Stromae’s performance on the TF1 bulletin in France, on January 9*, will have blown an unusual scent of existence on our pale souls, anosmic from COVID-19. Music against a background of silence.
Posted at 5:00 p.m.
How? ‘Or’ What hell, this song yet so quiet, does it jostle us so much in our bearings? A musical work as dissonant as hits Disco Inferno that make us dance, knock us down. A strange refrain, it should be remembered, whose words are composed, without laughing, of the cursed expression par excellence: “du coup”. How can an answer song and a sequence shot have such a big impact on the hearts of… many?
It is, however, the most beautiful thing of 2022 so far.
It was on the order of television shock, the disorder of our habits. This funny moment, piercing the image, has become the music video for pieces of life for some of us. Many.
That’s kind of how I like to imagine the feelings of those who watched man walk on the moon for the first time, live on television. But this time, it’s a surprise version, an astronaut who arrives unannounced.
For a moment, seeing him looking at us with his piercing eyes, despite our invisibility, in our soft laundry, dressed in our Sunday-lockdown clothes, there is a vertigo. We briefly inhabited a parallel universe, where the antenna codes blur between instinct and intention, between objectivity and subjectivity, between information and art, between all of us and ourselves. Our jaded landmarks no longer knew where to turn in this fragmented setting. Was this really happening on our bubble screens? Who, strangely, connected us, a little… a lot?
A taboo
A taboo. Even today, to publicly name a pain in life without fear of becoming heavy or ostracized is a matter of acrobatics. Then, as Sophie Fontanel points out in The Obs, it is “sioucidal” rather than suicidal thoughts that ring in our ears at this moment. I wondered, at the time, if it was his Belgian accent. I rather believe that it is the unspeakable that he fights.
It’s huge. You need a magic bean to climb it. Or one manbun, I do not know anymore.
This assumed historical moment, which walks on a sensitive wire, makes us wonder, since the end of January, if an unidentified revolution is not happening in the streets of our time. Stromae may be both the symptom and the cure. A visionary sensibility.
We freeze, in front of such candor. It’s borderline corny, but it’s genius. A poem spoken word, a gesture of art therapy.
Did we feel the same, a multitude of things? A slight stunned discomfort, a silent shiver running down the spine. A UFO metamorphosis, a luminous moment of humanity, a chapter of history, the passing of an unusual scene in the parade of life.
If it is indeed a stunt advertising, I don’t feel like it was one to only sell online plays and vinyl, which makes it very successful. Not “just” a calculation, no, there seemed to be a presence, a movement, which touched us in an extraordinary way, near or far, straight to the heart, in the head, far beyond the public relations transaction . There was something like a reason to live together, who cared.
It’s a little annoying, so much unspeakable at prime time. We are already in the next world. Welcome to all.
I don’t think we can measure the impact of this artistic magic trick, during another of our Winters of strength.
We are a forest of cacti thirsty for poetry. This drop of the Stromae ocean, which crosses the desert of the storm of our glasses of water, made our hearts overflow. Vulnerable dignity. It’s big, even on the small screen and very small screens.
So here is a promotional machination, which made a positive difference by daring to graze the discomfort. Perhaps this is the beginning of a small inner revolution, a recognition. Connected to something, together, all alone, between two amnesias. A thrill, a night. A sung silence.
It’s something like small collective progress. A happy accident. An anomaly, a lack of transparency of the shadows hidden within us which enlightens us. Almost a miracle.
I’m getting upset.
Let us remember that there are many forgotten. Those who suffered during this painful curfew 2.0. Essential workers at the end of their tether. Patients who take their pain patiently. Isolated ones. A cloud of smog that sometimes blocks the view on the performing arts horizon.
The loneliness will have gained one more song, to be hummed so that we can hear them a little, in the distance.