Like May 7, 2017 (History keeps pulling me down)

Dimanche 7 mai 2017.

J'ai ce souvenir en tête... Il y a 12 ans, cette première semaine de mai, j'étais à Berlin car j'allais interviewer Imre Kertész... Le grand Prix Nobel de littérature hongrois.

Je relisais tous ses livres dont le déchirant Etre sans destin, et Berlin dévoilait le Monument de stèles géantes sur la place du Reichstag.

L'Allemagne fêtait pour la première fois sa propre défaite.

2005 / 2017.

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Twelve years ago, I said, I was in Berlin, Germany the first week of May, as I was about the interview the great Hungarian writer, Imre Kertész, Nobel Prize for Literature. His novel, Fateless, was the most heartbreaking story I had ever read. It retells the story of Imre's youth, in Budapest, when, in 1944, he was taken away from home in the street with other Jewish people, by the Hungarian authoritative government, and how he was sent to a concentration camp. The boy spent more than a year in Auschwitz, while the Allies were actually winning the last battles against Germany.

That first week of May 2005, Germany celebrated for the first time its own defeat, as the Victory Over Fascism. And Berlin inaugurated a Monument of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust, just being their Parliament, the Reichstag.

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As many French kids, I had studied German in school from the age of 10, as a part of our duty to reunite Europe. I linked the language a lot, but the classes were often severe and we had to face the country's troubled history. As well as our responsibilities, as French citizens, in these catastrophes.

A couple of years later, when I started the English class, it was the course of films and music and in less than a year, I could speak fluent. I never really spoke German. I studied Kafka in the original text at La Sorbonne, when I was 20 years old, but I was never able to speak the language, to connect, to let it in into my heart. It was stuck in my head...

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Today, English is my favourite language, I speak it, I write it, I live it and I even dream in English. For me, it's the language of love and dear friends.

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Hey, England, English friends, if I'm back in a week as an asylum seeker, I hope you'll know that I have always loved you and that you are my second home anyway and the place where I've left my heart. Please find the strength to still accept people like us, running away from their political nightmare...

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I'd like to finish this post with a song, in order to bring another energy. As I have a horrible feeling regarding this French election...

Let's try to conjure it.


Florence+The Machine - 'Leave My Body'

Lyrics

"Leave My Body"

I'm gonna be released from behind these lines
And I don't care whether I live or die
And I'm losing blood, I'm gonna leave my bones
And I don't want your heart it leaves me cold

I don't want your future
I don't need your past
One bright moment
Is all I ask

I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me down)
Said I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

I don't need a husband, don't need no wife
And don't need the day, I don't need the night
And I don't need the birds let them fly away
And I don't want the clouds, they never seem to stay

I don't want no future
I don't need no past
One bright moment
Is all I ask

I don't want your future
I don't need your past
One bright moment
Is all I ask

I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me down)
Said I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my, lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

Pulling me down
Pulling me down
Pulling me down
Pulling me, pulling me down

I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me down)
Said I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

Yeah, said I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling me down)
(moving up to higher ground)
(History keeps pulling me, pulling me down)