Attack at its worst | Death to free will

People who know my work sometimes think that it is specifically about the body. In fact, I don't think I'm any more interested in the body than I am in animals or nature as a whole, which is to say, in a secular and relatively remote way. Not that I wouldn't like to be, but I would need a few more lifetimes in store to fully dedicate myself to it.

The interest we have in something, which makes it "our subject", always seems to me to be more viscerally rooted in ourselves than the result of a merely intellectual or emotional decision guided by free will. This famous "free will" that some people believe we have and whose charming fantasy I am determined to microfilm one of these days. Can't we imagine this free will fluttering, happy, above the lawn?

Alas, I am not a dancer and no, it is not in this capacity that I am able to examine the human body in the broadest sense. I only describe it because it is "our nature" and therefore, through it, but above all through the way we look at it, we express the consideration we have for ourselves and for others.

Well, if you didn't know, I regret to announce the sad results of my investigation, following this quasi-pharmaceutical study of a panel of people I have met in the course of my professional and emotional life, over a period of twenty years:

These representatives, each in their own category, of a majority of individuals of all sexes, turn out to be constituted in their deepest being by a desperately and irreducibly conventional part.

If he hadn't made me laugh at times and fortunately, in some cases, share that laughter, I would have to cry or, failing that, kill myself over it.

The worst thing is that, often, they maintain it with the best of faith and do not even realise it. Or, if they do realise it, they consider that after all, it is very easy to live with it, so why should they bother with unnecessary reflection and effort? The despairing thing for me is particularly at the heart of this last remark, since I can only agree with them: everything proves that it is formidably easier and more comfortable to lead one's life via the paths of behaviour and opinions steeped in cultural, sexual, social and societal conventions.

What else can be said? Friends, family, intellectuals, artists, social workers, educators... it is where one would expect to find the most openness that one finds the greatest gap between the general discourse on freedom and the specific points of view on the behaviours admitted or considered admissible. And here, pornography, or whatever one wants to put in it, is obviously at the centre of the debate:

"I'm not going to show off by jerking off on the Internet," says one. Is that so? Why not?

What is the content of this 'even so'? What is the limit that should not be exceeded? In relation to what more normal attitude?

"I wouldn't like my image to be associated with such and such a scene going on around me," some others tell me. Okay. Are we talking here about the "noise and smell" of pornography, as we did not long ago about the families of Africans sharing the same floor as native French people?

What kind of people are these who exhibit themselves? On what grounds do they deserve this racial ostracism that brings a section of the often enlightened cultural actors, including the public, closer to the most worn-out representatives of the stupid, right-wing, right-thinking Catholics?

Let us be clear. Readers, please don't ridicule what I say at little cost. Nowhere am I saying that freedom of being is achieved by exhibiting one's sexuality on the Web or elsewhere. I'm saying that judging what constitutes a fascinating modern pornography requires a little more humility than that, towards the men and women who find pleasure in doing it and generously gratify the Internet user that I am. They are also the new "actors" of the web. And I use the word deliberately because it has a profound impact on the change that the Internet is bringing to the performing arts and in particular to the recording of live performances. It is up to actors, actresses, amateur and professional artists, intellectuals of all kinds and others... in short, to all those who, wherever they come from, claim to be interested in creation, to look again at this eternal question of the limits of art, or else to remain foolishly on the sidelines of an evolution of potentially immense scope, socially and artistically. They will not be the first, nor the last, to miss the step forward that would have made them, themselves, progress. We must still have the modesty to look at the world as it is being made, without thinking that we have identified and understood it. Unfortunately, I have seen this with people I was very close to, such as my father, becoming obtuse can be a comfort of the mind that is difficult to resist when one feels threatened by the evolution of morals and mentalities. He also proved to me, shortly before he died, that the imminence of an end, whatever it may be, can trigger an awakening of the creative spirit and cause the soul to turn around, suddenly coloured with life again and inhabited by the newfound wonder of an infant faced with the discovery of what it does not know or understand.

In order to control one's fear, one loses precious time in forging opinions and judgements in kit form, which are supposed to determine one's temperament and personality in the face of reality. It is a truly grotesque characteristic of man that he swells up with such gossip around the pretentious notion of 'his' personality. From my observations, I can see that the so-called personality of individuals is only the facade of an unstable decor which inevitably collapses at the slightest insistent doubt, and that is sometimes so much the better; which is fleshed out with the vain coat of certainty when it is brushed in the direction of the hair, and that is generally distressing and mediocre.

