He stands on a stage he has made himself from found wood. There is no audience.
‘Good and bad are just a minor form of a bigger problem,’ he begins, his voice slow and rehearsed.
It had taken him many days to find just the right pieces of wood. He wanted to feel the platform was strong enough for his last words.
‘Judgement has an imperceptible desire for the end. Beyond all judgement lies decay, la grande fatigué, the yearning to reject life.’
He leaves his stage and walks to a recorder placed on a small table in the middle of the room. In a fast, sharp sequence he clicks stop, rewind, play and listens to his own voice. It no longer sounds strange to him. Pressing record, he returns and jumps easily up onto his stage. Repeating everything in a slightly different tone, he swaps a little and puts the French words last.
‘When we speak of good and bad, we speak in the most intimate way. We have lost shame and are not afraid to hide what we miss and what we want to be different. This intimacy suggests honesty and truth, but it cannot hide the decadence that is speaking through.’
He pauses. Professionally. As if waiting for the reaction from his public, which is not there.
‘If you are in love with life in the most intimate way, what is it that can be judged as good and bad? When I hear a piece of music that moves me, my feet become light, the air around me becomes more moist, the whole atmosphere changes. What is speaking is another sensibility in which nothing can be
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He stands on a stage he has made himself from found wood. There is no audience.
‘Good and bad are just a minor form of a bigger problem,’ he begins, his voice slow and rehearsed.
It had taken him many days to find just the right pieces of wood. He wanted to feel the platform was strong enough for his last words.
‘Judgement has an imperceptible desire for the end. Beyond all judgement lies decay, la grande fatigué, the yearning to reject life.’
He leaves his stage and walks to a recorder placed on a small table in the middle of the room. In a fast, sharp sequence he clicks stop, rewind, play and listens to his own voice. It no longer sounds strange to him. Pressing record, he returns and jumps easily up onto his stage. Repeating everything in a slightly different tone, he swaps a little and puts the French words last.
‘When we speak of good and bad, we speak in the most intimate way. We have lost shame and are not afraid to hide what we miss and what we want to be different. This intimacy suggests honesty and truth, but it cannot hide the decadence that is speaking through.’
He pauses. Professionally. As if waiting for the reaction from his public, which is not there.
‘If you are in love with life in the most intimate way, what is it that can be judged as good and bad? When I hear a piece of music that moves me, my feet become light, the air around me becomes more moist, the whole atmosphere changes. What is speaking is another sensibility in which nothing can be judged either good or bad.'
'Love is strongest when nothing is left out. Innocence, beauty, tragedy. Even cynicism and betrayal. The whole. Only then is there love. Not merely the idyllic sentiment. No longer just the heroic story. Love is translated back to its nature. Anything less than the whole is decadence.'
You immediately recognize this climate of non-judgement. You become a better person through it. The climate makes you fertile. An abundance of gratitude comes to you. This gratitude … I do not need any other proof for knowing what is good.'
He bends his knees, moving from a standing to a sitting position, and hesitates. There are so many different routes to continue. But he has to stick to what he has practiced. There is a need for sentiment, but he doesn't want to be remembered as being sentimental or unnecessarily emotional.
‘I have battled the disease of good and bad. I have liberated myself from being someone. And I thought I had cured myself. But all I am left with is a bleeding. Hypocrisy kills.’
He stops.
He knows his future audience will expect more, but there is no more. He steps from his stage to press stop. Rewind. He is convincing, but he knows he will have to come back soon and give a better performance. There can be no acting in this, the prologue for the ultimate act of decadence.
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