In Search of Lost Time

The laws of narration dictate that all stories must start somewhere. This poses a problem when describing events that have actually happened, since in the real world old stories constantly spawn new ones in an infinite succession like the buds of Romanesco broccoli, and what may at a cursory glance look like a complete story in its own right can turn out to be just a meandering side note for a much larger and more profound story. It would be tempting to start this particular story with a bear, but before that there was a mother telling bedtime stories to her son, and before that there were other stories that led up to that story, and at some point all those stories will fade into that great oblivion that haunts the most remote borders of our perception. Hence, it would appear to be the case that putting a finger on a timeline and proclaiming that right here a story started is a rather arbitrary way of presenting the succession of events. However, there are moments of particular importance, a sudden change of atmosphere, two tributaries joining together to form a river, when, standing there, one can feel the emergence of something new and unexpected, or become aware of something that has been there all along but hidden in plain sight like those trick images that look like a random collection of smears until suddenly the dots merge into a human face and it appears inconceivable how it couldn't be seen before and how it cannot be unseen after.

Such a pivotal moment occurred one day in March 2009. My son was watching the animated series Il était une fois ... l'espace on DVD and I noticed that I had been watching the same series on TV when I was exactly the same age as him. My English teacher of the time hadn't been particularly impressed when, instead of studying, I had a preference for drawing animated planets and space ships in the margins of my book – you know those simple animations that can be viewed by rapidly browsing through the pages. She must have had a point, since it took me all too long to acquire a passable knowledge of the English language. However, back in the present time of that day in March, I remembered that there had been other equally captivating animations made by the same producer, and on the spur of the moment I decided to check what the Web knew about the topic. The first link that I followed conveyed the somber news that Albert Barillé, the creator of the series, had just passed away last month. One particular sentence in the article drew my attention, since it told that Barillé had been 'the father of Colargol the bear'. What was this? The name sounded distantly familiar but I didn't remember having seen any bears in the various Il était une fois series and I wasn't aware of any related ones. Intrigued, I wrote the name in the search box and pressed the button. Then, right there, I had a madeleine moment.

It was a well known part of the lore about my childhood that when I was four years old I proclaimed that when I grow up I will become a space explorer, but I had completely forgotten the reason for why I had made such a random statement. That the prediction eventually turned out true looked quite incidental in retrospect. I could also remember that I drew my first comic book at that same age, and that the book depicted a number of animals that built a rocket and flew into space, but the motivation for doing that had been lost in time just like the book itself. Almost nothing remains of the material that I drew around that age, sometimes verging on an obsession so that I can still clearly remember the drawing that I made about a particular incident or a vivid dream while there aren't traces of recollection left of the actual event. It is as if the four years old me had a feverish urge to document anything and everything seemingly important that happened around him because he couldn't trust his memory to store it all (I had been taught to write by the age of three but I only learned to read through a sudden moment of enlightenment at an age of five, which made drawing the most reliable recording method between those two milestones), and with a sense of sadness I realize that he was right in that respect as well. While I have retained small islands of crystal clear lucidity all the way back to a time when I still couldn't walk or talk, all of them seem to be floating in an endless sea of ghostly non-existence, void of things that must have been there as dictated by logic, but neglected until even the last echoes of memories about them have died out. However, there wasn't any doubt about the fact that the four years old me was interested in space travel. He didn't as much draw rockets as he drew engineering plans for rockets, complete with cross sections and separate diagrams for individual parts. That should have been a rather odd thing for a child of his age to do but the mind is amazingly adept at not questioning its own motives, and thus I wasn't even looking for an explanation for all this eccentric behavior, until the moment it looked right back at me from the computer screen. And it was a stuffed little bear.

