Your Tragedy Is Mine
1988

I dedicate this show to the Children of Lebanon, and they dedicate it to the Children of the World.

I believe that to be an artist is a vocation.  It's a call to leave the world and live for the Word, the Message that you are called to reveal.

I, as an artist, am a tool in larger hands, more creative and more powerful. I have tried more than once to convince myself that I am the master and that these powers are there to serve me, but my life - my work - has proved the opposite. It's quite mysterious when you think that you are the Creator and find out that you are only the Doll, that you are lifeless, sterile and empty if these powers don't move you, fertilize you and fill you.

Dolls, puppets and marionettes, are these what we are? How often are we in control of our destiny? Do we make our own way, or do we just walk in the way that has been prepared for us?  To what present has our past entrusted us and does the future know with what arms the present has left us?  We don't even know where we come from, we question what our mold is made of, we wonder about the future that is already ours, and we still think we are the masters!

Dolls! and when life is given to them they choke themselves with their strings, wrap themselves with their cords and bind themselves with their wires;
Dolls! and the weak is the doll of the strong, the strong of the stronger, and the strongest of destiny;
Dolls! and whenever Time allows it Power, Wealth, and Advancement play with the lives of the weak, the poor, and the simple;
Dolls! and who of us was not made? And who of us is his own Creator?
Dolls! but we are given an awareness of who we are. Thus, we frequently choose to live in the illusion that we are the masters who create dolls;
Dolls! and how often we become the dolls of our creation;
Dolls! Politics, Religion, Economy, and Science are games that we play with and how many of us are their subjects!
Dolls! and constantly our Soul, Mind, Heart, and Body agitate, move, shake, and imprison us;
Dolls! we are shaped by yesterday, caught by today, and reshaped by tomorrow;
Dolls! wearing masks of rank, class, and profession. We're all thrown in the melting Fire of Life.
Flames everywhere: Truth and Violence, Beauty and Impurity, Youth and Sterility, Peace and Hatred, Love and Pride, Light and Darkness, Life and Selfishness, Knowledge and Blindness, Wisdom and Madness, Reality and Illusion;
Dolls! And we are so small in front of Hunger, War, Plague, and Death;
Dolls! Time leads us to where kings, emperors, popes, clergymen, politicians, judges, advocates, physicians, scientists, artists, doctors, philosophers, astrologers, theologians, merchants, laborers, peasants, sowers, thieves, whores, madmen, criminal, charlatans dance with the same Partner.

I wonder whether we become equal or different, whether we get unified or separated after that Dance.

Destiny generates its Dynasties and crushes them.  Can we make our destiny by choosing our destination? Do we choose the latter?

I am an artist, I was called, put on a path, and was told to walk it.  As an artist, I am a doll in the powerful hands of Creativity, I cannot evade them when they want to use me and I cannot hold them when they desert me.  I am a doll and when Love doesn't charge me, I am lifeless, sterile, and empty.