Based on a True Story

Jean moved to Metz, in France, and got a job. Nothing too spectacular, just to get him a small apartment and some cash to keep going. All alone, with no other human to talk to, to communicate with, he started communicating with himself, in his mind. He would go back home and have long conversations, ask himself how was work, what was there for dinner, no, I'm too tired, I'll just have a sandwich, ok, we'll do that then. The first months he thought he was going a bit mad, but after a while, he felt much better, not so lonely, and decided that he was not harming anybody. He would look in the mirror and smile, because there it was: the person he spoke to. It wasn't nobody, it was that man over there, good looking, polite, always smiling. He kept him company.

But the brain is a very interesting thing, and once it's finding ways out from loneliness, it's not going to stop. Once Jean was on the edge between reality and going bananas, he shouldn't have trusted his brain to go along, because brains, like any organ, will tell you when something's not right. And if you're losing grasp of reality, your brain will take you to extremes to let you know that no, it's not normal to be all alone and find company in your mirror. Somewhere in your brain there is a little neuron saying: yeah, man, you might think it's alright, but it's not. As much as Jean wanted to repress that neuron and go along with his nice existence, his brain foresaw the danger, and acted. And when Jean's neighbour decided to go on holiday, and Jean could not hear the TV anymore, he decided that, if the man in the mirror was his friend, the TV nextdoor might as well be his. Actually, it was this little neuron that suggested the idea, wanting Jean to take one more step into madness, because he was obviously not realising the danger, obviously not grasping the reality of things.

So Jean bought a hammer and made a hole on the wall, cleaned up everything, built a frame around the hole (because he was no messy man, and once you're beyond reality, you don't need to make a mess, you do it right, you take your time and finish what you started). For the whole summer, Jean sat in the neighbour's living room watching TV, and nothing there seemed to tell him that was not right. Reality didn't strike, he didn't find it weird, and his neuron, well, his neuron down there in the unconscious was quite calm, cause it knew, it knew that the neighbour would come back. And now it didn't have to make Jean do anything, because the neighbour would return, and bring reality back into Jean's mind.

Jean was not mad, you see... Jean was only looking for someone to stop him from going mad. His brain told him to make the hole on the wall, because he was not aware of his growing madness, and someone had to realise. Unconsciously, Jean knew, but he only had that street to follow.

This funny farm where he lives now is a wonderful place: everybody's beyond the edge of reality, and they give them these candy for those rebel-neurons so that nobody's aware that they are not well, and they don't have to go to extremes to let others know. No, in this farm, everybody's gone.