Serge, son,
You weren't even 15 when I gave you your first Aikido lessons. What talent! What promises! And then you chose a different path in martial arts… yours, one like no other. By gleaning knowledge here and there, you became an exceptional fighter, without much help, thanks to your qualities, your natural curiosity, your research, alone against the conformism of a society that was not yours, and in the same way that you had learned to play the shakuhachi with no other master than yourself, listening only to your senses, with honesty.
A solitary figure, that is how you lived your life, like the modern rōnin you had become, alone with your art... too alone, truth be told, because the romanticism attached to this term detracts from its true meaning: prison-man. Indeed, as the years went by, you built the walls of your own prison. We all build our own prison here on earth, in one way or another, but yours was an austere one. A cat was the last thread binding you to the world, a mere cat. Cats have nine lives, but they are no more eternal than we are, and you lost that last refuge of your affection. “I'm not interested in life,” a phrase that takes a long time of suffering to arrive at.
And so, on 23 April 2025, you turned that immense fighting talent of yours against yourself. It was the last of all the fights you won in your life, but this time the opponent standing in front of you, whom you knocked down for ever, was yourself. You were fifty years old.
Only three days earlier, you were alive and well, and everything was still possible when I hugged you and presented you with your Shodan certificate in Aikido. Of course, it was only a symbol of your distant beginnings in my first dojo; you were worth ten times that. I also handed you the very first bokken I brought back from Iwama in 1986, marked with the seal of O Sensei's dojo. I hope you took it with you and that it will slay all the demons that haunted you in this life, so that they will never again come back to stand in your way.
I wish I had done more, Serge, and I wish you could read these words.
Farewell, Serge Tooze, my rōnin friend. The inner loneliness that marked your life was an extreme form of the loneliness that is ultimately common to all men, whether they are aware of it or not.
Philippe Voarino, 05 May 2025
