Art, Love and Life

Friends,
This is incredibly painful. Three days have passed. It’s Monday 11/16. We keep crying. We keep thinking about all of the victims and their families. To our friends fighting at the hospital. To our friends who didn’t survive. Every hour that passes unveils new losses and injuries. This is unbearable.
Our people, our neighborhoods, our Paris are bleeding. They are the people who we love, the places where we eat, dance, play music, and socialize, the city of our lights.
Stade de France, Paris 11th, le petit Cambodge, le Carillon, la Belle Equipe, le Bataclan: the places where we smile, laugh, love, scream, sweat, hug, cheers. The places where we bind our emotions and build our friendships. The places where cultures meet. Life.
It’s Monday. We’re mourning. We’re neither nurses nor policemen but we’re trying to help as much as we can with what we have: words and love. Talking about what happened, unable to do anything else, writing and sharing our grief and hope, sending heartwarming messages to the ones we know and even don’t know, helping anxious and broken families looking for missing loved ones. Trying to share love as much as we can. Live.
We Parisian, French people who have the chance to wake up this morning in Paris or wherever city in the world have something more: our Culture. The music we play, the dishes we cook, the wine we make, the stories we write, the movies we produce, the paintings we paint, the drawings we draw, the sculptures we shape, the photos we take, the products we design.
The arts, our “Art de vivre”. This is what we stand for. This is our freedom. This is our response. We Parisian, Banlieusard, French people, musicians, chefs, winemakers, writers, movie makers, painters, sculptors, designers, entrepreneurs, craftsmen. We’ll continue to create, to love each other and to live. Because this is all we know and have.
From Beyrouth to Paris, thinking of all of the refugees on the road far away from their burning home countries: Art, Love and Life are our response and will free the world from hatred. Because Art, Love and Life are limitless.
Onward and never stop jamming
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” Victor Hugo.