Turning 20s in Y2K

 

You turn twenty in the year 2000 and people call it a milestone. But all you feel is the hangover from the nineties. It’s like waking up from the last wild dream of a century that swore it wouldn’t end. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe we just hit pause. 

We were the last analog kids and the first digital addicts. Grew up on Minitel, and now we’re thumbing Nokias like prayer beads. We’re not born into the future. We crash into it.

The nineties in France? A cocktail of contradictions. MTV Europe and Canal+, grunge in our veins, rave in our lungs, and neo-liberalism creeping through the cracks of every concrete estate. We watched our parents vote left, live right, and blame everything in between. We played Tony Hawk on PlayStation, and pirated tapes off Skyrock. We passed joints in stairwells and spoke in slang like it was a second skin. Our sneakers squeaked rebellion even when we were standing still.

We were fed techno in warehouses and fed existentialism in school. We were told to be realistic while our music screamed otherwise. It wasn’t peace and love. It was rage and beats. It was Daft Punk under a strobe. IAM in your Walkman. The Verve and Noir Désir on the same mixtape. Try making sense of that.

The streets weren’t safe, but they were home. Suburbs like Montreuil, Saint-Denis, Villeurbanne—we carried them like tattoos on our tongues. Not tourist places. Real places. Concrete and graffiti and youth that burned too fast.

You’d get on the RER and ride straight through your future without ever being sure where to get off. You’d see kids born in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Bosnia, and they’d speak better French than the lycée teachers. But they’d still get followed in Monoprix. We all knew something was broken, but we danced anyway. Maybe we thought if we danced hard enough, we’d shake it all straight.

Then came 2000. The millennium. Y2K was supposed to kill us all. Computers crashing, planes falling. But nothing exploded except our illusions. Everything got... cleaner. Smoother. Corporate.

Suddenly, the same guys who moshed in Doc Martens were in startups, building JavaScript empires. The rebels found careers. The punks wore lanyards. And the rest of us? We stood blinking in the fluorescent light of a new decade wondering where the hell the music went.

They called it the information age, but it felt like the sedation age. Everything fast. Everything optimized. MSN Messenger instead of yelling across the street. Blogs instead of manifestos. Emotions went digital, then got deleted.

You remember when love was showing up. Now it’s a status. A photo. A comment.

In the nineties, heartbreak was slamming a door. In the 2000s, it’s a text at 2 a.m.: “seen.”

We used to believe in scenes. Skaters, ravers, squatters, goths, hip-hoppers. We wore our tribes like armor. Now everyone’s fragmented, curated. We pick aesthetics like Netflix genres. Nothing’s lived. It’s all sampled. Remix culture turned real life into a playlist. No B-sides. Just highlight reels.

You try to scream, but it comes out like a hashtag.

Turning twenty in 2000 meant looking both ways and seeing two different worlds. Behind you: grit, noise, vinyl. Ahead: speed, polish, pixels.

We didn’t choose life. We chose the mix tape, the street corner, the basement gig, the badly photocopied zine. And now we’re here, being asked to choose between a LinkedIn update and another overpriced coffee.

Sometimes I walk down République and swear I can still hear it—the echo of rollerblades on cobbles, of teenagers lighting cigarettes with stolen lighters, of love stories that started on park benches not apps.

We grew up too fast and aged too slow. We’re nostalgic at 30 and burnt out at 35. We know the price of everything but the value of a Friday night that smelled like sweat, fear, and possibility.

So yeah, I turned twenty in 2000. Right between two centuries, two eras, two selves. One wild, stupid, and alive. The other smart, smooth, and sedated.

And I’d give anything to be stupid and alive 

But you keep going, don’t you? That’s the rule. The beat stops but your legs still move. The DJ packed up two decades ago but the bassline’s still in your chest.

Now it’s 2005 and everyone’s pretending to be fine. We’ve got Wi-Fi, Gmail, and sarcasm as a defense mechanism. Authenticity gets filtered through irony. Every conversation’s a tweet waiting to happen. Every mistake’s a meme. We live in an age of pre-apologies and soft cancellations. We’re no longer real. We’re rebranded.

You remember smoking under bridges and skipping school. Now you’re booking wellness retreats to "reconnect with your inner child"—the same one you told to shut up every time they asked where the feeling went.

You can’t talk to anyone anymore without competing with a screen. Dates are job interviews. Friendships are notifications. Love is a ghost story told through blue ticks and unanswered texts.

Back then, you didn’t need therapy to feel something. You needed a Friday night, a Metro ticket, and someone to meet you under the blinking lights of a bar where the walls sweated and the bass made your knees weak. You found God in subwoofers. You found identity in noise.

Now everything’s silent—even when it screams.

