Daniel isn't with us any more
Tribute to Daniel Pinheiro this Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 3:30 pm. by Muriel Piqué.
Annie proposed a long-distance meeting to Daniel's colleagues and close friends, those who were far from Porto and unable to attend today's commemoration ceremony on site at 2:00 pm...
We met at 15h25 15h23 following this zoom link: Meeting ID: 848 9925 5025 Secret code: love
Here, in Montpellier, France, outside it's raining, it's pouring rain, it's rare, through the window I can't see any further than the building opposite, the air contains all the greys, from the lightest to the darkest, the colours have gone.
Here, on the screen in front of me, more than twenty faces, maybe thirty, are looking at each other, looking at the camera or the screen from the front, looking at the faces of all these people connected to pay their last respects from a distance.
I'm caught up in all these looks, all these faces. I'm waiting for, âJâattendsâ⊠I'm waiting for the moment to close my eyes (I logged on in advance...), I'm hoping we'll close our eyes, like we did with Daniel, I'm hoping we'll feel and hear all those multiple other places that Daniel and I used to dream about...
I feel like crying. This tribute means a lot to me. A host of memories come flooding back... First, touching the eye of the camera⊠I dream of bringing Daniel's hand into the frame, into my life, into my space. I want to touch and be touched, but Daniel is gone.
We close our eyes, Annie's trembling voice beckons, and my breathing stops, a dull vibration inside! I'm THERE. I'm trying to bring my mind back HERE, to all these people together. It's a chance to be connected to the world, such a chance to be alive. Daniel is gone. THERE. I will no longer read those e-mails, in an English I didn't fully understand, he raised so many questions, I tried so hard to understand all his words, I cherish so much this difference in thinking, this difference in being, that brought us so deeply together.
It was Annie who brought us together, and we certainly wouldn't have met without Annie. For me, Daniel was the one far away, the one I never had the chance to touch in real life; and yet he touched me and even transformed me inside. He was living proof that deep, sincere, genuine bonds can be forged from a distance. Now that I'm mourning him, mourning his passing, I hope I'll never wonder if it was ârealâ.
It was a wind of madness that blew into my life every time we did a Distant Movements session: an ever-renewed fantasy, a fantasy without limits. I was always afraid of living a bland, insensitive life. Daniel, your fantasy, your presence, your elsewhere...
I open my eyes, find all those faces, those eyes searching the screen, the space, crossing the machine and the distance to get to my home, to me, to my very intimacy. I do the same. I tell myself the world is out there! The world isn't the cold, distant, incomprehensible abstraction we're led to believe it is, no! The world is made up of all these men and women, all these hearts and friendships. Living humans and human memories, present memories of distant humans... If I think back to all the humans I've met, perfectible, foolish, loving, sometimes lost, often worried, curious for the most part, I say to myself that distance makes no sense. It's the shared present that's true.
Here we are, all of us, on Thursday January 30th, at 3:51 pm. We could leave each other, Annie suggests, but we stay, together, until the end of the session programmed by the machine: another 9 min. 9 min pass... We look at each other again, a few fingers reach for the camera's eye as if for a caress, someone says how he'd like to take us in his arms, a few sniff, a few tears flow, we don't want to leave each other. Yet we're all so far apart. We don't want to leave our common present. We don't want to lose sight of this shared present.
It's time! All our hands are waving at the camera, the screen is filled with faces and hands, our eyes pierce the distance: goodbye Daniel, I miss you already...
Muriel Piqué Jan 30th 2025
Lire le texte original en français.
Love to Daniel!, your spirit won't leave us.
















