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Community, Companies, Talent
Scott McCorkle's five tenets of modern software
By Sara CroftSeptember 20, 2016
"Everyone knows Scott McCorkle," said Eric Prugh, Co-Founder and COO of PactSafe, as he introduced the start of Indy Executive Roundtable, a conversation and discussion event hosted by PactSafe on September 8, 2016.
Prugh and McCorkle go way back to their days together at ExactTarget. Prugh got his start at ExactTarget in 2008 and stayed through the company's acquisition by Salesforce in 2013. In January 2015 he left Salesforce to launch PactSafe, the world's first application built to both comprehensively manage digital legal agreements and control online legal risks, along with founder and CEO Brian Powers. It was that foundation of success at ExactTarget and the leadership of Scott McCorkle that led Eric and Brian to found PactSafe and further the ecosystem of tech startups in Indiana.
The question on everyone's mind has shifted to ask what's next for Scott McCorkle since resigning from his position as CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. PactSafe brought him together with Indiana tech entrepreneurs and leaders to discuss the future of the software-as-a-service industry.
The Future of SaaS
"The whole idea of software-as-a-service is interesting. The word SaaS is changing dramatically to the point that it's inconceivable for software to be delivered any other way. SaaS now begins to mean the characteristics of modern software, of which delivering it as a service is one. There are five tenets working at the same time that are significant and are shaping what modern software looks like," said McCorkle.
Cloud and Internet Delivery
"If you go back a couple of years, cloud could mean several things. We're reaching a point where Amazon, Azure, and Google are exceptionally powerful platforms with previously unthinkable computing power that is instantly available and is changing the whole idea of what's even possible," said McCorkle.
Forecasters are predicting 6.1 billion smartphone users globally by 2020, but what does that mean for us as human beings? "We've never as a society or humanity had a unifying technology platform, and that's what mobile is. But I don't think we know what that means. Anthropologists, psychologists and software entrepreneurs don't know what that means," said McCorkle.
He went on to state that the peak of PC distribution is at 300 million PC's with a 7-year replacement cycle, whereas our smartphones have a 2-year replacement cycle. Smartphones have completely rewritten the tech supply chain. "I think it's humanity shaping, and for a tech startup, it's inconceivable to not be mobile first," said McCorkle.
Worldwide, there are over 1.71 billion monthly active Facebook users, which explains that social media is a trend we cannot ignore. "It's exceptional, it's where everyone is. That in it's own statement is important. The expectation of interaction, collaboration and community, and how people expect to work with others to resolve any task, has changed the expectation of our customers and users dramatically," said McCorkle.
"If you look at software broadly, we are managing an amount of data that is unprecedented. We have achieved this fidelity of data that the whole idea of having software is to extract knowledge from it. No one knows how to do it cause there's too much of it. If you look at the advances made in machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science, it's really extraordinary," said McCorkle.
"If we use this word SaaS and what it means to be a modern SaaS company to not have cloud, mobile, social, and data science elements as an integral part of its architecture and capability – that's a big mistake."
Everything in our lives is now connected through devices and wearables, but what does that mean for the future of software?
"The physical and digital worlds have converged. The whole idea of separation of people and where they are and how they are interacting with your product is truly the ability to reach them anywhere at anytime," said McCorkle.
The question is not just for SaaS companies, but any company. "Think of your product and your customer in a completely blended, indistinguishable, continuous flow way. That's what's really disruptive about Uber, Lyft, FitBit, and Airbnb. There's no distinction between the product and being a customer; it's all one experience. This would fall into my top areas of startup advice, that from the beginning, you must think of your customers interacting with your service and your service as the same thing. Within our community today, the startup doing the best job at that is Clustertruck, which is a really cool seamless experience around the whole ordering food delivery service. And it's no accident that Chris Baggott created that," said McCorkle.
SaaS is much more than the a service being delivered, and it must be applied to all industries. "I've been challenged by many companies who say that what Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb are doing is not relevant to what we do. I think that's dangerous thinking. Someone will think of ways to integrate customer and product experience in your space and you'll be in deep trouble."
McCorkle's next move
After all the discussion on the future of SaaS, McCorkle gave a few insights into what he plans to do with his newfound free time.
"I've had my most dear mentors say to me that I've entered a wonderful world where I should cherish and recognize the amazing opportunity a break is, given the intensity of how hard we work in this industry. Say no to everything, they said. I pretty much have said no to everything, but there's one area I'm having trouble saying no to. The one area that I feel active anxiety about disconnecting from is machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science," said McCorkle.
"I think it's that profound, what's happening, and I also think it's not just that it's a different technology applied to our world of enterprise software. I think it can change the entire nature of enterprise software. When software starts telling you what to do, versus you saying to it what you want, user experience is different, user interface is different, architectures are different, it's all different. I couldn't name an example of anyone that's done it right yet," said McCorkle.
One area where ideas of machine learning and artificial intelligence are surfacing is with self-driving cars, which McCorkle says are imminent, and that a self-driving car by analogy will be significantly better at driving than a person.
"If we were all here brainstorming what the user experience of the self-driving car should be, we would be asking 'how do we reassure the rider that this car is so much better at driving than they are?' What kind of data can we show them that would create that reassurance? What then do we need from the rider? Not much. That starts to change what the rider can interact with. I think that analogy is going to happen with enterprise software and what we think of as a user experience."
Aside from continuing his involvement in the tech industry, McCorkle is staying active and using his time to mentor others and be present, as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff instilled in him from their time together. As for new startups to launch or participate in, we'll have to keep our eyes on him to find out.
PactSafe's commitment to the technology community is strong and further conversations with Indy's tech leaders through the Indy Executive Roundtable will occur quarterly. On a national level, PactSafe is supporting other startups through PactSafe for Startups, which allows startups, incubators and accelerators to access PactSafe and apply the software-as-a-service to their business at a low-cost that won't kill your budget. For more information, visit https://www.pactsafe.com/startups.
Sara Croft Sara is a senior product partner with digital product agency Innovatemap. See More of Sara's Stories


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12/11/2020 12/11/2020 LETTERS/OPINIONS
By Jimoh Abibat
The #EndSARS protest that occurred over the past few weeks has many symptoms of an upcoming mass revolt. Nigerians are frustrated with the way things operate and want a change to them. Events ranging from the #ENDSARS protests, shooting of unarmed protesters in Lekki and other parts of the country, heavy militarization of some states to quell the protests, and ruling class conspiracy to pass the social media bill, in essence to gag Nigerians from speaking against injustice online.
The #ENDSARS movement developed due to the continuous exploitation, killings and abuse of power by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). The atrocities committed by SARS are also perpetrated across the police force as a whole. This is the basis for the clamour for the reform of NPF entirely.
Men of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS)
As the movement grew, the youth got a clearer picture of the rottenness involving the political class and its handling of the economy. The Buhari administration was terrified of the broadening scope of the struggle and had no other choice than to disband SARS, with the hope of ending a mass awakening that was threatening its existence.
However, the youth did not trust the government to fulfil its promises after a series of 'reforms' over the years have proven false. Youths refused to leave the streets, distrusting their government and realising the government itself is another form of SARS. Other demands were also raised; like an end to bad governance, end to jumbo salaries of political office holders among others.
Nigerians are currently experiencing the ebb of the protest, with the state fomenting terror via a series of arrests, seizing of passports, freezing of bank accounts of organizers of the protests. This shows that the government is not genuinely interested in its commitment to end police brutality or repression of citizens. It also shows that the government cannot be trusted to uphold democratic tenets whenever its rule is threatened, even if such a rule causes more pain than happiness for the masses.
We need to build a formidable force of the masses led by the working class against this government of terror that's killing Nigeria's youngsters. The working class can deal a major blow to the government by withdrawing their services, making it difficult for the government and its billionaire backers to steal. Combining this with mass protests on the street will expose the government for the cowards it is.
However, the connection with these events is the fight between the oppressed and the oppressors, the haves and the haves not, the rich and the poor, the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. No hope should be placed in the panels the state governments have set up to investigate the SARS atrocities and clampdown on protesters. The panel is designed to give false hope that justice will be served. But in truth, the government agents who have been alleged to be part of these attacks in Lekki and other areas cannot implement a guilty verdict against themselves. What we have seen from the panels is the changing narratives of soldiers and the government that conducted the Lekki attack. It is only a mass struggle of the people that can bring justice.
Protesters displayed a flag stained by the blood of protesters shot by the military (20-10-20)
The #ENDSARS movement clearly shows that the police force needs a union to fight and protect the rights of the police to disobey inhuman orders; to fight for a living wage for officers; for an improvement in living and working conditions of officers. The present debasement of the Police as a zombie that carries out the orders of the ruling class without questions can be reversed. Also, there is the need for the police to be devolved in such a way that community members have democratic control over policing in their areas, by being in committees to oversee finances and petitions against errant officers.
However, if there is no change in the entire system of capitalism, the ruling class will always attempt to use the police to suppress the people while they exploit us.
This movement further shows that the ruling elites are aware that if the growing consciousness is channelled to the political demands for social change, it will be an end for them. As they are doing with the social media bill, they will do everything possible to suppress our voice or conduct systematic terror to keep us docile.
Social media is one of the few means of expression available to the masses. Majority of the print and T.V media are owned and controlled by politicians. We must defend our right to freedom of speech, right to protest peacefully, right to accountability, and right to good governance.
Nevertheless, all these cant be given on a platter of gold. We have to begin to organize ideologically with no difference in religion, tribe, gender, age.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Great British Comic-Book Characters: An Introduction
We spend most of our time in the Precinct writing about the heroes and villains that inhabit the pages of DC's comic-book universe, in fact about 90% of the posts originating from us are about this classic company's plethora of characters.
