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1
00:06:35,319 --> 00:06:38,226
Your alarm clock goes off,
2
00:06:41,508 --> 00:06:43,870
you do not stir,
3
00:06:44,748 --> 00:06:46,972
you remain in your bed,
4
00:06:47,871 --> 00:06:49,363
you close your eyes again.
5
00:06:51,910 --> 00:06:54,128
It is not a premeditated action,
6
00:06:54,738 --> 00:06:56,382
or rather it's not an action at all,
7
00:06:57,100 --> 00:06:58,780
but an absence of action,
8
00:06:59,121 --> 00:07:00,578
an action that you don't perform,
9
00:07:01,803 --> 00:07:03,723
actions that you avoid performing.
10
00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:07,464
You went to bed early,
11
00:07:08,111 --> 00:07:09,590
you slept peacefully,
12
00:07:10,605 --> 00:07:12,371
you had set the alarm clock,
13
00:07:12,913 --> 00:07:14,259
you heard it go off,
14
00:07:14,756 --> 00:07:17,515
you waited for it to go off,
for several minutes at least,
15
00:07:17,879 --> 00:07:19,523
already woken by the heat,
16
00:07:19,611 --> 00:07:20,914
or by the light.
17
00:07:21,104 --> 00:07:22,660
or by expectation itself.
18
00:07:25,595 --> 00:07:27,780
You do not move;
you will not move.
19
00:07:29,181 --> 00:07:33,409
Someone else, your twin,
conscientious double is perhaps..
20
00:07:33,545 --> 00:07:35,265
perhaps performing in your stead,
one by one,
21
00:07:35,409 --> 00:07:36,810
the actions you have eschewed:
22
00:07:37,669 --> 00:07:42,215
he gets up, washes, shaves, dresses, goes out.
23
00:07:42,974 --> 00:07:44,970
You let him bound down the stairs,
24
00:07:45,217 --> 00:07:46,450
run down the street,
25
00:07:47,154 --> 00:07:48,493
leap onto the moving bus,
26
00:07:48,781 --> 00:07:51,470
arrive on time, out of breath but
triumphant, at the doors in the hall.
27
00:07:51,994 --> 00:07:53,297
You get up too late.
28
00:07:54,902 --> 00:07:58,342
You will not set down on four, eight
or twelve sheets of paper what you know,
29
00:07:58,459 --> 00:07:59,680
what you think,
30
00:07:59,915 --> 00:08:02,346
what you know you are
supposed to think, about alienation,
31
00:08:02,700 --> 00:08:03,816
the workers,
32
00:08:04,238 --> 00:08:06,199
modernity and leisure.
33
00:08:06,657 --> 00:08:08,653
about white-collar workers
or about automation,
34
00:08:09,006 --> 00:08:10,555
about our knowledge of others,
35
00:08:10,992 --> 00:08:12,836
about Marx as rival to de Tocqueville,
36
00:08:13,164 --> 00:08:15,184
about Weber as an opponent of Lukacs.
37
00:08:16,382 --> 00:08:19,399
In any case, you wouldn't have said
anything, because you don't know a great deal
38
00:08:19,493 --> 00:08:20,738
and you think nothing at all.
39
00:08:22,936 --> 00:08:24,532
Your seat remains vacant.
40
00:08:25,942 --> 00:08:27,738
You will not finish your degree,
41
00:08:28,032 --> 00:08:29,863
you will never start your diploma.
42
00:08:43,285 --> 00:08:44,706
You will study no more.
43
00:08:45,939 --> 00:08:48,534
You make , as you do everyday, a bowl of Nescafe;
44
00:08:49,508 --> 00:08:53,078
you add, as you do everyday,
a few drops of sweetened condensed milk.
45
00:08:54,195 --> 00:08:55,334
You don't wash,
46
00:08:56,180 --> 00:08:57,354
you hardly bother to dress.
47
00:08:58,411 --> 00:09:02,955
In a pink plastic bowl you
place three pairs of socks to soak.
48
00:09:34,287 --> 00:09:37,476
You don't go and wait for the candidates
to come out of the examination hall
49
00:09:37,547 --> 00:09:40,459
to find out what questions were
devised to test their perspicacity.
50
00:09:42,291 --> 00:09:43,571
You don't go to the cafe
51
00:09:43,606 --> 00:09:45,332
as custom would have demanded
52
00:09:45,426 --> 00:09:47,704
like everyday to join your friends.
53
00:09:50,136 --> 00:09:52,590
One of them, the following morning
54
00:09:52,731 --> 00:09:55,420
will climb the six flights of
stairs that lead to your room.
55
00:09:56,954 --> 00:09:58,727
You will let him knock at your door.
56
00:09:59,056 --> 00:10:00,359
Wait.
57
00:10:00,852 --> 00:10:02,390
Knock again.
58
00:10:02,616 --> 00:10:03,743
A little louder.
59
00:10:03,978 --> 00:10:05,281
Wait again.
60
00:10:05,481 --> 00:10:06,761
Knock gently.
61
00:10:06,925 --> 00:10:08,252
Call your name quietly.
62
00:10:08,334 --> 00:10:09,179
Hesitate.
63
00:10:09,555 --> 00:10:11,030
Then stamp back down again.
64
00:10:25,381 --> 00:10:29,802
Others came, the day after,
the after that,
65
00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:34,583
knocked, waited, and called to you,
66
00:10:34,762 --> 00:10:36,853
slipped you messages.
67
00:10:53,156 --> 00:10:56,024
You stay lying on your narrow bench,
68
00:10:56,144 --> 00:10:59,251
your hands crossed behind
you back, your knees up.
69
00:11:00,028 --> 00:11:02,179
You don't want to see anyone,
70
00:11:02,537 --> 00:11:08,333
or to talk, or to think,
nor to go out, or move.
71
00:11:12,635 --> 00:11:14,787
It is on a day like this one,
72
00:11:14,906 --> 00:11:17,655
a little later, a little earlier,
73
00:11:17,774 --> 00:11:20,881
that you discover, without surprise,
that something is wrong,
74
00:11:20,941 --> 00:11:24,586
that you don't know how to live
and that you never will know.
75
00:11:26,700 --> 00:11:29,807
The sun beats on the sheet metal of the roof.
76
00:11:30,524 --> 00:11:33,751
The heat in your room is unbearable.
77
00:11:34,468 --> 00:11:37,814
You are sitting, wedged between
the bed and the bookshelf,
78
00:11:37,934 --> 00:11:39,547
with a book opened on your lap.
79
00:11:40,623 --> 00:11:42,654
You stopped reading it long ago.
80
00:11:43,192 --> 00:11:46,239
You are staring at a whitewood shelf,
81
00:11:46,538 --> 00:11:51,079
at the pink plastic bowl in
which rots six socks are rotting.
82
00:11:52,416 --> 00:11:55,404
The smoke from your cigarette,
abandoned in the ashtray, rises,
83
00:11:55,523 --> 00:11:56,898
in an almost straight line,
84
00:11:56,943 --> 00:12:01,716
and then spreads out in a blanket against
the ceiling which is fissured by minute cracks.
85
00:12:12,971 --> 00:12:16,018
Something has broken.
86
00:12:17,038 --> 00:12:19,006
You no longer feel
87
00:12:19,689 --> 00:12:24,051
some thing which until then fortified you until then,
88
00:12:24,230 --> 00:12:27,397
the feeling of your existence, the impression of belonging to
89
00:12:27,469 --> 00:12:30,978
or being in the world, is starting to slip away from you.
90
00:12:31,716 --> 00:12:36,086
Your past, your present, and your future merge into one:
91
00:12:37,131 --> 00:12:39,171
they are now just the heaviness of your limbs,
92
00:12:39,254 --> 00:12:40,794
your nagging migraine,
93
00:12:40,968 --> 00:12:43,085
the bitterness in your Nescafe.
94
00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:46,204
This converted cubbyhole that passes for your bedroom,
95
00:12:46,650 --> 00:12:48,883
this hovel two metres ninety-two long
96
00:12:48,993 --> 00:12:50,721
by one metre sixty-three wide,
97
00:12:50,993 --> 00:12:53,476
that is to say, a little over five square metres,
98
00:12:53,656 --> 00:12:56,764
this attic from which you have not stirred for several hours,
99
00:12:56,876 --> 00:12:58,898
for several days.
100
00:13:00,052 --> 00:13:03,328
You are sitting on a bed which is too short
101
00:13:03,597 --> 00:13:05,221
for you to be able to lie on it,
102
00:13:05,573 --> 00:13:08,855
too narrow for you to be able to turn over on it without precaution.
103
00:13:09,217 --> 00:13:12,805
You are staring, almost fascinated now,
104
00:13:13,111 --> 00:13:17,505
at a pink plastic bowl which contains no fewer than six socks.
105
00:13:19,981 --> 00:13:23,151
You stay in your room, without eating.
106
00:13:23,537 --> 00:13:24,872
without reading,
107
00:13:25,372 --> 00:13:27,069
almost without moving.
108
00:13:27,180 --> 00:13:29,628
You stare at the bowl,
109
00:13:29,850 --> 00:13:32,214
the shelf, your knees,
110
00:13:32,409 --> 00:13:34,745
you gaze in the cracked mirror,
111
00:13:34,884 --> 00:13:37,443
the coffee bowel, the light-switch.
112
00:13:38,172 --> 00:13:40,285
You listen to the sounds of the street,
113
00:13:40,452 --> 00:13:42,761
the dripping tap on the landing,
114
00:13:43,067 --> 00:13:44,624
the noises that your neighbour makes,
115
00:13:45,152 --> 00:13:46,738
clearing his throat,
116
00:13:47,016 --> 00:13:48,827
coughing fits.
117
00:13:49,795 --> 00:13:51,538
the whistle of his kettle.
118
00:13:53,299 --> 00:13:56,723
You follow across the ceiling the sinuous lines of a thin crack
119
00:13:56,814 --> 00:13:58,829
the futile meandering of a fly,
120
00:13:58,893 --> 00:14:01,529
the progress - which it is almost impossible to plot - of the shadows.
121
00:14:08,382 --> 00:14:10,731
You are 25 years old,
you have 29 teeth,
122
00:14:10,943 --> 00:14:12,837
three shirts and eight socks,
123
00:14:13,291 --> 00:14:15,306
55 francs a month to live on,
124
00:14:15,488 --> 00:14:17,306
a few books you no longer read,
125
00:14:17,446 --> 00:14:19,340
a few records you no longer play.
126
00:14:19,991 --> 00:14:22,597
You don't want to remember anything else.
127
00:14:22,872 --> 00:14:24,993
Here you sit, and you want only to wait,
128
00:14:25,084 --> 00:14:28,099
just to wait until there is nothing left to wait for.
129
00:14:31,238 --> 00:14:32,754
You do not see your friends again.
130
00:14:33,511 --> 00:14:34,784
You do not open your door.
131
00:14:35,725 --> 00:14:37,589
You do not go down to get your mail.
132
00:14:37,983 --> 00:14:41,346
You do not return the books you borrowed from the library.
133
00:14:42,016 --> 00:14:44,046
You do not write your parents.
134
00:14:47,231 --> 00:14:51,064
You only go out after nightfall like the rats, the cats, and the monsters.
