We peck in the order we want or almost.
Some are denser than others.
"Les Pensées d'Héractète" (Ed. Equateurs, 188 p., 15 euros), Haroun's first book, can be tasted like a box of chocolates.
But they don't cause indigestion.
Quite the contrary.
This collection of reflections on the absurdities of our world takes the gamble of making philosophy funny and accessible.
We come out with the impression of being a little less stupid.
No wonder when you know the work of the humorist, precise and acerbic, one of the few to have been opened the doors of the prestigious Edouard-VII theater, in Paris, a year ago.
It is on this same stage that the thirty-something will return for his new show, “Seul (s)”.
In the meantime, he is participating this Wednesday evening in a stand-up show, “Inglorious Baltard”, digital and paid, organized by his colleague Vérino.
Meet.
A book of “philosophy”… We weren't expecting you on this ground!
HAROUN.
I wanted to challenge myself.
I read a lot and I am always impressed by my readings, by the authors.
It was the right way to do a first test without taking too many risks.
I was afraid to make a comedy book.
I wanted it to go a little further than the floodgates that follow one another.
I don't think I'm going to pursue a career as a writer.
I am disturbed at how hard it is.
It's often funny, but not always.
You push the reflection far.
How did you imagine your book?
I take notes all the time and there were some ideas that I couldn't fit into my show.
They required a little longer development, difficult to fit on stage, because that can lower the attention of the public.
The most successful ideas, I worked them from start to finish for the book during the first confinement.
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Why did you revive the character of Heractetus that we meet in your first show?
Heractet does not exist.
I had imagined it to make fun of people who like to cram quotes from great philosophers, not always wisely.
But this book is also to desecrate philosophy.
I read a lot.
People are often afraid of it when it can be accessed through very simple, funny and easy to read things.
You highlight the incongruities of our society.
Can reading philosophy help people live better?
I find.
We undermine our morale too much with things that will never change.
And by reading several philosophers, by not agreeing, we develop a reflection on things that are beyond us and that helps us to accept them.
Right now the debate is so muddled by people screaming.
We no longer get along.
There is an overload of information that is difficult for our brains to process.
We consume them quickly, without any hindsight, which means that we are only touched by emotion.
Emotion invades the debates and we no longer have room to think.
To reflect, one must not have compassion, one must take a cold and scientific perspective, there is a time for emotion, but also for reflection.
There is also a flaw in education, which is that it does not teach rhetoric.
Just because we speak well, we can trick someone with information into believing it's the truth.
You talk a lot about our tiny place in the universe.
Does it work for you?
I find that remembering our insignificance helps to accept who we are.
Our individual is the cause of not much and the consequence of not much.
We spend an average of 80 years on earth.
On the scale of humanity or the universe, we are nothing.
We believe ourselves to be so important when we are not much more than ants.
Finally, we are almost pebbles.
It helps to put things into perspective.
It is a speech that particularly raises questions during this health crisis ...
I have the impression that we have refocused on the essential.
On what's going on down our street.
This allows us to put our radius of action, which is not huge, in relief.
But we focused so much on the Covid that we forget the side effects.
The situation in the psychiatric hospital, for example, is a disaster.
You had to be prowling your new show right now.
What do you think of the treatment reserved for the culture sector?
There are plenty of neglected areas.
We are not the only ones.
But I have the feeling that we are dealing with people who do not understand what we are doing.
What is hard is not knowing.
When we say Thursday:
Tuesday, it will finally not reopen,
it's very hard.
It cuts off the legs.
It's as if we were doing a hike, and at the end, we were told:
the finish is not there, it is in 20 km.
We are in the coldest possible management.
Your new show is called “Seul (s)”.
This is from actuality !
Yes, the title was inspired by containment.
The idea was to talk about everything that can be multiple.
We are not the same at home as we are at work, at 15, 30 or 60 years old.
Over the course of a lifetime, at different times, we have different ways of thinking and approaching problems.
I wanted to tell the public that we have the right to change, to be different, or to have thoughts that we do not assume.
You've opened up your independent web platform, Pasquinade, to videos from other comedians.
Why ?
I propose to artists who have the spirit that matches.
Often they are independent.
They defend a humor with ideas, a point, even if I do not agree with everything.
On YouTube, we often have potters, ads that we do not control, invasive, comments not always positive.
I found that Pasquinade had a role to play in offering artists to show what they do, on a benevolent site, with a benevolent audience who pay as they wish
(Editor's note: hat)
.
It is a laboratory.
We are to large platforms what craftsmanship is to industry.
Isn't a comedian and a philosopher the same job, after all?
You have to take a step back from society to be able to make jokes, but you don't go as far as a philosopher or a sociologist.
I think we're a kind of ersatz, an artificial flavor of philosophy.
What's interesting is that the comedian asks questions and the philosopher tries to answer them.
“Inglorious Baltard”
with Vérino, Haroun, Pierre-Emmanuel Barré, Tania Dutel, Fabien Olicard and Alex Vizorek, live and streaming show broadcast on January 20 at 9 pm (“tickets” at 22 euros sold on ticketing sites) .