I first discovered Superheroes through DC after being bought a copy of Detective Comics by my Mum at the tender age of six, it was here that I came across the character that has had the biggest influence on me as I have grown up… Batman. I continued to read nothing but Batman stories up until the age of 9, when I decided to branch out and leave my comfort zone of Gotham City, and travel to a place that was as far removed from that festering crime-ridden city as could be… Themyscira, home of the fabled Amazons and of course the world's first ever female Superhero… Wonder Woman.
Now, now, no need for fighting amongst yourselves, we love you both equally here in the Precinct
With all that said, being English, I also grew up reading and collecting the characters that came out of a popular British comic-book called 2000 AD, these home grown dramatis-personae were very different to the spandex clad heroes who populated the books I avidly collected from DC. I always found that these characters originating from the land of my birth were (though this is only true of the late 70's and very early 80's) darker, edgier and definitely more derived from what was happening in the UK on a weekly basis, be that through political or trendsetting issues.
Characters like Judge Dredd, (even though the stories were based in a fictional dystopian USA) were directly influenced by the politics and social movements of late seventies and early eighties Britain. Dredd himself was a correlation of what the people of the UK in the eighties believed the country was becoming; a police state, plus the rise of the anti-establishment punk rock movement that originated from Britain in direct defiance of how the government were running the country at the time, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "1984″ seemed to be coming true (in fact, the UK has the largest amount of street surveillance cameras in the world.)
Now then, this isn't a politically motivated piece (politics bores the hell out of me, to be honest) just a small background on why, I believe, that the heroes and villains that leapt out of the pages of British comics were so different from their US counterparts. Alan Moore's masterpiece "V for Vendetta" captured this sentiment perfectly, an amazing amalgam of everything that was believed to be taking place, and how at the time (and maybe still today, to some extent) the people of this sceptred Isle felt about the direction the country was taking.
Now that the lengthy preamble is done, we can concentrate on the interesting things this hopefully weekly series will bring you, my loyal and avid readers and blogging friends… cool comic characters from this tiny island we call the United Kingdom. So stay tuned, in our next instalment we shall examine the popular rise of the British comic-book industry and its first foray into the realm of the Superhero. Until next time, or as Tharg The Mighty would say "Splundig Vur Thrigg."
Tags: 1984, 2000 AD, Alan Moore, George Orwell, Great British Comic-Book Characters, Judge Dredd, V for Vendetta


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Faculté et rechercheadmin2019-04-16T12:58:55+02:00
More than 40% of our professors hold a doctorate or a PhD and some are also professionals with a rich high level experience (MDs, CEOs).
Strategy, Management and HR
Mr Bertrand AUDRIN
Mr David DELFINI
Prof. Alain Max GUÉNETTE
Prof.Dr. Richard DELAYE
Mr Félicé TIOULONG
Prof. Sung-Do KIM (visiting)
Prof.Dr. Jean-Luc CERDIN (visiting)
Mr Arnaud CLAUDEL
Prof.Dr. Jean-Marie PERETTI (visiting)
Dr. Shiwei WU
Prof. Alain LEMPEREUR
Prof. Annie CORNET
Prof. Yvon PESQUEUX
Mr Philippe PACHE
Mr Cédric BERGER
Mr Hervé MUNZ
Mr Thibaut GALLINEAU
Prof. Dr. Didier CAVENG
Mr Philippe GROSSKOST
Since June 2014, Bertrand Audrin holds a bachelor's degree in Letters from the University of Lausanne and a Master's degree in Business Communication from the University of Friborg. He is a graduate assistant to the Human Resources and Organization Chair. He has previously held internships in the communication and human resources sectors at Radio Télévision Suisse. He is preparing a doctoral thesis on managerial communication under the direction of Professor Eric Davoine.
He is actively involved in Human Resources and Organization Management courses, several applied research projects, student supervision, chair work and the organization of seminars and events. In particular, he participated in a prospective study – jointly with the CRQP – on the impact of web 2.0 for the HR function.
He teaches the module of introduction to Human Resources Management to IMSG' students.
After completing a Bachelor's degree in Commerce and Finance at the University of Toronto, David Delfini received an MBA from SDA Bocconi. In 2009, he became Director of Revenue Management, Network and Distribution at AirOne (Alitalia Group). In 2016, he joined Amadeus as head of product distribution. He teaches corporate strategy & leadership at the International Management School Geneva.
Alain Max Guénette, initially trained in management, then philosophy and human and social sciences, is a professor at the Arc School of management (HES-SO) and an associate researcher at the Center for Scientific Management of the École des Mines ParisTech. His research concern wellness and diversity at work.
Richard Delaye is a Doctor of Management Sciences (dir. Prof. Peretti), HDR in Humanities and Social Sciences (Dir. Prof. Lardellier), MBA of Reims Management School (NEOMA Business School) AGRH). He has always sought to set up innovative management training schemes aimed at developing talents in Africa, China, Switzerland and France, while continuing his work of writing about the sacred and the generations (Y and Z). In order to be consistent with his professor-researcher activity, he ensures regular publication. You can find his publications on Cairn.
Mr. Tioulong is a visiting professor of Supply Chain, Risk Management and Security & Safety Management at the IMSG. After obtaining a DUT Logistics and Transport Management at the IUT of Evry, he found a post of logistical assistant at AEROLYON, then logistics coordinator at CATAIR. In 2001, he joined EXACOD as Deputy Head of Operations and General Services, then became Head of General Services at LVL MEDICAL Group until 2007, when he obtained a Master 2 Public Security. He then became Head of Maintenance – Security – Safety at SEACA. Since 2014, he is a Consultant / Auditor at PANTHERA.
Koryo University, Séoul, Professor Sung-Do KIM teaches Intercultural Management.
Specialist of expatriation subjects, to the international mobility and to the international management of the human resources and careers, Jean-Luc CERDIN is Professor at ESSEC Business School and has a doctorate in sciences of management. He has also a diploma by a M.Sc. in Personal Industrial Relations and Management of London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Real entrepreneur, Arnaud Claudel creates companies for more than 20 years. SSII (SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COMPANY), universe of the health are the domains in which he essentially intervenes. Initially engineer, he then followed the program "Entrepreneur" of HEC PARIS.
Reserve officer of the French Air Force, he is an amateur warned of rugby and gastronomy.
Jean-Marie Peretti is a French organizational theorist, Professor at the ESSEC business school and in University of Corsica, management consultant and author, known for his work on human resources management. Graduated from ESSEC in 1967, he received his PhD in Management at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris in 1969. After his graduation Peretti has been working as management consultant. He was president of the Institut International de l'Audit Social from 1991 to 2000, and President of the French Association of Human Resource Management (HRMA) from 2001 to 2004.
Shiwei Wu is an expert in China-Europe exchanges and business, which he is teaching in French or Cantonese. He is working on bridging the educational gaps between Europe & China and helps educational partners to create profitable exchanges. He is also a lobbyist who understands the multicultural aspects of the Chinese and numerous European cultures.
Mediator and negotiation expert, Alain Lempereur is an Affiliated Faculty and Executive Committee Member of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. He is the chair of the scientific committee of the Humanitarian Negotiation Exchange (HNx), a project of the International Committee of the Red Cross and of the Harvard Kennedy School's Future of Diplomacy Project. He is currently a Professor at Brandeis University, Boston.
Professor at HEC-ULg, Liège University (Belgium) where she teaches in Human Ressources, Annie Cornet created and still leads a research lab on Genders & Diversity in Management.
Professor of Management, Yvon PESQUEUX works in France (CNAM) and in numerous countries in Africa. Main courses taught: Business and Society, Organization Behavior.
Trained as a psychologist, Philippe Pache teaches Personal Development and is a Coach in Career Development and in Recruitment. He works for private companies in Switzerland and Academic Organisations worldwide (HEC Paris, Université de Genève, Cheung Kong University Beijing).
With two Master of Science; in Information System Analysis & Design (ESSEC – Paris) and in Business Administration (University of Lyon), Cédric Berger begins his career in training and research in system organizational dynamics (project OSSAD). International entrepreneur, he creates and manages consulting companies since more than 15 years. He intervenes in many international groups in industrial, public administration, multinationals in the framework of reorganization projects and quality assurance. Specialist in organizational analysis, he is the author of several books and an international speaker. Since 10 years, he introduced in Europe, the professional association of Business Analysts (IIBA®). He participated in the creation the respective IIBA Chapters in France and French-part of Switzerland where he currently acts as President.
Today, as Senior Business Analyst, he leads Mark International, management company in Geneva and lectures at the "Haute Ecole de Gestion " of the University of Geneva.
After achieving a PhD on know-how transmission in the Swiss watch industry, Hervé Munz studied the global circulation of Swiss mechanical watches and the teaching/learning of their servicing techniques in Hong Kong.
He is currently based in Hong Kong where He conducts ethnographic surveys among actors, brands and organizations concerned with the after-sales service of Swiss fine watches.
The aim of this research is to better understand how firms involved in this business secure a skilled workforce in Hong Kong in order to provide there technical servicing according to the Swiss Standards.
Thibaut Gallineau is graduated from EDHEC Business School & the London School of Economics with an engineer background. After two Consulting work experiences and a specialisation in Corporate Finance, He joined first the SGCIB Global Graduate Programme for two years in Structured Finance. Then he joined consulting firms to work for Financial Services, CIB and Private Banking especially.
Business expertise :
– Project Management (Business analysis&requirement, business process management -BPM- scoping, dashboard&reports, SteerCo&Comex communication,…)
– Strategy (Transformation and Streamlining plan, project selection, change management,…)
– Finance (budget, objective and incentives, cost killing, valuation,…)
– Business Modelling (benchmark, scoping, priorisation, pricing model, business case,…)
– Banking Sector Expertise (Private Banking Client Sensitive Information,…)
Economist graduated from IMD (Lausanne) and INSEAD (Paris), and holder of the federal certificate of trainer, Didier Caveng is a consultant and trainer for various training centers and companies.