In the early 1970's the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) had made the commendable decision to import a new, high quality French-Polish stop motion animation series about the adventures of Colargol, a little bear with an insatiable curiosity. I didn't just like the show, I loved it to bits. One of the very few moments of 1970's era TV programming that has been permanently burned into my mind's eye consists of a singing and dancing bear with irresistibly cute pompon ears. The comic book that I had drawn was just my feeble attempt at recording what happened in the episodes where Colargol built a rocket and flew to the Moon and beyond. The rocket plans and the proclamation were my attemps at emulating the intrepid bear. Forty years later I am sitting here in front of my computer, wondering whether I would ever have gotten involved with space missions that have so far taken me – remotely, of course – all the way to the moons of Saturn, had I not been encouraged to seek new horizons by a show for children. Or maybe the very best shows can act as a mirror to a child's mind, tending to a spark of natural ability and helping it grow and take form. I became a scientist to follow my thirst for exploration, another person elsewhere on the Web reflected on how the rich musical score of the very same show contributed to her becoming a musician. Overall, when traversing the Web one cannot help noticing that the self-confessed friends of Colargol are an amazingly creative and talented group of people. I believe that Mr. Barillé would be most pleased if he could still hear us tell him in unison: "You touched our lives when we were very young. As you can see, we are adults now and that much richer thanks to you, and for that you have our eternal gratitude."

If I was fortunate to have been able to watch the adventures of Colargol on TV as a child then equally unfortunate circumstances led to me losing almost all of it as I grew up. My family moved four times between my fifth and tenth birthdays, and some part of my externalized memory got lost during each move. To this day I am extremely reluctant to throw away any piece of paper that has text or drawings on it, for the remote chance that there is something important behind those notes. Also, and even more importantly, there was an extended period when we didn't have a TV set and by the time we got a new one I had already lost contact with the bear that I loved because I didn't know his name! Apparently, when the show was localized the name Colargol was seen as totally incompatible with the phonetic structure of the Finnish language but instead of picking a more suitable one the person in charge just called him the Finnish equivalent of 'little bear cub'. Such a vague and general label was insufficient for even asking somebody about the series, and I was left with a mental image of what the bear looked like and a short piece of song in which the word 'koola' appeared, as the four years old me heard it, possibly confusing it with a koala bear. While that suggests that at least some of the original songs were left untranslated, neither of my recollections was of any use in trying to find my friend Koola the bear again, and eventually I yielded and stored those memories to a corner of my mind reserved for items permanently lost in time. Life went on, I grew up, became a full time space explorer as promised, and a part time comic artist just for the fun of it, got married and had three children of my own, and then, on that particular day of March, a presence reached out and touched me through the chasm of years like the distance wasn't there at all, saying: "Hi. I am still here." While I recognized the presence immediately, I didn't completely understand its true nature until much later. At the moment I was just moved by the unexpected rediscovery and the sudden realization of what I had lost once but wouldn't ever be losing a second time.

It is a tragic twist of the story that the very same event that brought back a precious friend prevented me from expressing my gratitude to a person who had been instrumental in providing the chance to meet that friend in the first place. However, as it turned out to be, Mr. Barillé was not exactly the father of Colargol. As explained in the article about the real Colargol, it would be more accurate to call him a father, or even better, the godfather of Colargol, since the amazing animations and the adorable bear itself were made by the Polish animator Tadeusz Wilkosz whom I managed to track down to tell this story and express my gratitude. I was greatly delighted and also humbled when Mr. Wilkosz didn't just reply but also sent me some Colargol related material, including a copy of those space episodes that had so profoundly influenced the four years old me. With the movie in my hands I felt like an archeologist about to enter a sealed and long forgotten tomb in which the gears of time had ground to a halt and every item was in the same place where its makers had left it, for just as ordinary household items wear out and are gradually replaced by new ones, memories of past events are worn down and pushed aside by new memories of similar but more recent events, until it is impossible to discern the original memories from below layers and layers of retelling of the same story. As an explorer of my own inner space I broke the seal and found wonderful things.

