Andy Warhol prophesied that with the mass media, everyone would one day have their quarter of an hour of fame. I find that my quarter of an hour drags on a bit… Two years ago, I wrote a book, the Way of the mountain pastures. I wrote it not to collect applause, but to try to justify the kind of wandering of my life, me which shows a little difficulty to settle down in a place and a state of life.
Chances would have it that this book reaped the favor of the public. The media acclaimed it. Word of mouth spread it. So much so that almost as many copies have been sold as there are inhabitants of Bayonne or Angers… While the vagaries of it had hitherto subscribed me to chess and ovens, I had to acclimatizes me to this weird thing called…success. On my small scale, I experienced its exhilaration, its graces, its impact on a soul.
Clownery and absurdity
“Celebrity” (with lots of quotes, I’m neither David Bowie nor Lady Gaga…) is like transubstantiation: it mysteriously changes your species. Suddenly, by the grace of a passage on TV, the quidam that you were becomes “someone”.
People ask you for selfies. The counter remarks that you exchange with your friends are worthy of the “Opinion” pages of the major newspapers. We invite you everywhere. The media are tearing up your words as if they were oracles. Your life, which looked more like a shipwreck, becomes “inspiring”… With their mania for giving birth to characters, the newspapers pin you down as “Tesson’s cousin”, “the gyrovague writer”, “the spiritual brother of people on the way”, “the man of a thousand lives”.
There is something clownish, absurd and funny in the discrepancy between these incensing external looks and the one you have on yourself, who know you are a poor guy… Moreover, to lessen the disappointment of readers who have fantasized an image, I often quote this funny sentence from an English author: “Meeting a writer whose book you liked is like seeing a goose after eating foie gras”…
My brothers, my compass
In Christian culture, success is sometimes frowned upon. You have to be small, hidden, erased, go underground, avoid exposure. Like Fabrice Hadjadj, one of my teachers, I am one of those Nietzschean Christians for whom this vision of humility as self-negation is not evangelical. The truly humble, is it not rather the one who deploys all his being and his gifts, never forgetting that he is not the source? Everything is good, even notoriety, provided you use it not to shine personally, but to try to illuminate the world…
For two years, I have received so many letters from readers who told me that my book had accompanied them, helped them grow in freedom or enlightened them in their existential throes! Humility is also accepting to receive this recognition, even if it is not easy…
That said, media coverage, this narcissistic balm, is also dangerous. In the long run, if we are not careful, the crackling flashes can turn off the interior light. That’s why, as soon as I can, I run away from these sirens and go to Ardèche. The place where I live over there, at the door of a small monastery, in destitution and release from the ephemeral, is my matrix, my source.
The brothers who have been supporting me for three years don’t give a damn about the fads of the moment. News, for them, is that of saints, birds, trees, faces. Their presence is a compass. She reminds me that favors are fleeting, that true glory comes from God, and that the only greatness is that of kindness, of self-sacrifice, of service to the little ones. In the end, it’s not on the number of likes that we will be judged, but on the love we have given…
Charles Wright lives in Ardèche, near a monastery, where he leads a spiritual quest that he shares through his books. His latest book, the summer pasture path (Flammarion) received the prize for inner freedom.