His skills have been acquired for more than 30 years, as a member of the executive committee in banking institutions and project manager in Switzerland and abroad with international organizations, and as a trainer at various private and public institutes.
A General Manager and Natural Leader with international background in growing for & not-for-profit organisations, including Secondary & Higher Education, Testing, Vocational Training, Language Courses & Certifications, Philippe Grosskost has chaired and lead several organisations in the assessment & educational field: CEO of ETS (Educational Testing Service) EMEA; CEO of PerformanSe (a European leader in psychological assessments); Director Global Network & Membership for Global Study Pass, a start-up in secondary education financed by GEMS; International Dean & co-founder of the International Management School Geneva and IMS Education.
In addition to that, Philippe Grosskost is also teaching International Strategy & Expansion to IMS Geneva's Bachelor & Master students. He has followed the HBS seminar on Teaching with Cases in 2017 and has since taught and trained IMSG professors on how to teach with cases.
Marketing, Digital communication and Innovation
Mr Thierry DIME
Prof.Dr. Pascal LARDELLIER
Mrs Pascale BOSSON
Mrs Emmanuelle DELLUS
Mr Robert FAESSLER
Mr Michel YAZIGI
Mr Franck VIDAL
Dr. André-Yves PORTNOFF
Dr. Thierry WEBER
Dr. Thierry FABIANI
Mr Gérard LEMARIÉ
Dr. Julien INTARTAGLIA
Mrs Nathalie ROBERT
Mrs Nadia GIANOLI
Mr Andrew YOUNG
Mrs Marie-Gabrielle CAJOLY
Mr Fabien ARÉVALO
Mr Damien HUBERT
Mrs Laura VENCHIARUTTI-TOCMACOV
Mr Fabien LACROIX
Mrs Carole HADDAD
Graduate of the Swiss Italian University in Lugano, Thierry Dime created his first company after his studies. With his passion in communication he quickly realizes the role that media can play in society. He naturally becomes a boss of the press by launching several titles, of which the well-known « Monde Économique », a Swiss magazine of information and economic analysis.The success of this magazine is to exclusively address it to the economic actors: Business leaders, Executive managers & Decision-makers.Thierry Dime teaches public relations and strategic communication to IMSG's students.
Professor Lardellier specializes in Behavioral Marketing. He has published several books and articles. His work questions the new forms of social links and the status of relationships on social networks.
Public relations teacher, Pascale BOSSON is the founder of a swiss public relation agency. She organizes many event and help famous people in their communication strategy.
Emmanuelle Dellus is a professor of strategic marketing at the IMSG. After obtaining a Master's degree at the Business School in Tours, she joined Orange France SA as Project Manager. She was then in charge of Business Development (B2B2C), and have been promoted to Senior CRM Marketing Manager at Orange Communications SA in Lausanne. In 2012, she joined Jaeger-Lecoultre (Groupe Richemont), in charge of global brand development. Since 2017, she is a consultant for the Glion Institue of Higher Education.
Robert Faessler has worked and leaded in the fields of luxury and watchmaking, in different companies at international level with collaborators from all walks of life, from all countries with their different mentalities, putting the capabilities of these people ahead of time to work together with a single goal, success. He also created companies, with the objective of developing them. He works as a consultant for many companies in logistics, marketing, sales, strategy and accompanies them in the development of their business or projects. He teaches marketing, sales and strategy in different universities, as a professor, notably at the International Management School Geneva.
Michel Yazigi, event specialist, owner of Switch Vibration and Sushitime, but also co-founder of Village du Soir, is a teacher for the Event Management courses within the IMSG.
Franck Vidal is an entrepreneur (Manager, Technical, Sales and Environment).
Coming from a Swiss-French family of entrepreneurs (Asuel JU) specialized in hydraulic drilling, he discovered the world during his childhood in Africa. Ivory Cost, Senegal, enabled him to forge a personality attentive to cultural differences.
He pursued in France his graduate studies in R & D on Lasers. At 23, he founded an innovative company in the east of France marking and laser machining, which was sold 8 years later.
Back in Switzerland, he was entrusted with the creation of four call centers (Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich, St. Gallen) Internet Provider. Five years later, Swiss investors have entrusted to create the first Call-center Switzerland Indian Ocean.
– Founder of Sustainable Development Centre in Belmont-sur-Lausanne – 2sustainable.ch
– Business shaker © – 2shake your entrepreneurial business to business leader
– Importer for CroquetteBio.ch – Organic Food for Dogs and Cats
– Director of Traiteur-bio.ch – Cocktail Receptions and catering Bio
– Co-Chair of CommonFuture – The Cooperative of Advisers / eras in Environment
– The committee SocialBusinessModels.ch – methods, tools and training in SSE
– President LAMPER.ch – The Association for the moderation of public lighting in Romandie
Doctor in nuclear metallurgy, André-Yves Portnoff created and directed (1977-1992) the only francophone monthly Prospective Technological Studies, Science & Technology. He is the co-author of the first French report (The Revolution of Intelligence) on the Company and the intangible economy. He developed Futuribles and large enterprises, a method for evaluating organizations by intangible factors, which particularly applies to the management of innovation, the digital transition and the risk of disintermediation, but also to the development of territories. It analyzes the relationship between economy, culture, values, mental models, based on the analysis of many current and historical cases.
Scientific Advisor International Futuribles (Paris), he is author of numerous books and reports on the impact of digital (on crafts, cultural tourism …), nanotechnologies, biotechnologies.
French-Italian bilingual, he is particularly concerned in companies development and reindustrialisation of Europe.
With a doctor's initial training, Thierry Weber occupied numerous marketing positions for big pharmaceutical companies. He is the Founder and CEO of BREEW and built up to himself right-hand man's reputation, reliable, generous and always with an orientation solution.
He is also the co-founder, initiator and committee member of the organization of the price "Le Meilleur du Web", an association started by Netzmedien and Com In, from whom the purpose is to defend the quality in the field of the Internet services in Switzerland.
He is the referer of our Master of Sciences in Life Sciences.
Thierry Fabiani has a doctorate in sciences of management and more particularly in marketing with an original subject "The determiners of the eating habits of seniors: the case of the sweetened products". Graduate "École Supérieure de Commerce de Marseille" and ex-auditor of the institute of the high studies of national defence (IHEDN), he followed a 3rd cycle to HEC Montréal. MCF at the University of Corsica, he exercises advices small businesses in France and all over the world.
Thierry has an operational experience of leader of profit center in the distribution with director's posts of a food wholesaler Unilever (40 employees) for 5 years, then as the head of Marketing department of Unilever France.
Teacher of public speaking, Gérard Lemarié is also a philosopher, a speaker and a coach in personal development.
Professor of Advertising & Marketing, Dr Intartaglia works on Neurosciences & Persuasion Techniques in Sales and Advertising. He does research in Information & Management Institute of HEG Arc (Switzerland). He has published numerous books and articles on Advertisement & Persuasion Techniques. He also works as a consultant for private companies.
Digital Marketing & CRM expert, Nathalie Robert has worked in the private sector in Hong Kong, Paris & Singapore. She holds a Master's in Marketing and teaches in several educational institutions in Lausanne, Geneva & Paris.
Nadia Gianoli is a communication strategy teacher for Bachelor's students at the International Management School Geneva. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Human Relations at Quebec University in Montreal and a Master in Development Studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Nadia Gianoli held various communication positions in non-governmental organizations.
After Political economics and sport management studies in Geneva and Fribourg, Andrew Young worked for over 25 years for numerous public administrations in various functions as a top manager, in such different areas as environment, culture, sport, youth or police. As a consultant during the 12 following years, he also specialized in NPO management, as well as event organization and public-private partnerships.
At IMSG, Andrew Young works in the school administration, teaches introduction to micro and macroeconomics and coordinates outsourced teaching for languages and IT skills offered to our students.
He is also in charge of creating the specialized program of Bachelor in Sport Business and of creating an e-Learning platform for our futur EBBA and EMBA.
Graduated from IMD (E-MBA Business Administration, 2009), CELSA (DESS Public Relations, 1997), Paris VII University (DESS Socio-Economics, 1996) and Sciences Po Grenoble (Political Sciences, Master 1995). Marie-Gabrielle Cajoly is the founder and director of CorporatEngagement, a communications and social investment consulting firm. She assists the administrative committees and directorates of public, private and non-profit sector organizations (NGOs) in the definition and implementation of their brand management and their societal commitments at an international level, in Europe, Africa , North America, Middle East and Asia.
Marie-Gabrielle Cajoly bases her consulting activity on 20 years of experience with international brands in different sectors and industries (FMCG, High-Tech, Defense, Chemistry, Pharmaceutical, Energy, Development).
On a personal and professional level, she is particularly involved in promoting the rights of children and women.
Fabien Arévalo graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Geneva, after having studied advertising and operational marketing (senior technician). He currently has nearly 20 years of experience in the field of communication, marketing and sales, with a specialization on CRM and direct customer contact (opposite face-to-face and remote, especially for customer services).
In 2003, he created altamedia company, advice and training for customer relations. In 2006, he obtained the Federal Diploma of Trainer in Business, then in 2010 the CAS in e-business and e-communication of HEC Geneva.
Damien Hubert has significant experience in the direction of international B to B sales in the luxury goods and travel sectors (Disneyland Resort, Nina Ricci, La Montre Hermès …). His areas of expertise are team management and business development in international markets. He is also involved in the training and management of programs in Sales and Marketing. In 2014, he founded La Maison Hubert, creator of exclusive culinary events.
Laura Venchiarutti founded and directs the impactIA Foundation that drives the practical applications of artificial intelligence on work in a sustainable approach. Trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in "Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy", she supports individuals and businesses to cope with the mutations generated by AI. She is also a mentor and coach in business creation programs with societal impacts.
