1 00:06:34,719 --> 00:06:37,626 Your alarm clock goes off, 2 00:06:40,908 --> 00:06:43,270 you do not stir, 3 00:06:44,148 --> 00:06:46,372 you remain in your bed, 4 00:06:47,271 --> 00:06:48,763 you close your eyes again. 5 00:06:51,310 --> 00:06:53,528 It is not a premeditated action, 6 00:06:54,138 --> 00:06:55,782 or rather it's not an action at all, 7 00:06:56,500 --> 00:06:58,180 but an absence of action, 8 00:06:58,521 --> 00:06:59,978 an action that you don't perform, 9 00:07:01,203 --> 00:07:03,123 actions that you avoid performing. 10 00:07:05,440 --> 00:07:06,864 You went to bed early, 11 00:07:07,511 --> 00:07:08,990 you slept peacefully, 12 00:07:10,005 --> 00:07:11,771 you had set the alarm clock, 13 00:07:12,313 --> 00:07:13,659 you heard it go off, 14 00:07:14,156 --> 00:07:16,915 you waited for it to go off, for several minutes at least, 15 00:07:17,279 --> 00:07:18,923 already woken by the heat, 16 00:07:19,011 --> 00:07:20,314 or by the light. 17 00:07:20,504 --> 00:07:22,060 or by expectation itself. 18 00:07:24,995 --> 00:07:27,180 You do not move; you will not move. 19 00:07:28,581 --> 00:07:32,809 Someone else, your twin, conscientious double is perhaps.. 20 00:07:32,945 --> 00:07:34,665 perhaps performing in your stead, one by one, 21 00:07:34,809 --> 00:07:36,210 the actions you have eschewed: 22 00:07:37,069 --> 00:07:41,615 he gets up, washes, shaves, dresses, goes out. 23 00:07:42,374 --> 00:07:44,370 You let him bound down the stairs, 24 00:07:44,617 --> 00:07:45,850 run down the street, 25 00:07:46,554 --> 00:07:47,893 leap onto the moving bus, 26 00:07:48,181 --> 00:07:50,870 arrive on time, out of breath but triumphant, at the doors in the hall. 27 00:07:51,394 --> 00:07:52,697 You get up too late. 28 00:07:54,302 --> 00:07:57,742 You will not set down on four, eight or twelve sheets of paper what you know, 29 00:07:57,859 --> 00:07:59,080 what you think, 30 00:07:59,315 --> 00:08:01,746 what you know you are supposed to think, about alienation, 31 00:08:02,100 --> 00:08:03,216 the workers, 32 00:08:03,638 --> 00:08:05,599 modernity and leisure. 33 00:08:06,057 --> 00:08:08,053 about white-collar workers or about automation, 34 00:08:08,406 --> 00:08:09,955 about our knowledge of others, 35 00:08:10,392 --> 00:08:12,236 about Marx as rival to de Tocqueville, 36 00:08:12,564 --> 00:08:14,584 about Weber as an opponent of Lukacs. 37 00:08:15,782 --> 00:08:18,799 In any case, you wouldn't have said anything, because you don't know a great deal 38 00:08:18,893 --> 00:08:20,138 and you think nothing at all. 39 00:08:22,336 --> 00:08:23,932 Your seat remains vacant. 40 00:08:25,342 --> 00:08:27,138 You will not finish your degree, 41 00:08:27,432 --> 00:08:29,263 you will never start your diploma. 42 00:08:42,685 --> 00:08:44,106 You will study no more. 43 00:08:45,339 --> 00:08:47,934 You make, as you do everyday, a bowl of Nescafe; 44 00:08:48,908 --> 00:08:52,478 you add, as you do everyday, a few drops of sweetened condensed milk. 45 00:08:53,595 --> 00:08:54,734 You don't wash, 46 00:08:55,580 --> 00:08:56,754 you hardly bother to dress. 47 00:08:57,811 --> 00:09:02,355 In a pink plastic bowl you place three pairs of socks to soak. 48 00:09:33,687 --> 00:09:36,876 You don't go and wait for the candidates to come out of the examination hall 49 00:09:36,947 --> 00:09:39,859 to find out what questions were devised to test their perspicacity. 50 00:09:41,691 --> 00:09:42,971 You don't go to the cafe 51 00:09:43,006 --> 00:09:44,732 as custom would have demanded 52 00:09:44,826 --> 00:09:47,104 like everyday to join your friends. 