SIMON BURET
Name: Simon Buret
Age: Depends of the day
Home: Paris
Birthplace: A narrow street in Paris, Tour Eiffel
Work: Always from the heart, and devotion
Photographed at his place
What does your Monday morning look like?
Well, it depends on the work(s) in process… After the college years and their daily routines, I've never had a clear vision of what a “week” should look like – I guess because an artistic life is a constant stroll of wonders, but usually not on a societal organisation schedule path, more on the sides of official calendars. So I would say, Monday is like every day: coffee first, stretches of mind and body before a canvas or a notebook. Maybe it is superstition, but to me, the most important thing is to create every day to keep the hand and the heart supple.
How do you define what you do?
I am afraid of definition(s), as when one defines something, the second you do it, you give it a shape, a form, a name… and the shape kills the freedom. In arts, and mostly in life I find labels to be most of the time killers of freedom. I attempt to express and understand who I am and what I am “doing” in this world by experiencing, and this can take a different variety of possibilities. On stage, in matters of paintings, in melodies, lyrics, … I hope to get something out of it, if I work well, if I dig well, maybe one day I will understand what I “do”. This is such a large question if you take it to its core: what does one actually “do” in this life, besides breathing and trying to love and be loved in the purest form?
Is there a specific satisfying moment in your work?
I find satisfaction when I truly forget that I am “working”, when I am so much in the present that I lose track of the uniform of time. The moment I found a door in some shape, colour, or sentence… When it opens to the next chapter – this doesn't always happen, of course – or leans toward something unexpected. This is satisfying to me. It seems to me my will is to be always seeking an accident, a bump, an unpredicted match of colours and shapes, or a combination of words. When it appears and meets my eye and gives a sort of new “shape” to what I am facing, I am excited.
As for the second part of the question, there is a moment maybe of balance between chaos and full control, when your work almost tells you “it’s ok, let me go, I’m ready”. It is very hard to describe this feeling, you feel a bit exhausted and very alive at the same time. When this comes, I usually stop, go for a walk, leave the work for a night or day, and come back to face it a bit later to check if the feeling is seeded and ready to grow in the viewer’s eye – or if I need to keep the process active and push a few more strokes. The funny part is that this “satisfaction state” is fully gone once you are on to the next painting, song, or poem. No laurels rest from past achievements, not to me at least. And no matter what one does, the unknown of the blank page is always as scary, unsettling, and thrilling as it has ever been. Maybe this too is a form of satisfaction, in a way. To stay hungry.
What are you obsessed with?
Not in particular order: Caccio e peppe; old stones; sculptures; ruins; animals and their ways of moving; coffee AND cafés; city lights at night; lately, the view and the passing of clouds in my window frame; their shapes !; and on a more consistent study, digging the past of our time and what has been here before me: literature, movies, architecture, objects… I find that we keep running too easily into what's new, and I hammer in my head daily that there is a lot of future in our past; that it's important to dive backwards too, in the open water of the past.
I am also regularly attracted to the fragile things of life. Details. Finding beauty in it. What could vanish soon: wild greens growing in concrete cracks of the city, a special walk of a person, the elegance of a pigeon bathing in the sun, the quiet of branches in the breezy spring, a broken neon light standing fiercely in the street at night. I am obsessed with observing. Maybe to catch something in the nets, something I could later use. Watching the facial expressions of people, how wonderful that we are all unique. All sorts of stuff.
I train my eye to find beauty in the bizarre, to quote Baudelaire, the same king who wrote “Dieu qu’un visage est beau lorsque rien ne l’insulte,” it is a hard yet interesting sport to find beauty in the bizarre angles of life too.
Do you have a “mantra” or something you often refer to?
Depending on what my activity is at the moment, I think these are the words I love by Anaïs Nin: “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as WE are.”
When and how did you arrive in Paris?
I arrived naked and loud in the ’80s through the dream, efforts, and womb of my mother, who had this obsession/goal as a youngster that her first child should be a true Parisian, born and raised, and managed somehow to organise her bohemian life and self a few years later to fly back from America. So it actually happened the way she had planned it.
What’s special about this city and what makes it home?
The shiny grey slates after the rain.
The shiny grey slates mirroring the sun.
The banks, the parks, the people doing their lives.
The light, different every season, yet so beautiful.
The noises of Paris.
The open skies popping out suddenly after narrow streets.
The culture! Museums, cinemas, arts in all their shapes!
The ever-changing faces of a stroll here, which light up the ideas and put my mind in movement automatically – the powerful enchantment that bewitches me when I am taking a stroll in this city is endless.
The mess, then the quiet.
The café terraces.
The old people path, their lives in their own zone without bothering about anything else.
The strong identity, still majorly standing of the architecture; its stone and pavement royalty reigning in the middle of the noises, in stoicism.
The buzz of life, the so many different cultures melted all together in one big muscle of life.
