Jacques Brel
The day after Jacques Brel died, Brussels, October 10th 1978.
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel died on October 9th, 1978. The next morning in school, my sad-faced friends stood around me, embarassed and uneasy, as if I had just lost a family member. Brel was dead, as much for them as for me, but I guess they knew how close I was to him. And they were right. Brel had opened my eyes and my heart. He had taught me to see and not to be afraid, to dare to live and love with all my might, without reservation and with my heart on the frontline. To hate caution and shyness, to dare to spit up to the heavens, to take ‘a bite out of the stays.’ As a teenager, this was just what I needed. ‘My heart opened its arms, I was no longer a barbarian.’ And ever since then, be it as Jacky, or sometimes Jef, but always as Zangra, I live with this Belgitude that makes bastards of us wherever we are, that makes us mock whatever we do, and that makes us drown our sorrows in beer. Why did I take this photo that night before dinner, thirty-five years ago? I was afraid that now that he was gone, everything that he had given me would disappear; I was afraid of forgetting, of becoming an orphan. One last dinner with Brel.
