Artistic Explosion
We met in a treeless jungle
The Internet, where survival has become the norm
beyond borders,
You in Algeria, me in the United States.
An Improbable Travel
An Improbable Meeting
An improbable place where, against all odds,
Essential friendships sometimes arise
beneath the illusion of fulfilment
masking modern slavery.
We talked about everything and nothing,
and often about Hannah Arendt.
About exile.
About thought as an act of resistance.
About that idea that kept us standing:
to think is to refuse darkness,
to never grow indifferent.
We were training artificial intelligence,
But above all, without knowing it,
We were training our humanity —
to stay lucid,
to laugh,
to never give in.
You were a huge support
In my american adventure.
And I became for you
an ally,
a super coach,
a voice when yours trembled.
You were the witness to my miracles and my struggles,
my victories and my sudden falls and vice & versa.
But each time I came through it, and each time you came through it.
You carried a heavy story:
orphaned too early, adopted,
then struck by loss,
by injustice,
by a stolen legacy.
Sentenced to prison
for believing that creating with the World
was no crime.
To prison, for having received grants from abroad,
even after winning
an artist’s residency in Saint-Louis, Senegal,
where you had decided to live
One day, soon, tomorrow, my friend!
When I met you,
There was depression,
Broken loves,
Silent addictions.
But above all, there was your light:
Radiant, generous,
The light of an artist,
A documentary filmmaker,
A man profoundly free within himself.
You were getting back up again,
Thanks to an army of online friends
Who became friends thanks to an IA project
Through seemingly trivial chats
That wove so many bonds between us
You were starting to care for yourself again,
To step out of the traps.
We were the best.
Doors were opening again, from Timimoun to Paris.
And then there was our laughter
Laughter that saves from everything.
That absurd and serious quest for the gold bar,
Where we asked what we’d do to find it.
Now I’m counting on you
to lay it on my path
not the metal one,
But the one made of courage and meaning.
There was Virginie’s aunt,
Who suddenly wanted to leave me an incredible inheritance,
And you, arriving in New York,
to win a Golden Globe,
as if it were our shared destiny.
And that chimpanzee vomit!
The miracle drug we invented
That made us laugh until we cried,
For in the absurdity of the world,
Laughter is sometimes
The purest form of truth.
On December 6,
I wrote to you for almost nothing:
A dollar seventy,
Paid too late, earned for nothing.
You didn’t answer.
I didn’t worry.
I didn’t know
a gas explosion had sent you to the hospital,
that a silent battle was underway,
and that you’d leave
On Christmas Day.
The shortest friendship of my life,
But a just one for life.
Now, here and now,
Don’t look at the darkness
You’ve crossed too much of it already.
Look at the light.
Your light, the one I saw,
The one you left in others.
May the earth welcome you lightly,
As you lightened our lives by your presence.
As Hannah Arendt said
Acts and lives survive
Only when they’re woven into stories.
So I tell yours
So you remain,
So you continue.
Rest in peace, my friend.
And keep watch over our laughter.
ABY M'BAYE
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