53 00:09:49,536 --> 00:09:51,990 One of them, the following morning 54 00:09:52,131 --> 00:09:54,820 will climb the six flights of stairs that lead to your room. 55 00:09:56,354 --> 00:09:58,127 You will let him knock at your door. 56 00:09:58,456 --> 00:09:59,759 Wait. 57 00:10:00,252 --> 00:10:01,790 Knock again. 58 00:10:02,016 --> 00:10:03,143 A little louder. 59 00:10:03,378 --> 00:10:04,681 Wait again. 60 00:10:04,881 --> 00:10:06,161 Knock gently. 61 00:10:06,325 --> 00:10:07,652 Call your name quietly. 62 00:10:07,734 --> 00:10:08,579 Hesitate. 63 00:10:08,955 --> 00:10:10,430 Then stamp back down again. 64 00:10:24,781 --> 00:10:29,202 Others came, the day after, the after that, 65 00:10:29,680 --> 00:10:33,983 knocked, waited, and called to you, 66 00:10:34,162 --> 00:10:36,253 slipped you messages. 67 00:10:52,556 --> 00:10:55,424 You stay lying on your narrow bench, 68 00:10:55,544 --> 00:10:58,651 your hands crossed behind you back, your knees up. 69 00:10:59,428 --> 00:11:01,579 You don't want to see anyone, 70 00:11:01,937 --> 00:11:07,733 or to talk, or to think, nor to go out, or move. 71 00:11:12,035 --> 00:11:14,187 It is on a day like this one, 72 00:11:14,306 --> 00:11:17,055 a little later, a little earlier, 73 00:11:17,174 --> 00:11:20,281 that you discover, without surprise, that something is wrong, 74 00:11:20,341 --> 00:11:23,986 that you don't know how to live and that you never will know. 75 00:11:26,100 --> 00:11:29,207 The sun beats on the sheet metal of the roof. 76 00:11:29,924 --> 00:11:33,151 The heat in your room is unbearable. 77 00:11:33,868 --> 00:11:37,214 You are sitting, wedged between the bed and the bookshelf, 78 00:11:37,334 --> 00:11:38,947 with a book opened on your lap. 79 00:11:40,023 --> 00:11:42,054 You stopped reading it long ago. 80 00:11:42,592 --> 00:11:45,639 You are staring at a whitewood shelf, 81 00:11:45,938 --> 00:11:50,479 at the pink plastic bowl in which rots six socks are rotting. 82 00:11:51,816 --> 00:11:54,804 The smoke from your cigarette, abandoned in the ashtray, rises, 83 00:11:54,923 --> 00:11:56,298 in an almost straight line, 84 00:11:56,343 --> 00:12:01,116 and then spreads out in a blanket against the ceiling which is fissured by minute cracks. 85 00:12:12,371 --> 00:12:15,418 Something has broken. 86 00:12:16,438 --> 00:12:18,406 You no longer feel 87 00:12:19,089 --> 00:12:23,451 some thing which until then fortified you until then, 88 00:12:23,630 --> 00:12:26,797 the feeling of your existence, the impression of belonging to 89 00:12:26,869 --> 00:12:30,378 or being in the world, is starting to slip away from you. 90 00:12:31,116 --> 00:12:35,486 Your past, your present, and your future merge into one: 91 00:12:36,531 --> 00:12:38,571 they are now just the heaviness of your limbs, 92 00:12:38,654 --> 00:12:40,194 your nagging migraine, 93 00:12:40,368 --> 00:12:42,485 the bitterness in your Nescafe. 94 00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:45,604 This converted cubbyhole that passes for your bedroom, 95 00:12:46,050 --> 00:12:48,283 this hovel two metres ninety-two long 96 00:12:48,393 --> 00:12:50,121 by one metre sixty-three wide, 97 00:12:50,393 --> 00:12:52,876 that is to say, a little over five square metres, 98 00:12:53,056 --> 00:12:56,164 this attic from which you have not stirred for several hours, 99 00:12:56,276 --> 00:12:58,298 for several days. 100 00:12:59,452 --> 00:13:02,728 You are sitting on a bed which is too short 101 00:13:02,997 --> 00:13:04,621 for you to be able to lie on it, 102 00:13:04,973 --> 00:13:08,255 too narrow for you to be able to turn over on it without precaution. 