We used to take photos to remember. Now we take them to prove we exist.

The kids today? They’re kind, careful, hyper-aware. They know about boundaries and trauma and climate collapse. They speak in complete thoughts and curated vulnerability. It’s beautiful, it really is. But you worry. You worry they’ll miss out on the mess. The glorious chaos of screwing up with style, of not knowing who you were and not caring, of breaking and breaking and breaking until something stuck.

You want to shake them sometimes. Not to change them—God no—but to tell them it’s okay not to optimize everything. That boredom is holy. That heartbreak builds empires. That your twenties aren’t supposed to be neat.

Because yours weren’t. Yours were brutal and brilliant and confusing and wild. You broke hearts and skipped rent. You danced until the sunrise made your mistakes look holy. You were loved and hated and forgotten and forgiven. You weren’t content—you were contentless.

And maybe that’s why you feel out of place now.

Because the world doesn’t want loud anymore. It wants likable.

But you? You were a mixtape with the volume turned to max. A scratched CD still spinning. A VHS that ate the tape but played magic while it did.

So yeah, you turned twenty in 2000. And nothing since has felt quite as alive.

And maybe it never will.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe the point isn’t to chase the noise.

Maybe the point is to remember it—to carry it inside you.

A heartbeat. A memory. A war drum.

Still playing.

Always playing.

I wake up and I want to scream but I don’t  
Because I can’t  
Because no one does anymore  
Because everything is fine  
Everything is good  
Everything is optimized  
I wake up and I check my phone and it tells me how I slept and what I missed and who I am  
It knows  
It knows me  
It knows me better than I know myself and I hate it for that  
I hate it  
But I love it too  
I need it like I needed the smoke the noise the bodies

Back in 98  
Back when we were kings and queens of nothing  
But it felt like everything  
Back when you could fall in love in a park with a girl who wore eyeliner like a dare  
Back when a Saturday night meant something  
Meant the world  
Meant sweat and music and maybe a fight maybe a kiss maybe both

Now it means content  
Now it means notifications  
Now it means pretending you’re okay because it’s too hard to explain what’s missing

And what’s missing is everything

There’s no soundtrack  
There’s no pulse  
There’s no rebellion  
Just calendars and coffee and curated sadness

I want to smash something  
I want to throw this phone in the river and run  
Run until my lungs burst  
Until my legs stop being polite  
Until I remember what it feels like to be alive and unfiltered and unshared and unseen

I miss the ugly  
I miss the mess  
I miss the beauty that only came in chaos  
The love that hit like a train  
The pain that didn’t need hashtags

I want to burn it all down  
The passwords the profiles the platforms  
The perfect lives the perfect diets the perfect captions

Burn it down  
Burn it all down  
And dance in the smoke like it’s 1999 and we’ve got nothing to lose  
Because we don’t  
We already lost it

And all that’s left is this

This ache  
This noise  
This chapter

When Silence Spoke First

“I mistook silence for emptiness, until I learned to listen.”

There was a time when silence made me uncomfortable.

The kind of quiet that fills a room after a difficult truth, or the hush of early morning when nothing external demands your attention. I’d fill those spaces quickly — with noise, with screens, with the company of others, even with thoughts that weren’t really mine. Anything to drown out the stillness.

For a long while, I equated silence with absence.

I believed if nothing was said, then nothing existed. If there was no reply, then there was no presence. Silence, to me, was a blank page — meaningless unless written upon.

But something changed.

Not suddenly, but subtly, like the way the light shifts just before rain — noticeable only if you’re paying attention.

Moments That Taught Me

In Conversations

I used to think that a pause between words meant awkwardness — a failure to communicate.

So I’d rush to fill the silence, finish someone’s sentence, or shift the topic too quickly.

But over time, I noticed something:

The most meaningful conversations I’ve had weren’t always about what was said, but about what was allowed to linger.

In the silence between my friend sharing their grief and me offering a response, there was a kind of holding — a space that didn’t need to be filled, only respected.

At Home

In the quiet of the kitchen after dinner, when the dishes are done and the hum of the fridge is the only sound,

I used to grab my phone out of habit.

One night, I didn’t.

I stood there, hands still damp from washing, and just listened — to the house, to the faint echo of my breath.

It was mundane, but strangely grounding.

That silence felt like being present in my own life for the first time that day.

While Walking Alone

When I walked without headphones, I noticed how birdsong layered over traffic,

how the wind shifted differently near certain trees,

how my mind calmed when it had nothing to compete with.

I realized how often I drowned my own thoughts in sound,

afraid of what might rise if I let silence stretch too long.

But in that stillness, ideas and emotions came up with surprising clarity —

not always easy, but real.