Colargol and his friends exploring the Moon. © Procidis/Filmoteka Narodowa

As I watched the movie it soon became clear that a child sees the world in a different light than an adult. There were things that an adult might pass without further notice but that proved to be irresistible to the child, like numbered drawers in the spacecraft. They must have looked like the doors of an advent calendar to the four years old me since he always drew a good number of them in the cockpit of his rockets, another random detail that suddenly got an explanation. Conversely, there were things that immediately drew the attention of the adult me, details that were at the same time fantastic and unfamiliar like the constant rotation of the field of stars in the background, or the technical complexity of some scenes which must have been extremely difficult to animate. The child had missed them even if they were in plain sight, probably because his concentration was mostly focused on the characters and the items with which they interacted directly and he didn't have the insight to see the mechanisms of stop motion animation behind the show. There were several moments of happy discovery but I still felt like I was missing something important. While the show was adorable even if one disregarded the sentiment of nostalgia, there was something elusive just outside the reach of my perception that kept bothering me. Then a most unexpected thing happened. I was watching Colargol as he took his first steps on the surface of the Moon when my mind said: "I remember that part. That's me walking on the Moon." The thought floated to the consciousness so naturally and effortlessly that it took me a moment to notice anything unusual in it, until suddenly my mind split in two. There was a me that knew that the character on the Moon was Colargol, and at the same time another me knowing just as certainly that it was me myself on the screen. And only then I understood the nature of the presence speaking from my past and the true importance of the little bear – the bear was the four years old me and vice versa!

My mind is getting weak and dull as it ages but when I was young it could rather enviably project itself around with a razor sharp edge, a feat that pretty much spoiled the entire school system for me – I was never forced to make an effort because I could do anything just by enveloping it with the full attention of my mind. I was told that when I concentrated on something it would have been possible to burn down the house around me without me noticing it. I understand now that this same ability was the cause behind the peculiar assimilation. The four years old me was not watching Colargol's adventures on TV, in a state of total immersion he was the little bear and lived the events as if they were happening to him. He was drawing his own experiences on paper all along. This also explained another mystery that had teased me from time to time, which was that some fleeting fragments of my retained memories were odd in the sense that it didn't look plausible that I could have experienced them the way they appeared. In the light of my epiphany, those memories were neither false nor paranormal, they just weren't really mine other than through an empathic link that my mind could create to appropriate the experiences of other people. This was the final piece in the enigma about why it was just Colargol's adventures that became singled out as the anchor to which the child in me had fixated himself, since the show was practically radiating empathy, to an extent that it must have appeared boring or even annoying to watch for those who weren't able to feel it. And now, defying oblivion with a stuffed bear as his fixed star, the four years old boy pulled himself through time back into existence.

If memories are what makes us what we are, then it looks like there is a tiny bit of a French-Polish bear in me now, or by induction, I am carrying echoes of the stories and memories of those who created that bear, and I wonder what the true forms of those stories were if they resulted to such a loving piece of work. I am thankful for the little bear, but I am even more deeply thankful for getting back that four years old little boy with his pure, unconditional enthusiasm about all things new. Though the world is eternally new, we humans tend to lose the ability to see that as we age and mistake the creeping lack of inspiration in ourselves for a condition corrupting the entire world, an error that I can now clearly see through the eyes of the child in me. Receiving him back so serendipitously makes me think that maybe there isn't truly lost time after all, and all the persons that once were me are still out there, somewhere, just looking for a beacon bright enough to guide them back home through the tides of time. The four years old me wishes them and all the other people lost in time a safe journey. If he could do it, then others can as well, and by making me write down this story he can rest assured that he won't get lost again. This is why I am taking my Colargol with me when I travel around. If I can through my actions let others rediscover the same happiness that I have found then that is at the same time my way of expressing gratitude to all those whom I never got a chance to meet, and a generous reward in itself.

Vantaa, November 20, 2009

This is a non-commercial tribute site. The author is not associated with Procidis France, Se-Ma-For Poland or other right holders for the original Colargol franchise. Unless otherwise indicated, all the material including the puppets is created by the author and is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Photos of actual people are published with permission.