After having literally undressed for the first two volumes of his erotic-autobiographical series ecstasieshere is the author Jean-Louis Tripp offering us a piece of his soul in The little brother, a poignant story in which he recounts the tragic death of Gilles, his 11-year-old younger brother, in 1976. Tragic as in being mowed down by a driver who flees, leaving a child almost dead in the middle of the road, In the middle of the countryside. Might as well say in the middle of nowhere.
“In fact, what I’m talking about is life. It’s a job that I started with ecstasies. These books are for me like the pieces of a puzzle which explores what builds us as human beings,” says Jean-Louis Tripp. “My way of working is to cut out in a very surgical way and, afterwards, to dig into the depths of what’s underneath. »
Flee into banality
And what’s underneath, often, are moments that grab us by the throat, that plunge us into mourning. Moments that seem banal, but which add to the ritual inherent in death. Like when the author calls his mother, who serves as a memory for the story, who remembers the details, to ask her what the family did while waiting for the return trip to be undertaken with the remains of the deceased. towards the house. “Well, my brother is dead, he was hit by a car, and there are a lot of objective details that I remember. But, I still had memory lapses and, therefore, I talked a lot with my mother to try to fill these gaps. I had to ask him what we did the day after my brother died. She replied that we had played Monopoly. It’s completely insane, isn’t it? But it was our way of escaping reality. »
The death of Gilles, it is evoked in ecstasies, a previous album. Does the desire, or the need, to explore this mourning in a story come from there? “Actually, I hadn’t planned to talk about it when I started doing Ecstasys. But, when I arrived at the time to tell my 18 years, I told myself that it had been too important for me, that I should at least mention it. What I have done. But the trigger came in May 2019, when a friend lost her 29-year-old brother. And the mourning of a sudden, violent death, you have to have been there to understand it. My first instinct, when it happens to someone around me, is to listen because I can understand, I’ve been there. A few months later, there was an accident in France similar to the one that took my brother’s life. These two events made it so that a few months later, I told a friend that I was going to do it, that I was going to write a book on Gilles. »
The art of kintsugi
Jean-Louis Tripp is 64 years old today. Did he need to examine his own grief, with this hindsight, to better understand it? Could he have written the same album at 30 or 40? “I started doing autobiography when I was 57. But, as I assume everything, I don’t feel like I’m putting myself in danger when I tell myself in a book. I’m not afraid to show my vulnerability. But I’m not doing this to get better, I’m fine! In fact, a reader wrote to me who I think best describes what I’m trying to do, comparing my recent work to kintsugi, which is a Japanese technique for repairing broken porcelain, reattached with gold. We take an object that is broken and, while showing the fractures, we make a new, even more beautiful thing! »
And it’s not just the author who has progressed in his way of telling. There is also the designer, now digital, which allows him to take risks, to try things that otherwise would have taken much longer. “I totally had a blast! On a technical level, drawing on the iPad was a revelation for me. We can go back, without erasing or scratching the sheet, I was able to play with the colors, in short, I had more time to devote myself to meaning rather than wondering if the technique was going to work. For example, the sequence where I learn of my brother’s death in the hospital, I was able to work on it until I was satisfied, because it was an important moment for me. »
Remember again
As the mother occupies a place in this story, both as a character and as a real memory, we are entitled to wonder what she thought of the work. Did she even read the album, once finished? “In fact, it was I who read the album to him, so I was able to respect his rhythm, not intentionally stretch out the most difficult moments. She was still involved throughout the process, since I asked her a lot of questions, on Skype. But she didn’t want to see the drawings I put on the Internet even though she thought it was, after all, a good idea to tell about Gilles’ death, to talk about him. In the end, for her, it’s a way of honoring the memory of her son who died too soon. »
And to keep it alive, in a way. Because it may be true, as they say, that you die twice. The first, when you stop breathing, and the second, when you say your name for the last time.