135
00:14:53,036 --> 00:14:54,491
You drift around the streets,
136
00:14:54,839 --> 00:14:57,612
you slip into the grubby little cinemas on the Grand Boulevards.
137
00:15:20,062 --> 00:15:21,804
Sometimes you walk all night,
138
00:15:22,079 --> 00:15:24,049
sometimes you sleep all day.
139
00:15:24,791 --> 00:15:27,064
You are an idler, a sleepwalker,
140
00:15:27,427 --> 00:15:28,579
a mollusc.
141
00:15:29,415 --> 00:15:33,006
you do not really feel cut our for living, for doing, for making;
142
00:15:34,099 --> 00:15:35,750
you only want to go on,
143
00:15:36,008 --> 00:15:38,175
to go on waiting and forget.
144
00:15:51,107 --> 00:15:54,349
You reject nothing, you refuse nothing.
145
00:15:55,182 --> 00:15:57,076
You have ceased going forward,
146
00:15:57,563 --> 00:15:59,183
but that is because you weren't going forward anyway,
147
00:15:59,539 --> 00:16:01,977
you're not setting off again, you have arrived,
148
00:16:02,779 --> 00:16:05,235
you can see no reason to go on any further:
149
00:16:06,923 --> 00:16:10,145
all it took, practically,
150
00:16:10,466 --> 00:16:12,637
on a day in May when it was too hot,
151
00:16:13,510 --> 00:16:17,266
was the untimely conjunction of a text of which you'd lost the thread,
152
00:16:17,585 --> 00:16:20,469
a bowl of Nescafe that suddenly tasted too bitter,
153
00:16:21,264 --> 00:16:25,736
a pink plastic bowl filled with blackish water in which six socks were floating,
154
00:16:26,426 --> 00:16:28,362
this was all it took for something to snap,
155
00:16:28,807 --> 00:16:29,897
to turn bad,
156
00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:31,388
to come undone,
157
00:16:32,183 --> 00:16:35,098
and for the truth to appear in the bright light of day,
158
00:16:35,276 --> 00:16:37,723
as sad and ridiculous as a dunce's cap.
159
00:16:38,035 --> 00:16:39,815
You have no desire to carry on.
160
00:16:49,332 --> 00:16:52,558
Only the night and your room protect you:
161
00:16:52,759 --> 00:16:55,006
the narrow bed where you lie and stretched out,
162
00:16:55,223 --> 00:16:58,049
the ceiling that you discover anew at every moment;
163
00:16:58,583 --> 00:17:02,409
the night in which, alone amidst the crowds on the Grands Boulevards,
164
00:17:02,632 --> 00:17:05,391
you occasionally feel almost happy with the noise and the lights,
165
00:17:05,502 --> 00:17:07,883
the bustle and the forgetting.
166
00:17:10,503 --> 00:17:14,218
You are the wave that ebbs and flows, from the Place de la Republique to Place de la Madeleine,
167
00:17:14,338 --> 00:17:15,917
from the Madeleine to Place de la Republique.
168
00:17:20,802 --> 00:17:21,923
The dead hours,
169
00:17:22,415 --> 00:17:23,567
empty passages,
170
00:17:24,113 --> 00:17:26,979
the fleeting and poignant desire to hear no more,
171
00:17:27,136 --> 00:17:28,435
to see no more,
172
00:17:28,883 --> 00:17:31,055
to remain silent and motionless.
173
00:17:31,659 --> 00:17:34,078
Crazy dreams of solitude.
174
00:17:35,169 --> 00:17:37,587
An amnesiac wandering through the Land of the Blind:
175
00:17:37,789 --> 00:17:41,259
wide, empty streets, cold lights,
176
00:17:41,842 --> 00:17:45,021
faces without mouths that you would look at without seeing.
177
00:17:53,570 --> 00:17:59,168
It's as if, beneath the surface of your calm and reassuring history, the good little boy,
178
00:17:59,501 --> 00:18:03,628
as if, running beneath the obvious, too obvious, signs of growth and maturity -
179
00:18:03,894 --> 00:18:06,955
scribbled graffiti on bathroom doors,
180
00:18:07,155 --> 00:18:11,747
certificates, long trousers, the first cigarette,
181
00:18:12,014 --> 00:18:14,077
sting of the first shave, alcohol,
182
00:18:14,277 --> 00:18:16,872
the key left under the mat for your Saturday night outings,
183
00:18:17,138 --> 00:18:21,398
losing your virginity, the baptism of air, the baptism of fire -
184
00:18:21,797 --> 00:18:24,593
as if another thread had always been running,
185
00:18:24,859 --> 00:18:28,653
ever present but always held at bay,
186
00:18:29,046 --> 00:18:32,240
and which is now weaving the familiar fabric of your rediscovered existence,
187
00:18:32,780 --> 00:18:35,036
the bare backdrop of your abandoned life,
188
00:18:35,484 --> 00:18:38,097
veiled images of this revealed truth,
189
00:18:38,711 --> 00:18:41,491
of this resignation so long deferred,
190
00:18:41,824 --> 00:18:43,821
of this appeal for calm -
191
00:18:44,087 --> 00:18:46,217
hazy lifeless images,
192
00:18:46,616 --> 00:18:48,746
over-exposed snap shots,
193
00:18:48,946 --> 00:18:51,675
almost white, almost dead,
194
00:18:52,007 --> 00:18:54,536
almost already fossilized:
195
00:18:55,468 --> 00:18:58,996
a street in a sleepy provincial town, closed shutters,
196
00:18:59,129 --> 00:19:03,921
dull shadows, the buzzing of flies in an army post,
197
00:19:04,387 --> 00:19:07,581
a lounge blanketed in grey dustsheets,
198
00:19:08,129 --> 00:19:10,991
dust particles suspended in a ray of sunlight,
199
00:19:11,390 --> 00:19:12,921
bare countryside,
200
00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:15,383
cemeteries on a Sunday,
201
00:19:15,583 --> 00:19:18,445
outings in a car.
202
00:19:25,566 --> 00:19:29,693
Man sitting on a narrow bed, one Thursday afternoon,
203
00:19:29,759 --> 00:19:34,818
a book open on his knees, eyes vacant.
204
00:19:41,394 --> 00:19:44,887
You are just a murky shadow, a hard kernel of indifference,
205
00:19:45,015 --> 00:19:47,911
a neutral gaze avoiding the gaze of others.
206
00:19:48,380 --> 00:19:51,362
Speechless lips, dead eyes.
207
00:19:51,532 --> 00:19:54,812
Henceforth you will be able to glimpse in the puddles, in the shop windows,
208
00:19:54,982 --> 00:19:57,496
in the gleaming bodywork of cars,
209
00:19:57,623 --> 00:20:00,648
the fleeting reflections of your decelerating life.
210
00:20:05,294 --> 00:20:07,509
Water drips from the tap on the landing.
211
00:20:07,892 --> 00:20:09,596
Your neighbour is sleeping
212
00:20:09,949 --> 00:20:14,433
The faint chugging of a stationary diesel taxi emphasizes rather than breaks the silence of the street.
213
00:20:16,893 --> 00:20:19,092
Your memory is slowly penetrated by oblivion.
214
00:20:20,643 --> 00:20:24,499
The cracks in the ceiling trace an implausible labyrinth.
215
00:20:32,225 --> 00:20:33,725
The heat in your room,
216
00:20:33,847 --> 00:20:35,173
like a cauldron,
217
00:20:35,365 --> 00:20:36,917
like a furnace,
218
00:20:37,546 --> 00:20:40,198
the six socks, indolent sharks,
219
00:20:40,337 --> 00:20:41,506
sleeping whales.
220
00:20:41,590 --> 00:20:43,736
in the pink plastic bowl.
221
00:20:46,528 --> 00:20:48,412
That alarm clock that did not ring,
222
00:20:48,534 --> 00:20:49,791
that does not ring,
223
00:20:50,768 --> 00:20:52,844
that will not ring to wake you up.
224
00:20:54,690 --> 00:20:55,789
You stretch out.
225
00:20:56,121 --> 00:20:57,586
You let yourself slip.
226
00:20:58,476 --> 00:21:00,151
You drop into sleep.
227
00:21:10,689 --> 00:21:13,184
Your room is the center of the world
228
00:21:13,510 --> 00:21:14,639
This lair,
229
00:21:14,728 --> 00:21:17,522
this cupboard like garret which never loses your smell,
230
00:21:17,834 --> 00:21:19,839
with its bed into which you slip alone,
231
00:21:20,002 --> 00:21:21,012
its shelf
232
00:21:21,148 --> 00:21:22,291
its linoleum,
233
00:21:22,381 --> 00:21:25,217
its ceiling whose cracks you have counted a thousand times,
234
00:21:25,321 --> 00:21:27,163
the flakes, the stains,
235
00:21:27,254 --> 00:21:28,279
the contours,
236
00:21:28,947 --> 00:21:31,962
the washbasin that is so tiny it resembles a piece of doll's-house furniture,
237
00:21:32,379 --> 00:21:33,597
the bowl,
238
00:21:33,672 --> 00:21:34,474
the window,
239
00:21:34,563 --> 00:21:36,983
the wallpaper of which you know every flower,
240
00:21:37,148 --> 00:21:39,019
these newspapers that you read and re-read,
241
00:21:39,078 --> 00:21:40,994
that you will read and re-read again;
242
00:21:41,501 --> 00:21:44,145
this cracked mirror has only ever reflected your face
243
00:21:44,146 --> 00:21:46,506
fragmented into three unequal portions;
244
00:21:47,189 --> 00:21:48,556
the shelved books:
245
00:21:50,399 --> 00:21:52,404
thus begins and ends your kingdom,
246
00:21:52,449 --> 00:21:53,963
perfectly encircled,
247
00:21:54,010 --> 00:21:56,460
by ever present noises, which are now all that keeps you attached to the world:
248
00:21:58,614 --> 00:22:01,754
the dripping tap on the landing,
249
00:22:03,150 --> 00:22:04,668
the noises from your neighbor room,
250
00:22:05,069 --> 00:22:06,430
his throat-clearing
251
00:22:06,954 --> 00:22:08,245
his coughing fits,
252
00:22:09,802 --> 00:22:11,913
the incessant murmur of the city.
253
00:22:18,332 --> 00:22:21,315
The measured succession of car noises,
254
00:22:21,891 --> 00:22:22,903
braking,
255
00:22:23,182 --> 00:22:24,177
stopping,
256
00:22:24,700 --> 00:22:26,201
accelerating,
257
00:22:27,122 --> 00:22:30,385
imparts a rhythm to time almost as surely as the tirelessly dripping tap
258
00:22:30,873 --> 00:22:32,758
or the bells of Sainte-Roch.
259
00:22:36,596 --> 00:22:37,677
Your alarm clock
260
00:22:37,765 --> 00:22:40,190
has been showing 5:15 for a long time now.
261
00:22:43,102 --> 00:22:44,829
In the silence of your room
262
00:22:44,934 --> 00:22:46,522
time no longer penetrates,
263
00:22:47,004 --> 00:22:48,367
it is around
264
00:22:48,531 --> 00:22:49,785
a permanent medium,
265
00:22:49,976 --> 00:22:50,875
obsessive
266
00:22:51,393 --> 00:22:52,620
warped,
267
00:22:52,892 --> 00:22:54,119
a little suspect:
268
00:22:55,134 --> 00:22:58,242
time passes, but you never know what time it is.