103 00:13:08,617 --> 00:13:12,205 You are staring, almost fascinated now, 104 00:13:12,511 --> 00:13:16,905 at a pink plastic bowl which contains no fewer than six socks. 105 00:13:19,381 --> 00:13:22,551 You stay in your room, without eating. 106 00:13:22,937 --> 00:13:24,272 without reading, 107 00:13:24,772 --> 00:13:26,469 almost without moving. 108 00:13:26,580 --> 00:13:29,028 You stare at the bowl, 109 00:13:29,250 --> 00:13:31,614 the shelf, your knees, 110 00:13:31,809 --> 00:13:34,145 you gaze in the cracked mirror, 111 00:13:34,284 --> 00:13:36,843 the coffee bowel, the light-switch. 112 00:13:37,572 --> 00:13:39,685 You listen to the sounds of the street, 113 00:13:39,852 --> 00:13:42,161 the dripping tap on the landing, 114 00:13:42,467 --> 00:13:44,024 the noises that your neighbour makes, 115 00:13:44,552 --> 00:13:46,138 clearing his throat, 116 00:13:46,416 --> 00:13:48,227 coughing fits. 117 00:13:49,195 --> 00:13:50,938 the whistle of his kettle. 118 00:13:52,699 --> 00:13:56,123 You follow across the ceiling the sinuous lines of a thin crack 119 00:13:56,214 --> 00:13:58,229 the futile meandering of a fly, 120 00:13:58,293 --> 00:14:00,929 the progress - which it is almost impossible to plot - of the shadows. 121 00:14:07,782 --> 00:14:10,131 You are 25 years old, you have 29 teeth, 122 00:14:10,343 --> 00:14:12,237 three shirts and eight socks, 123 00:14:12,691 --> 00:14:14,706 55 francs a month to live on, 124 00:14:14,888 --> 00:14:16,706 a few books you no longer read, 125 00:14:16,846 --> 00:14:18,740 a few records you no longer play. 126 00:14:19,391 --> 00:14:21,997 You don't want to remember anything else. 127 00:14:22,272 --> 00:14:24,393 Here you sit, and you want only to wait, 128 00:14:24,484 --> 00:14:27,499 just to wait until there is nothing left to wait for. 129 00:14:30,638 --> 00:14:32,154 You do not see your friends again. 130 00:14:32,911 --> 00:14:34,184 You do not open your door. 131 00:14:35,125 --> 00:14:36,989 You do not go down to get your mail. 132 00:14:37,383 --> 00:14:40,746 You do not return the books you borrowed from the library. 133 00:14:41,416 --> 00:14:43,446 You do not write your parents. 134 00:14:46,631 --> 00:14:50,464 You only go out after nightfall like the rats, the cats, and the monsters. 135 00:14:52,436 --> 00:14:53,891 You drift around the streets, 136 00:14:54,239 --> 00:14:57,012 you slip into the grubby little cinemas on the Grand Boulevards. 137 00:15:19,462 --> 00:15:21,204 Sometimes you walk all night, 138 00:15:21,479 --> 00:15:23,449 sometimes you sleep all day. 139 00:15:24,191 --> 00:15:26,464 You are an idler, a sleepwalker, 140 00:15:26,827 --> 00:15:27,979 a mollusc. 141 00:15:28,815 --> 00:15:32,406 you do not really feel cut our for living, for doing, for making; 142 00:15:33,499 --> 00:15:35,150 you only want to go on, 143 00:15:35,408 --> 00:15:37,575 to go on waiting and forget. 144 00:15:50,507 --> 00:15:53,749 You reject nothing, you refuse nothing. 145 00:15:54,582 --> 00:15:56,476 You have ceased going forward, 146 00:15:56,963 --> 00:15:58,583 but that is because you weren't going forward anyway, 147 00:15:58,939 --> 00:16:01,377 you're not setting off again, you have arrived, 148 00:16:02,179 --> 00:16:04,635 you can see no reason to go on any further: 149 00:16:06,323 --> 00:16:09,545 all it took, practically, 150 00:16:09,866 --> 00:16:12,037 on a day in May when it was too hot, 151 00:16:12,910 --> 00:16:16,666 was the untimely conjunction of a text of which you'd lost the thread, 152 00:16:16,985 --> 00:16:19,869 a bowl of Nescafe that suddenly tasted too bitter, 153 00:16:20,664 --> 00:16:25,136 a