Fabien Lacroix has held the sales management of many multinationals (Paget Group, De Rigo S.p.A, Raymond Weil, Bertolucci SA, Red SA, etc.). He is now CEO of IMCEO, HR Director of Alternet Solutions and CEO of ABCYS Consulting Group Recruitment.
Carole Haddad is a creative and innovative business growth strategist with over 10 years of experience, driving strategic plans, communications, and client relationships. She is known for team leadership and mentorship, networking and connection-building abilities, and key alliance/partnership development.
Law and Finance
Mrs Séverine BERGEROT
M° Hervé CRAUSAZ
Mr Jean-Marc PORTIER
Mr Daniel HERREN
Dr. Elliot ROMANO
Mr Gérard VERNEDE
Mr Xavier BARATON
Mr Bertrand DE GASQUET
Dr. Bernard BARBERI
Mrs Laura VEYRAND
Mr Christian PECHNER
M° Paul COSMOVICI
Séverine Bergerot teaches the Finance Data Mining to IMSG' Master students. After having validated a Master of Science in Management at ESSEC Business School, she is hired at Palexpo as Assistant Director, Head of Planning, Project and Legal Department. She then created her company Human Spark Plug, and then joined Médecins sans Frontières in 2016 as a financial controller. Séverine Bergerot is now a Management Trainer at IFAGE and holds the position of Project Manager at FIPOI.
Hervé Crausaz graduated from the University of Geneva in 1994 and qualified in 1996 in Geneva and in 1999 in Vaud. He founded the Firm Schwab Flaherty Hassberger & Crausaz in 2002 and joined Chabrier Avocats SA in 2007 as partner. He graduated from the Lausanne University in 2009 (LL.M in International and Commercial Law). Hervé is a member of the dispute resolution group of Chabrier Avocats. He has broad experience in domestic and international litigation, dispute resolution including commercial and employment litigation, white collar crimes, interim measures proceedings, debts collections and insolvency proceedings. Hervé also advises his clients, both corporations and individuals, in relation to corporate and commercial matters. Since 1997, Hervé specializes in all Labor, Employment and Immigration law matters, assisting corporation and private clients in those fields. Hervé acted as Clerk for the Geneva Labor Courts (1997 to 2002) and is a member of the State examination commission for Labor Courts Judges in Geneva.
With a benefit of a career made in banks located on the territory of Geneva, Jean-Marc Porter had the opportunity to work primarily in the stock area in connection with the management of private wealth. He was also part of investment committees as a stock picker and monitoring customer positions on fundamental and technical basis. He worked in the last five years as an assistant in wealth management.
Today he teaches to pass this knowledge among university students, based on a completely practical approach, whether in the field of selection of investment instruments or dealing in connection with this selection, but also a knowledge of the possibilities of hedging positions by derivatives.
Certified Accountant (Federal Masters since 1985), Daniel Herren has held positions such as Chief Accountant or CFO. He teaches accounting at different levels for many years in several training centers and private universities. As part of its business, He has had the opportunity to deal with international consulting mandates and travel in Europe, Asia and Africa. Certified FSEA1, he has undertaken the preparation of an institute in his eduQua certification. Trainer of apprentices, there is expert ITFC (Community interest in business education – Geneva).
Elliot Romano holds a Master of Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and a PhD in Economics, Econometrics and Political Economy Department from HEC Lausanne. As an economist of energy, he gained international experience in major energy groups or monitoring and control authority. He is also active in the Energy Systems Group of the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the University of Geneva. His research include pricing and regulation of electricity and gas industry.
After graduation in accounting, Gérard Vernede joins then few years later leads a trustee in Geneva. Since 1993, he is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in Safram SA, Group specialized in the field of international road haulage, warehousing and customs.
Head of Accounting and Reporting for Switzerland, France and Netherlands at LDC, he successively occupied the functions of Junior Financial Controler for Valeo Service, Senior Financial Auditor at Ernst & Young, Trade Accounting Manager – Metals Platforms then Head of Trade Accounting for Europe – Black Sea within LDC.
Bertrand De Gasquet, professor of micro / macroeconomics and international finance, is asset manager in a Parisian private bank. He intervenes all over the world for many banks as well as in numerous programs of "Executive" training.
Bernard Barberi, Chartered accountant and external auditor registered at the Order of "Paris-Île de France", he intervenes in his domains of specialization covering the accounting, the management control, the financial management and the tax system. He works with professional clients of diverse sizes, in different branches of industry, which is source of enrichment for the students.
Laura Veyrand is a consultant and auditor in risk analysis and accounting audit support for companies in various sectors. Professor of accounting, she has a significant experience as a research and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva.
Christian Pechner has held the financial and administrative management of various multinationals and international organizations (ICRC, National Luxembourg Aluminum Company, etc.). After co-leading a business management consulting firm for five years, he was hired by IATA as Senior Auditor, a position he held for nine years. Since 2010, he has been an independent consultant and auditor and chairs a company active in the field of tourism.
M° Paul Cosmovici, lawyer in the field of trademarks, patents and designs, has significant expertise in the strategy related to intellectual property. His experience includes the structuring of commercial transactions as well as the protection of intellectual property assets.
Mr Christophe LUCAS
Mrs Geneviève d'ANGENSTEIN
Mr Vincent TISSIER
Mrs Dorra ANNE
Mr Antoine VAN DEN BROEK
Mr Hervé AZOULAY
Mr Laurent BIOUSSE
Mr Patrick THILL
Prof.Dr. Olivier BADOT (visiting)
Mrs Viktoria AVERSANO
Mr Patrick CHALANÇON
Christophe Lucas followed a training in Asset Management and Management after his university business studies. He chaired a Supervisory Board of an SCPI and was a director of French banking affiliates for several years. He was a lecturer at the Training Centre of the Banking Profession and Euronext and professor at the Business and Management School in Tours where he taught, Heritage Management, international economics, and financial mathematics.
He is now Chief Executive Officer at Alternative Advisors SA and CEO of Compagnie Financière de Florissant, and teaches Businesss Plan methodology to students at the International Management School Geneva.
Specialist in social and professional savoir-vivre, Geneviève d'Angenstein runs BusinessEtiquette.Paris in France.
Although her knowledge is a family heritage, her expertise in intercultural relations is also the result of her academic studies: Bachelor of Arts and Archaeology in Paris – Sorbonne, DEA of Anthropology at Diderot Paris, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
As a diplomat's wife, she has closely been associated with official representations functions and thus had access to political, cultural, intellectual and business elites. She has been associated with various cultural projects. Today, companies, training organizations, administrations, associations, touristic agencies, individuals, employees, financiers, executives, in France and abroad call upon her expertise to teach the importance of social and professionals codes for an individual or a community's success and fulfilment.
She is the author of Savoir-vivre est un jeu, Librio-Flammarion November 2012.
Vincent Tissier teaches the Quality Management to students of the International Management School Geneva. With more than 20 years experience in strategic and operational management, marketing, finance and business development (Operations manager at Relais & Château de Puy Robert, Deputy General Manager at Hôtel Montalembert, General Manager at Hotel Bel Ami, then at the Geneva Hotel & Spa Reserve), he is now a consultant for Luxury groups.
After a Bachelor of Business Administration at Neoma Business School and then a Master at Skema Business School, Dorra ANNE becomes an international sales associate for an event agency in London. Then, she joined SAGEMCOM as a commercial engineer and then SFR Business team Distributor 5sur5 for major accounts. Then she became Key Account Manager BtoB Telecom for the brand Samsung. Today she is independent, and leads B to B sales consulting seminars, especially at the International Management School Geneva.
Antoine is the co-founder of Mutinerie, a co-working space in Paris. He teaches students the best way to manage projects in group.
Hervé Azoulay, speaker in "Grandes Écoles" of France (HEC, CNAM, EM-Lyon, ESCP Europe), president of the Group Athes, he intervenes firstly in the field of the new business start-up and the conception of business plan. He is also the author of noticed works.
Laurent started his career in 1993 at Coutts bank in the UK and moved to Geneva in 1997 to join the bank's portfolio management team. He left in 1999 to set up Geneva Asset and Wealth Management SA, an independent asset management company based in Geneva, which he later sold to his partner. In 2011 Laurent moved to Singapore and set up Aeronautics Fund, a Cayman based regulated investment fund managed by a Finma regulated Swiss independent fund manager. Laurent holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Aviation Management from the Geneva School of Economics and Management, an MBA from the International Management School Geneva and he is an associate member of CISI, the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment and a member of ISTAT the International Society of Transport Aircraft Traders.
Junior Lecturer in Ireland (University College of Galway), Patrick THILL led a group of Business Schools (Weller) for 9 years, and then became HR Director of Lybertysurf-Tiscali & Dell Southern Europe. He then led a French private group of schools in Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Dublin, Shanghai & Casablanca. Today, he helps & tutors start-ups within the Educational sector.
The Prof.Dr. Olivier Badot has a Doctorate in Industrial Economics. He is a specialist in consumption, trade and distribution.. Member of the Committee of Experts of the City Factory (Vivendi) and the National Center of Shopping Centers, he is Scientific Director of the E. Leclerc Chair and current Dean of Research at ESCP Europe. He is a Visiting Professor at IMSG, teaching the prospective of consumption and distribution.
After studying law at the University of Geneva, Viktoria Aversano was a lawyer at Cartier. She was then Secretary of the Board of Directors and Head of Legal Services at Deutsche Bank, and then embarked on personal development coaching and legal advice as a freelancer. In February 2008, noting the suffering represented by a lawsuit, unresolved litigation and deadlocked debates, she is moving towards mediation, a method of consensual resolution of disputes and offers the possibility of overcoming a dispute while respecting others. and mutual accountability. Thus, she opens Esprit d'Entente, specialized firm in mediation, coaching and legal advice. Since 2015 she has been a member of the Swiss Circle of Directors.