269
00:22:59,468 --> 00:23:00,804
It is ten o'clock,
270
00:23:01,158 --> 00:23:02,467
or perhaps eleven,
271
00:23:02,685 --> 00:23:03,912
it's late,
272
00:23:04,021 --> 00:23:04,893
it's early,
273
00:23:05,084 --> 00:23:06,175
the sun rises,
274
00:23:06,338 --> 00:23:07,619
night falls,
275
00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:10,427
the sounds never quite cease altogether,
276
00:23:11,027 --> 00:23:12,799
time never stops completely,
277
00:23:13,487 --> 00:23:16,737
even if it is now reduced to the merely imperceptible: a hairline crack in the wall of silence,
278
00:23:17,362 --> 00:23:18,567
a slow murmur
279
00:23:18,708 --> 00:23:20,022
forgotten, drop by drop,
280
00:23:20,377 --> 00:23:23,182
almost indistinguishable from the beats of your heart.
281
00:23:28,135 --> 00:23:30,303
Your room is the most beautiful of desert islands,
282
00:23:30,581 --> 00:23:34,829
and Paris is a desert that no-one has ever traversed.
283
00:23:39,338 --> 00:23:41,678
All you really need is your sleep,
284
00:23:42,112 --> 00:23:43,586
your own silence,
285
00:23:43,933 --> 00:23:45,927
your stillness,
286
00:23:46,620 --> 00:23:48,701
the rising and falling of your rib-cage,
287
00:23:48,961 --> 00:23:51,736
evidence of your continuing and patient existence.
288
00:24:13,792 --> 00:24:15,526
To want nothing.
289
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:19,774
Just to wait , until there is nothing left to wait for.
290
00:24:20,381 --> 00:24:22,375
To wander, and to sleep.
291
00:24:22,895 --> 00:24:25,583
To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets.
292
00:24:26,190 --> 00:24:29,485
To follow the gutters, the fences, the water's edge.
293
00:24:30,092 --> 00:24:31,999
To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls.
294
00:24:32,259 --> 00:24:33,646
To waste your time.
295
00:24:33,993 --> 00:24:37,721
To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt.
296
00:24:44,579 --> 00:24:46,626
In the course of time your life will be there in front of you:
297
00:24:46,714 --> 00:24:47,831
a life without motion.
298
00:24:47,877 --> 00:24:49,052
without crisis,
299
00:24:49,154 --> 00:24:50,346
without disorder,
300
00:24:51,408 --> 00:24:53,880
day after day, season after season,
301
00:24:54,069 --> 00:24:56,856
something is going to start that will be without end:
302
00:24:57,092 --> 00:25:00,501
your vegetal existence, your cancelled life.
303
00:25:10,965 --> 00:25:13,442
Here, you learn how to last.
304
00:25:14,536 --> 00:25:15,937
At times, you are the master of time itself,
305
00:25:16,070 --> 00:25:17,403
the master of the world,
306
00:25:17,689 --> 00:25:20,432
a watchful little spider at the hub of your web,
307
00:25:20,794 --> 00:25:22,184
reigning over Paris:
308
00:25:23,171 --> 00:25:25,419
you command the North by Avenue de l'Opera,
309
00:25:25,762 --> 00:25:27,590
the South by the Louvre colonnade,
310
00:25:27,876 --> 00:25:30,371
the East and west by Rue Saint-Honore.
311
00:25:35,509 --> 00:25:36,995
You have everything still to learn
312
00:25:37,255 --> 00:25:39,138
everything that cannot be learnt:
313
00:25:39,434 --> 00:25:40,618
solitude,
314
00:25:40,725 --> 00:25:41,936
indifference,
315
00:25:42,178 --> 00:25:43,388
patience,
316
00:25:43,792 --> 00:25:45,325
silence.
317
00:25:50,870 --> 00:25:52,161
You are alone,
318
00:25:52,242 --> 00:25:55,282
and because you are alone you must never look to see what time it is.
319
00:26:02,818 --> 00:26:05,965
You are letting yourself go, and it come almost easily to you.
320
00:26:06,342 --> 00:26:09,005
You allow passing time to erase the memory of the faces,
321
00:26:09,113 --> 00:26:11,022
the addresses, the telephone numbers,
322
00:26:11,238 --> 00:26:13,497
the smiles and the voices.
323
00:26:16,863 --> 00:26:18,692
You forget that you learnt how to forget,
324
00:26:18,854 --> 00:26:21,463
that, one day, you forced yourself to forget.
325
00:26:22,351 --> 00:26:24,126
You no longer enter the cafes,
326
00:26:24,449 --> 00:26:26,709
checking the tables with a worried expression on your face,
327
00:26:26,978 --> 00:26:30,852
going into the back rooms in search of you no longer know whom.
328
00:26:31,742 --> 00:26:37,768
You no longer look for anyone in the queues which form every two hours outside the seven cinemas in Rue Champollion.
329
00:26:38,118 --> 00:26:40,270
You are alone.
330
00:26:41,322 --> 00:26:43,636
You learn how to walk like a man alone,
331
00:26:43,770 --> 00:26:45,895
to stroll, to dawdle,
332
00:26:46,191 --> 00:26:49,419
to see without looking, to look without seeing.
333
00:26:50,146 --> 00:26:51,975
You learn the art of transparency,
334
00:26:52,083 --> 00:26:53,132
immobility,
335
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:55,069
inexistence.
336
00:26:57,708 --> 00:26:59,188
You learn how to remain seated,
337
00:26:59,403 --> 00:27:00,802
or supine,
338
00:27:01,044 --> 00:27:02,443
or erect.
339
00:27:02,954 --> 00:27:06,155
You learn how to look at paintings as if they were bits of wall or ceiling,
340
00:27:06,424 --> 00:27:11,093
the walls, as if they were paintings whose tens of thousands of paths you follow untiringly,
341
00:27:11,362 --> 00:27:13,272
merciless labyrinths,
342
00:27:13,487 --> 00:27:15,666
texts that no-one will ever decipher,
343
00:27:16,785 --> 00:27:18,748
decaying faces.
344
00:27:36,143 --> 00:27:37,972
You plunge into Ile Saint-Louis,
345
00:27:38,330 --> 00:27:39,917
you take Rue Vaugirard
346
00:27:40,186 --> 00:27:43,092
and head towards Pereire, towards Chateau-Landon.
347
00:27:43,791 --> 00:27:45,163
You walk slowly,
348
00:27:45,297 --> 00:27:46,696
and return the way you came,
349
00:27:46,911 --> 00:27:48,310
sticking close to the shop fronts.
350
00:27:49,667 --> 00:27:51,926
You go and sit on the parapet of Pont Louis-Phillipe,
351
00:27:52,169 --> 00:27:56,500
and you watch an eddy forming and disintegrating under the arches.
352
00:27:57,549 --> 00:27:59,378
Barges pass by,
353
00:27:59,782 --> 00:28:02,717
eventually shattering the play of water against the piers
354
00:28:03,793 --> 00:28:05,676
Motionless anglers sit,
355
00:28:05,945 --> 00:28:08,689
their eyes following the inexorable drift of their floats.
356
00:28:13,983 --> 00:28:20,238
You walk round the fenced gardens, overtaken by children clattering an iron ruler against the palings as they run past.
357
00:28:28,457 --> 00:28:32,584
You sit down on the benches with green slats and cast-iron lion-paw ferrules.
358
00:28:32,967 --> 00:28:37,134
Disabled, ageing park-keepers pass the time of day with nannies of a different generation.
359
00:28:37,243 --> 00:28:42,115
With the tip of your shoes you trace circles on the sparsely sandy ground, or squares, or an eye,
360
00:28:42,494 --> 00:28:45,645
or your initials.
361
00:28:55,073 --> 00:28:57,223
You walked round and round near the entrance to the Catacombs,
362
00:28:57,602 --> 00:28:59,871
you went and stood beneath the Eiffel Tower,
363
00:29:00,208 --> 00:29:02,267
you went up a few monuments,
364
00:29:02,646 --> 00:29:06,681
you crossed all the bridges, walked along the embankments, visited all the museums,
365
00:29:07,152 --> 00:29:10,136
the Palais de la Decouverte and the Aquarium du Trocadero,
366
00:29:10,556 --> 00:29:14,339
you saw the rose gardens of Bagatelle, Montmartre by night, les Halles at first light,
367
00:29:14,550 --> 00:29:16,988
Saint-Lazare station in the rush-hour,
368
00:29:17,282 --> 00:29:20,056
Concorde at midday on August 15.
369
00:29:31,950 --> 00:29:38,129
In the Luxembourg Gardens you watch the pensioners playing bridge, belote or tarot.
370
00:29:39,306 --> 00:29:43,636
On a bench close by an old man stares into space for hours on end; his is mummified,
371
00:29:43,804 --> 00:29:46,746
perfectly still, with his heels together,
372
00:29:47,293 --> 00:29:50,886
his chin leaning on the knob of the walking-stick that he grips tightly with both hands,
373
00:29:51,475 --> 00:29:53,997
gazing into emptiness,
374
00:29:54,291 --> 00:29:56,351
for hours.
375
00:29:56,897 --> 00:29:58,494
You marvel at him.
376
00:29:58,831 --> 00:30:02,151
You try to discover his secret, his weakness.
377
00:30:02,793 --> 00:30:04,326
But he appears to have no weak point.
378
00:30:05,152 --> 00:30:06,900
He doesn't even dribble,
379
00:30:07,313 --> 00:30:08,879
or move his lips,
380
00:30:09,344 --> 00:30:10,670
he hardly even blinks.
381
00:30:12,314 --> 00:30:15,120
The sun describes an arc about him:
382
00:30:16,412 --> 00:30:20,526
perhaps his vigilance consists solely in following its shadow;
383
00:30:21,259 --> 00:30:24,530
he must have markers placed long in advance;
384
00:30:25,615 --> 00:30:27,250
his madness, if he is mad,
385
00:30:27,534 --> 00:30:30,255
consists in believing that he is a sundial.
386
00:30:34,466 --> 00:30:35,888
You would like to look like him,
387
00:30:36,260 --> 00:30:40,512
but - and this is probably one of the effects of your being young and inexperienced in the art of being old -
388
00:30:40,945 --> 00:30:42,801
you get restless too quickly:
389
00:30:43,665 --> 00:30:46,430
in spite of yourself, your foot starts scuffing the sand,
390
00:30:46,667 --> 00:30:48,011
you let your eyes wander,
391
00:30:48,603 --> 00:30:52,356
you are continually crossing and uncrossing your fingers.
392
00:30:52,672 --> 00:30:57,175
Sill you keep walking, wherever your feet take you. You get lost, you go round in circles.
393
00:30:57,689 --> 00:30:59,980
Sometimes you set yourself derisory goals:
394
00:31:00,410 --> 00:31:01,595
Daumesnil,
395
00:31:01,714 --> 00:31:02,939
Clignancourt,
396
00:31:03,136 --> 00:31:04,874
Boulevard Gouvion Saint-Cyr
397
00:31:05,269 --> 00:31:07,481
or the Postal Museum.
398
00:31:14,237 --> 00:31:17,357
You wander into bookshops and leaf through a few books without reading them.