pink plastic bowl filled with blackish water in which six socks were floating, 154 00:16:25,826 --> 00:16:27,762 this was all it took for something to snap, 155 00:16:28,207 --> 00:16:29,297 to turn bad, 156 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:30,788 to come undone, 157 00:16:31,583 --> 00:16:34,498 and for the truth to appear in the bright light of day, 158 00:16:34,676 --> 00:16:37,123 as sad and ridiculous as a dunce's cap. 159 00:16:37,435 --> 00:16:39,215 You have no desire to carry on. 160 00:16:48,732 --> 00:16:51,958 Only the night and your room protect you: 161 00:16:52,159 --> 00:16:54,406 the narrow bed where you lie and stretched out, 162 00:16:54,623 --> 00:16:57,449 the ceiling that you discover anew at every moment; 163 00:16:57,983 --> 00:17:01,809 the night in which, alone amidst the crowds on the Grands Boulevards, 164 00:17:02,032 --> 00:17:04,791 you occasionally feel almost happy with the noise and the lights, 165 00:17:04,902 --> 00:17:07,283 the bustle and the forgetting. 166 00:17:09,903 --> 00:17:13,618 You are the wave that ebbs and flows, from the Place de la Republique to Place de la Madeleine, 167 00:17:13,738 --> 00:17:15,317 from the Madeleine to Place de la Republique. 168 00:17:20,202 --> 00:17:21,323 The dead hours, 169 00:17:21,815 --> 00:17:22,967 empty passages, 170 00:17:23,513 --> 00:17:26,379 the fleeting and poignant desire to hear no more, 171 00:17:26,536 --> 00:17:27,835 to see no more, 172 00:17:28,283 --> 00:17:30,455 to remain silent and motionless. 173 00:17:31,059 --> 00:17:33,478 Crazy dreams of solitude. 174 00:17:34,569 --> 00:17:36,987 An amnesiac wandering through the Land of the Blind: 175 00:17:37,189 --> 00:17:40,659 wide, empty streets, cold lights, 176 00:17:41,242 --> 00:17:44,421 faces without mouths that you would look at without seeing. 177 00:17:52,970 --> 00:17:58,568 It's as if, beneath the surface of your calm and reassuring history, the good little boy, 178 00:17:58,901 --> 00:18:03,028 as if, running beneath the obvious, too obvious, signs of growth and maturity - 179 00:18:03,294 --> 00:18:06,355 scribbled graffiti on bathroom doors, 180 00:18:06,555 --> 00:18:11,147 certificates, long trousers, the first cigarette, 181 00:18:11,414 --> 00:18:13,477 sting of the first shave, alcohol, 182 00:18:13,677 --> 00:18:16,272 the key left under the mat for your Saturday night outings, 183 00:18:16,538 --> 00:18:20,798 losing your virginity, the baptism of air, the baptism of fire - 184 00:18:21,197 --> 00:18:23,993 as if another thread had always been running, 185 00:18:24,259 --> 00:18:28,053 ever present but always held at bay, 186 00:18:28,446 --> 00:18:31,640 and which is now weaving the familiar fabric of your rediscovered existence, 187 00:18:32,180 --> 00:18:34,436 the bare backdrop of your abandoned life, 188 00:18:34,884 --> 00:18:37,497 veiled images of this revealed truth, 189 00:18:38,111 --> 00:18:40,891 of this resignation so long deferred, 190 00:18:41,224 --> 00:18:43,221 of this appeal for calm - 191 00:18:43,487 --> 00:18:45,617 hazy lifeless images, 192 00:18:46,016 --> 00:18:48,146 over-exposed snap shots, 193 00:18:48,346 --> 00:18:51,075 almost white, almost dead, 194 00:18:51,407 --> 00:18:53,936 almost already fossilized: 195 00:18:54,868 --> 00:18:58,396 a street in a sleepy provincial town, closed shutters, 196 00:18:58,529 --> 00:19:03,321 dull shadows, the buzzing of flies in an army post, 197 00:19:03,787 --> 00:19:06,981 a lounge blanketed in grey dustsheets, 198 00:19:07,529 --> 00:19:10,391 dust particles suspended in a ray of sunlight, 199 00:19:10,790 --> 00:19:12,321 bare countryside, 200 00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:14,783 cemeteries on a Sunday, 201 00:19:14,983 --> 00:19:17,845 outings in a car. 202 00:19:24,966 --> 00:19:29,093 Man sitting on a narrow bed, one Thursday afternoon, 203 00:19:29,159 --> 00:19:34,218 a book open on his knees, eyes vacant. 