The epigraph for Where the Bird Sings Best is from Jean Cocteau: "Where the bird sings best is in the genealogical tree."
Yes, that is the meaning of the title.
Creative energy, and experiencing the flow of being and doing and creating, is something that people seek through spiritual work. They meditate, they chant, they do practices to come into a kind of fullness of life.
These days there are a lot of people searching, as if for an object. Searching for illumination, satori, baraka. Searching for this, for that. Searching to construct myself a soul, trying to do something. But we have nothing to construct. We have everything. We were born perfect, and we are perfect; but we don't know. And then the only thing we need to do is to take out prejudice. That is the work; not to "do something." Just to take out prejudice, to be free. No definition in the mind, no definition in the heart, no definition in the sex, no definition in the body. I can be free to do every movement I want. I can think whatever I want. I have no age. I have no nationality. I am not this or that. I am free. I am a body, that is all. That is to be free, and if you are free, you are yourself. And if you are yourself, well, what more do you want? You cannot have more than what you are. I am what I am. And I feel very good, you know?
Let's talk again about your book.
When I wrote this book, I knew that I was in the Latin American literature. I am not Garcia Márquez or Neruda, and I knew that if I started to speak about my genealogical tree, as a Jew, I would no longer be included in the literature of Latin America. They cannot accept that. But now I am happy, because with the Jewish immigration so big in America, I believe I can find, at last, a public for my book, because I believe in my book. I took a lot of time to construct it, to go through history, to search my family, because the family stories are a secret. They don't want to speak about painful things. You need to work to find that information. I did it, and now I hope I will communicate that to people.
How did you do the research? Where did you find the information about your family?
From the family who was alive at the time. You know, when I was 23 years old, I cut my tree. I stopped seeing my family, forever. It was very difficult, but I did it. You need to be a real hero or a bad criminal to never see your mother, your father, your sister, your grandparents. I stopped. Twenty-three years old, I came to Paris alone. I was finished with my family. And then I started to suffer, because it was a big anguish to quit with this family. I said, I am not a Christian, why do I need to forgive a person who was like a monster? Why do I need to try to love people who never loved me, who were always fighting, who never gave me any nurturing? I quit with them, and it was forever. My sister, my mother, my father—all of them died.
So the last time you saw any of them was when you were 23?
Yes. And then later, I searched for friends of them, doing research, like an ethnologue, scientific. I was searching. In Metagenealogy I explain the importance of the genealogical tree. But in order to discover how important was this tree, I needed to cut it. All people have a family, but I needed to not have a family. I had to sacrifice that to realize the importance of a good family.
So, what was the effect of that sacrifice?
It made me really strong. I have been fighting all my life. This is why I make pictures without fear. I do what I want. It made me very strong, very strong.
Sometimes when people become very strong, they become dangerous—overblown ego.
We need to speak about the ego, also, because as you know, the gurus say, "Kill your ego," and they have an enormous ego, right? They say to kill your ego, but the ego is necessary. Every one of us has it. The ego is individuality, because every one of us is different from the others. Every person has a unique point of view with a gift for the universe, for us. So the ego needs to be dominated. If the ego controls you, your essential being, that is terrible. But if you control your ego, it is really useful, and beautiful. I respect the ego very much, but not in an egoist way. When you dominate your ego, you learn things through your ego; you learn to give things, to be generous, but in secret. It's fantastic to give to people, to give in secret, without the thank-you of the others. And that makes you very strong.
