Ceremonies
She accompanied the great moments of our lives: birth, marriage, death. Sort-out death. We identified even the earliest civilizations (worthy, our
Eyes of the name) using the special care brought to the graves, like the promise of another life. Funeral ceremonies are probably the most
Old and all peoples have celebrated them, even nomads, who stood as monuments that occasion, as if death alone was worth a souvenir
Stone, a golden crown. As if the living and the dead are united in the latter shared celebration.
We love the ceremonies because they stop for a moment life is sometimes sad and painful. They have something of a party. They accompany a
Event which we will remember.
We also like it because we participate in it, because we celebrate together. Although sometimes they are boring. Even if the meaning is lost.
Although we do not know why we do this or that gesture, why we say this or that.
We mumble the Latin words or Greek, or Syrian, or Persian or Sanskrit without even knowing what we say. But no matter: we do not know
Together.
A moment of quiet and secret, sometimes beauty.
But now we know of other ceremonies, which are not official, nor public. Some are held by small insider groups at night
Fallen, in desert places. An efficient leads the ritual who’s symbolic, very long time, is lost, impenetrable. The bodies to be brought there, nobody
Could say where they come from, and what their death was. Are they innocent or guilty? We do not know. Nevertheless, we are still here, we the participants. We
Come together: it's already something.
Other ceremonies are perfectly secret. They are sometimes known as an individual. He waves his arms like this, as it produces a particular
Music but without knowing why or how. We are well. Each of us, unconsciously invents every moment of the ceremonies, as if
Was a need. A forgotten song comes to my lips this morning: why? I count my steps when I walk in my garden: why? I am of
Eyes the flight of birds in the gray sky, when the day falls. I look at the trees that the wind balance and try to guess what their relationships, their words.
Each of us famous and some special ceremonies. They come back to us and they are binding on us without our provoquions without even
We were waiting for.
I think Mahjid is secretly aware of these ceremonies of the shadows and silence. The painter is there, between life and death, between day and night, between color and
Gray dusk. And if any real life seems at first sight cleared, and maybe even denied, it reveals a multitude of relations, feelings, we
Opens another territory where he is the only guide. This bare land, watched by darkness, we suspected that the piecemeal, yet we recognize that.
Where are we? Nowhere and elsewhere. Home.

Jean-Claude Carrière