samedi, décembre 07, 2013

It has never been easy to be an artist, especially when you're a two headed artist, and when it comes to 3 heads, it's like playing chess while skiing while changing your shoes. In the young generation, many are poly-talented artists; to be a musician, a critic, a graphic designer and a banana peeler has become normal. 'Courir plusieurs lièvres à la fois' is a current survival practice. Max Jacob, poet and painter, suffered from his double activity. Today, what would he say amongst artists with 3,4,5 or more activities ? In the past I thought I will be considered a dilettante, being a poet, a musician, plus a filmaker (since 2008). Someone told me, when you're poly-talented, you're not using all the tools on the shelves, like someone who's focused on a single practice. You don't have enough time for that. What you need is to know exactly what every tool is made for, and go straight to the one you need, ignoring the others. To know what the tools are made for is called culture. This is probably the only way to become competent in different fields : to know, to have enough culture. 

Yesterday I realized why it's so important for me to make an album (the prepared public) with a fake piano, an approximative sound coming from electronic keyboards, while thinking about onomatopeia. An onomatopeia is a code in which the real sound has nothing to do with the reality of the sound it's supposed to transcript. The duck doesn't make 'coin coin', but everyone in France knows that 'coin coin' means the duck sound. We all share this code, which is different from other countries. It is exactly the same with approximative sounds coming from the keyboard. We all know this sound is the piano, while the Steinway is light years away from the synth. We share the same code. My next album is about how we interact with approximative codes, with 'le degré zéro de la reconnaissance mutuelle'. We don't need the real duck, the onomatopeia 'coin coin' is enough. The public is prepared to identify the code, he's able to rebuild the Steinway, recreate the duck. There is no need to fill the flag with an image, to capitalize on completion, the flag itself means that there is a country.