Self-knowledge or How to meet the No. 1

Paradoxically, when I reach the foot of my mountain, I realise that I can have power over things. I just have to stand up and climb it.

Frodo my friend, hold on, you still have a few metres to go before you reach the goal.

I am going to make up for lost time. The delay of a life, but not only mine, because the path I start to take from this point on is the one common to all lives in search of themselves. As in the astonishing and extraordinary denouement of the final episode of PrisonerI'm going to meet myself, against all odds, ripping the mask off the No. 1 during the final confrontation, stunned.

What else would there be to discover, for each of us, after constant hard fights and numerous escapes to hide, having escaped the worst, but the grimacing features of our own faces, in the excitement of the good joke that has been played out over the years? None other than a We ourselves can't wait for us at the top, quite happy with the joke that made us work so hard to reach it. A very well conducted treasure hunt, it must be said; a manhunt or treasure hunt, roundly concocted, with all the suspense one has a right to expect. The joke turns out to be tasty and juicy like a ripe orange. Nothing else on the horizon of a life but one's own face; a happy, fevered, exhausted, ravaged, emaciated face, hollowed out in its flesh by the trickles of years of conquest. Back to square one with nothing more in his pocket than he had at the beginning, except for a small vial, a phial of barely a few millilitres, containing in outrageously dissolved solution a few grams of self-knowledge. This is enough, according to the good doctors of the soul, for what we should do with it and what we have left to live, having reached this stage. Still, we will have to make do with it. Doubters of homeopathy, go your way or resign yourself to the meagre pittance and the hardly more voluminous pay, received as a reward for his efforts by the basic soldier. The kindly brave scout who has gone to the outposts will hopefully return enriched with what he already had, his life saved, but now glorious. Proud soldiers do not cultivate bitterness. They are not content with having lived through the agonies and torments, they sing the praises of the adventure that has brought them this far. I must say that from this point of view, I understand them and if I would not be so bold as to compare myself to an armed combatant who has risked his life on the battlefield, I share the feeling of having done our duty. The job was done and that was what mattered above all else. It is no longer a time to feel sorry for ourselves, but to remember. So, take your pack and walk straight as if the blood of the legion were suddenly flowing in your veins. "I had a comrade" they sing, both to remember the loss of those who have fallen, but also to give themselves the courage to continue to advance towards a death that we never know enough is inevitable. Their heavy, cadenced steps follow the scansion of the words they gravely recite, with a voice that seems to come from the bowels of the earth they are treading, their cohort makes the ground vibrate and the feverish bones of the buried bodies it contains. Our earth feeds on the corpses that have been melting on its surface for thousands of years. The treasure is there, under our feet. The dead are our insurance against life. Their countless family members are our most secure future. Unequivocally, we will find each other, my brothers. Conscious or not, what does it matter?

For several centuries now, we have been putting a price on life that ends up degrading the value of its content. We must survive everything, above all else. Nothing else matters. And yet!

I myself, a coward among cowards, timidly create shows in the fervent hope that something, something even more infinite than the fear with which I have been mollycoddled, will take over and finally appear to me as a guide capable of leading me further than the mediocrity of my ambition to be and to remain alive and still. Yes, there is better, I am sure, than this bland light, the star of the multitude so miserably bright, which we look at, pupils eternally screwed to its pale glow, thinking that there can be none warmer or more precious. No, life is not everything, and I can see from the top of this rocky peak that I have yet to survey, that the flying carpet patiently woven according to the random and oblique diversions of its canvas, more often than not by the rigour of our choices, can carry us elsewhere. If, by chance or by a few good intuitions, a handful of golden threads have been entangled - we do not all possess the art of creating very skilful compositions - it is possible that we will finally soar to even greater heights and perhaps never come down again. The greater part of a life can, in some cases, be reduced to building a stepping stone.

It is sometimes said that the important thing is not to fail in life but to succeed in death. Perhaps, but between the two, it seems to me that there is room for a final surge towards a higher aspiration than the value attributed up to now to the simple fact of being alive and remaining alive. There is nothing mystical in my thinking. I am not referring to the religious, which seems to me to be a children's story that is hardly more exciting than the programming of certain theatres; let's not go into that again. No, I am talking about and hoping to have succeeded in expressing at least the rough outlines of it, to make its existence more 'important' in its own eyes. I can see how this might sound like the worst kind of paradox, since on the one hand, we want to put an end to an unalterable idea of the overvalued living being, and on the other hand, we want to raise the importance of existence. Would existence have any meaning, detached from the irreducible idea of living? Unfortunately, my philosophical stammerings on a theme that has undoubtedly been addressed and reasoned about many times by thinkers from antiquity to the present day will not go much further. I am aware that in doing so I am simply opening a door through which I can avoid approaching old age with the sole fear of death. That would be quite useless.

I am now amazed to realise how, when I was younger, I must have considered my life more precious than myself!

