The Secret of Eternity

Impossible-Mission. Festival / Main characters

Careful, I’ll sell you : The Dream.

You’re into that, aren’t you? Being immortal? – I found the secret.
I’m selling it cheap. Honestly.

Just imagine: burying your children. your grandchildren. your great-grandchildren. forgetting you even have any offspring. Witnessing the explosion of the Earth. Being propelled into the vacuum of space. Getting caught by an asteroid and circling around it for centuries and centuries.
Finally encountering a larger asteroid. Being dragged through its asteroid belt. Travelling through space like a stone.
See the contraction of the universe.
Still not dying.
A dream, isn’t it?

It’s all for peanuts. Please clik on the link below and… trust me !

All right, fine. Ok, ok, it’s stupid. I didn’t go into psychic clairvoyance and I didn’t become an alchemist.

It’s not our carnal eternity I’m talking about. It’s an eternity of work – of show.

It is by talking with Francisco Bravo Cabrera – who has an excellent site : OMNIA CAELUM both in painting, poetry and music ; and with whom one can find real reflections on the arts and “the outside world” – that these reflections finally came to my mind.

You may know, surely, that I am very keen to set up a Festival in 3 seasons, one Impossible, one Legendary and one Mythical.
Each season leads to the other.
To imagine this, I am seriously creating the scenario of these three seasons.

And now I come up against the : Legendary.
Legendary doesn’t mean nothing. Legendary means more than History, it goes through time.
If I want this Festival to be truly Legendary, in a way it must also cross time.

That’s easy to say. I could just write it down, and “que sera sera…“, and then they’ll judge after me.
But writing “Legendary” cannot satisfy me.

That’s where my little discussion with Francisco came in: he allowed me to remember the “Great Ancients” – basically, for the theatre and the epic: the Greeks.
What’s the difference between the Iliad and Game of Thrones? The Iliad, in ten centuries we still talk about it. Game of Thrones, in 10 years, your children won’t know about it.
I like the series very much – but it won’t last longer than its life.

I’m not going to tell you that I think I’m Homer. I have violent fits of megalomania, that’s right. But I’m still not at the point where I can imagine being a match for Homer. At the height of his genius, I’m not even the size of a virus. But I have to at least take him and the other Greeks on the horizon to hope to get a little bit of Legendary.

The first and most important thing is that there are no good guys or bad guys in Greece. Achilles is a monster, he’s childish, undisciplined and angry, but he is among the Greeks. Hector is a great guy, and he ends up smashed against the walls of his town. Medea of jealousy and rage exterminates her children: what happens to the father? He’s a little sad.
Ulysses is a smart kid who tried to dodge the war – well – he was punished. But his teammates, more valiant than him, could not resist the years of wandering at sea.

And there, this dimension, where heroes and opponents are oversized men, has no morals.
The Gods are even more immoral than the others.

I have already thought of planting an opponent who “saves the planet”: to get to the first step of the legend, I will have to push this logic of destroying the agreed lines (the good / the bad): the Festival will only become Legendary if the hero gives in to his humanity and his weaknesses, when the villain gives in to his humanity and his greatness – without anyone knowing at the end of the Legendary who to love.

I believe the Iliad is still loved because of Hector. Thanks to those Trojans who, in the face of an unjust fate, remained Men.
How to be a Man when you don’t have the answer of: Is this good ? This is in my opinion, the secret of the works that will be able to enter the Legend.

Indeed, there we all meet again: which one of us really has the answer?
Every time we make a decision, we have to ask ourselves if we’re in the right. And we never have the answer in advance. We have feelings – hunches – but we have no idea whether it will be good or not.
So some people choose never to act.
Others, more adventurous, will put their souls at risk but will try to find the path to Good, knowing that they may get lost. But we all know that we cannot be certain of the good of our actions.
It is when a work resonates in our souls – and in our doubts – that it really resonates for a long time.
As an adult, I don’t need a work that gives me prefabricated keys to life.
I need a work that resonates with the concerns of my soul.

So this will be the line of construction for these Festivals scenario. It will have to be, because this one is destined to end in the Mythic

It’s a nasty gift I’m giving to those after me: I’ll be too old to get involved in the last opus.

There are other things, of course.
One of the things I find remarkable – is originality.
I know why Games of Thrones is going to disappear: because it’s the nth remake of the same old, old, story. (and this is how I alienate all the fans of this show. I like Peaky Blinders better – but that one shouldn’t survive either – because, for this series, what’s missing is the epic and the super-human)

If the Epic means going beyond yourself and consciously putting your life, your flesh and soul at stake – it doesn’t mean telling for the n time the battle of Achilles.

And here, it is Baudelaire who guides me: a work only becomes great when it is “of its time”. What are the struggles of our time? What are the places of our time? What are the shadowy areas? The unknown lands? What are our current frontiers between Good and Evil? Without these answers, there is nothing worthwhile.

I’m afraid I have a few more years of work ahead of me.

But the advantage – which allows me to write all this very quietly – is that I won’t be able to do it all by myself and pretend to be the Genius of the Century. Given the format I’ve chosen, there will be so many authors and artists involved that we have a real chance of reaching the Legendary. My role is limited to imagining a framework – a canvas if you will – in which this Legendary dimension can unfold.

Moreover, to enter the Legendary Festival, you will have to have been an artist/company that has already turned Altair upside down: during the Impossible Mission Festival in particular.
Not only this festival – there will also be the most incredible of the different Festivals: Deus Ex.

And since I’m a bit of a tease, these Festivals won’t take place very often. In fact, they will take place very rarely.

Rarity is the price of so many things. Isn’t it ?

And then, if I don’t make it, I’ll always be able to play at MediEvil: that’s the fate of those who didn’t make it into the Legend. Will I get a second chance like Sir Dan? I hope so.

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Featured Image : Ruins of Troy (Turkey) I would like to take this opportunity to thank Berkan and his family who made me discover and love this beautiful country.