Qualified Engineer, specializing in the study of marketing and management, Patrick Chalançon has more than 25 years of experience in company management. He has held management positions in Swiss companies and major Swedish and American groups.
Business Booster in all its form is his passion. Taking care of companies, its employees and its customers is his profession, whether through international consulting or on an operational basis (He has manages 3 companies).
In 2013 He co-wrotes a book: Manager : Devenez Durable! (Managing : Become Sustainable!) describing how to sustainably manage a business. He also publishes articles regularly in the Monde Economique magazine.
Economical Intelligence and Geopolitics
Col. Eric NICOD
Mr Serge VIDAL
Col. Frédéric GALLOIS
Mr Christian AGHROUM
Mr Rolin WAVRE
Dr. Patrick NAEF
Mr Gilles-Emmanuel JACQUET
Mr Patrice SAM
Mr Olivier NARAY
Colonel Eric NICOD spent a career as an officer in the French Air Force before performing various teaching duties, notably within Institutes of Political Studies from 2011 onwards. As an officer, he held various positions of responsibility in various fields and in diplomatic and operational contexts, which gave him the opportunity to make numerous visits abroad, particularly in the ex -Soviet. He was then assigned to posts related to the training function, which enabled him to develop the initial and continuous training of all French Air Force officers at the Ecole Militaire in Paris and then In the Salon de Provence air force officers' school (including the Air School) of which he is a graduate. Holder of the diplomas of the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Paris), of the Center for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies (Paris) and of an Institute of Political Studies. Colonel Eric Nicod is also a graduate of the Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik in Berlin. He is also a graduate of the German military academy (Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg).
He is now professor of international relations at the IMSG and mission manager "exchanges with Russia".
Serge VIDAL is a specialist in substantial, international projects, where a complex solution must be built from scratch, taking into account various drivers: costs, performances, risks, operational constraints, local specificity…
Such multifaceted projects require a good understanding of many issues : commercial and technical, but also financial, legal, regulatory, logistical, cultural, and even diplomatic affairs.
With dual high-level education (International Relations + Projects Engineering) , He is equally at ease while :
– selling a project to government officials in the field in an unsafe country,
– leading a high-tech R&D bid team,
– or building a partnership in an emerging country.
Specialties: – Facts Finding, Projects Surveys, Situation Assessment, requirement analyses, competition analyses…
– Technical solutions, concepts, costing and pricing, Bid Strategy, Bid Management, Partnerships, Alliances, Joint Ventures
– Contract Negotiation, Contract Management,
– Project Management, suppliers management, contract management, client relationship
Frédéric Gallois has got a MBA HEC/GENDARMERIE in "Safety management", and a Master in "Business Intelligence". He followed the program of the ESM of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan then the School of Officers of the Gendarmerie Nationale. Furthermore, he possesses the diploma of "Expert in management of the criminal and terrorist crises" of the GIGN. Finally, he is a member of the Center of Reflection on the Internal security (CRSI). He is in charge of teaching students the risks related to the expatriation.
After a career in the French National Police, then having been director of the security for an international company based in Switzerland, Christian Aghroum created his own company of advice in cybersecurity and crisis management.
Rolin Wavre, professor of compared political systems, has worked for 18 years at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and possesses a large experience in international humanitarian operations. He's also committee member of the Swiss PLR. He is since May 2018 deputy to the Grand Council, Member of the Commissions of the Transports, of the Judicial Commission and that of the Communal and Regional Affairs.
Patrick Naef holds a PhD in cultural geography from the University of Geneva. He was previously a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His main areas of research are around memory and violence. His research in Eastern Europe, South America and South-East Asia has led him to examine notions such as identity, tourism, war, genocide, nationalism and representation.
Gilles-Emmanuel Jacquet holds Master degrees in Political Science from the University of Geneva and in European Studies from the European Institute of the University of Geneva. Mr. Jacquet specializes in History, International Relations and Geopolitics. His research includes: armed conflicts, terrorism, religious and political radicalism, ethnolinguistic and cultural issues as well as the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.
Patrice Sam has been working for over twenty years in the areas of financial transparency and the fight against fraud and corruption. Following graduation from Ecole de Management de Lyon, Mr. Sam started his career as a financial auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers and forensic accountant in the Paris prosecutor's office. He then joined the international civil service as a fraud and corruption investigator. Successively assigned to the Asian Development Bank, UNESCO and the Global Fund, he eventually joined the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as the head of its investigation unit.
Swiss and multilingual (French, German, Swiss-German, English) with solid experience in stakeholder management and advocacy, Olivier Naray is specialised in trade & investment promotion as well as corporate public affairs. Through first hand knowledge of the Swiss political system, He has a network in the media, politics, business interest groups and diplomacy.
He has represented business interests, delivered strategies for both government and corporates, business linkages/market intelligence in B2B and B2G contexts, among others in the technology industry (large enterprises, SMEs, start-ups). Also, He has brought together together diverse actors and influenced policy-formulation and policy-making.
He is part of a Geneva-based global start-up company's Advisory Board and is a reviewer for a business journal's editorial board. Published in scientific peer reviewed journals and books relating to commercial diplomacy, trade & investment promotion, and lectured on management as well as marketing at Swiss universities. He hold a Ph.D. in Management, an M.A. in International Affairs as well as a M.Sc. in Political Sciences.


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What Does a High SGOT in a Liver Function Test Mean?
How to Calculate the AST/ALT Ratio
What Is a High GGT Level?
Normal Levels for Liver Enzymes
What Is AST/SGOT in a CMP Test?
Does Lithium Carbonate Affect Liver Enzymes?
What Is a SGPT Blood Test?
By Ezmeralda Lee ; Updated July 27, 2017
An SGPT blood test is a test used to measure the amount of the enzyme glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) in blood.
Significance of the SGPT Blood Test
This enzyme is found in cells of the heart, kidneys, muscles and pancreas in small amounts, but it is in much greater concentration in the liver. This test is sometimes called ALT. You may hear your physician refer to it as a liver function study, where it is also combined with several other tests, all of which test how well the liver is functioning.
Benefits of SGPT BloodTest
An SGPT test is done to see if the liver is diseased or damaged. Although there is normally a low level of GPT in the bloodstream, it will greatly increase in the presence of certain diseases, such as cirrhosis and hepatitis. The use of certain medications, such as statins to lower cholesterol, can also irritate the liver causing GPT to be released. This is why doctors check the liver functions carefully whenever you are on certain types of drugs. Early detection of elevated GPT levels can let the doctor know when to decrease or eliminate the use of certain drugs to prevent permanent damage to the liver.
Features of SGPT Lab Test
Normal results of SGPT can vary from one lab to another. The lab performing the SGPT test will print their normal values on the lab report. Most labs consider a GPT level of zero to 30 units per liter. The level of GPT may be elevated considerably if you drink too much alcohol, or have mononucleosis, chronic liver damage or disease, gallstones or gallbladder disease or certain types of cancer. No medical conditions are known to cause a person to have a GPT level that is too low.
Further Testing
If the SGPT test is extremely elevated, your physician may request that you have an ultrasound performed on your liver. This will determine if there is an underlying disease factor and will help the physician decide what to do to lower the GPT level. If the increased GPT level is caused by the use of a drug, discontinuing use of the drug or replacing it with another drug will usually let the GPT levels fall back into the normal range. If the elevated GPT levels are caused by other problems with the liver or gallbladder, the physician will probably refer you to a specialist, such as a gastroenterologist, for further evaluation.
SGPT Blood Test Considerations
The SGPT blood test is performed on blood serum. The blood is drawn from a vein and spun in a centrifuge to separate the serum from the cells. No special preparation for the test is needed; however, do not perform strenuous exercise immediately before having the test done. You should also avoid taking herbs such as echinacea and valerian, as they can affect the SGPT results. If you have an abnormal test result, you will probably be asked to have the test done again to be sure the first test was accurate.
University of Minnesota Medical Center: What Is the SGPT Test?
Causes of Elevated B-12 Levels
Can Too Much Protein Cause Bad Blood Work Results?
The Effects of Ibuprofen on the Liver & Kidneys
Normal BUN & Creatinine Levels
Rheumatoid Arthritis & Elevated Liver Enzymes
What Is a Normal B12 Count?


We are hiring for both tier 1 and tier 2 techncial support representatives for incoming technical support. Typically we are providing support for cell phones, hardware and software for our clients and their customers.
Work 5 steady shifts followed by 2 consecutive days off (this may not be a typical Sat/Sun as we are a 24/7 operation) We offer shifts on days, afternoons, nights and weekends. You will have a regular, steady shift.
Previous experience as tier 1 or tier 2 technical support is ideal.


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CNN and HLN have employed Hines Ward, the 2-time Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Super Bowl MVP, and winner of season 12 of Dancing With the Stars. Once Mariano Rivera retires, no other participant will probably be allowed to wear #forty two (Rivera had #forty two earlier than MLB started Jackie Robinson day in 2004). The most notable — at present on hiatus — is Keith Olbermann: A sports (and particularly baseball historical past) aficionado who also happened to be MSNBC's high-rated political host for many years before returning to ESPN.
The show was renamed Sports Tonight shortly afterwards, and when CNN pre-empted the present in late 2000 1 because of the coverage of the disputed 2000 presidential election , producers decided to distinguish the format from SportsCenter's highlights.


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Actors & Personalities · Directors · Essays
Love of Sophia: Lost in Translation, Transcendence, Transfiguration
"Translation is at best an echo." – George Borrow
Listen to me, Sofia . . .