What sense could it possibly make? It didn't. So I certainly lived without really belonging to myself. Without understanding that I was my own property and that I was free, and I say today, realising this, totally free, to do what I wanted. Free to be a murderer, to try to be president of the world or to spend my life in the sun, with no other ambition than to spend entire days dedicated to carefree living. The question would be: Why did I not follow, according to my heart, one or the other, or all together, these trajectories that freedom offered me to choose in the space of its vast open arms?

Two answers, in my opinion, to this, but so concrete in the influences which result from it, that one can say indeed, that free will can only be a theoretical notion. Firstly, the weight of the beliefs instilled by the education received from my parents and from which it took some time to see that the universe is not limited to it, far from it; secondly, the simple and banal fear of death; fear of losing one's life by leading it astray in unknown and incomprehensible areas to my senses or by taking risks that are too great for my supposed abilities. No wonder, since many of us - judging from each other's lives - must not have realised instantly that time was not an issue.

Whether it is a short life or a hundred years old, a life only has real meaning if we have equipped it with an acute awareness of the importance of its components, rather than its potential duration, as an automatic pilot.

The code of honour of the medieval knights, if it was really applied, may seem obsolete to us, but it is nonetheless a quick way of putting the veil on a conception of life that certainly condemns it to a lesser longevity, but which remains all the more relevant because it raises questions of an order that it hurts our eyes to face. I recently confided to several people how appalled I was to hear, now integrated into the list of the usual and automatic polite phrases thrown out at the shops or between colleagues at the beginning of the day, the famous "Good luck" which is supposed to support the unfortunate man or woman who is going to face his or her day at the office valiantly. What an ulcerating mockery! I, who don't think I have any, am at least aware of the value of words, and to abuse this rare and complex quality in this way, as if one were carrying it under one's arm in the morning, at the same time as taking one's baguette, seems to me to be of the utmost indecency for the few of us who really show it.

Do these inconsistent people who sell out an expression that carries such a decisive undertone even realise what it implies when they thunderously or plaintively - as the case may be - throw out their ready-made formula, with no further regard for the accuracy of the situations? It says a lot about the perpetual and distressing incoherence resulting from the gap between words and deeds.

Yes, the crisis of course, yes the evil capitalists of course, but damn it, at least a little intellectual honesty if we are no longer able to cross swords for our ideals, however silly they may be. The modern age has certainly made us more reflective than the butchery of wars, which we have no reason to regret, but the bravery of feelings and behaviour has also surely lost much in the acquisition of a more conscious humanism. At least that is what we Westerners like to tell ourselves, for are we so much more pacified when our pacifism comes from the terror of death rather than from the taste for intensifying life? I, for my part, am cowardly belligerent only through words, but if I have time for a short struggle, I aspire to my flag does not confuse in its symbols that of peace with that of passivity. The two rods clashing at the entrance to a vulva, worn on my flag, do not claim the war of the sexes, nor the fight of males to possess a female, but rather the personalisation of these genitals, looked at with so little naturalness, that, seeming to open their mouths like heraldic creatures, we can imagine them roaring at us:

"A bit of audacity, a bit of love, a bit of desire and let the songs of human impulses resound, far from the chimerical fictions that our heads, filled with ridiculous demons, embroider around them, making them seem morbid, from liberation of morals to perpetual regression, when they are only the dynamics of movement, the fruit of the quest to finally learn to live the moment in a heroic way.

Three minutes of pure sexuality live on air was not just any old thing,

Would you have held me back?

Centaurs and hydras putting on the necklaces of gods,

Mythical brass bands,

Divine zobs crossing swords with pussies spewing odious poisons,

Brilliant fellatio,

Asses open to the infinite, all studded with anus and cunnilingus,

Our flesh to be consumed staggering the shelves of my supermarket,

All lined up, full to the brim, with the white yoghurt skins of my supernovas,

And not of the sulphurous nerd you can believe me!

I can suck your cock out of pure friendship as a one night stand,

Because we don't really care about all that!

Be clean and you'll be fine; as long as you don't get AIDS, that's all...

My stitch has spun, my cotte has widened,

Who loves me jumps and follows me and jumps me

And whoever wants to look for me will find me!

There are some stocks left,

Yes, but the sales will soon be over!

To the wardrobe of the promos! The rage shapes its knitting.

I'm going into my erection like a spider who will have no more children

And I sharpen my sting, hoping it will be deadly,

Go sit your ass on a wedding ban,

If you think I'm going to have courage for you!

I don't give a shit about your aspirations,

I don't give a shit about your expectations,

You set yourself up as I don't know what, but deep down you just want to be looked after,

You you you you!

Pinocchio made of wood; you know nothing but yourself!

Like in those games with controllers, I died several times, believe me!

Gay mother!

UN CUL RIT | LA TOISON DORT | LES PARQUES D'ATTRACTION © David Noir