399
00:31:25,429 --> 00:31:31,038
stopping conscientiously in front of every painting, leaning your head to the right, squinting,
400
00:31:31,275 --> 00:31:34,396
stepping back to get a better view.
401
00:31:34,797 --> 00:31:40,091
On your way out, you sign the book with large illegible initials accompanied by a false address.
402
00:31:41,315 --> 00:31:43,646
You sit at a table at the back of a cafe
403
00:31:43,935 --> 00:31:47,103
and read Le Monde, line by line, systematically.
404
00:31:47,403 --> 00:31:49,607
It is an excellent exercise.
405
00:32:18,957 --> 00:32:23,046
Five hundred, a thousand pieces of information have passed in front of your eyes so scrupulous and attentive.
406
00:32:23,265 --> 00:32:25,986
But your memory has carefully avoided retaining any of this.
407
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:29,705
You read with an equal lack of interest that Pont-a-Mousson was weak
408
00:32:29,980 --> 00:32:31,186
whilst New York remained steady,
409
00:32:31,616 --> 00:32:35,567
that one may have complete confidence in the experience of the oldest credit bank in France
410
00:32:35,619 --> 00:32:37,461
and its network of specialists,
411
00:32:38,253 --> 00:32:42,213
that the damage caused in Florda by typhoon Barbara would cost three billion to repair,
412
00:32:44,029 --> 00:32:48,195
that Jean-Paul and Lucas are proud to announce the arrival of their little sister Lucie.
413
00:32:50,731 --> 00:32:54,691
You are still capable of being amazed by the way in which the combination, according to a few ultimately very simple rules,
414
00:32:54,789 --> 00:32:59,971
of thirty or so typographic signs is able to generate, everyday, these thousands of messages.
415
00:33:01,684 --> 00:33:03,613
But why should you eagerly devour them,
416
00:33:04,095 --> 00:33:05,696
why should you bother deciphering them?
417
00:33:07,684 --> 00:33:10,869
All that matters to you is that time should pass and nothing should get through to you:
418
00:33:11,110 --> 00:33:13,986
your eyes follow the lines, deliberately, one after the other.
419
00:33:43,274 --> 00:33:47,096
Indifference to the world is neither ignorance nor hostility.
420
00:33:49,521 --> 00:33:52,448
You do not propose to rediscover the robust joys of illiteracy,
421
00:33:52,482 --> 00:33:55,891
but rather, in reading, not to grant a privileged status to any one thing you read.
422
00:33:57,726 --> 00:34:04,404
You do not propose to go naked, but to be clad, without this implying either elegance or neglect.
423
00:34:04,740 --> 00:34:08,877
you do not propose to let yourself starve to death, but simply to feed yourself.
424
00:34:09,593 --> 00:34:10,669
You eat,
425
00:34:10,825 --> 00:34:11,608
you sleep,
426
00:34:11,937 --> 00:34:13,201
you walk,
427
00:34:13,530 --> 00:34:14,845
you are clothed,
428
00:34:15,198 --> 00:34:18,915
let these be actions or gestures,
429
00:34:19,177 --> 00:34:22,085
but not proofs, not some kind of symbolic currency.
430
00:34:25,007 --> 00:34:29,609
Your dress, your food, your reading matter will not speak in your stead.
431
00:34:31,065 --> 00:34:36,020
Never again will you entrust to them the exhausting, impossible, mortal burden of representing you.
432
00:34:54,367 --> 00:34:56,836
you ingest, once or twice a day, rarely more,
433
00:34:57,181 --> 00:35:00,539
a fairly precisely calculable compound of proteins and glucosides,
434
00:35:00,934 --> 00:35:03,206
in the form of a piece of grilled beef,
435
00:35:03,453 --> 00:35:06,218
strips of potato quick-fried in boiling oil,
436
00:35:06,515 --> 00:35:08,095
a glass of red wine.
437
00:35:08,638 --> 00:35:10,070
In other words it's a steak,
438
00:35:10,218 --> 00:35:12,737
but it is definitely not a tournedos,
439
00:35:13,351 --> 00:35:16,165
and chips that no-one would dignity with the name French fries,
440
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:20,066
and a glass of red wine of uncertain, not to say dubious origin.
441
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:24,412
But your stomach can no longer tell the difference.
442
00:35:24,955 --> 00:35:27,869
Language has proved more resistant:
443
00:35:28,264 --> 00:35:31,227
it took a while for your meat to stop being tough,
444
00:35:31,326 --> 00:35:34,091
your chips to stop being greasy, the wine vinegary,
445
00:35:34,336 --> 00:35:37,496
for these pejorative adjectives, which at first evoke the sad fare of the soup-kitchens,
446
00:35:37,645 --> 00:35:40,262
to lose little by little their meaning,
447
00:35:40,805 --> 00:35:45,151
and for the sadness, the misery, the poverty, the need,
448
00:35:45,299 --> 00:35:49,101
the shame that has become inexorably attached to them - this fat become-chip,
449
00:35:49,348 --> 00:35:52,854
this hardness-become-meat, this bitterness-become-wine -
450
00:35:53,101 --> 00:35:54,681
stop hitting you,
451
00:35:55,768 --> 00:35:58,632
stop leaving their mark on you.
452
00:35:59,519 --> 00:36:02,729
No explanation marks punctuate your meals.
453
00:36:03,075 --> 00:36:05,149
You drink your red wine,
454
00:36:05,346 --> 00:36:08,605
you eat your steak and fries.
455
00:36:24,746 --> 00:36:26,641
You devise complicated itineraries,
456
00:36:27,063 --> 00:36:30,016
bristling with rules which oblige you to make long detours.
457
00:36:31,412 --> 00:36:32,668
You go and see the monuments.
458
00:36:33,888 --> 00:36:35,051
You count the churches,
459
00:36:35,147 --> 00:36:36,293
the equestrian statues,
460
00:36:36,395 --> 00:36:37,453
the public urinals,
461
00:36:37,541 --> 00:36:38,775
the Russian restaurants.
462
00:36:39,189 --> 00:36:42,183
You go and look at the major buildings works on the banks of the river,
463
00:36:42,699 --> 00:36:45,067
and the gutted streets that resemble ploughed fields,
464
00:36:45,325 --> 00:36:46,724
the pipe laying,
465
00:36:47,047 --> 00:36:49,091
the blocks of flats being razed to the ground.
466
00:36:51,045 --> 00:36:55,005
You go back to your room and collapse onto your too-narrow bed.
467
00:36:55,845 --> 00:36:57,911
You count and organise the cracks in the ceiling.
468
00:37:06,448 --> 00:37:09,267
You often play cards all by yourself.
469
00:37:10,537 --> 00:37:14,002
You deal out four columns of thirteen cards on the bed,
470
00:37:14,260 --> 00:37:15,702
you remove the aces.
471
00:37:16,154 --> 00:37:18,582
The game consists in arranging the forty-eight remaining cards,
472
00:37:18,616 --> 00:37:22,042
by using the four spaces left by the removal of the aces,
473
00:37:22,593 --> 00:37:24,711
if one of the spaces happens to be the first in a column,
474
00:37:24,903 --> 00:37:26,315
you are allowed to put a two there;
475
00:37:26,573 --> 00:37:28,433
if it follows, say, a six,
476
00:37:28,553 --> 00:37:30,240
you can insert the seven of the same suit,
477
00:37:30,491 --> 00:37:31,713
a seven can be followed by an eight,
478
00:37:32,161 --> 00:37:33,366
an eight by a nine,
479
00:37:33,607 --> 00:37:35,329
a jack by the queen;
480
00:37:36,035 --> 00:37:37,567
if the space follows a king,
481
00:37:37,661 --> 00:37:40,020
you may not lay anything and the space is dead.
482
00:37:40,554 --> 00:37:43,791
Chance has virtually no role to play in this patience.
483
00:37:44,298 --> 00:37:48,671
You can foresee a long time in advance the moment when the four cleared spaces would bring you up against kings,
484
00:37:48,740 --> 00:37:51,727
and therefore failure, if you were to play them in order;
485
00:37:52,123 --> 00:37:53,965
you don't have to: you are allowed to use one space,
486
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,495
then a different one, come back to the first, jump to the third, the fourth,
487
00:37:57,589 --> 00:37:58,881
back to the second again.
488
00:38:00,379 --> 00:38:02,634
Nevertheless, you rarely succeed;
489
00:38:02,901 --> 00:38:05,104
there always comes a point when the game is blocked,
490
00:38:05,328 --> 00:38:08,135
when, with half or a third of the cards already in order,
491
00:38:08,213 --> 00:38:11,518
you can no longer fill a space fill a space without turning up a king every time.
492
00:38:12,328 --> 00:38:14,841
In theory, you have the right to two more attempts,
493
00:38:15,031 --> 00:38:18,207
no sooner does the game appear lost than you scoop up all the cards,
494
00:38:18,448 --> 00:38:21,960
shuffle them once or twice, and deal them out again for another attempt.
495
00:38:23,314 --> 00:38:27,860
You shuffle the cards, deal them out, remove the aces, and take stock of the situation.
496
00:38:28,479 --> 00:38:30,093
You begin more or less at random,
497
00:38:30,201 --> 00:38:33,536
taking care only to avoid laying bare a king too soon.
498
00:38:33,913 --> 00:38:35,984
Gradually, the games starts to take shape,
499
00:38:36,290 --> 00:38:39,438
constraints appear, possibilities come to light:
500
00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:41,939
there is one card already in its proper place,
501
00:38:42,266 --> 00:38:46,274
over here a single move will allow you to arrange five or six in one go,
502
00:38:46,570 --> 00:38:49,125
over there a king that is in your way cannot be moved.
503
00:38:49,448 --> 00:38:51,520
You hardly ever get the patience out.
504
00:38:52,138 --> 00:38:55,664
You cheat sometimes, a little, rarely,
505
00:38:56,198 --> 00:38:57,696
increasingly rarely.
506
00:38:58,976 --> 00:39:00,853
Winning doesn't matter to you,
507
00:39:00,939 --> 00:39:03,005
for what would winning mean to you anyway.
508
00:39:14,335 --> 00:39:16,031
But you play more and more often,
509
00:39:16,607 --> 00:39:18,449
for longer and longer,
510
00:39:19,035 --> 00:39:20,429
sometimes all afternoon,
511
00:39:20,643 --> 00:39:22,003
as soon as you get up,
512
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:24,173
or right through the night.
513
00:39:25,128 --> 00:39:28,417
There is something about this game that fascinates you,
514
00:39:28,985 --> 00:39:32,376
perhaps even more than the game with the water under the bridges,
515
00:39:35,235 --> 00:39:40,039
or the imperfectly opaque twigs which drift slowly across the surface of your cornea.
516
00:39:41,089 --> 00:39:43,516
Depending on where it is, or when it crops up,
517
00:39:43,852 --> 00:39:46,934
each card acquires an almost poignant density.
