Quebec. December 17, 2021. It is 9:32 p.m. I greet my public, masked. I feel my legs vibrate at the sound of applause and my adrenaline slowly descends like the gliding flight of a swallow. I am moved to announce that when I return from the holidays, I will return to their city to start the new year with them. I leave the stage and the crowd to go into the dressing room, put on my coat and head back home for the last time this year. I am feverish, proud, paralyzed to see that life has finally started again. Euphoria. A show. A lie. I cross the 20 in a denial proportional to the energy that I have just received from the public, very great.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
The lethargic state in which the end of the show leaves us is as pleasant as the kick in the heart that we receive for an hour and a half. It’s legal heroin. We inject it as soon as the lights go out and we get high too long. I often thought that doing the stage was a way to feed my excessive ego and fill my lack of fatherly love. Until the day when I looked into the dilated pupils, highlighted by her mask, of a young woman in the front row. She was laughing and thus feeding the hungry monster that has been living in my body for 10 years. Laughter is a free prescription for valuing the mindless beings that we are.
I wake up the next day with a message on my cellphone. It’s never a good sign when my manager leaves a message. I always have the impression that I’m going to be told that Quebec has decided, in a secret vote, to take away my entertainment license. “Hello Mazza. Listen, if you want to go to the cabin longer than planned, you can. We have to postpone the shows for the month of January. I apologize for being the bearer of bad news. It’s going to be fine. »
I let my cell phone slip over the head of my poodle who was napping on my thighs. I stare into space like prey about to attack its meal. It’s going to be fine. Chalet. Report. Shows. I look at my almost absent fingernails, the tips of my fingers about to enter my mouth for another round of bloody merry-go-round. I get up mechanically to get my box of antidepressants lying on a desk between two old AA batteries and spare laces for new sneakers. I take a glass of water, swallow them all at once and thank my audience for having prescribed them to me. Entertaining a mass of humans is a privilege that comes with the responsibility of not falling into depression too often.
I put my thumb in my mouth and gnaw. How it gnaws at the mental health of health care workers. Teachers. Artists. From everyone. I’m eating away at the rest of the hope I had before the new Public Health measures.
The blinds in my living room are closed. Opening them wouldn’t change anything. The outside light is not strong enough to convince me to be positive. My mouth is dry. Water lifts my heart. I have a rumbling stomach. I am in pain. Evil like teenagers who can’t touch each other. Evil like Madame Picard on her rocking chair who won’t be able to kiss her grandchildren. I remove my finger from my mouth, stare at it, and wonder what part of my nail I haven’t finished. Completed, like the morale of all of us. It is cold outside and inside. I no longer see the end. “Hey, don’t cry! Your mother fled Lebanon. If only I could flee my living room and go nowhere. As far as I can run away from myself to get better.
I pulled myself together. As I can. As we can. As we have been doing for two years. There is worse. There is the future. He’s the worst. We don’t know him. He looks at me from a distance. Don’t let me talk to him. But he looks at me. It’s up to me to stand up and face it. At worst, I’ll close my eyes and move my arms. At worst, I will call my neighbors to ask them for help. At worst, I would say to myself that there has been worse. It can’t be worse.
I am not alone. We have each other. Let’s hold hands and move forward into the unknown. As we have done for centuries. Uncertainty frightens (and hurts) many people. When we face it, together, we can open our eyes and see the crowd rise. Applaud. To laugh. Beneath the masks of fear hides the beauty of the world.
Give me my dope that I keep imagining that the best is yet to come.