Listening Is an Act of Courage

We live in a world that rewards speaking, sharing, reacting — fast.

But listening, especially in silence, is something else.

It requires patience.

It requires us to be still long enough for our own truths to rise to the surface —

not just what we think, but what we feel underneath.

Silence is not absence.

It’s presence without pressure.

It’s the friend who stays beside you without needing to speak.

It’s the page before the poem — already full of possibility.

Now I return to silence often.

Not to escape the world,

but to understand how I’m moving through it.

I listen —

and I find meaning, not because I’m searching for it,

but because silence has always been offering it.

We just have to learn how to receive it.

Ctlr+C, Ctrl+V Art hole

"Banksy - The man behind the wall" Will Ellsworth-Jones

CTRL+C, CTRL+V paradigm

What I personnaly like about long-distance Banksy, the closed link to its natural roots, and the "don't justify your acts", the thing most are looking for is for an explanation, hence to understand. Might be why I am taking it simple with art. Give me a context, and an emotions. No more, no less.

And this positive "I don't care" attitude displayed around, that has to care, and cared that much, still doing the things keeping doing them his way.

After, this book, a tale or not, is providing another brick to my wall of book. The opportunities at the best times provides the back timeline.

From Rock & Roll tales in the sixties, to the emerging movement aside of hackers in the 70s, 80s, 90s, another look around. It might come from there or not, how many failed before, yet as interesting as it could ever be.

I hence gambled through the path of Syd, of Linus Torvalds, of somehow the NSA viewed by Stephen Clarke, or any other book in the past decades that went after in the diluted mainstream, keeping my ears wide opened. Just an e.g. for the sake of describing these experiences, I do still enjoy these memories of replicating the bip of the phone to get early internet connection and hijack the wall by behind. Lovely loopholes.

Whatever the value of this book, it has in y eyes, it was a joyful trip from Bristol to London, to other festival in the UK (Gosh, only realizing now, some were here with me in Glastonbury 2007), and most of all, this book provided me with the nicest pause to enjoy in the nonsense one might be, daily, walking by.

Henri Moufettal 2014 - henrimoufettal@gmail.com

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30 ans au son du violon

Je suis tombé sur cela au détour, et franchement frais. 30 bonnes années en didascalies musicales. Et puis en plus un violon, alors là suis tombé sur le cul, enfin. Tomber sur autre chose, ça m´arrive pas tous les quatre matins.

Bref - Montreux Kyan Navo et le petit dernier

Ça et Murakami, mon Pomme d'Apo pense s’emmieller au delà du raisonnable, au delà de la scène finale un peu tortueuse.

Henri Moufettal 2014 - henrimoufettal@gmail.com

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Tonight and to other pieces

Tonight, Tonight - Hard-fi

So far this week, went to follow up the contest on Oris with the question mark: What does inspire you, little F? People, F2F, books, sounds, lights, musics, arts, colours and well stressing it further music. Since I've learned English, I found another rythm of speech, in Spanish more singing syllabus, in German, the delicatessen of the language up in Hamburg, flowing smoothly.

And it's only a picture, so only grabbing part of the whole, one of the reason why a book is only slightly present on the bottom right. The interest is as well outside the frame. And on the bottom left, the cover from "A million little pieces" - James Frey, scintillating through the universe of books.

Chosen extract:

"The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel.

I broke something, Old Man.

How badly is it broken?

It’s in a million little pieces.

I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Why?

There’s nothing you can do.

Why?

It can’t be fixed.

Why?

It’s broken beyond repair. It’s in a million little pieces."

It's all that, it's that and something else, it's whatever you feel like riding right now.

Henri Moufettal 2014 - henrimoufettal@gmail.com

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Je t'aime, moi non plus

Ça s'en va et ça revient etc

Alors, après "qui veut la peau de roger rabbit", un de mes films préférés mélant l'animation et le cinéma. La première fois que je suis tombé sur ce film, j'étais sur le cul. Remarquez tant mieux quand on tombe.

Et là une petite prise de rappel. Et puis, ça me fait revoir en tête les images de Serge Gainsbourg de son vivant. Oui, j'étais déjà né pour le voir en interview, la voie rauque, les yeux dans le vide du tout, et ce regard, ce regard.

Bref, ça permet aussi d'équilibrer les points de vues au fur et à mesure que j'ai vu le film. Et donc un tout qui Wouahoouh.

Merci de ce célèbre Jm'enfoutisme.

Bon après, il y a le jm'enfoutisme réac, très marketable. Pour mon côté, je marche comme dans les systèmes électriques étudiées plutôt dans mon cursus. 