518
00:39:47,123 --> 00:39:48,242
You protect,
519
00:39:48,277 --> 00:39:49,172
you destroy,
520
00:39:49,258 --> 00:39:50,274
you construct,
521
00:39:50,325 --> 00:39:52,752
you plot, you concoct one plan after another:
522
00:39:53,048 --> 00:39:56,168
a futile exercise, a danger that entails no risk of punishment,
523
00:39:56,390 --> 00:39:57,991
a derisory restoration of order:
524
00:39:58,434 --> 00:40:00,431
forty-eight cards keep you chained to your room,
525
00:40:00,604 --> 00:40:03,324
and you feel almost happy when a ten happens to fall into place
526
00:40:03,513 --> 00:40:05,614
or when a king is unable to thwart you,
527
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:10,047
and you feel almost unhappy when all your patient calculations lead to the impossible outcome.
528
00:40:11,674 --> 00:40:16,270
It is as if this solitary silent strategy were your only way forward,
529
00:40:16,512 --> 00:40:19,128
as if it had become your reason for being.
530
00:40:26,348 --> 00:40:27,691
It's dark.
531
00:40:28,818 --> 00:40:30,385
You close your eyes,
532
00:40:30,764 --> 00:40:31,900
you open them.
533
00:40:32,584 --> 00:40:36,854
Viral, microbial forms, inside your eye, or on the surface of your cornea,
534
00:40:36,905 --> 00:40:38,748
drifty slowly downwards,
535
00:40:38,997 --> 00:40:40,116
disappear,
536
00:40:40,306 --> 00:40:41,666
suddenly reappear in the center,
537
00:40:41,786 --> 00:40:42,905
hardly changed,
538
00:40:42,974 --> 00:40:44,248
discs or bubbles,
539
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:49,387
twigs, twisted filaments, which, when brought together, produce something resembling a mythological beast.
540
00:40:49,886 --> 00:40:51,315
You lose track of them,
541
00:40:51,643 --> 00:40:53,106
then find them again;
542
00:40:53,390 --> 00:40:54,957
you rub your eyes
543
00:40:55,232 --> 00:40:56,713
and the filaments explode,
544
00:40:57,109 --> 00:40:58,710
proliferate.
545
00:40:59,779 --> 00:41:01,518
Time passes,
546
00:41:02,327 --> 00:41:04,290
you are drowsy.
547
00:41:05,702 --> 00:41:09,782
You put down the book beside you on the bed.
548
00:41:11,072 --> 00:41:12,346
Everything is vague,
549
00:41:12,871 --> 00:41:14,335
throbbing.
550
00:41:16,246 --> 00:41:19,706
Your breathing is astonishingly regular.
551
00:41:41,648 --> 00:41:47,244
As the hours, the days, the weeks, the seasons slip by,
552
00:41:47,949 --> 00:41:51,066
you detach yourself from everything.
553
00:41:51,540 --> 00:41:54,760
You discover, with something that sometimes almost resembles exhilaration,
554
00:41:54,863 --> 00:41:55,999
that you are free,
555
00:41:56,413 --> 00:41:59,873
that nothing is weighing you down, nothing pleases or displeases you.
556
00:42:01,793 --> 00:42:06,390
You find, in this life exempt from wear and tear and with no thrill in it other than these suspended moments,
557
00:42:06,484 --> 00:42:08,378
an almost perfect happiness,
558
00:42:08,550 --> 00:42:09,480
fascinating,
559
00:42:09,979 --> 00:42:12,372
occasionally swollen by new emotions.
560
00:42:16,005 --> 00:42:22,717
You are living in a blessed parenthesis, in a vacuum full of promise, and from which you expect nothing.
561
00:42:23,180 --> 00:42:28,041
You are invisible, limpid, transparent.
562
00:42:28,350 --> 00:42:30,278
You no longer exist:
563
00:42:30,664 --> 00:42:33,072
across the passing hours, the succession of days,
564
00:42:33,257 --> 00:42:36,405
the procession of the seasons, the flow of time,
565
00:42:36,891 --> 00:42:39,668
you survive, without joy and without sadness,
566
00:42:39,915 --> 00:42:41,767
without a future and without a past,
567
00:42:42,014 --> 00:42:45,841
just like that: simply, self-evidently,
568
00:42:46,211 --> 00:42:49,730
like a drop of water forming on a drinking tap on a landing,
569
00:42:49,976 --> 00:42:53,063
like six socks soaking in a pink plastic bowl,
570
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:55,310
like a fly or a mollusc,
571
00:42:55,557 --> 00:43:00,557
like a tree, like a rat.
572
00:43:06,112 --> 00:43:09,507
In the course of time your coldness becomes awesome.
573
00:43:09,939 --> 00:43:12,408
Your eyes have lost the last vestige of their sparkle,
574
00:43:12,902 --> 00:43:16,296
your silhouette now slumps perfectly.
575
00:43:17,161 --> 00:43:23,395
An expression of serenity with lassitude, without bitterness, plays at the corners of your mouth.
576
00:43:25,047 --> 00:43:27,762
You slip through the streets, untouchable,
577
00:43:28,071 --> 00:43:30,849
protected by the judicious wear and tear of your clothing,
578
00:43:31,034 --> 00:43:33,626
by the neutrality of your gait.
579
00:43:34,552 --> 00:43:37,515
Now, your movements are simply acquired gestures.
580
00:43:38,070 --> 00:43:42,391
You utter only those words which are strictly necessary.
581
00:43:44,552 --> 00:43:49,181
You never say please, hello, thank you, goodbye.
582
00:43:49,613 --> 00:43:52,144
You do not ask your way.
583
00:43:52,848 --> 00:43:54,082
You wander around.
584
00:43:54,329 --> 00:43:55,934
You walk.
585
00:43:56,922 --> 00:44:00,502
All moments are equivalent, all spaces are alike.
586
00:44:01,057 --> 00:44:04,452
You are never in a hurry, never lost.
587
00:44:05,069 --> 00:44:07,168
You are not sleepy.
588
00:44:07,662 --> 00:44:10,254
You are not hungry.
589
00:44:11,057 --> 00:44:16,488
You let yourself go, you allow yourself to be carried along:
590
00:44:18,652 --> 00:44:21,677
all it takes is for the crows to be going up or down the Champs Elysees.
591
00:44:21,985 --> 00:44:26,491
all it takes is for a grey back a few yards in front of you to turn off suddenly down a grey street;
592
00:44:26,862 --> 00:44:29,701
or else a light or an absence of light,
593
00:44:29,886 --> 00:44:32,047
a noise of an absence of noise,
594
00:44:32,232 --> 00:44:34,762
a wall, a group of people, a tree,
595
00:44:35,071 --> 00:44:38,034
some water, a porch, a fence,
596
00:44:38,219 --> 00:44:41,614
advertising posters, paving stones, a pedestrian crossing,
597
00:44:41,969 --> 00:44:46,105
a shop front, a luminous stop sign, the name plate of a street,
598
00:44:46,414 --> 00:44:52,956
a haberdasher's stall, a flight of steps, a traffic island...
599
00:44:59,252 --> 00:45:01,351
You walk or you do not walk.
600
00:45:01,598 --> 00:45:03,635
You sleep or you do not sleep.
601
00:45:03,882 --> 00:45:05,980
You buy Le Monde or you do not buy it.
602
00:45:06,474 --> 00:45:08,202
You eat or you do not eat.
603
00:45:08,573 --> 00:45:11,906
You sit down, you stretch out, you remain standing,
604
00:45:12,196 --> 00:45:14,665
You slip into the darkened auditoriums.
605
00:45:14,850 --> 00:45:16,764
You light a cigarette.
606
00:45:17,196 --> 00:45:19,912
You cross the street, you cross the Seine,
607
00:45:20,159 --> 00:45:23,060
you stop, you start again.
608
00:45:23,677 --> 00:45:27,195
You pall pinball or you don't.
609
00:45:40,081 --> 00:45:42,735
Indifference has neither beginning nor end:
610
00:45:42,859 --> 00:45:46,130
it is an immutable state, an unshakeable inertia.
611
00:45:46,871 --> 00:45:49,895
All that remains are elementary reflexes:
612
00:45:50,204 --> 00:45:52,796
when the light is red you do not cross the road,
613
00:45:53,290 --> 00:45:56,191
you shelter from the wind in order to light a cigarette,
614
00:45:56,790 --> 00:45:59,321
you wrap up warmer on winter mornings,
615
00:46:00,062 --> 00:46:06,419
you change your sports shirt, your socks, your underpants and your vest about once a week.
616
00:46:19,490 --> 00:46:23,811
Indifference dissolves language and scrambles the signs.
617
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:29,212
You are patient and you are not waiting, you are free and you do not choose,
618
00:46:29,598 --> 00:46:33,301
you are available and nothing arouses your enthusiasm.
619
00:46:33,610 --> 00:46:38,471
You hear without ever listening, you see without ever looking:
620
00:46:38,779 --> 00:46:42,483
the cracks in the ceilings, in the floorboards,
621
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:46,495
the patterns in the tiling, the lines around your eyes,
622
00:46:46,881 --> 00:46:50,198
the trees, the water, the stones,
623
00:46:50,661 --> 00:46:57,065
the cars passing in the street, the clouds that form...cloud shapes in the sky.
624
00:47:02,226 --> 00:47:05,312
Now, your existence is boundless.
625
00:47:05,762 --> 00:47:08,290
Each day is made up of silence and noise,
626
00:47:08,575 --> 00:47:10,155
of light and blackness,
627
00:47:10,345 --> 00:47:14,137
layers, expectations, shivers.
628
00:47:14,390 --> 00:47:16,728
You slide, you let yourself slip and go under:
629
00:47:17,125 --> 00:47:20,349
searching for emptiness, running from it.
630
00:47:20,602 --> 00:47:23,414
Walk, stop,
631
00:47:23,857 --> 00:47:26,243
sit down, take a table,
632
00:47:26,579 --> 00:47:29,695
lean on it, stretch out.
633
00:47:30,522 --> 00:47:32,347
Robotic actions:
634
00:47:32,588 --> 00:47:36,324
get up, wash, shave, dress.
635
00:47:36,780 --> 00:47:38,295
A cork on the water:
636
00:47:38,553 --> 00:47:39,982
drift with the current,
637
00:47:40,051 --> 00:47:42,926
follow the crowd, trail about:
638
00:47:43,555 --> 00:47:45,362
in the heavy silence of summer,
639
00:47:45,569 --> 00:47:47,291
closed shutters, deserted streets,
640
00:47:47,575 --> 00:47:49,004
sticky asphalt,
641
00:47:49,193 --> 00:47:51,689
deathly-still leaves of a green that verges on black;
642
00:47:52,258 --> 00:47:54,926
winter in the cold light of the shop-fronts,
643
00:47:55,210 --> 00:47:58,464
the street lights, the little clouds of condensing breath at cafe doors,
644
00:47:58,774 --> 00:48:00,771
the black stumps of the dead winter trees.
645
00:48:02,381 --> 00:48:04,309
It is a life without surprises.
646
00:48:04,602 --> 00:48:05,772
You are safe.
647
00:48:06,140 --> 00:48:10,185
You sleep, you walk, you continue to live,
648
00:48:10,533 --> 00:48:15,653
like a laboratory rat abandoned in its maze by some absent-minded scientist.
649
00:48:20,433 --> 00:48:22,108
There is no hierarchy,
650
00:48:22,424 --> 00:48:23,846
no preference.
651
00:48:24,780 --> 00:48:30,343
Your indifference is motionless, becalmed: a grey man for whom grey has no connotation of dullness.
652
00:48:30,912 --> 00:48:34,040
But insensitive, but neutral.