There's a moment in Lost in Translation everyone talks about, after they've talked about the "whisper" near the end. It's the instant when I, the actor character in your movie, do a double-take on seeing myself on a billboard on my jetlagged taxi to the Tokyo hotel where I spend much of the rest of my time. Most people won't get it till they see the film a second time, but the reason the sight takes me so unawares is that, having only been here an hour at best, the picture on the ad couldn't have been taken yet. The situation is, like everything else that happens here, left to speak for itself. It's an experience of the uncanny, such as what follows for the rest of my story.
Something about Lance Acord's luminous photography, the breathy soundtrack, the feeling of passivity in the back of a cab in the seeming middle of the night tells me I'm in a dream, as you signal in your opening shot of Charlotte, the woman I come so close to loving, lying in the half-light, her back to the audience like a cat. She is a mediator between worlds — our copula, Sofia — the means by which you brought me into being. And yet it's not her I love; it's you — unreachable, untouchable, unknowable, uncanny. As you used her to coax me from half a world away to get to know you and learn something of this unknown ground between us, then, so may I also use her, your philosophy student, our liaison between heaven and — heaven — to address you, to express my gratitude for this act of creation.
Having done so twice already, let me explain what I mean when I use the term uncanny. I take it the same way Freud did, as that sense of the unheimlich — the un-home-ly — an encounter with something familiar which seems somehow unfamiliar, whether a lost part of the self returned in another form; a private thought or feeling made peculiar by its representation in the visible world; a loss of one's sense of mastery over the material realm (what Sartre termed nausea); an unexpected fulfillment of one's wishes, as though one's desires had been known; a moment of creative genius, when an invented personality takes on independent life or, as Freud has said, "a symbol takes on the full function of what it symbolizes." It's also the surprise of finding that the ETA Hoffman story, "The Sand-Man," Freud used as a touchpoint in his oft-cited essay on "The Uncanny" itself focuses on an Italian optician named Coppola. As the Latin coppo means "eye-socket," so too are you the eyes or lens through which I am seen, through the mind of Charlotte. For me it's like being bathed in the body's own electric current for the 102 minutes of our existence; this feeling of knowing you.
And I know the effect is mutual, too; the opposite sex is always uncanny. From your maiden feature, The Virgin Suicides, through your most recent, you've looked at the sexes from every viewpoint in order to find the heimlich in the unheimlich. To do this you've had to alienate yourself, to fashion some not-you between yourself and your leads, preferably in some foreign location, whether '70s suburbia, contemporary Japan, or 18th-century Versailles. You've had to make yourself uncanny, that you might meet your Other as yourself. Not for nothing did you situate us in Japan, the home of the original fission that marked that country's separation from its history of reverence for nature and the zen Buddhist One into a modern technological anomie. Japan understands. (As did your father Francis, whose first picture, Battle Beyond the Sun, started with a mushroom cloud, initiating a career-long parade of atomically divided characters trying to reunite with their alternately redemptive and corrupting Others.) Yet for all the unearthliness of neon-and-glass Tokyo, there's a certain sanctity about the place, a sense of belonging in the unhomeliness. It's the perfect place for opposites to meet and, more than reconcile their differences, recognize their likenesses.
This realm is also known as the world of dreams. Here, the conscious and the unconscious mind meet to enact those dramas neither is capable of realizing without the other. The ego willingly forfeits its power over the self in order to let other aspects of the personality come out and test their differences and affinities in search of new possibilities. We tend to gender the consciousness masculine for its seeming willfulness, control, and valuing of logic over the emotions, versus the more spontaneous and intuitive associations of the "feminine" unconscious. Disoriented as my character is, then, there's a sense of his feminization — especially as I'm given as a onetime action star whose defining trait now is nothing if not inaction.
If everything about the place seems off, or wrong, it's because we're both in an unfamiliar frame of mind. For me, it's called middle age. That's why I forget my son's birthday, and why I have to get away from the two businessmen who recognize me from my movies, for my youth, my past is as strange to me now as the future is to Charlotte. The billboard welcoming me here is a reassurance, then, as though some part of me had gone on ahead to explore this new place; it serves a similar function to the last-shot photo in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, to demonstrate that no matter how alien it may seem to me now, I Have Always Been in Japan.
Likewise Charlotte, whose responses to me early in our meeting suggest an always-already quality to our relationship, though she doesn't recognize me from a previous encounter and seems unfamiliar with my film-life. Caught in a misguided marriage something like my own, she shares an estrangement from an unnamed part of herself, an association that isn't working anymore. When she laments to her sister "I don't know who I married," it's as good as saying to what she's married, betraying the source of her anxiety: She doesn't know where her other half lies.
Like spores from another planet, we've both drifted here to find a new self to live in in this alien world, a commonality beyond the cultural mystifications that keep us apart as man and woman. Yet it's not these structural and linguistic codes that alienate us, it's the alienation itself. Nothing is truly lost in translation but our selves — and I don't mean a loss in the sense of absence, failure or diminution, but a lost-in-the-stars sublimity that comes from abandoning oneself to the fact of finding a loving other in this world.
Adding to our sense of Parousia are the reverberations from your other films, beginning with Charlotte's name. Besides being a winking acknowledgment of the actress who plays her, Scarlett Johansson, it's also the name of a central character in the script you co-wrote with your father for his segment of the New York Stories omnibus, "Life Without Zoe." That film's Charlotte, as globetrotting mother to its title child, suggests an imaginative future for your present character. And, since Zoe was a thinly veiled surrogate for yourself — and as mythological Sophia, whose name meant wisdom, was the actual mother of mythological Zoe, whose name meant life — you get the sense of a parthenogenetic creatrix serially rebirthing herself child-unto-mother-unto-child again. The title effectively translates into "Life Without Life," making it a ringer, too, for the movie your father would attempt to regenerate his own artistic spirit with 18 years later, Youth Without Youth. Zoe is also the name of my daughter here, as well as being the first part of your dad's beloved Zoetrope Studios — meaning that you, kind mother, are in some sense the generator of his life-work and the raison d'être for his creative genius.
Virgin's narrator and self-confessed creator of the "noise that seemed to fascinate" that film's girls is played by Giovanni Ribisi, Lost's photographer husband John, first seen similarly snoring while Charlotte keeps window-watch over nighttime Tokyo. In a way, the earlier film plays as John's backstory, then, his character's attempt to understand the opposite sex a sort of autopsy on its title sisters, who commit group suicide. The theatrical manner of their deaths suggest that they function mainly to be seen, not "known," to show these young men something of what they're on the verge of losing; poor John still wants only to fix these objects in space, having apparently not learned his lesson.
That Charlotte has a degree in philosophy — from the Latin philo-sophia — tells me there's an element of self-love, self-regard, self-knowledge that has somehow failed to yield her author the kind of satisfaction she's looking for. The fact that she's about as believable in her discipline as I am in my action past tells us how distant we've become from our origins, both looking now for that understanding that can only be found in an other. The course you chart in your story is our path back to each other, to that unity of purpose when the mind and body we represent were one and the muse spoke in a language that transcended words.
You open our movie with a vignette of a woman's behind; you close it with a vision of one man's future. That first shot is a reframing of John Kacere's painting Jutta, so that the effect of your fade to black is one of disappearing into a work of art, your film a modern-day Keatsian "On First Looking into Kacere." The filminess of her underwear is a signal as to the ethereal tone the rest of the drama will take, much like the similarly fleeting, transient introductions to all your pictures. It also calls attention to the midsection of life I'm encountering as well as suggesting that you are beginning at the End, reinforcing the action to follow as a crawling back to some originating or essential moment from which two static characters may rediscover their momentum. As an in-flight voiceover announces my arrival, it is, finally, a birthing out the 'other' side: my introduction into your world.
Being a semi-retired actor, I'm a dormant character called into action to fulfill a particular role in your life — the animus whose archetypal purpose is to guide a woman back to her spirit-self, and the "regressive masculinity," or mythical symbol of power lost to many women on the advent of sexual or social maturation. It's been said that I was modeled on your father, who similarly had not made a movie of his own for six years by the time of Lost's release; it could also be said that your film was a rite of invocation to urge him back into creative work, though I know who I'm really here to represent.
Awaking in a cab, I'm a figure both of and in transition. The electric paintbox city that passes by my window suggests a Tron-like landscape, indicating your own disorientation suddenly occupying a masculine mindspace, like Marie Antoinette transplanted early in your next film from her native Austria to her intended husband's Versailles. My many fish-out-of-water scenes illustrate the reciprocal effect of finding myself in or serving a feminine consciousness, my double-take on seeing myself on that billboard like a scene in some eighties' genderswitch movie when the heroine sees her new self in the mirror for the first time. As it's a sophisticated pose I'm struck by, this vision of a self-to-be suggests the refinement we both seek here, a coming-into-the-self achievable only by leaving that self for as long as it takes to get an objective viewpoint. (One flashes to the out-of-body sequence of your father's Rumble Fish, as foreseen in his preceding The Outsiders.) My suavity up there contrasts awkward John here on earth, a character purportedly based on your estranged director-hubby Spike Jonze but indicative also of your own uncertainty as a picture-maker in this, your sophomore feature directorial effort. To find one of us will be to find the other, as yourself.
From the Old Country known as my marriage, I keep getting faxes — communiqués from the one major actor in this scenario we never see, my wife Lydia, suggesting her as the ordering, logical consciousness or ego we've been alienated from in order to let the dream play out. (Her name is shared by Virgin's similarly intrusive voice of consciousness, the newswoman hounding the Lisbon family.) The first message she sends is the one about my son, Adam's, birth day; the next, jarring me from my half-sleep in the early morning, concerns a remodeling job she's undertaking. What seems like trivia spit out in the dreaming hours is in reality a multiple reminder of the re-genesis I'm not yet aware is taking place.
