“Thanks to climbing, I achieved the impossible”

You publish Out of sight. Make our mouths water…

It is the rebirth of a man cut down by fate. From my headlong rush into fighting and alcohol, when I learned, at 14, that I was going to go blind, to my rebuilding thanks to climbing. This sport allowed me to achieve the impossible: conquer an 8a route, one of the most difficult stages.

Your latest cultural favorite?

The audiobook of The road, exceptional dystopia by Cormac McCarthy. Having managed to face my future after fifteen years of denial, I am capable, like its heroes, of confronting the threats weighing on our world.

For what cause would you mobilize?

Ecology, the mother of all battles. If the planet is no longer viable, all other struggles, such as equality and freedom of expression, will no longer have any reason to exist.

The person who meant the most in your family?

My uncle and godfather, who is 60 years old. He returned to the land in Ariège to raise sheep. As a kid and teenager, I went on an adventure on its 65 hectares of land, in the heart of the wild hills.

Proust’s Madeleine from your childhood?

While drinking almond liqueur with friends twenty years ago, I remembered kindergarten and my “creations” with Cleopatra glue. Deprived of images, I associate the presence of things and beings with their scent.

The object or place that crosses generations in your family?

There is a before and after my total blindness, which occurred in my early thirties. I do not return to the places of my youth, nor keep objects from them. I live in the present and the near future, hoping that my 16-year-old son finds his way.

We offer you an hour of silence. What do you do with it?

Not hearing anything places me face to face with nothingness: as I cannot see, what I receive from the outside is the sound. So I always listen to music, especially rock, or I play guitar.

The beauty that will save the world?

That of feelings, which is entirely internal.

An inspired place where you like to take refuge?

Against my cliff, at home, in Saint-Géry, in the Lot. Up there, I forget the difficulties of everyday life, I am autonomous and I can even become the one who leads the way in front of my partner.