For my part, I do not presumptuously extricate myself from the pack, but if I create and carry out projects, it is for the sole purpose of disengaging myself a little more each time, from the ordinary alienation of my own stupidity. Anyone who has taken advantage of belonging to his own species to study it has been able to see that human beings, contrary to the term frequently attached to them by associating their supposed imbecility with the image of a woman's sex, are not "stupid" in their state of nature, but instead are frequently perverse, unhappy, cowardly and boastful. It is these ordinary attributes, largely born of the legitimate fear of existence and our difficult means of responding to it, that manufacture and constitute human stupidity and the violence that flows from it. One of the best jokes I heard during the debate on marriage for all was the one involved in the argumentation of some opponents who thought they were making a point by saying: "and then polygamy will be claimed as a right! But of course, my dears! How can we not say that they are right to be afraid. And why not? And in the name of what would one refuse to make polygamy and polyandry official when humanity has always lived its conjugal, sentimental and sexual reality through adultery, simple and frequent proof of the unfounded nature of the sole validity of the couple. I would be told "the family, children, blah blah..." in short, the same nonsense that has just been served up on societal debates that frankly I don't care about, so much do I find them comparable to useless resistance resurfacing from the depths of the worst obscurantisms. Individuals, sometimes against themselves, aspire to be free, that is all. Only, underneath this instinctive slope, there is always a little inner cop who is scared to death and digs his little tunnel with good barricades, convinced that he is saving the world by preventing the slope supporting the slope, which is made of solid earth, from collapsing on itself. Yet it is he, the little cop, the well-meaning miner, who, digging his galleries in the heart of our consciousness, is weakening and seriously threatening the edifice at the source of human creative potential, from collapsing like a piece of shit falling flat on its face, weighed down by preconceived ideas, imbecilic racism and frightened bullshit. So we didn't hear anyone bringing it up too much among the defenders of the project, on the subject of poly-union. It was better not to upset the intolerance of the other side too much; the famous "oil on the fire" would have harmed the already painful passage of this forceps birth. It reminds me of the no less famous sentence of the former CEO of TF1, Patrick Le Lay, on the "available brain time" of the viewer sold to advertisers by the channel; a sentence judged odious and cynical, I don't know why by some, whereas it was only expressing a truth of the system; for once one of its important representatives was trying to do so! Here again it was the vanity of the people that was affected and nothing more. What did the poor believe? They were told that they were being manipulated and they cried scandal. But what scandal, about what new information? The scandal of recognising themselves in this image, as sheep, knowing full well that they are, but not being able to say so, in the name of a dignity that has been sacredly well hidden until now. I don't think that this noble indignation has prevented the same people from drinking coke while watching TV. Yes, human misery is mostly the result of one's lack of scruples and demands on whichever side of the barricade one finds oneself. So, for pity's sake, let's get off these high horses for our short little legs. "What better way to be indignant? Absolutely, but not without first inspecting the machine with a good examination of conscience.

"From what vantage point do we express our indignation?" seems to me to be the essential preliminary question if we are not to be content with being, once again, a simple follower blown about by the ambient winds.

To achieve this, learning to look before you feel is probably the first thing to do.

…

Attack the worst if you don't come back to You.

Police - scum, intellectuals - demagogues: same story, Lino!

Me, a born individualist,

I let my sad air wander

While waiting for the torment to resume in the courtyard,

Where are engraved,

Liber...- Equal... - Frater...

But I do believe that the sign

ment.

Oh, we take offence at words, we make literature!

So we are in the culture?!

The Sandman, Pimprenelle, Nicolas,

And his little brother

They need to be scrubbed,

But by the way, don't hesitate to make yourself

A powerful enema with run-off water,

Removing dirt

And hydrate the foundation of your democratic spirit;

If you want, without creating cracks,

Manage to grow a little.

Holy Mediocrity that brings us together in your bosom,

For our common good

In your ghetto of the Republic,

Bless our island and the Vermot almanac,

Where your hills drip,

Sticky syrups from our info

On our Sunday cream vanilla,

The painful evils of our human cliques,

Take and taste and share my pain!

This is my bullshit sprinkled with a thousand praline chips!

Too bad for us, the guillotine

Will not be for this neck

A meeting place for small families.

Excerpt from MAN HEINEKEN PISSE | LES PARQUES D'ATTRACTION © David Noir