime were scarce. You had to fight to get a place. Co-optation, the casting couch, and family connections were the best ways to achieve it.
Having a Walkman clipped to your raw denim jeans, sunglasses, and hair spiked with gel was the peak of style, coolness, and fashion. We would put on our headphones, feel the fine, soft cushions on our ears, press the large Play button, and the music would start—it wasn't digital, it was analog, mechanical.
The wires, from being twisted in every direction, would eventually stop working, but as long as one earpiece functioned, we continued to enjoy the music until both batteries were completely drained.
In those days, batteries were essential. They powered all the electronic objects around us: the Game Boys, the remote-control cars, the Walkmans, the Discmans, the portable radios, and all our electric toys.
Board Games instead of doomscrolling
We used to play board games and card games. Our cupboards and bookshelves in our bedrooms were full of those cardboard boxes, containing more or less the same games. Every family had a favorite game, one they preferred above all others, and whose rules its members had become experts in after playing for entire evenings.
I had a friend who owned them all. At his house, we played Rummy 500, War, Old Maid (the Queen of Spades), Guess Who?, Crazy Eights, Speed, Liar Liar, Chess, Checkers, Ludo, Pick-Up Sticks, Mille Bornes, Risk, Monopoly, Pictionary, Mastermind. We bought those game sets that contained more than 50 different board games.
On weekends, in his living room, they would take out the chips, cards, and rulebooks as if performing a ceremony, handling everything with great care. They were careful that no one bent the cards—it was seen as sacrilege. The game and its rules had to be respected exactly as if one were holding a prayer book and reciting praises. Likewise, when they put the games away, they made sure to return the bills to their specific slots, sorted the two decks of cards before putting them back in their cases, and found a certain pleasure in it. However, all these precautions did not prevent some of them from cheating here and there.
Whereas at my house, we didn't sort the cards. We sometimes forgot to close the little lids on the cases. When we opened a board game box, it was like opening an apartment devastated by a student party that had gone wrong, or as if we had put all the pieces, bills, and cards through the washing machine and then poured everything back into the box before hastily closing it, with the lid askew and bills and cards visible at the sides. However, we never cheated.
Needless to say, in his family, they were engineers and doctors, and in mine, we were entrepreneurs, labourers, and artists.
Giving Your Word as a Child
On Sunday mornings, I would pick up the phone, which had only one function. Its long cord ran across the entire apartment, connecting the handset to the wall. I would call a friend, hear one of his parents answer, ask if I could speak to their son, and then, when I heard his voice, I would ask if we could meet at the park at 10 a.m. He would ask the parent nearest the phone; the answer was either yes, no, or “better this afternoon.” And that was it. It was simple, quick, and immediate.
“At the park, at 10 sharp! Bring your leather ball!”
“Okay! And you, bring a big bottle of mint syrup water, please!”
We'd hang up. It was settled.
If the friend in question didn't arrive on time, it was either because he had been delayed by a few minutes or something serious had happened. Without realizing it, these were the first times we gave our word, and we had to keep it. From what I remember, all my friends honored their word once given.
Our teachers, due to religious influence, had an obsession with strict truth and a visceral hatred of lying. This Manichaeism shaped our minds from a very early age, in a radical way. So much so that even among ourselves, far from the eyes of adults, telling the truth was a necessity, an obligation. Honesty was worn as a badge of high personal value, and anyone who lied was quickly singled out, disliked, and gradually sidelined.
I once had a friend who lived in the same town as my father. That fool stood me up twice in a row. I never called him again, and many times after that, I ignored him, even though he had apologized profusely and given me all sorts of tedious explanations, blah blah blah... I later learned, at the synagogue, that he was gaining a reputation as a pathological liar that was starting to catch up with him.
In those small communities, everything was known, or eventually came out fairly quickly. (One didn't stay in the dark for very long, ha ha ha!)
Intense and Infinite Love
I remember my first love at a Jewish summer camp. I was 13. I had found a little secret staircase, away from prying eyes, where I held this young girl in my arms and placed a few soft little kisses on her lips, red with desire. We were certain our relationship would last a lifetime; it could not be otherwise. It was a time when our brains fed only our hearts and silenced our reason. We grew up thinking that love was a feeling that lasted eternally; it could not fade. The very idea was not within the realm of possibility.
You met a girl, you fell madly in love, got married, had children—it lasted a lifetime. That was happiness; it was as simple as having a family, going to restaurants, the cinema, and on holiday. We grew up with simple, romantic ideas, in the tradition of fairy tales. One might argue it was due to childhood, but no, it was the common culture of that era. This reality was the norm for both children and adults, although, of course, here and there, there must have been a few cads.
Married couples had not integrated divorce as a possibility, an exit, or an escape. In my class in 1995, out of 25 pupils, I was the only one with divorced parents (thrilled to have been a pioneer in something in my life!). Divorce was then considered a genuine drama.