Charlotte seems to grasp this on some level as she sits listening to John's noises from the bed opposite. Her joining him there despite his snoring is a decision to commune with that noise in order, we assume, to come to terms with it. His exit from our story later on suggests a dismissal — a resolution of the male perspective, or "voice," that served to guide you through your maiden voyage to this one. What a marvel, to witness firsthand a woman discovering her own voice, and to see her using it to bridge the divide rather than deepen it.
My experience on the commercial I've come here to shoot, where its arty, aloof director's longwinded orders are distilled into bafflingly simple directions by his assistant, parallels a scene in which Charlotte observes a Buddhist rite, which also fails to speak to her. Coming just after John abandons Charlotte to go to work, as I have Lydia back home, the two episodes reinforce the film's sense of a theological ennui in a universe alienated from its obscure god-fathers. Charlotte's ritual is familiar territory in all your films, as well, from the Virgin cliques and formals to the court intrigues and bals of Marie Antoinette. All are influenced as much, no doubt, by your Catholic upbringing as by your father's gangsterish, military and courtly transposition of these rites in his own works. So it's a surprise that Charlotte should show such lack of involvement here as well as in the ikebana demonstration later: it goes against what we're trained by Hollywood to expect from such scenes, to the extent, even, of being a riposte to that particular ritual of moviemaking. This skepticism indicates an ambivalence on your part toward both word and image, contributing to the cinematic coup at the climax of our story.
The art of floral arrangement carries a religious function similar to the rite. It's a working of the elements of heaven, man and earth into a re-presentation not unlike your own practice of directing, where you locate objects in space (as occurrences in time, the demonstration itself appearing out of narrative sequence), in order to reveal their timeless, universal and spiritual underpinnings. Charlotte's non-reaction is doubly strange, then, for you are if nothing a gestural filmmaker, informed by your fashion designer's appreciation for form and stylization; you have an eye for things. While obviously fascinated by such visual and spatial noise, though, you also see the shortcoming in such utter convention. You seem to be implying that the original import of our acts and manners is lost,; what we need now is to re-connect on the earthly, human level we all occupy, rather than elevating ourselves to some mythic, irrational heaven. Some loss is for the better.
You can take this to the realm of sexual politics, if you want.
Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, compares the importance imputed to women's work to that ascribed to men's. The latter, at least up until the time of her writing in 1929, purported to address "big" issues like war and nobility, while women focused on smaller, domestic, relational — thus, inferior — matters. It's easy to see the difference between the politics of, say, your father's The Conversation and the insanity of Apocalypse Now, and the intimacy of Virgin and Lost. This, in spite of your tendency to restate elements and themes from his works, from casting — Kathleen Turner returning from Peggy Sue Got Married to mother your Virgin girls (whose prom scene and sister Lux's deflowering is an extension of her own); to setpieces — The Godfather's grandiose wedding scenes reduced to a perfunctory swirl in Marie Antoinette, Apocalypse's Bo Long Bridge fantasia recast as Charlotte's video arcade excursion; to simple vignettes — Marie's fishing a pug dog out of her sheets a response to The Godfather's horse's head, the lackadaisical airscapes in Virgin soothing counterpoint to the testosteronal Qoyaanisqatsi rhythms of Rumble Fish.
So little may have changed on the critical front from Woolf's day to ours that when making your own historical epic in Marie Antoinette you were taken to task more than once for examining the situation in terms empathetic to the title fourteen-year-old, leaving to the side cinematically as well as politically those unseemly peasant hordes who brought the film-long party to its conclusion. Reading these critics, you can't help but recall the Virgin doctor condescending about the issues leading Cec Lisbon to her failed suicide, and the "Hmphs" of agreement from audiences to her reply, "You've obviously never been a thirteen-year-old girl." If the personal is the political, it's as important in its way.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin picks up Woolf's argument, taking issue with men's alleged virtue of objectivity versus women's supposed subjectivity. "In all his ideas, systems, philosophies," Nin says, "art comes from a personal source he does not wish to admit." Woman's art, by contrast, should be organic, gestative, "different from man's abstractions," created "without those proud delusions…without megalomania, without schizophrenia, without madness. She must create that unity which man first destroyed by his proud consciousness." When your father emerged from the Apocalyptic jungle where he'd also gone a little mad, he had seemingly learned this lesson and set about recreating himself on the emotional and domestic front — literally, for his second Vietnam film, Gardens of Stone, which dealt with the battles within these military families, and for which he received his own share of flack from those trained to expect bigger statements on larger canvases from an artist of his stature. (Tell me, Sofia, was it you who helped your father see his way to this self-knowledge, or did a later loss drive the point home?)
When Charlotte and I meet for real in the hotel bar, neither of us can sleep. Our insomnia puts us in sympathy with the times, preceded as we were by 1993's Sleepless in Seattle; Dream for an Insomniac three years after that; the Danish Insomnia, followed by its 2002 American remake of the same name; Dario Argento's millennial Sleepless (the director's enfant-terrible daughter Asia soon to be your Marie Antoinette Madame DuBarry) and finally the Comedy Central series, "Insomniac." It's as if we've been put here to fulfill a need of the wider world's, to lay that world to rest through the meeting of a certain male character and his younger female counterpart. Charlotte's toast to my midlife crisis then is as to the middle ground itself — the very nebulous, possibly hypnagogic state that fostered our meeting and in which we must both learn to thrive.
The next time we see each other you dress us both in robes like kimonos, indicating we've gone native like the Apocalypse soldiers, but benignly; when Charlotte invites me to go clubbing with her local friends, it takes our disappearance into the neutral territory of Japan further. We end up at a balloon disco reminiscent of your Virgin prom and anticipating Marie's many pageants, where Charlotte's best friend — who goes by the masculine variant of her name, Charlie Brown, making him an intermediate figure between her and me — invites us back to his place. There, we carry on a karaoke dialogue between the generations as well as our characters. The songs follow a strict chronological, tonal and emotional trajectory, from the 1977 roar of "God Save the Queen" through 1979's dynamic "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" and slower, poppier "Brass in Pocket," culminating with the 1982 dream-flow of "More Than This." Together, they chart a working through from a point of catharsis to one of transcendence and calm — though a not-unproblematic one.
Charlie's cri de l'anarchie in "Queen" befits his role as disruptive agent in the dream. Yet for all the hectoring, lecturing and ranting of the song, the message behind the nihilist punk ethos it sprang from was of a tearing-down not for its own sake but with the intention of clearing room for a rebuilding. Its "no future" taunt is equal parts protest and liberation, after Richard Hell's "Blank Generation," the declaration of a culture recognizing itself at human Ground Zero. Frustrated in a way that "What's So Funny" conveys with more vulnerability, and bereft in a way that "More Than This" will wear on its sleeve, the song serves to document a society ripping apart with the disparity between the oblivious rich and the desperate poor, with no connective middle to support either. As such, it's a neat foreshadowing of your later Marie Antoinette and descriptive, as well, of both our marriages.
The hippie-era virtues extolled in my response song call to mind both the 70s rap-session aesthetic of the preceding scene as well as the legendary appearance of that song's popularizer, Elvis Costello, on "Saturday Night Live" — the program which gave Bill Murray, the actor who plays me, his start. As defiant and propulsive as "Queen," "What's So Funny" is more tuneful and more skillfully packaged, offering at least a memory of the hope the punks were unable or unwilling to muster. As sung by me, it's the plea of a middle-aged man for the values of a perhaps imagined lost season of love and a quest for something better than what obtains today, its "As I walk through/walk on" refrain indicating mobility and progress despite the drains of the pain and misery of the present on its speaker. Lamenting to Charlotte for a lost "ha-a-a-a-rmony, sweet harmony" tells her that I know what she is looking for, because I am feeling it too.
It's up to her, then, to take the discussion out of the political and into the personal as she interprets "Brass in Pocket" like it was every woman's plea to the male gender to recognize the validity of such "feminine" values as gesture, vulnerability and desire. As the only song originally voiced by a woman, it's also the least British in pedigree, writer Chrissie Hynde an expatriate American expressing a loneliness from within not only a foreign land but also the traditionally masculine domain of rock and roll. Her plaint is the most personal in all the songs, the first to employ a one-on-one form of address as well as a physicality in its imagery, her "gonna use my arms/legs/fingers/sidestep" contrasting the abstractions of the previous tunes' "dreaming/future/crimes/peace/love/etc." She has unrealized power, she wants you to know, to awaken knowledge in her other. Like the Lisbon suicides, the speaker, as Charlotte's, only need is to be recognized, if not by her photographer husband (whose job it is to notice things), then by this act-or you have introduced into her life.
Taking this longing to a zen level, I serenade her with Roxy Music's "More Than This" — as in "there is nothing," a recognition that our collusion is both the ne plus ultra and the base reality to counter the spiritual mysteries Charlotte had encountered. Its nihilism, though more sublimely couched, closes the circle with "Queen" while opening out the dialogue to include the transcendent. In the end, the lyric's reference to that elusive "this" is to the song itself, as well as the moment it takes place in. What more can there be than this woman and I relating to each other through the art that seems to spring so effortlessly here, other than the longing that draws us together? In the true world of men and women, there's no need for deeper reasoning. This longing is enough.
On leaving Charlie's apartment, I find myself face to face with myself again in the form of the whiskey ad I'd just shot, blown up and lit from behind on the side of a passing truck. As overwhelming as it is, it's a throwback to my introduction to Tokyo — an indication that our story has started over. It's also a reminder that one of the most common elements of the uncanny is that of the doppelgänger, or double. Freud said this figure "was originally an insurance against the extinction of the self," in the sense that if there were more than one me there could be a life beyond my own. Beginning in children's lack of differentiation from their surroundings — which Freud termed primitive narcissism, where all the world is an extension of the self reflecting that self back to the individual, as in a dream — this double later in life becomes a harbinger of death instead, an awareness of the self as a body in the world prone to the breakdowns and degenerations inevitable in that world. Seeing myself huge and illuminated in such a way is my second, incontestable encounter with my own double, an awareness of my mortality.
