Marseille - Allogene

At first glance, I recognised you. I had to come all the way here for my eyes to open to you. Embracing the city. Your multiple faces make you indiscernible ; perhaps it is why so many clichés depict you… What the mind cannot understand, it explains… but Marseille is unexplainable. Brand new land where all is contrast ; undecipherable and deep city, colours are guiding me into your maze. Marseille you adopted me, and to tell your tale, I turn to my senses. I always preferred ordinary musing to the run-ups of the mind. My gaze wanders, looking for an image, a moment that did not happen and yet already disappears… I look for my distance, too far, too close… without even fighting back, I lose myself within your chaos. Phocaean energy, endless matter made of light and scents, accents and colours, sensual, sometimes distant, absorbs and consumes me. The sea blinds me, the heat crushes me, I crawl back into your sinuous streets, where shadow wraps our secrets, where your mysteries blow. In this world in movement, I impose my silence : A still dance, a silent song, a photograph. I walk up your hills of stone and concrete, dreamy landscapes where cries of men are lost, here a modern odyssey is written. Far from the sparkling fasts of other capitals, your richness is elsewhere, there in the smile of a kid, in the raging perfume of a woman, in the ragged voice of a lost soul, in the sea spray the wind ripped from the waves. The heat of day slowly fades and I come back to the sea. Twilight already erases my memories. In my hands your images dig furrows, imaginary lines where fear, and sometimes desire, tumble. The horizon stares at us, under the mocking laughter of the sea gulls. You have your own journey, and as my eyes close themselves, I think about Baudelaire :« Aimer à loisir, aimer à mourir, au pays qui te ressemble. »