653
00:48:34,198 --> 00:48:37,043
You are attracted by water, but also by stone;
654
00:48:37,407 --> 00:48:39,430
by darkness, but also by light;
655
00:48:39,620 --> 00:48:41,453
by warmth, but also by cold.
656
00:48:42,021 --> 00:48:43,949
All that exists is your walking,
657
00:48:44,139 --> 00:48:46,383
and your gaze, which lingers and slides,
658
00:48:46,572 --> 00:48:50,807
oblivious to beauty, to ugliness, to the familiar, the surprising,
659
00:48:51,204 --> 00:48:56,260
only ever retaining combinations of shapes and lights, which form and dissolve continuously,
660
00:48:56,450 --> 00:48:58,314
all around you, in your eyes,
661
00:48:58,599 --> 00:49:02,297
on the ceilings, at your feet, in the sky,
662
00:49:02,441 --> 00:49:04,969
in your cracked mirror, in the water,
663
00:49:05,159 --> 00:49:07,814
in the stone, in the crowds.
664
00:49:07,940 --> 00:49:09,899
Squares, avenues,
665
00:49:10,152 --> 00:49:13,629
parks and boulevards, trees and railings,
666
00:49:13,850 --> 00:49:17,105
men and women, children and dogs,
667
00:49:17,564 --> 00:49:19,966
crowds, queues,
668
00:49:20,328 --> 00:49:21,687
vehicles and shop windows,
669
00:49:22,373 --> 00:49:24,535
buildings, facades,
670
00:49:25,234 --> 00:49:27,318
columns and capitals,
671
00:49:27,962 --> 00:49:30,688
sidewalks, gutters,
672
00:49:31,044 --> 00:49:33,532
sandstone paving flags glistening grey in the drizzle.
673
00:49:34,402 --> 00:49:37,996
Silences, rackets, crowds at the stations,
674
00:49:38,313 --> 00:49:40,525
in the shops, on the boulevards,
675
00:49:40,801 --> 00:49:44,001
teeming streets, packed platforms,
676
00:49:44,548 --> 00:49:46,761
deserted Sunday streets in August,
677
00:49:47,037 --> 00:49:49,052
mornings, evenings,
678
00:49:49,210 --> 00:49:52,844
nights, dawns and dusks.
679
00:49:53,871 --> 00:49:56,281
Now you are the nameless master of the world,
680
00:49:56,597 --> 00:49:59,047
the one on whom history has lost its hold,
681
00:49:59,323 --> 00:50:02,997
the one who no longer feels the rain falling, who does not see the approach of night.
682
00:50:04,340 --> 00:50:06,948
All you are is all you know:
683
00:50:07,550 --> 00:50:11,184
your life that continues, you breathing, your step,
684
00:50:11,382 --> 00:50:15,807
You see the people coming and going, crowds and objects taking shape and dissolving.
685
00:50:16,921 --> 00:50:20,832
You see a curtain rail in the tiny window of a haberdasher's,
686
00:50:21,030 --> 00:50:23,716
which your eye is suddenly caught by,
687
00:50:24,585 --> 00:50:26,995
you continue on your way,
688
00:50:27,153 --> 00:50:34,067
you are inaccessible, like a tree, like a shop window, like a rat.
689
00:53:40,439 --> 00:53:45,455
But rats don't spend hours trying to get to sleep.
690
00:53:46,844 --> 00:53:52,785
But rats don't wake up with a start, gripped by panic, bathed in sweat.
691
00:53:54,868 --> 00:54:00,269
But rats don't dream and what can you do to protect yourself against your dreams?
692
00:54:02,093 --> 00:54:04,099
But rats don't bite their nails,
693
00:54:04,331 --> 00:54:10,581
especially not methodically, for hours on end until the tips of their claws are little more than a large open sore.
694
00:54:11,352 --> 00:54:16,753
You tear off half of the nail, bruising the spots where it is attached to the flesh;
695
00:54:17,139 --> 00:54:22,463
you tear away the cuticle nearly all the way back to the top joint until beads of blood start to appear,
696
00:54:22,926 --> 00:54:25,858
until your fingers are so painful that, for hours,
697
00:54:26,244 --> 00:54:29,870
the slightest contact is so unbearable that you can no longer pick things up
698
00:54:30,025 --> 00:54:32,571
and you have to go and immerse your hands in scalding hot water.
699
00:54:33,010 --> 00:54:38,146
But rats, as far as you know, do not play pinball.
700
00:54:38,669 --> 00:54:41,183
You hug the machines for hours on end,
701
00:54:41,286 --> 00:54:44,764
for nights on end, feverishly, angrily.
702
00:54:45,874 --> 00:54:48,474
You cling, grunting, to the machine,
703
00:54:48,732 --> 00:54:52,020
accompanying the erratic rebounds of the steal ball with exaggerated thrusts of your hips.
704
00:54:52,752 --> 00:54:54,388
You wage relentless warfare on the springs,
705
00:54:54,508 --> 00:54:57,969
the lights, the figures, the channels.
706
00:54:59,079 --> 00:55:03,039
Painted ladies who give an electronic wink, who lower their fans.
707
00:55:03,745 --> 00:55:06,052
You can't fight against a tilt.
708
00:55:06,628 --> 00:55:08,643
You can play or not play.
709
00:55:09,469 --> 00:55:11,174
You can't start up a conversation,
710
00:55:12,267 --> 00:55:14,677
you can't make it say what it will never be able to say to you.
711
00:55:15,767 --> 00:55:17,179
It is no use snuggling up against it.
712
00:55:17,317 --> 00:55:18,987
painting over it,
713
00:55:19,073 --> 00:55:21,535
the tilt remains insensitive to the friendship you feel,
714
00:55:22,103 --> 00:55:23,773
to the love which you seek,
715
00:55:24,048 --> 00:55:26,179
to the desire which torments you.
716
00:55:33,348 --> 00:55:34,966
You drift around the streets,
717
00:55:35,052 --> 00:55:36,739
you enter a cinema;
718
00:55:37,462 --> 00:55:38,823
you drift around the streets,
719
00:55:39,064 --> 00:55:40,303
you enter a cafe;
720
00:55:41,181 --> 00:55:42,593
you drift around the streets,
721
00:55:42,731 --> 00:55:44,022
you look at the trains;
722
00:55:44,867 --> 00:55:46,554
you drift around the streets,
723
00:55:46,812 --> 00:55:51,048
you enter a cinema where you see a film which resembles the one you've just seen,
724
00:55:51,599 --> 00:55:52,623
you walk out;
725
00:55:53,002 --> 00:55:55,085
you drift around the over-lit streets.
726
00:55:55,808 --> 00:55:58,425
You go back to your room, you undress,
727
00:55:58,624 --> 00:56:00,845
you slip between the sheets, you turn out the light,
728
00:56:01,051 --> 00:56:02,825
you close your eyes.
729
00:56:04,021 --> 00:56:08,170
Now is the time when dream-women, to quickly undressed, crowd in around you,
730
00:56:08,721 --> 00:56:11,528
the time when you reread ad nauseam books you've read a hundred times before,
731
00:56:11,812 --> 00:56:15,324
when you toss and turn for hours without getting to sleep.
732
00:56:16,254 --> 00:56:19,370
This is the hour when, your eyes wide open in the darkness,
733
00:56:19,602 --> 00:56:23,011
you hand groping towards the foot of the narrow bed in search of an ashtray,
734
00:56:23,183 --> 00:56:26,179
matches, a last cigarette,
735
00:56:26,514 --> 00:56:29,820
you calmly measure the sticky extent of your unhappiness.
736
00:56:37,177 --> 00:56:39,935
Now you get up in the night.
737
00:56:40,526 --> 00:56:42,375
You wander the streets,
738
00:56:42,611 --> 00:56:47,083
you go and perch on bar-stools and there you stay, for hours,
739
00:56:47,621 --> 00:56:49,134
until closing time.
740
00:56:49,471 --> 00:56:54,515
with a beer in front of you or a black coffee or a glass of red wine.
741
00:56:56,613 --> 00:56:59,034
You are alone and drifting.
742
00:57:00,278 --> 00:57:03,674
You walk along the desolate avenues, past the stunted trees,
743
00:57:03,876 --> 00:57:06,869
the peeling facades, the dark porches.
744
00:57:07,236 --> 00:57:10,968
You penetrate the bottomless ugliness of Les Batignolles, and Pantin.
745
00:57:11,271 --> 00:57:14,297
Your only chance encounters are with Wallace fountains which long since ran dry,
746
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:17,559
tacky churches, gutted building sites,
747
00:57:17,794 --> 00:57:19,543
pale walls.
748
00:57:20,043 --> 00:57:22,095
The parks whose railings imprison you,
749
00:57:22,431 --> 00:57:24,549
the festering swamps near the sewer outlets,
750
00:57:24,684 --> 00:57:26,870
the monstrous factory gates.
751
00:57:27,374 --> 00:57:33,292
Steam locomotives pump out clouds of white smoke under the metallic walkways of the Gare Saint-Lazare.
752
00:57:33,494 --> 00:57:35,781
On Boulevard Barbes or Place Clichy,
753
00:57:36,098 --> 00:57:39,393
impatient crowds raise their eyes to the heavens.
754
00:57:53,597 --> 00:57:56,522
Unhappiness did not swoop down on you,
755
00:57:57,666 --> 00:58:00,695
it insinuated itself almost ingratiatingly.
756
00:58:01,430 --> 00:58:06,562
It meticulously impregnated you life, your movements, the hours you keep, your room,
757
00:58:06,941 --> 00:58:09,254
it took possession of the cracks in the ceiling,
758
00:58:09,465 --> 00:58:13,882
of the lines in your face in the cracked mirror, of the pack of cards;
759
00:58:14,849 --> 00:58:18,635
it slipped furtively into the dripping tap on the landing,
760
00:58:19,224 --> 00:58:23,389
it echoed in sympathy with the chimes of each quarter-hour from the bell of Saint-Roch.
761
00:58:24,511 --> 00:58:28,339
The snare was that feeling which, on occasion, came close to exhilaration,
762
00:58:28,675 --> 00:58:30,274
that arrogance,
763
00:58:30,947 --> 00:58:34,480
that sort of exaltation;
764
00:58:34,901 --> 00:58:38,519
you thought that the city was all you needed, its stones and its streets,
765
00:58:38,897 --> 00:58:41,632
the crowds that carried you along,
766
00:58:42,029 --> 00:58:46,068
you thought you needed only a front stall in some local cinema,
767
00:58:46,951 --> 00:58:49,433
you thought you only needed your room,
768
00:58:49,727 --> 00:58:55,869
your lair, your cage, your borrow.
769
00:58:56,983 --> 00:59:01,610
Once again you deal out the fifty-two cards on your narrow bed.
770
00:59:03,629 --> 00:59:07,541
Your powers have deserted you.
771
00:59:09,033 --> 00:59:14,375
The snare: the dangerous illusion of being impenetrable,
772
00:59:14,922 --> 00:59:20,643
of offering no purchase to the outside world, of silently sliding, inaccessible,
773
00:59:21,302 --> 00:59:24,962
just two open eyes looking forward, perceiving everything,
774
00:59:25,341 --> 00:59:27,318
retaining nothing.
