LA FIN DES VOYAGES

Preamble

I was born in the United States in January 1965, then my parents separated in 1970 and my mother, brother and I returned to France. I saw my father again in 1980, and for the next forty years I visited him on average once a year, for just a few days.

Episode 1: Endless days.

Exactly three years ago, during the establishment of the viral psychosis, I showed some photographs in this very space. On Monday March 9, 2020, I left for ten days in Bisbee, a small mountain town in the far south of Arizona, to help my father, Sandy, organize his life after the departure of Susan, his partner of 20 years. Within days of my arrival, I realized the extreme severity of his senile dementia, a deplorable state of health, and a heavy dependence on sugar, alcohol and medication. Worse still, I discovered that Susan had taken advantage of her position to take legal, medical and financial control of her companion and that, far from helping him, she was encouraging his decline. Worse still, Ryan, the day-to-day carer, warned me of the evil stepmother's plan to move to California and then return six months later to put Sandy in a retirement home and quietly enjoy the house and the spoils.
I quickly came to the conclusion that, as the only person with the ability and legitimate power to undo what was in place, I had to delay my return to France to spare my father a sad end. At the same time, Macron announced that confinement would soon be compulsory, so I had no reason to return, especially to be uselessly locked up. Especially as local living conditions were incomparably more pleasant than those I'd have had to endure in France, it was in my interest to stay!
I immediately set about securing my father's life and reorganizing his estate. Ryan, my indispensable and indefatigable partner in this (Herculean, according to the lawyer) undertaking, would work five days a day, 24 hours a day, and for the other two days I hired Robin, the housekeeper who had been deprived of most of her clients by the health policy. The priority was to remove Susan's legal and medical powers of attorney, then remove her name from the bank account, change the will drawn up under her influence, find another primary care physician, gradually wean Sandy off alcohol and anti-depressants, get him to exercise, and minimize anything that aggravated a very advanced cirrhosis that would have killed him in the short term. Fearing that Susan might contest the will's change on the grounds of mental health, Sandy's lawyer asked for a neurological assessment to prove that he was not a vegetable in a wheelchair. An appointment was therefore made in Tucson, outside the county, to prevent the attending physician (and therefore Susan) from being informed of the procedure. Asked "Who is the current President of the United States?", he replied "I wouldn't stoop to pronouncing his name".
In the early days, as on my previous visits, I took a lot of photos; three, four, even five films a day. Then, as the pandemic paralysis spread to banks, lawyers and administrative offices, the process slowed to a crawl. The airline offered to keep my ticket until things calmed down. The stay lengthened, the weeks added up, and the novelty, exoticism and folklore of the place dulled, as did the need or desire to photograph. Every day the same day, 90% of the time spent dealing with my father and his delirious ramblings, driving for hours to walk his dog Mamou, watching CNN on a loop, and 10% trying to solve his problems, especially during his brief moments of lucidity in the morning. Gradually, the pace dropped to one or two rolls a day...
After a few weeks, I realized that, if I had escaped this unprecedented situation for the whole of mankind, I was individually in the midst of an initiatory experience just as unprecedented on the scale of my life. Although I'm not very fond of what you might call "immersive photographic work", it was clear to me that I had to document these extraordinary moments. Thinking that it was better to regret an action than an inaction (rather have remorse than regret), I gradually turned the lens of my camera towards my father, his absences, his delusions, his frustrations, and the "daily insignificant", thus continuing to accumulate images.
In mid-May, on the very day the lawyer announced that he had finally received the new version of the will, I boarded my return ticket with almost 1,500 photos. An uneventful trip, surrounded by strange characters in full-body suits worthy of chemical warfare...