When Charlotte and I bunk down in my room that night to watch La Dolce Vita on T.V., the Japanese subtitling of this Italian-language film redoubles the distance between us and the spoken word. It makes a certain sense, then, that this scene and its dialogue should become the centerpiece of the movie, especially as it involves Charlotte's insecurity with words in the form of the writing she says she's given up on.
Did you know that before the written Word of God became law, Wisdom — Sophia — was lord? As Leonard Shlain has it in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, the development of written language was instrumental in the transition of society from image-oriented goddess-worship to the patriarchal order of today. So when I encourage Charlotte to keep writing, it's my way of telling you, Sofia, to keep communing with that elder animus you once served but now must find in yourself, so to integrate it with the image-friendly Goddess within.
On that platonic bed, home of reverie as well as sexuality, Charlotte and I make love with our words — that is, with that lost sense of self I am here to re-connect her to — those same words we'll finally transcend in our last moment together. When I pat her injured foot at the end of our scene it casts the whole dialogue as an x-ray of both our maladies, a gesture that says it's okay to feel hurt in an unsatisfying world. And it's this recognition that finally allows us to drift into the sleep we'd both been craving as long as we'd been here.
Your fade to black at this point suggests that our film has found rest too, its sleepy rhythms throughout a phasing in and out of consciousness, as of personalities. Our chaste bedding down is a culmination of each our separate missions — hers, to heal this injury (to her foot, where self meets world) and to rekindle my erotic connection to diminishing life: sex without sex, in the fashion of Youth Without Youth.
The next day, Charlotte trains to Kyoto while I make an appearance on a local show. As anagrammatic not-Tokyo, her destination suggests a turning inside-out of our experiences in the city to reveal their inner truth. Her visit to a temple to observe a wedding indicates a sort of internal marriage happening at the same time, unifying parts of herself separated so long she's found herself alien to her own life. Seeing this groom provide his bride a hand up visualizes the Agape I had extended to her the night before; knowing that such communion is possible in life means she's one step closer to discovering and achieving it herself. At the same time, my good-natured joining in on the Welcome Dance during the bizarre "Matthew's Best Hit T.V." show indicates that I too have become part of the culture, having given up just enough pride to do so. Would that such an experience had lasted longer.
Maybe coming so close to that variant of the uncanny the Japanese call mono no aware, a direct and unmediated understanding of or sympathy with the gods through open encounters with the world, threw me for a loop in a way it might not have Charlotte. Maybe she wasn't as entrenched yet in that world as I was, or maybe her background in philosophy, versus mine in action, better prepared her. Either way, another exchange with Lydia sends me into a blackout after picking up a singer in the lounge bar upstairs. When I wake to hear her warbling "Midnight at the Oasis," it's a cunning reference to the female genitalia from which I'm conditionally reborn; when Lydia calls soon after and tries to put our daughter on the line — tries to reconnect me with Zoe — she's unsuccessful, for I have by now crossed that Elysian median to the other side (the Latin root of the term translation meaning to bear across). Charlotte's course from here on is back toward consciousness, mine toward obliviation.
There'd always been an element of the dreamlike in our story's airy rhythms, elisions, logical lapses and dislocations, but here it collapses into the truly peculiar as Charlotte awakens in the middle of the night to a distant alarm. She finds downstairs a cadre of hazmat-suited specters milling among the meandering, disoriented hotel guests, including a robed and slippered me. Apparently there had been a fire, but with the tone more of bafflement than distress it takes a bit of adjusting to recognize this as reality — especially given the small-scale fire truck somehow sitting in the middle of the lobby — and you may still not be so sure. By the end of the movie, you may see that you were right.
As I stand in my kimono assimilated into the Tokyo nightworld, Charlotte must recognize what your father may not have when his Apocalypse adventurers began blending into their surroundings: that there is a purity in losing yourself to an other, which one must not be so afraid of. In this lobby, where elements enter and exit on their own, all stirred by an unnamed upset, there is a communal consciousness of which we both partake. Those emergency workers, rather than responding to any material event, are there to clear away any toxins we might worry had been left between us after Charlotte heckled me over my having had an affair. The next day I would be leaving Tokyo, as all the world, to her.
As we make up here, my announcement of imminent departure is a signal that I had done all I rationally could to un-stick her, and a realization that the dream would soon be ending. When I touch Charlotte's hand and tell her I don't want to leave, it's as good as confessing that I know my life is over, my usefulness used up. Our peck in the elevator, on the way down, alone now as opposed to the first time I spied her there, is one next-to-last goodbye to that sense of immortality so easy to maintain as a screen star, but not so easy in life.
For you, this passing of a semi-retired — that is, restless; unquiet — figure partially modeled on your father is an awareness within yourself of having transcended that preceding, always-already god-father essence of patriarchal causality that would permit you now to become an artist in your own right, with your own distinctly feminine stamp on what was necessary to our survival. The fax I receive the next morning from Lydia awaiting my arrival that night is your consigning me back to the home to which Charlotte never returns in the life of the film — a reintegration into the self and a reorientation of my own self toward the death I had spent the whole time evading, like a ghost who could not rest until one last loose end had been tied up. As I say goodbye to that ascendant part of myself I must now leave behind there at the elevator which had so defined her for me, the flashing of the reporters' cameras fixes our moment in time, making it indelible.
My listless cab out from that sacred space occurs in the daylight this time, for all has been illuminated by the intervening events. When I see her face again from out of the crowd in a place she couldn't have reached by then it's a suggestion that the dream which had either begun or intensified on Charlotte's awakening is still not over, her discovery there a condensation of all those foreign faces into one heimlich image. If seeing oneself in the world — my arriving recognition of the similarly incongruous billboard — is a manifestation of narcissism, then seeing the other — or oneself in that other — must mean a leap has been made, a movement out of a restrictive, dead-end point of view into a transcendent vision. Ken Wilber tells us that such leaps are not effective until an embrace of this vision takes place, and so embrace we do, and it is at this point that the magic happens.
I whisper something in her ear, and we kiss. Resolved, I return to my cab like some fifties alien bearing an important message for mankind to his spaceship. When I tell the driver "All right," it's an affirmation of my recent agreement with Charlotte ("Okay?" "Okay") as the feedback-drenched drum intro of "Just Like Honey" sounds like my own resuming heartbeat. It's dusk, however, confirming my mortality, which I meet with a satisfied fade to black. Am I going home to settle things with Lydia? It hardly matters. Mostly I'm just going, although the fate of your Marie-Antoinette, who began and ended her film in a similar cab, would bode not so well.
As for the whisper, well, everyone has their theories. For those people who need to know what was said, I feel genuinely sorry. They're still too attached to the Word, when what counts here is that we have transcended matters of interpretation. We have reached that exalted station where the hemispheres of the brain are in communion, where the dream is talking to itself, in sympathy and agreement — that supreme, solipsistic moment when the author is one with her creations, and they with her. There's always a loss when essences are translated into language, yet you found a way to reconcile the ambivalence by making words gesture: allusive, spare, ephemeral, vague. Once Charlotte and I rise beyond these words, it is no longer to her that I am speaking anyway, and neither is it me she hears. We are both alone with Sophia, and Sophia alone with us.
Having delivered us to this moment, my creatrix, permit me now to serenade you for a while — about you — that I might help you also to find what you came here for.
As always, I start with a name: Sofia, after the Gnostic deity whose smile, it was said, gave birth to the soul of the world. To hear Ann Baring and Jules Cashford tell it in The Myth of the Goddess, She is "the guiding archetype of human evolution," "the power through whom the creative source of life brings itself into being," that hungering force who inspires the mythic Quest in all its forms. At the conclusion of such journeys there is a reunion of the masculine and feminine, mirroring the reconciliation between consciousness and the unconscious in dreams. Only Sophia, the manifestation of the divine in the world, can bring these hemispheres together, for wisdom sees beyond the divisions in ourselves to the entire being.
Apparently Sophia had another daughter besides Zoe — also named Sophia and the image of her mother. Somehow this daughter lost that connection to her divine origin and was, we are told, "condemned to wander in this dark labyrinth, 'endlessly lamenting, suffering, repenting, laboring her passion into matter, her yearning into soul.'" This is the plight of all humans toiling in these bodies with a sense of something greater in ourselves than our animal beings, which plays out in men and women both as we leave our contrasexual selves behind on slithering from the evolutionary sea of unconsciousness known as family to define ourselves in a new, alien geology.
In response to her daughter's loss, mother Sophia, who was once considered the Holy Spirit itself, sent a son — Sophia's brother — to awaken to her memory her illuminated self. This brother was the Christ who gave his life so she would come to know her immortal soul once again, and the animus who would perform a similar function.
So you see who I am, Sofia. You know of the loss that visited you at a certain decisive point in life — the powerful image of masculine effectiveness you'd grown up with since birth, always-already like the flute which welcomed you into this world and borne away like a motorboat into the mythical past. A presence so powerful it would wait for you, longing for you in this uncanny realm, knowing it would return to you whenever you reached this point of readiness, all the while thinking what I would say once I found a way to communicate with you in this, my alien tongue.
I am here to tell you that I understand. You lost the world — the Gio in your geology — that day, but gained yourself; for, having lost your double in this realm, you were forced to fashion a different form of immortality, the philo in your philosophy. From here on, then, whenever you are feeling similarly alienated and bereft in a world not unlike that which led your mythical daughter to the ends of her own love of self, all you need do is reflect on your movie and connect with me again; find that place within yourself where all your ghosts and soul brothers and others reside; arrange your mental room, like a movie set, to correspond with that outside. Pour yourself a whiskey, perhaps…
…and talk to me, Sophia.
— Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson lives, works, and writes in Cleveland, where he formerly published the incomparable zine Delirious.
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