775
00:59:28,243 --> 00:59:33,249
A being without memory, without alarm.
776
00:59:36,666 --> 00:59:38,811
But there is no exit,
777
00:59:39,316 --> 00:59:40,830
no miracle,
778
00:59:41,251 --> 00:59:43,060
no truth.
779
00:59:43,523 --> 00:59:46,720
Your legs dangling above the Seine.
780
00:59:47,034 --> 00:59:49,642
781
00:59:49,589 --> 00:59:53,333
You withdraw the four aces from you fifty-two cards.
782
00:59:54,900 --> 00:59:58,350
How many times have you repeated the same amputated gesture,
783
00:59:58,686 --> 01:00:01,337
the same journey's that lead nowhere?
784
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:06,446
All you have left to fall back on are your tuppeny-halfpenny boltholes,
785
01:00:06,807 --> 01:00:08,546
your idiotic patience,
786
01:00:08,774 --> 01:00:12,063
the thousand and one detours that always lead you back unfailingly to your starting point.
787
01:00:12,579 --> 01:00:14,267
From park to museum,
788
01:00:14,525 --> 01:00:15,885
from cafe to cinema,
789
01:00:16,204 --> 01:00:17,599
from embankment to garden,
790
01:00:17,943 --> 01:00:19,906
the station waiting-rooms,
791
01:00:19,992 --> 01:00:21,541
the lobbies of the grand hotels,
792
01:00:21,860 --> 01:00:22,910
the supermarkets,
793
01:00:23,117 --> 01:00:24,253
the bookshops,
794
01:00:24,477 --> 01:00:25,837
the corridors of the metro.
795
01:00:26,534 --> 01:00:28,256
Trees, stones,
796
01:00:28,445 --> 01:00:29,891
water, clouds,
797
01:00:30,115 --> 01:00:31,888
sand, brick,
798
01:00:32,078 --> 01:00:33,059
light,
799
01:00:33,335 --> 01:00:34,075
wind,
800
01:00:34,230 --> 01:00:35,435
rain:
801
01:00:36,184 --> 01:00:38,302
all that counts is your solitude:
802
01:00:38,663 --> 01:00:40,850
whatever you do, wherever you go,
803
01:00:40,910 --> 01:00:42,976
nothing that you see has any importance,
804
01:00:43,114 --> 01:00:44,835
everything you do, you do in vain,
805
01:00:45,128 --> 01:00:46,781
nothing that you seek is real.
806
01:00:47,202 --> 01:00:51,472
Solitude alone exists, every time you are confronted, every time you face yourself.
807
01:00:55,530 --> 01:00:58,973
You stopped speaking and only silence replied.
808
01:01:00,609 --> 01:01:03,260
But those words, those thousands,
809
01:01:03,553 --> 01:01:06,066
those millions of words that dried up in your throat,
810
01:01:06,503 --> 01:01:08,758
the inconsequential chit-chat, the cries of joy,
811
01:01:09,008 --> 01:01:11,453
the words of live, the silly laughter,
812
01:01:11,711 --> 01:01:13,915
just when will you find them again?
813
01:01:15,034 --> 01:01:17,673
Now you live in dread of silence.
814
01:01:19,033 --> 01:01:21,616
But are you not the most silent of all?
815
01:01:35,988 --> 01:01:37,882
The monsters have come into you life,
816
01:01:38,123 --> 01:01:40,843
the rats, your fellow creatures, your brothers.
817
01:01:41,170 --> 01:01:44,356
The monsters in their tens, their hundreds, their thousands.
818
01:01:44,459 --> 01:01:47,598
You can spot them from almost subliminal signs,
819
01:01:47,718 --> 01:01:49,199
their furtive departures,
820
01:01:49,423 --> 01:01:50,679
their silence,
821
01:01:50,765 --> 01:01:55,470
from their shifty, hesitant, startled eyes that look away when they meet yours.
822
01:01:57,071 --> 01:02:01,548
In the middle of the night a light still shows at the attic windows of their sordid little rooms.
823
01:02:02,603 --> 01:02:04,772
Their footfalls echo in the night.
824
01:02:10,202 --> 01:02:11,803
But these faces without age,
825
01:02:12,044 --> 01:02:13,955
these frail or drooping figures,
826
01:02:14,110 --> 01:02:17,812
these hunched, grey backs, you can feel their constant proximity,
827
01:02:18,187 --> 01:02:20,942
you follow their shadows, you are their shadow,
828
01:02:21,028 --> 01:02:22,772
you frequent their hideouts, their pokey little holes,
829
01:02:23,030 --> 01:02:24,890
you have the same refuges, the same sanctuaries:
830
01:02:24,959 --> 01:02:27,042
the local cinema which stinks of disinfectant,
831
01:02:27,111 --> 01:02:31,312
the public gardens, the museums, the cares, the stations, the metro, the covered markets.
832
01:02:31,765 --> 01:02:34,054
Bundles of despair sitting like you on park benches,
833
01:02:34,301 --> 01:02:38,054
endlessly drawing and rubbing out the same imperfect circle in the sand,
834
01:02:38,691 --> 01:02:41,239
readers of newspapers found in rubbish bins.
835
01:02:42,460 --> 01:02:46,489
They follow the same circuits as you, just as futile, just as slow.
836
01:02:46,988 --> 01:02:49,881
They hesitate in front of the maps in the metro,
837
01:02:50,264 --> 01:02:53,226
they eat their buns sitting on the river banks.
838
01:02:54,362 --> 01:02:55,171
The banished,
839
01:02:55,986 --> 01:02:56,864
the pariahs,
840
01:02:57,122 --> 01:02:58,189
the exiles.
841
01:02:58,998 --> 01:03:02,907
When they walk, they hug the walls, eyes cast down and shoulders drooping,
842
01:03:03,101 --> 01:03:05,408
clutching at the stones of the facades,
843
01:03:05,597 --> 01:03:08,770
with the weary gestures of a defeated army, of those who bite the dust.
844
01:03:09,132 --> 01:03:12,988
You follow them, you spy on them, you hate them:
845
01:03:13,246 --> 01:03:15,644
monsters in their garrets,
846
01:03:16,092 --> 01:03:18,640
monsters in slippers who shuffle at the fringes of the putrid markets,
847
01:03:18,984 --> 01:03:20,672
monsters with dead fish-eyes,
848
01:03:20,947 --> 01:03:22,858
monsters moving like robots,
849
01:03:23,248 --> 01:03:24,918
monster who drivel.
850
01:03:25,039 --> 01:03:29,153
You rub shoulders with them, you walk with them, you make your way amongst them:
851
01:03:29,670 --> 01:03:32,648
the sleepwalkers, the old men,
852
01:03:32,912 --> 01:03:35,012
the deaf-mutes with their berets pulled down over their ears,
853
01:03:35,357 --> 01:03:36,344
the drunkards,
854
01:03:36,412 --> 01:03:39,425
the dotards who clear their throats and try to control the spasms of their cheeks
855
01:03:39,597 --> 01:03:41,491
the peasants lost in the big city,
856
01:03:41,612 --> 01:03:44,229
the windows, the slyboots, the old boys.
857
01:03:45,060 --> 01:03:46,593
They came to you,
858
01:03:46,900 --> 01:03:48,685
they grabbed you by the arm.
859
01:03:48,850 --> 01:03:52,666
As if, because you are a stranger lost in your own city, you could only meet other strangers;
860
01:03:52,831 --> 01:03:56,702
as if, because you are alone, you had to watch as all the other loners swooped down on you.
861
01:03:57,043 --> 01:03:58,399
Those who never speak,
862
01:03:58,743 --> 01:04:00,065
those who talk to themselves,
863
01:04:00,583 --> 01:04:02,886
The old lunatics, the old lushes,
864
01:04:02,999 --> 01:04:04,443
the exiles.
865
01:04:05,272 --> 01:04:07,934
The hand on to your coat tails,
866
01:04:08,022 --> 01:04:09,730
the breathe in your face.
867
01:04:09,854 --> 01:04:13,292
They slide up to you with their wholesome smiles,
868
01:04:13,416 --> 01:04:15,796
their leaflets, their flags,
869
01:04:16,064 --> 01:04:18,411
the pathetic champions of great lost causes,
870
01:04:18,756 --> 01:04:20,643
the sad chansonniers out collecting for their friends,
871
01:04:21,183 --> 01:04:22,781
the abused orphans selling table-mats,
872
01:04:23,079 --> 01:04:25,082
the scraggy widows who protect pets.
873
01:04:25,941 --> 01:04:28,222
All those who accost you, detain you,
874
01:04:28,523 --> 01:04:31,609
paw you, ram their petty-minded truth down your throat,
875
01:04:31,689 --> 01:04:33,118
spit their eternal questions in your face,
876
01:04:33,188 --> 01:04:35,215
their charitable works and their True Way.
877
01:04:35,593 --> 01:04:37,943
The sandwich-men of the true faith which will save the world.
878
01:04:38,748 --> 01:04:41,803
The sallow complexions, the frayed collars, the stammerers who tell you their life story,
879
01:04:42,057 --> 01:04:45,120
tell you about their time in prison, in the asylum, in the hospital.
880
01:04:45,476 --> 01:04:47,625
The old school teachers who have a plan to standardize spelling,
881
01:04:47,705 --> 01:04:50,790
the strategists, the water diviners, the faith healers, the enlightened,
882
01:04:51,102 --> 01:04:52,986
all those who live with their obsessions,
883
01:04:53,320 --> 01:04:57,323
the failures, the dead beats, the harmless monsters mocked by bartenders
884
01:04:57,345 --> 01:05:00,139
who fill their glasses so high that they can't raise them to their lips,
885
01:05:00,259 --> 01:05:03,780
the old bags in their furs who try to remain dignified whilst kicking back the Marie Brizard.
886
01:05:06,996 --> 01:05:11,546
And all the others who are even worse, the smug, the smart-Alecs, the self-satisfied, who think they know,
887
01:05:11,598 --> 01:05:14,714
the fat men and the forever young, the dairymen and the decorated;
888
01:05:14,786 --> 01:05:18,178
the revelers on a binge, the Brylcreem-boys, the stinking rich, the dumb bastards.
889
01:05:18,316 --> 01:05:21,949
The monster confident of their own rights, who address you without further to do, call you to witness,
890
01:05:22,086 --> 01:05:25,965
The monster with their big families, with their monster children and monster dogs,
891
01:05:26,103 --> 01:05:28,014
the thousands of monsters caught at the traffic lights,
892
01:05:28,134 --> 01:05:29,701
the yapping females of the monsters,
893
01:05:29,770 --> 01:05:31,715
the monsters with moustaches, and waistcoats, and braces,
894
01:05:31,824 --> 01:05:34,389
the monsters tipped out by the coachload in front of the hideous monuments,
895
01:05:34,493 --> 01:05:37,282
the monsters in their Sunday best, the monster crowd.
896
01:05:37,359 --> 01:05:41,457
You drift around, but the crowd no longer carries you, the night no longer protects you.
897
01:05:41,535 --> 01:05:45,391
Still you walk on, ever onwards, untiring, immortal.