Something hard to describe, a poetic greyish blue sandy coloured everyday life, that matches the robe of its birds. How many cities do you know that match in perfect harmony the colour of their pigeons? I find this fantastic.
I think this city is a collection of villages melted together in one big adventure.
Do you have a secret place in town or a secret ritual?
I do, and if you are bored or don’t have any, dare to ask the old folks; they will give you some secrets.
What has changed between who you were ten years ago and who you are now?
For my birthday, my godmother, Janet Hubbard Brown – who wrote the beautiful novel The Eloquence of Grief – wrote this to me: “For you and I, time doesn’t really exist; it’s more about Ocean time.” Besides being a quote of hers that I cherish, indeed, I don’t really understand the passing of time. I see grey in my beard and in my hair, making friends more and more, but I think my obsessions and my will to love the world are the same. Maybe the evolution would be that I assume even more to be “this guy” in plain light. I also intend to show and sell my paintings for about five years now, and therefore expose myself maybe in a more direct way, which wasn’t the case ten years ago. That’s a big change in my life.
If you had any advice to give…
To whom? Myself? Break your armour of ideas every day.
I don’t know if it is a proper “advice”, but I could share something that I keep as a reminder to lit myself up: I think that when one got his days and nights living in “democratic” parts of the world, it comes with a first responsibility: to live to the fullest for the ones that can’t – in respect bowed to them, in the mirror of them, in empathy. Vote for the ones who can’t. Dream for the one who is not allowed to. Act for them. Open their thoughts.
We have to balance the most we can like the waltz of shadow and light. Creating, for example, to me, is resistance. We all learned in books that artists have done their best works in response to the darker times of the world. I have this thought that maybe it was because global energy needed to be lifted – to serve the supreme act of revealing beauty and not let stupidity drive our beats. It may sound very innocent, utopian, too. But I do believe in the silent forces that animates us. A collective act of beauty in small and big things. I think they are the first steps to empathy, so I’d say go find your eye(s) and share your vision. To create beauty to balance the darkness – a small yet active solution. I think one can fight with the use of “beauty” – its definition is so large. It works on every human-made field, like very simple things for some, impossible to others, like dancing in a club, kissing someone outdoors, holding a hand, being kind to animals that are slaughtered elsewhere, being alive to balance the ones that got theirs shuttered daily.
Kindness.
And break your armour of certitudes every day. Stay porous, curious.
At the end of one's life, all you have are experiences, so experience life, don’t stay too sure of who you are.
Seek what this gift that you have been given has in store for you.
Smile to strangers.
Smile in the mirror.
Smile through your tears, you are alive!
The gift of each death isn’t it to have this precious little life to experience before, is it?
Choose the colour of your days in respect of the child that you are/were.
I read Charles Baudelaire’s poem Enivrez vous early in life, and it made a big impression on me. Also, every time needed, listen to Heywete by Tesfa-Maryam Kidane or Petite fleur by Sydney Bechet. That's two good advices !
When do you feel proud, relieved, in peace?
Proud, never so much. The only true pride I remember was when I got my driver’s licence. That day I was soooo proud.
At peace is a feeling I receive when I’m in nature, or when I don’t have my phone with me, or when I work and it’s late, and everyone is sleeping but me, and the world seems alright.
“Relieved” would be in water, or when the last gig of the tour is done, and people seem to be lifted, and all is an open future before me. Also, there is a special pair of arms in this world, that when they hold me, makes me calm as a sleeping ocean.
How do you escape daily life?
I don’t wish to escape daily life.
What are you chasing?
Sidewalks and dreams.
What do you see behind the shadow?
Its twin of light? Or maybe a free speech unborn yet, something that contains the invisible to arrive. In our third album, I wrote the song Magnetic Road about the stretched shadows at dusk and their final connection, the uprising night. It fascinates me. I was driving in Colorado at dusk and got struck by a lightning of beauty. Before my eyes all turned purple, the mountains around would cast gigantic shadows stretching on the road all around me. There grew this idea, at the end of each day, they stretch with the dying sun, all shadows of each form slowly reuniting, until all becomes shapeless, each shadow joined together forming our gigantic nights. I loved this idea of “unshaping” this world again – a few hours of pure freedom. When dawn rises back, the night goes back in shadows to their body owners, until the next round.
I like the idea that shadows are the reminiscence of the night that stays with us during the day. A reminder of the wildest part of ourselves. I see shadows as a graceful, silent gown each of us has. A sort of silent cape, holding the kingdom of dreams of its subjects. As a symbol, it can also be a reminder of the souple version of us, dimmed or plain, that we all carry. Our eternal twin.
A new project to come?
The soonest one will be my first book launched, this fall by Ofr editions, with paintings and poems, which to me are the same thing. And early next year, something fun will come.
Photography by Hanna Pallot
Interview by SP curatorial team