204 00:19:40,794 --> 00:19:44,287 You are just a murky shadow, a hard kernel of indifference, 205 00:19:44,415 --> 00:19:47,311 a neutral gaze avoiding the gaze of others. 206 00:19:47,780 --> 00:19:50,762 Speechless lips, dead eyes. 207 00:19:50,932 --> 00:19:54,212 Henceforth you will be able to glimpse in the puddles, in the shop windows, 208 00:19:54,382 --> 00:19:56,896 in the gleaming bodywork of cars, 209 00:19:57,023 --> 00:20:00,048 the fleeting reflections of your decelerating life. 210 00:20:04,694 --> 00:20:06,909 Water drips from the tap on the landing. 211 00:20:07,292 --> 00:20:08,996 Your neighbour is sleeping 212 00:20:09,349 --> 00:20:13,833 The faint chugging of a stationary diesel taxi emphasizes rather than breaks the silence of the street. 213 00:20:16,293 --> 00:20:18,492 Your memory is slowly penetrated by oblivion. 214 00:20:20,043 --> 00:20:23,899 The cracks in the ceiling trace an implausible labyrinth. 215 00:20:31,625 --> 00:20:33,125 The heat in your room, 216 00:20:33,247 --> 00:20:34,573 like a cauldron, 217 00:20:34,765 --> 00:20:36,317 like a furnace, 218 00:20:36,946 --> 00:20:39,598 the six socks, indolent sharks, 219 00:20:39,737 --> 00:20:40,906 sleeping whales. 220 00:20:40,990 --> 00:20:43,136 in the pink plastic bowl. 221 00:20:45,928 --> 00:20:47,812 That alarm clock that did not ring, 222 00:20:47,934 --> 00:20:49,191 that does not ring, 223 00:20:50,168 --> 00:20:52,244 that will not ring to wake you up. 224 00:20:54,090 --> 00:20:55,189 You stretch out. 225 00:20:55,521 --> 00:20:56,986 You let yourself slip. 226 00:20:57,876 --> 00:20:59,551 You drop into sleep. 227 00:21:10,089 --> 00:21:12,584 Your room is the center of the world 228 00:21:12,910 --> 00:21:14,039 This lair, 229 00:21:14,128 --> 00:21:16,922 this cupboard like garret which never loses your smell, 230 00:21:17,234 --> 00:21:19,239 with its bed into which you slip alone, 231 00:21:19,402 --> 00:21:20,412 its shelf 232 00:21:20,548 --> 00:21:21,691 its linoleum, 233 00:21:21,781 --> 00:21:24,617 its ceiling whose cracks you have counted a thousand times, 234 00:21:24,721 --> 00:21:26,563 the flakes, the stains, 235 00:21:26,654 --> 00:21:27,679 the contours, 236 00:21:28,347 --> 00:21:31,362 the washbasin that is so tiny it resembles a piece of doll's-house furniture, 237 00:21:31,779 --> 00:21:32,997 the bowl, 238 00:21:33,072 --> 00:21:33,874 the window, 239 00:21:33,963 --> 00:21:36,383 the wallpaper of which you know every flower, 240 00:21:36,548 --> 00:21:38,419 these newspapers that you read and re-read, 241 00:21:38,478 --> 00:21:40,394 that you will read and re-read again; 242 00:21:40,901 --> 00:21:43,545 this cracked mirror has only ever reflected your face 243 00:21:43,546 --> 00:21:45,906 fragmented into three unequal portions; 244 00:21:46,589 --> 00:21:47,956 the shelved books: 245 00:21:49,799 --> 00:21:51,804 thus begins and ends your kingdom, 246 00:21:51,849 --> 00:21:53,363 perfectly encircled, 247 00:21:53,410 --> 00:21:55,860 by ever present noises, which are now all that keeps you attached to the world: 248 00:21:58,014 --> 00:22:01,154 the dripping tap on the landing, 249 00:22:02,550 --> 00:22:04,068 the noises from your neighbor room, 250 00:22:04,469 --> 00:22:05,830 his throat-clearing 251 00:22:06,354 --> 00:22:07,645 his coughing