The Heartbreak, It is Mine

By Stanislas Kazal

“The Heartbreak” (copyright July 2008) was a clandestinely published book, sold illicitly after performances in Paris and Bordeaux’s underground scene until 2010. At last, here is a final edition of this rare and hard to find book, (a collector’s item), which has been responsible for fomenting division and revolution.  In addition, this  opus draws on other work published covertly by the author in 2008. I thus want to celebrate the long period of catharsis that inspired me to pull these miscellaneous writings together into this “mashup,” which was never meant to be mass-produced or sold in bookshops. This version is complete, containing the spirit of the original in the writing. One should view “The Heartbreak” as the ‘materia primera’ of an alchemical reaction. It ends differently to the original underground edition, from 2008, by returning to a new point of departure, but remains a poignant testimony to my years of wandering. – Stanislas Kazal (18th May 2014).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Le Satellite
• Release date: Jun 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781547505500

Book preview

The Birth of Stanislas Kazal

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I am Stanislas Kazal. I don’t do jumps or somersaults. I am not trying to sell you anything and will ask nothing from you but that you give me your time and listen to me because this is the moment and the place wherein I roll out the straw mattress for you all to be seated on.

I write songs, but first, I would like to tell you how I was born, because I was not born Stanislas Kazal.

I was born, enslaved to ignorance that breeds wickedness and to wickedness that breeds ignorance. I was born a machine, a machine of flesh and blood, barely human, a robotic existence. I was sad, I was happy, according to my frustrations and satisfactions, desires that weren’t really me. I had no soul.

Like everyone, I sought to understand my programming and I contented myself with the answers I found in my instruction manual. To that end, I learnt to read.

Like everyone, I tried to offer explanations and I contented myself by justifying my possible technical failures. To that end, I learnt to speak.

Like all of us, I wanted to be, but was only allowed to have and have not, so

I contented myself with yearning. To that end, I learnt to count.

To that end. Like others I hoped for peace, love, happiness, freedom, truth and, when they were not forthcoming, I contented myself with activating mechanisms for revenge and auto-destruction. To that end, I learnt to think. But one day, impatient and wanting to know why I had learnt to write, I took a sheet of paper and wrote down whatever came to me. And I found it - that which I had sought: peace, love, freedom. I was, from the verb ‘to be,’ happy, and I felt, for the first time in the course of my existence, like a real human being! Henceforth, I clandestinely raked my pen over the paper, inscribing symbols. Thus words became my obsession, my wonderful secret, and my shameful