All the Hollywood films we watched ended the same way, with a romantic happy ending, continuing the tradition of fairy tales made by Walt Disney. Womanizers didn't exist; playboys with the bodies of Apollo and the faces of angels ultimately got married, settled down, gained weight, and lost some of their youthful beauty. Dominant, castrating, extreme feminist women had no voice in society. Hollywood was made in Church.
The Shift Towards Digital Tyranny
Boredom, a source of rest and action
Childhood and adolescence, for me, were synonymous with boredom. I spent entire afternoons daydreaming, gazing at my walls covered in posters that served as windows to imaginary worlds. Those faces, those places, beckoned me to travel far away, to lose myself in endless illusions. I would immerse myself in infinite universes where I could write, create, live, and experience anything—much like Walter Mitty, who disconnects from his reality and allows his unrestrained imagination to take over for a few moments. I was both director and actor, the screenwriter of these images, these internal films, these characters with extraordinary powers, heroic feats, and legendary lives.
I would sometimes tell my mother that I was bored, and she would invariably reply: “Pick up a book.”
Unlike children today, I grew up without home cinema or a telephone, but rather with shelves full of books, enormous dictionaries thicker than bibles, and partial sets of heavy encyclopaedias that often gathered dust. They were full of knowledge, their contents serving who knows whom, though I would open them out of curiosity. To this day, I still don't know why we never had a complete collection from A to Z. We had a few volumes, probably spanning from J to M, then from P to U, and for the rest, the mystery remains. I would open them not for a specific search, but rather to find or learn something by chance that might be useful one day—you never know.
As for the dictionaries, our teachers would regularly give us lists of words to look up and definitions to learn for the next day. The dictionary was an everyday object we couldn't do without—our analogue search engine.
Boredom would either plunge us into daydreaming or push us to do something real. The idea of overwork or burnout was unknown to us. Boredom, that phase of rest, often triggered a desire to do something, an impulse to act.
I would go downstairs from the apartment building, get my bike from the basement, ride through the park, meet other children, and play with them. We didn't have the option to be unreal, to let ourselves be hypnotized for several hours a day by video-based apps. We only had tangible pleasures and activities: riding our bikes for hours, playing football until exhausted, running, rolling down slopes in the grass, picking flowers to give as gifts, looking at trees, climbing branches, avoiding dog shit, going to the local corner shop, filling bags with sweets and candies for a few francs, eating them together on the way home, opening the fridge, drinking orange juice, watching extremely violent Japanese cartoons and American TV series whose plots and outcomes we didn't understand at all.
We never questioned those pauses between the actors' lines in the sitcoms, where the canned laughter of a non-existent audience was inserted (only Americans would cheat on humor in such a grotesque way!). Anyway, we only laughed at the visual gags. We understood nothing of the suggestive remarks, the double meanings, or the characters' motives. We only laughed at the most obvious jokes, much like one laughs at a circus.
A Shared Culture
The other day, an internet user explained that loneliness nowadays, or rather isolation—which is not the same thing at all—is felt in an acute, intense, and profound way. One of the causes, he suggested, is that we live in separate spheres of reference, largely due to all the current applications that use algorithms to produce personalized content for each individual. The result is that we no longer share the same points of reference, the same general culture, the same ideas, the same familiarity with or interpretations of events.
It is as if the social fabric—woven with shared faces, images, films, customs, conventions, rules, a shared gauge of normality, a common notion of what is acceptable in our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the world—is being unravelled, so that we no longer inhabit the same psychological world. We are all separate from one another, in autonomous and singular bubbles. Physically side-by-side, yet psychologically worlds apart.
I found that explanation absolutely right, because until I was 15, around the turn of the year 2000, I remember that even among strangers, we had a broad base of common subjects, references, and opinions. We all watched the same cartoon episodes, the same movies, the same series, on the same channels, at the same times, synchronized with one another. We bought the same games, wore the same clothes, watched the seasons begin and end, always during the same months, give or take a week.
The weather was as regular as clockwork; there were no surprises, no casual disruptions. We knew how to dress without looking out the window or checking the weather forecast, but just with a calendar. We all formed a homogeneous whole.
We shared a vast common psychological landscape, as if we were the same person, a single great being with different faces. Whereas today, I observe that all these faces have become entire worlds unto themselves, worlds that only cross paths from time to time. They often look at each other, sometimes they brush past, clash, or oppose one another. But as soon as they try to connect, or even merge, the resistance from both sides is stronger, even impossible. The confrontation of ideas and worldviews has never been so intense, to the point that people prefer to be alone and be right, rather than be part of a heterogeneous group.
Similarly, within couples, each person's identity is much more sharply defined, creating insurmountable territories between them—sexuality, veganism, transhumanism, human rights versus the law, not to mention nationalism and religion.
Nowadays, the technology that once brought us ever more comfort is progressively achieving its ultimate goal: to destroy human characteristics and human relationships, to turn us into people who think and act like machines, with infallible logic and hearts increasingly absent, withdrawn, retired, abandoned, renounced, and forgotten.