898
01:05:46,086 --> 01:05:49,753
You search, you wait. You wander through the fossilised town,
899
01:05:49,848 --> 01:05:51,983
the intact white stones of the restored facades,
900
01:05:52,069 --> 01:05:55,323
the petrified dustbins, the vacant chairs where concierges once sat;
901
01:05:55,590 --> 01:05:59,412
you wander through the ghost town, scaffolding abandoned against gutted apartment blocks,
902
01:05:59,567 --> 01:06:01,461
bridges adrift in the fog and the rain.
903
01:06:01,952 --> 01:06:05,309
Putrid city, vile, repulsive city.
904
01:06:05,378 --> 01:06:07,690
Sad city, sad lights in the sad streets,
905
01:06:07,759 --> 01:06:11,185
sad clowns in sad music-halls, sad queues outside the sad cinemas,
906
01:06:11,254 --> 01:06:13,360
sad furniture in the sad stores.
907
01:06:13,411 --> 01:06:15,391
Dark stations, barracks, warehouses.
908
01:06:15,460 --> 01:06:17,991
The gloomy bars which line the Grand Boulevards.
909
01:06:18,060 --> 01:06:20,630
Noisy or deserted city, pallid or hysterical city,
910
01:06:20,717 --> 01:06:25,158
gutted, devastated, soiled city, city bristling with prohibitions, steel bars, iron fences.
911
01:06:25,237 --> 01:06:28,543
Charnel house city: the covered markets rotting away, the slum belt in the heart of Paris,
912
01:06:28,629 --> 01:06:30,798
the unbearable horror of the boulevards when the cops hang out:
913
01:06:30,838 --> 01:06:33,386
Haussmann, Magenta - and Charonne.
914
01:06:38,156 --> 01:06:40,738
Like a prisoner, like a madman in his cell.
915
01:06:40,756 --> 01:06:43,424
Like a rat looking for the way out of his maze.
916
01:06:43,493 --> 01:06:45,542
You pace the length of Paris.
917
01:06:45,633 --> 01:06:47,372
Like a starving man,
918
01:06:47,441 --> 01:06:50,419
like a messenger delivering a letter with no address.
919
01:07:06,215 --> 01:07:09,039
Now you have run out of hiding places.
920
01:07:12,246 --> 01:07:14,341
You are afraid.
921
01:07:17,704 --> 01:07:20,527
You are waiting for everything to stop,
922
01:07:21,158 --> 01:07:22,897
the rain,
923
01:07:23,384 --> 01:07:25,187
the hours,
924
01:07:26,241 --> 01:07:28,342
the stream of traffic,
925
01:07:29,289 --> 01:07:31,131
life,
926
01:07:31,682 --> 01:07:33,163
people,
927
01:07:33,856 --> 01:07:35,664
the world;
928
01:07:36,422 --> 01:07:38,057
waiting for everything to collapse,
929
01:07:38,161 --> 01:07:39,917
walls,
930
01:07:40,766 --> 01:07:42,660
towers,
931
01:07:43,021 --> 01:07:45,346
floors and ceilings,
932
01:07:46,585 --> 01:07:48,789
men and women,
933
01:07:48,914 --> 01:07:51,118
old people and children,
934
01:07:51,635 --> 01:07:53,150
dogs,
935
01:07:53,236 --> 01:07:55,026
horses,
936
01:07:55,832 --> 01:07:57,381
birds,
937
01:07:57,588 --> 01:07:59,843
to fall to the ground,
938
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:02,391
paralysed,
939
01:08:03,308 --> 01:08:05,340
plague-ridden,
940
01:08:07,285 --> 01:08:09,248
epileptic;
941
01:08:11,469 --> 01:08:13,552
waiting for the marble to crumble away,
942
01:08:14,487 --> 01:08:17,207
for the wood to turn to pulp,
943
01:08:17,827 --> 01:08:20,496
for the houses to collapse noiselessly,
944
01:08:23,687 --> 01:08:27,148
for the diluvian rains to dissolve the paintwork,
945
01:08:27,251 --> 01:08:30,746
pull apart the dowel-joints in hundred-year-old wardrobes,
946
01:08:31,161 --> 01:08:33,451
tear the fabric to shreds,
947
01:08:34,007 --> 01:08:36,675
wash away the newspaper ink,
948
01:08:43,418 --> 01:08:46,948
waiting for the fire without flames to consume the stairs,
949
01:08:48,187 --> 01:08:50,757
waiting for the streets to subside and split down the middle
950
01:08:50,895 --> 01:08:53,633
to reveal the gaping labyrinth of the sewers;
951
01:08:54,080 --> 01:08:58,298
waiting for the rust and mist to invade the city.
952
01:10:06,744 --> 01:10:12,183
You are not dead and you are no wiser.
953
01:10:12,594 --> 01:10:17,109
You have not exposed your eyes to the suns burning rays.
954
01:10:18,135 --> 01:10:22,343
The two tenth-rate old actors have not come to fetch you,
955
01:10:22,754 --> 01:10:25,216
hugging you so tightly
956
01:10:25,730 --> 01:10:32,503
that you formed a unity which would have brought all three of you down together had one of you knocked out.
957
01:10:33,016 --> 01:10:38,250
The merciful volcanoes have paid you no heed.
958
01:10:38,557 --> 01:10:41,533
Your mother had not put your new second-hand clothes in order.
959
01:10:42,680 --> 01:10:47,586
You are not going to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience
960
01:10:48,473 --> 01:10:53,001
and forge in the smithy of your soul the uncreated conscience of your race.
961
01:10:54,728 --> 01:10:56,880
No old father,
962
01:10:57,276 --> 01:11:01,649
no old artificer will stand you now and ever in good stead.
963
01:11:03,487 --> 01:11:05,243
You have learnt nothing,
964
01:11:05,656 --> 01:11:08,290
except that solitude teaches you nothing,
965
01:11:08,763 --> 01:11:11,277
except that indifference teaches you nothing:
966
01:11:13,309 --> 01:11:18,790
You were along and you wanted to burn the bridges between you and the world.
967
01:11:19,702 --> 01:11:22,232
But you are such a negligble speck,
968
01:11:22,978 --> 01:11:25,837
and the world is such a big word:
969
01:11:26,206 --> 01:11:28,560
to walk a few kilometres past facades,
970
01:11:28,796 --> 01:11:32,192
shopfronts, parks and embankments.
971
01:11:33,803 --> 01:11:36,560
Indifference is futile.
972
01:11:37,267 --> 01:11:39,856
Your refusal is futile.
973
01:11:40,764 --> 01:11:43,790
Your neutrality is meaningless.
974
01:11:44,813 --> 01:11:49,185
You believe that you are just passing by, walking down the avenues, drifting through the city,
975
01:11:49,353 --> 01:11:54,195
dogging the footsteps of the crowd, penetrating the play of shadows and cracks.
976
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:58,126
But nothing has happened:
977
01:11:58,832 --> 01:12:00,884
no miracle,
978
01:12:01,220 --> 01:12:03,238
no explosion.
979
01:12:05,793 --> 01:12:09,358
With each passing day your patience has worn thinner.
980
01:12:10,276 --> 01:12:13,404
Time would have to stand still,
981
01:12:13,773 --> 01:12:16,834
but no-one has the strength to fight against time.
982
01:12:17,876 --> 01:12:21,609
You may have cheated, snitching a few crumbs, a few seconds:
983
01:12:22,244 --> 01:12:24,161
but the bells of Saint-Roch,
984
01:12:24,261 --> 01:12:28,532
the changing traffic lights at the intersection between Rue des Pyramids and Rue Saint-Honore,
985
01:12:28,969 --> 01:12:33,105
the predictable drop from the tap on the landing,
986
01:12:33,374 --> 01:12:35,627
never ceased to signal the hours,
987
01:12:35,829 --> 01:12:36,737
minutes,
988
01:12:36,972 --> 01:12:40,032
the days and the seasons.
989
01:12:41,321 --> 01:12:43,978
For a long time you constructed sanctuaries, and destroyed them:
990
01:12:44,112 --> 01:12:45,861
order or in inaction.
991
01:12:46,096 --> 01:12:47,912
drifting or sleep,
992
01:12:48,148 --> 01:12:49,224
the night patrols,
993
01:12:49,526 --> 01:12:50,838
the neutral moments,
994
01:12:51,107 --> 01:12:54,301
the flight of shadows and light.
995
01:12:55,377 --> 01:12:58,538
Perhaps for a long time yet you could continue to lie to yourself,
996
01:12:58,774 --> 01:13:00,388
deadening your senses.
997
01:13:01,094 --> 01:13:02,943
But the game is over.
998
01:13:03,588 --> 01:13:06,688
The world has stirred and you have not changed.
999
01:13:07,214 --> 01:13:10,734
Indifference has not made you any different.
1000
01:13:11,785 --> 01:13:15,516
You are not dead. You have not gone mad.
1001
01:13:16,671 --> 01:13:19,404
There is no curse hanging over you.
1002
01:13:20,034 --> 01:13:21,926
There is no tribulation in store for you,
1003
01:13:22,293 --> 01:13:25,288
there is no crow with sinister designs on your eyeballs,
1004
01:13:25,701 --> 01:13:32,900
no vulture has been assigned the indigestible chore of tucking into your liver morning, noon, and night.
1005
01:13:33,583 --> 01:13:37,208
No-one is condemning you, and you have committed no offence.
1006
01:13:38,206 --> 01:13:42,567
Time, which see to everything, has provided the solution, despite yourself.
1007
01:13:42,988 --> 01:13:47,506
Time, that knows the answer, has continued to flow.
1008
01:13:47,971 --> 01:13:49,757
It is on a day like this one,
1009
01:13:50,073 --> 01:13:52,227
a little later, a little earlier,
1010
01:13:52,595 --> 01:13:54,434
that everything starts again,
1011
01:13:54,591 --> 01:13:58,795
that everything starts, that everything continues.
1012
01:13:59,530 --> 01:14:03,576
Stop talking like a man in a dream.
1013
01:14:04,102 --> 01:14:05,678
Look!
1014
01:14:06,518 --> 01:14:08,883
Look at them.
1015
01:14:09,618 --> 01:14:12,403
They are thousands upon thousands,
1016
01:14:12,824 --> 01:14:18,963
posted like silent sentinels by the river, along the embankments,
1017
01:14:19,541 --> 01:14:22,115
all over the rain-washed pavements of Place Clichy,
1018
01:14:22,483 --> 01:14:24,690
mortal men fixed in ocean reveries,
1019
01:14:24,851 --> 01:14:28,046
waiting for the sea-spray, for the breaking waves,
1020
01:14:28,309 --> 01:14:32,008
for the raucous cries of the sea-birds.
1021
01:14:32,748 --> 01:14:33,824
No,
1022
01:14:35,001 --> 01:14:37,792
you are not the nameless master of the world,
1023
01:14:38,028 --> 01:14:40,819
the one on whom history had lost its hold,
1024
01:14:41,002 --> 01:14:43,390
the one who no longer felt the rain falling,
1025
01:14:43,591 --> 01:14:46,315
who did not see the approach of night.
1026
01:14:47,069 --> 01:14:52,718
You are no longer inaccessible, the limpid, the transparent one.
1027
01:14:53,671 --> 01:14:55,846
You are afraid,
1028
01:14:56,496 --> 01:14:58,076
you are waiting.
1029
01:14:59,993 --> 01:15:04,902
You are waiting, on Place Clichy, for the rain to stop falling.
84008
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