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Bonjour Paris,
I can’t wait to walk through you beyond my affectionate fantasy, beyond the realm of merely internal energy, if you catch my drift. But what is the difference between here and there? I can’t wait to be with you as much as I am eager to walk my local streets in the cold mornings of October with a warm, slightly fuzzy, heart. I’m still coming over, probably even sooner than you anticipated.
Birthday season’s over, a lot of things should be over. Like injustice and wars, like my questionable concerns about both. Still a busy itinerary but there is a silence underneath, brewing and engulfing, that I want to sit with and honour that it is almost painful to disturb it with typing never mind reading it out loud. No – sounds do not disturb it, movements do not disturb it – it is that powerful. It is almost as powerful as the silence imposed upon the ballet audience at the Sadler’s Wells last night by John Neumeier’s ‘Ghost Light’.
The first couple of minutes following curtain up, the room was quiet and steady – the audience behaving as expected, if you like. Nothing strange about a ballerina – not just any ballerina, by the way: it was Alina Cojocaru – singlehandedly commanding everyone’s focus, even without music. Delicate and adorable, non? But five minutes into the performance and still no music? No sound? Not even a poetic metronome just to help us keep up with the aging process, par exemple? Let me tell you it drove some of us crazy – uncomfortable, at least. Some of us started clearing throats, launching mini coughs, adjusting sitting positions and, most audacious of all, breathing. We could hear it all. It was almost like we were being watched. We were definitely ghost-lighted.
I steadied my gaze at the stage, sat incredibly still and breathed incredibly quietly, almost like a performance. Damn – it was a performance! Albeit an incredible performance for I’ve trained a bit in the field of silence. It didn’t scare me or make me feel uncomfortable – not anymore, no, perhaps because of the sheer familiarity. It didn’t drive me crazy for I had accepted that that was just how life was. It didn’t make me feel awkward, even with the clear nuance of being watched. Watch me, assess me, judge me, understand or misunderstand me; I am used to being in an awkward position for I seem to have an impulse to insert myself into situations many people think I shouldn’t. I shall not defend my position, I wish not to defend my position for I am always in the right place at the right time.
No – this silence brewing and engulfing underneath the travels and the conversations, underneath the music and the passionate kisses, underneath the protests and the poetry, underneath the wars and the prices, underneath the hellos and the goodbyes is not only as powerful but it is more potent, and it is constant. It is not in between movements and sounds, it is constantly there underneath even quietude itself. The crucial thing about it doesn’t seem to be if it is observing me, but if I am observing it back.
My observation of it is in between, its observation of me is constant. My observation of it is like trying to catch darkness while walking inside a perpetual tunnel with a head torch powered by um.. not battery.. motivation? no. light? that would be fucked up! not as fucked up as by darkness! powered by… love! We’ll settle for love. Its observation of me is the darkness itself – or love itself? That would be as fucked up as saying the head torch is powered by darkness! But perhaps that is just the truth: basic and at the same time profound. How would you feel if I said your love for me is powered by my love for you? But one is only in between and the other is constant? That is the illusion anyway. If it is love, there won’t be competition: it is winning regardless.
londres, le 25 octobre 2026
je t’embrasse !
d.o.
