Whales, whales....

Good grief ! What a story...
To port, the whales. To starboard, humans, upright.
Two hands. One for falsehood, and the other for the truth.
Their respective worlds are set out on either side. The two are separate. But sometimes, they cross over. Doubtless because, like us, whales breathe. And doubtless because blood runs in their veins. And certainly because they sing.
And so it came to pass that the sperm whale took on a human shape. It happened, also, that the devil took the form of the sperm whale. And what of God in all this ? He had nothing to do with it. And Man ? Even less ! Alain Le Goff led us on an adventure of the imagination, a journey in thought as profound as it was ethereal, turning us into tiny boats on a tempestuous sea, with a storm of personalities and a whirlwind of stories. As narrator, he spares us nothing. He misleads us, diverts us, submerges us. We are transported across oceans, beyond the infinity of horizons, just a bit closer to the realisation of how microscopic is the human condition. Alain Le Goff’s narration is merciless as we are rolled in surf, and swamped in soul.
For a while, he flounders with us - out of our depth!
What’s so great about the human brain, when the whales have thirty million years of history ? Whales ruled the earth long before man arrived on the scene. And indeed, for the human species the whale is a godsend, a sperm whale an Eldorado.
From ocean depths littered with old pipes and duralex, the voice of old Jackez transports us over the sea to witness the filthy habits and the cruel greed of mankind. And in every sea-port the world over, you can find a Shangaï Brown driven by greed. Or a Mad Trevor, who hangs out with rats and who has lost his mind. At the sight of the ruddy hands of sailors coming in from the ocean, the violin screeches - man’s eyes are certainly « larger than their stomachs ».
Having almost lost himself in trying to gobble up the sky, he is so revolted that he throws the leftovers back into the sea. Now we come back to the Cetacean that we thought we had lost. Fragments of sky leap from the surface of the water. For whales are really pieces of Heaven. In fact, do you know how many whale tails you need to reach heaven ? Just one, as long as it is big enough.....

 

Jean Romer