Witnesses to a Vanished World
Growing up during that decade, from age 5 to 15, turned out to be both an immense piece of luck and an unsuspected, long-silent misfortune. It was luck because I got to know that world—an authentic, true, organic, evident, reliable, secure, sociable, easy, and communal life. I was a part of it; its imprint is still within me: those authentic interactions, that experience of time flowing in its favour, of overall stability, of a horizontality among people, identities, and cultures. Certain groups did not take up as much space in the public sphere; the nation, the country's identity, was supreme. It covered everything, encompassed everything.
I now carry its memory and its melancholy within me, like everyone from my generation, as today's world descends into widespread madness. Imagine! At 6 and 7 years old, I formed two friendships that lasted almost 20 years. In that era, the bonds we forged, in love and friendship, were for life, until death. Your best friend was like your brother, and almost nothing could break your bond except betrayal or the slow death of old couples.
Sometimes there were crises, but we overcame them. The two lovers united to become one, physically and psychologically: one bed, one rent, one bank account, one destiny. It didn't matter if one earned more than the other, because the primary beneficiaries were the children. Parents didn't boast about buying a new car or a luxury watch; they took pleasure in detailing to other parents the holiday destination where they had all stayed together. The family was at the centre of everything.
Living on a farm with sheep and making cheese has become an insult to this society.
Is finding myself in adulthood amidst constant societal and technological shifts, in the middle of social networks, perpetual crises, wars, criminals, and above all, state corruption and omnipresent lies—where it's often hard to distinguish true from false—difficult? Certainly.
Living nowadays is a genuine challenge, and fortunately for me, my solitude, which is my best friend and something I had cultivated in part during childhood, helps me navigate this existence where we move from one battle to the next.
Filled with projects and motivation, driven by this new, visceral, irrational, and endless need: the need for self-realization, to identify with a material or spiritual achievement—a symptom of the pinnacle of this new, omnipresent, and all-powerful religion called individualism. One must realize oneself to make one's existence profitable!
This is perhaps the most deeply ingrained mark, the most evident foundation in our society, and also the darkest, of the post-2000 world: the necessity to realize oneself in something and to identify with one's success, to merge with it, regardless of the form it takes, to justify to oneself and to others that one's existence is not in vain. Living on a farm with sheep and making cheese has become an insult to this society.
Addicted to Caffeine and Success
Today, because of technology, our brains run like Formula 1 cars, constantly at maximum speed. They race every day, fueled by that soft drug: caffeine. Now there's another form of “progress”—what the hell is that obsession over coffee? Today, coffee has become a social phenomenon. It has taken on a decisive role in social relationships; people gather either out of a love for coffee or in opposition to this drug. It has become excessive, limitless. It's utter nonsense that a single beverage has become the symbolic representation of a businessman or businesswoman who takes care of themselves, dresses impeccably, and succeeds in their ventures. Coffee has become the symbol of a person who wakes up early, exercises, has a side hustle or is an entrepreneur, and is on the path to financial success.
What would happen to our world if, for one week, all of humanity drank no coffee, had no access to Wi-Fi, and smoked no cigarettes? Certainly, the apocalypse!
If everyone who drank coffee were successful in their lives, the world would be very different. What a beautiful illusion! It serves to mask the reality: coffee is a soft drug. From the moment you cannot do without it, when you cannot function—go to work, exercise, return home, look after your family, do everything our Monday expects of us—without your daily dose, it means you are dependent on caffeine, addicted to this drug. The difference is that this addiction is socially accepted and even valued, somewhat like alcohol, which is used as a necessary instrument for joy and sociability.
What would happen to our world if, for one week, all of humanity drank no coffee, had no access to Wi-Fi, and smoked no cigarettes? Certainly, the apocalypse!
In retrospect, the turn of the millennium itself changed nothing. Some feared it, IT experts predicted a series of catastrophes, but none of that happened. It came a little later, on September 11, 2001. That event tipped our lives, our collective carefreeness, into fear, uncertainty, distrust, anxiety, and a constant need for information to reassure ourselves. 9/11 paved the way for global consequences; what happened on the other side of the world suddenly now had an impact on our lives.
Terrorism, coupled with relentless technological leaps, has led to our current madness, to the ambient neurotic decadence, where only those accustomed to living in chaos and profiting from it feel at ease, like fish in water. As for the others, the silent majority, they are survivors, like it or not.
I tend to think that the chaos is orchestrated by those who govern us—not by the visible politicians, but rather by their invisible masters who manage the world with this malevolent motto: “first the poison, then the antidote,” on a large scale. This is so people don't realize all the freedom-stifling laws being passed to cage them in. We are heading straight towards a digital dictatorship, for mass surveillance, with a global oligarchy ruling over everything at the top. Welcome to the era of Pharaohs 2.0! It's here and it's now.
Written by Samuel James K
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