If it was easy,

Programming / French Week – Day 7.

it wouldn’t be fun.

Easy things are good when you want to rest – but when is it interesting?

Don’t you agree with me?

Afterwards, okay, sometimes it’s too difficult. But when it’s too hard, then our whole head starts to work in a hurry to find a way out of this mess: find the bias, find the cheat, dream of living easy days to get by, hurry to look everywhere to see the flaw.
Careful, I’m not talking about the serious things in life – I’m talking about those challenges we sometimes take on and that are only funny when they’re not easy.

Some games have multiple modes – and the hard modes are to throw that damn controller against the walls – luckily, there are cheat codes. I love game programmers, I feel like they’re brothers.
Cheating is adapting and winning – I have no moral problem cheating, especially since I’m assuming it very well – and switching back to hard mode when it’s finally within my reach without cheating. In a word: I have fun – when it’s easy, I get bored.

What does this have to do with France?
To tell you the truth, I spent hours looking for what the last day of my French Week could be like.
I thought of trolling you, with videos from Fashion Week – after all it’s French – but it’s so ugly. And then it was too easy.

It took me hours, when it was so obvious. The whole of France summed up in one sentence, the backbone of all of us: Impossible is not a French word.

It’s the maxim that silences the kids: you cry, you say you can’t do it? that it’s impossible? But baby, impossible is not French. So he doesn’t cry any more, he goes off grumbling – and he doesn’t necessarily succeed, and he finds this maxim completely idiotic.
And he says it as soon as he can, to someone else who’s in trouble.

We believe from our very first steps that nothing is impossible – because it’s not a French word.

Do you see this tiny nation, full of morons ?(I’m part of it, yes, and I’m proud of it too) Very small, but at the head of the pack of battles and military victories?
It’s normal: impossible, it’s for the others.
The most famous marching song of the Foreign Legion is: The Devil walks with us.

Do you see us, all those roosters that we are, strutting around on our hay, and bawling at anyone who wants to hear us: Impossible is not a French word !
We use this maxim so much that we don’t really know what it means any more.
But it is at the root of our inability to respect, of our irreverence, of our insolence.

Do you see a little bit of this people?
The only way to calm us down is to flood us, to bury us under tons and tons of paper and paperwork. Besides, that’s what those in power do. Tons and tons of paper – it’s not impossible – but it’s no fun at all.

So, to end my week in honor of France, I had to find something really difficult, something impossible to stage – something about France.

I found a text – absolutely impossible to stage – but it doesn’t matter, because impossible is not a French word, and when it’s not difficult, it’s not funny.

The most written text in honor of France, Tolstoy wrote it. It is War and Peace.
So as a stupid bet, this one is of a good level.

These sentences are wonderful. I share them quietly – as I’m a girl, I allow myself to be afraid of everything and to admire very sincerely guys who are afraid of nothing – yes it’s in bad faith -well, I know.

Because the guy who succeeds in staging Napoleon’s troops – the guy who succeeds in rendering all the insolence of the French who are going, just the two of them, to take Vienna, is Tolstoy – Do you know this story? It’s just unbelievable.
There was the Austrian army to protect Vienna.
Only one bridge.
The French army in front.

And then two of Napoleon’s marshals, Murat in the lead, advanced alone on the bridge.
The sentries couldn’t believe their eyes.
Two marshals? Alone? So they had come to surrender.
Battle stations in the Austrian General Staff.
To have the honor of being the one to forgive Murat – and to hear him admit his defeat: they all came. The entire General Staff.

And while Murat was talking – and all the Austrian officers were listening – the French army was crossing the bridge.
A sentry wanted to warn the officers – what to do? What are the orders?
He was thrown out like a nasty turd.
These gentlemen were in the Day of their Lives.

And besides it was true.
At the door, at the end of the interview, there were the French soldiers to take the surrender of the Austrians.

Murat is in my pantheon of French heroes. A summit of insolence. And when the French army is described by Tolstoy’s genius, one can only be amazed and drawn into this madness as epic as it is buffoonish: the French army, the one that had no rules. The guy who shows Bonaparte both brilliant and so disappointing; that’s Tolstoy.
All the ideas of the French Revolution that preceded the troops and that rocked the old Russian aristocratic order, he speaks best of them.
Of course, it is a rather long novel.

There are series, films – it’s too close to the historical reality – it’s good, but it’s just “not bad”.
I’d like a real adaptation, for a stage in a live show, with real links in a virtual show (with games) –
I don’t need to remake the Russian campaign on stage – but the heart of the text – but the eyes of these Russians, panic-stricken or Bonaparte-loving, they have everything to do on a stage.

And there you will find them, the French – those tramps who came out of their campaign, who went to fight against all the armies of the world, because Impossible is not French and their leader was with them and not above them.

Of course, it needs to be adapted.
After… there are so many battles – so many epics – so many totally idiotic moments – that not to consider this idea would be a major mistake.
And then if it was easy…..

it wouldn’t be funny.

And if with all these battles, I don’t have a major connection with the great war games, I’m the last of the idiots.

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Featured Image :  Alexander Dreymon – Last Kingdom season 3 & a little video game associated done after. Who is an idiot ? Okay I am.