It’s as if countless researchers are waking up. They look at the dizzying past, the strange remains, the big stones, the bizarre clouds, more and more bizarre indeed. Incredulous, they rub their eyes. Here we are at the beginning –very modest– of the greatest adventure of all time: pushing down dishonesty, flushing out the deception.
That’s what we have become, incredulous. To rewrite the same old stories, to chew the same tired salads, to ruminate the same faded ideas, a day comes where the heart stutters, the bubble bursts, and the disgust comes. But the heart keeps on beating. The spring is in your eyes. It’s incredible. Fake merchants, fear dealers, world deceivers, public abusers, your reign is coming to an end. May your law collapse. Let us dream, it’s not over. Believe without believing.
What if tomorrow do not exist? Slap in the face! We wake up in the worn-out old world, with creaky seams, handles lustrous with dirt. Time passing, we see the frame, the sun filters through. Walls crossing, we see behind the scenes. Damn it! We see the void through the boards! They can laugh at us. It depends on what laugh, vociferates the immortal palm of the planks, the aedorn with the hair of foam, the painter in words, the henaurme anarchist. It’s not a fault, but a quote. Now tell me, you who read this, why see everything in black and gray? Who told you to live in hell? Nobody condemned you to death, since you live in the eternal present, you will live forever. Just do it well. If you’re here, there’s a good reason for that.
You tell me that you have no taste for life. That emptiness attracts you. You tell me that you do not feel at home down here, that you are thirsty for nothing, because nothing can be worse than your present life. Not that you suffer from a disability, an incurable disease, or anything like that. Not that you have no country, no roof, no food. Your deep hurt does not come from there. It is the world as you see that disgusts you. You do not want to live among all those impure, bad, or indifferent people. Are you thirsty for absolute, for perfection? Not even. You are thirsty for death. You think that after this screen of smoke they called life, death will give you forgetfulness of nothingness. What if you make a mistake? If you are misleading yourself all the way? Is the sickness in the world, or in your heart?
Sartre liked to dart his valid eye on a root, to scrutinize it long enough for it to become something else, absurd, too real to be true. Discomfort, he felt sick. Nausea, he said. My good Sartre,he was anything but good that a root made you sick, il ferait Beau voir !it would be nice to see! A beaver told me, a root expert. Contemplate anything, you will find the void. And not the nausea: it comes from the belly.
Still. This philosophy of the absurd has given rise to nihilism, and closer to us, to the no-future of punk in black. Punks do not care about roots. But they caught the eye of Sartre and see the disgust everywhere. It has rubbed off on the art, on the films,on the TV, on the ugly web, and on Houellebecq. We have the right to prefer the good side of things, even if the in-crowd take us for dumb outers. By glorifying the poop, our gallerists and critics will perish drowned in a manure pit. Shit is in the eye of the one who watches.
Open your heart and contemplate what you want, you will find absolute love, which attracts, which join couples and unites the smaller particles of matter and light in an orgasm vibrant with energy. Everything depends on your look, what you look at does not count. You can see the horror or the absolute, the devil or the god, the evil or the good. You can see the mutilated body or the wounded smile. It’s up to you. But this look, as piercing as it is, will only see what is shown. Learn to disassemble the lure showers. Sowers of fear who play for butter. Death mowers, you can resist them. Death is nothing, nothing is death. Live, yes. As long as you want!
We are descended, it is said, from lemurs. Take a test. Look at a lemur in the eyes, you’ll see what enlightenment means. Constantly moving, he remains motionless. Worried, he is serene. Impassive, he boils, he stamps. Huddled, he stretches. See the lemur naked in its fur. It does not need anything. A little clothes it, a little feeds it, a little quanch its thirst, a lemur does not smoke, and Solomon was never more just than it is. See what we have lost since we left the trees of Madagascar. See how we are K.O. standing. How to heal the wounds we make? How to relieve the pain we inflict on ourselves? How to renounce lies that you’ve been force to believe? You have no worse enemy than you. It’s like that. Are you apologetic? Tell yourself that you are not different, neither more miserable nor more needy, you have two legs and two arms, do not take yourself for the fox without legs.
Why do the lemurs have this astonished look, still more, stunned? To see them, it looks like they can’t believe. And that’s the truth. What surprises them so much is us, the people. They remember very well the distant times when we were friends. From the bygone days when our games, our lives and our loves were with them, in the branches, over jumps and antics. When they see us in our schools, in our cars, in our pots, do you think they’re laughing? No, they are stunned that we have turned that badly. Lemurs are all we lost. Innocence. The joy of living. And the sense of balance.
In a future life, you have a very small chance to escape the call of the void: try to be a lemur.