Un ampli-op niveau émotions, qui fait que je m'intéresse à beaucoup et n'hésite pas à m'investir, mais aussi un passe-bande en sortie. Raison pour laquelle, je ne m'énerve pas, un jm'enfoutisme, pas dans le sens négatif, dans le sens optimiste, ok that's said, let's move on now. 

Henri Moufettal 2014 - henrimoufettal@gmail.com

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Des couloirs du temps

On the road - Wait for it - of time

Pour ce 700ème billet, un petit plaisir, un article qui rassemble ce que j'aime: une bonne digestion de la technique de ces petites choses qui ont leur place dans nos vies quotidiennes.

 Animation from the british museum on watches

Bienvenue dans le monde de la cinématique et des rouages du temps. 

De gauche à droite, du stockage de l'énergie, aux roues, à l'échappement pour éviter à toute cette énergie de s'emballer, au mécanisme de stabilisation. Une philosophie qu'on voyait aussi dans les avions avant l'arrivée en masse du fly-by-wire. Bref, un bien beau monde.

Je trouve cela tout simplement beau. Oui, le tout n'est pas aussi simple, et j'ai bien apprécié le fait de mettre en linéaire, comme présenté ci-dessus. Les mécanismes évoluent dans la pratique dans des espaces beaucoup plus confinés.

Donc, un petit plaisir, cela me rappelle un milieu différent dans mes études, les torseurs, qu'on m'a la première fois présentés comme des boites à craies, entre forces et moments. Vive la SI de la PCSI. Tiens, un train épicycloïdal.

Si vous voulez voir plus loin, je vous invite à voir le site http://www.horlogerie-suisse.com/ ou vous renseigner sur ce  qui est une bible dans ces arts. Enfin cela reste des mots, et ce que j'apprécie, ce sont aussi les mouvements qui symbolise l'action. Miam. D'ailleurs, pour aller encore plus loin, allez voir par là et là, ou là, et là, ou ici, et ici pour voir pourquoi le secteur bouge autant depuis ces dernières années.

Magnifique, j'ai les yeux qui brillent.

Henri Moufettal 2014 - henrimoufettal@gmail.com

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Oui, et alors???

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction Des points de vue de Rue 89 sur l'"ogre" Google qui investit à renfort le milieu artistique.

Bref, oui et alors. Perso, je suis pour voir la pub du côté bénéfique aussi, Paris est encore reconnue comme capitale culturelle, ici par Google, donc bon, tant mieux:

"Histoire, musée, langues : le géant du Web accueille sur ses serveurs une part croissante du patrimoine culturel de l'humanité. Pas juste une affaire d'image."

Oui, et alors?
See on www.rue89.com

VW - The Original Click

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

Nice mechanism for a campaign :) I do enjoy how twisted the mind has to get to walk through that very simple process.

 

"Credits Advertiser: Volkswagen Product: Peças Originais Title: VW -- Peças Originais General Creative Director: Marcello Serpa, Luiz Sanches Co-Creative Dire..."

See on www.youtube.com

L'Odyssée Cartier 2012

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

A long ad from Cartier I really enjoyed earlier this year. wonderful work.

 

"spot joaillerie Cartier Odyssey / musique originale de Pierre Adenot réalisateur : Bruno Aveillan agence : Marcel & Publicis 133 mannequin : Shalom Harlow ht..."

See on www.youtube.com

Draw me a feather

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

cause it s a sickness i enjoy.
See on www.feather-art.net

Le blog documentaire

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

"Suggérer, c'est créer, Décrire, c'est détruire", Robert DOISNEAU...

See on cinemadocumentaire.wordpress.com

Louise Brooks (1906 - 1985) - Find A Grave Memorial

See on Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

Some are just timeless, dans le sens intemporel

See on www.findagrave.com

Nicolas de Stael le peintre le plus raffiné de l'art moderne

Via Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

"If there was no real place to go, there would always be a place to dream"

 

Bon, ave' un anglais approximatif.

 

Et une jolie surprise au detour des ruelles d'Aix, et d'une exposition Philippe Favier.

 

 

Via art-deco.france.pagesperso-orange.fr

Zoom sur… Les librairies

Via Scoop.it - Contemporary fiction

ne tuez pas les petites maisons d'éditions, et librairie, j'adore decouvrir dans les rayons des libraries locales.Je vais a Virgin acheter de nouveaux livres vu que j'ai digéré pas mal de livres ici. donc je rentre et voit en tetes de gondole, les livres "cultes" des 50 dernieres années. et diable, de Ubik a American Psycho, j'ai du lire 80% de la collection presentée. 

 

"Télérama titrait récemment « Et s'il n'y avait plus de libraires ? », et vouait son dossier aux menaces pesant comme un couvercle sur le métier."

Via www.paris-initiative.org