Episode 2: The end of days

On Wednesday, November 3, 2021, I had to return to Bisbee to tidy up the mess my father was constantly creating around himself. The day after my arrival, he complained of discomfort in his chest, which didn't particularly alarm us. We were far too preoccupied with the strange behavior of Mamou, the lively fourteen-year-old dog, who was now lying moaning, reluctant to eat or leave the house. Thinking she had probably been poisoned by contact with carrion in the desert, the vet tried various treatments, but to no avail...
The following Wednesday evening, Sandy's pain had intensified to the point where he couldn't eat, and had spread to his left arm, so we rushed to the emergency room. The admitting physician immediately inquired about a recent COVID vaccine injection, and I learned that he had received his third "booster shot" the same day I left Paris... The blood test revealed that it was indeed a heart attack, without precedent in his case.
Away from his usual environment, my father's mental state made him unmanageable in hospital. He constantly forgot where he was and why. He would get up unexpectedly, ripping out infusions and sensors to urinate or buy pants, convinced that his had been stolen. From then on, Ryan and I took turns at his bedside as much as we could to lighten the load on the carers and minimize their annoyance. At the same time, we had to take care of the dog, who had obviously sensed the heart problem from the start, and for whom her master's departure could only mean death. She now had to be syringe-fed and carried outside to relieve herself, her hindquarters almost paralyzed. She gave in and had to be put down a week later...
Over-motivated by the prospect of getting rid of the troublemaker, the staff at Copper Queen Hospital went to great lengths to find him a bed in a cardiac surgery unit, albeit in a neighboring state. After two days and some forty calls, a bed fortunately became available in the nearest major city, 160km away. I hit the road on Friday evening, unable to keep up with the speeding ambulance. Arriving at Tucson Medical Center (TMC) at around 9pm, I paced the place several times before finding Sandy's room to give him a few things. I then set off in search of a hotel, which proved to be very arduous. I finally ended up at midnight in a luxurious $400 suite, complete with kitchen, two bedrooms and king-size beds. Intrigued by the frenzy of activity in the corridors and by the pool, I learned that all the local hotels were saturated by a major bike race involving 4,000 participants and even more accompanying persons! I declined with difficulty the tempting offers of debauchery (C'mon, French boy, have a beer with us! Hey, wanna smoke some weed?) to try and get a few hours' sleep before returning to hospital...
The next day, an ex-employee of my father's bank, whom I informed of the situation, generously offered me her spare room, which made things considerably easier. For the next two weeks, sometimes relieved by Ryan or friends, I spent my days at the hospital, watching over the patient, reassuring him, chatting with the doctors, preventing disasters, calming crises, etc... He was finally operated on the following Saturday and, with the frantic Thanksgiving season fast approaching, I took my ticket home as soon as he was out of intensive care. When I arrived in France, I learned that he had been sent back there, having broken the sternum staples while coughing uncontrollably and having sent food into his lungs, which led to believe that he had pneumonia.

Epilogue

From then on, his condition gradually deteriorated, and he died peacefully in hospital on December 19, 2021. He was 78 years old. In mid-January, my brother Yann and I went to Bisbee to carry out the final formalities, scatter his ashes in the mountains, have a ceremony for his friends, and clear his belongings from the house that now belonged to Susan.
With what I know today, I understand that I should have done what I could to avoid him the surgery. I should have asked that he simply be kept under medical supervision until the inflammation caused by the injection had passed, that he never receive another, and that he live naturally for the time he had left. But the idea of "over-treatment" is a powerful collective convention in our society, and it's understood that any elderly person with a serious heart problem and good medical cover should be operated on...
For the past few decades, I've been harping on the fact that humans have been on the move far too much for far too long, and that it will come to an end. Ironically, my obligation to travel somewhat undermined my argument. After my American grandparents passed away around 2006, I stopped going to the U.S. for seven years before resuming annual visits in 2013, at my father's request. When Ryan told me of his death, one of my first thoughts was: "I'll never have to fly again"...

***

The Soundtrack of a Journey

01. Des jours sans fin
02. Tous les jours le même jour
03. La psychose virale
04. Une expérience initiatique
05. L’insignifiant quotidien
06. Une crise cardiaque
07. L’acharnement thérapeutique
08. La fin des jours
09. Les dernières formalités
10. “Je n'aurais plus jamais à prendre l'avion”

***

In May 2023 I had my first "real" exhibition, "La Fin Des Voyages", not just miscellaneous prints but a coherent body of work. The subject was the last two years of my father’s life in Arizona. After attending the opening where he played some guitar, Davide Barbarino spontaneously recorded a whole album of "desert music", of which I used a few tracks in my "exporama" movie. Some time later, he and I were discussing lap steels and I mentioned my unused pedal steel (a far more complicated instrument). Davide went to get it the next day, took it to Normandie, spent countless hours taming the beast, and ended up recording what became "The Sho Bud Sessions". When he played it to me, I was so impressed with the original use he had made of the pedal steel, I decided to include some tracks in the ongoing movie...

Marc Upson, October 2023, Paris


This particular work was inspired by Marc Upson's photographs and story about his long and difficult journey in Southern Arizona, during the crazy months in which the COVID pandemic made us even more exposed and subject to totalitarian regime of media information and governments' bio-political strategies: months in which Marc had to deal with the serious mental and health conditions of his father Sandy.
The reportage tells, with a cold and ruthless clarity, the events of a man who, in addition to struggling with his own history, must also struggle with the absurdities of the healthcare and administrative system that it would be adequate to define as Kafkaesque.
This touched me personally, making clear a story that we all, sooner or later, must and will have to deal with: the meeting with the tall dark stranger.
In this long and meditative emotional journey, I composed these pieces of "desert music" immediately after having visited his exhibition. To record them, I used the guitar (a Fender Telecaster) that Marc lent me for my long residence in France. Once I was done tracking, I immediately presented them to Marc, explaining the reason that had led me to compose them and, to tell the truth, given their dimension and evocative quality, I was not surprised when he told me that he had just recorded the presentation text and was looking for guitar parts to associate it with. In the following days, Marc gave the opportunity to visit the exhibition while listening to my music and his voice telling the story.
The highly cinematographic soundtrack it turned out to be led him to make a video montage of the photographs, the film still being progress...

Davide Barbarino, January 2024, Paris