fits, 252 00:22:09,202 --> 00:22:11,313 the incessant murmur of the city. 253 00:22:17,732 --> 00:22:20,715 The measured succession of car noises, 254 00:22:21,291 --> 00:22:22,303 braking, 255 00:22:22,582 --> 00:22:23,577 stopping, 256 00:22:24,100 --> 00:22:25,601 accelerating, 257 00:22:26,522 --> 00:22:29,785 imparts a rhythm to time almost as surely as the tirelessly dripping tap 258 00:22:30,273 --> 00:22:32,158 or the bells of Sainte-Roch. 259 00:22:35,996 --> 00:22:37,077 Your alarm clock 260 00:22:37,165 --> 00:22:39,590 has been showing 5:15 for a long time now. 261 00:22:42,502 --> 00:22:44,229 In the silence of your room 262 00:22:44,334 --> 00:22:45,922 time no longer penetrates, 263 00:22:46,404 --> 00:22:47,767 it is around 264 00:22:47,931 --> 00:22:49,185 a permanent medium, 265 00:22:49,376 --> 00:22:50,275 obsessive 266 00:22:50,793 --> 00:22:52,020 warped, 267 00:22:52,292 --> 00:22:53,519 a little suspect: 268 00:22:54,534 --> 00:22:57,642 time passes, but you never know what time it is. 269 00:22:58,868 --> 00:23:00,204 It is ten o'clock, 270 00:23:00,558 --> 00:23:01,867 or perhaps eleven, 271 00:23:02,085 --> 00:23:03,312 it's late, 272 00:23:03,421 --> 00:23:04,293 it's early, 273 00:23:04,484 --> 00:23:05,575 the sun rises, 274 00:23:05,738 --> 00:23:07,019 night falls, 275 00:23:07,919 --> 00:23:09,827 the sounds never quite cease altogether, 276 00:23:10,427 --> 00:23:12,199 time never stops completely, 277 00:23:12,887 --> 00:23:16,137 even if it is now reduced to the merely imperceptible: a hairline crack in the wall of silence, 278 00:23:16,762 --> 00:23:17,967 a slow murmur 279 00:23:18,108 --> 00:23:19,422 forgotten, drop by drop, 280 00:23:19,777 --> 00:23:22,582 almost indistinguishable from the beats of your heart. 281 00:23:27,535 --> 00:23:29,703 Your room is the most beautiful of desert islands, 282 00:23:29,981 --> 00:23:34,229 and Paris is a desert that no-one has ever traversed. 283 00:23:38,738 --> 00:23:41,078 All you really need is your sleep, 284 00:23:41,512 --> 00:23:42,986 your own silence, 285 00:23:43,333 --> 00:23:45,327 your stillness, 286 00:23:46,020 --> 00:23:48,101 the rising and falling of your rib-cage, 287 00:23:48,361 --> 00:23:51,136 evidence of your continuing and patient existence. 288 00:24:13,192 --> 00:24:14,926 To want nothing. 289 00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:19,174 Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. 290 00:24:19,781 --> 00:24:21,775 To wander, and to sleep. 291 00:24:22,295 --> 00:24:24,983 To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. 292 00:24:25,590 --> 00:24:28,885 To follow the gutters, the fences, the water's edge. 293 00:24:29,492 --> 00:24:31,399 To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls. 294 00:24:31,659 --> 00:24:33,046 To waste your time. 295 00:24:33,393 --> 00:24:37,121 To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt. 296 00:24:43,979 --> 00:24:46,026 In the course of time your life will be there in front of you: 297 00:24:46,114 --> 00:24:47,231 a life without motion. 298 00:24:47,277 --> 00:24:48,452 without crisis, 299 00:24:48,554 --> 00:24:49,746 without disorder, 300 00:24:50,808 --> 00:24:53,280 day after day, season after season, 301 00:24:53,469 --> 00:24:56,256 something is going to start that will be without end: 302 00:24:56,492 --> 00:24:59,901 your vegetal existence, your cancelled life. 303 00:25:10,365 --> 00:25:12,842 Here, you learn how to last. 304 00:25:13,936 --> 00:25:15,337 At times, you are the master of time itself, 305 00:25:15,470 --> 00:25:16,803 the master of the world, 306 00:25:17,089 --> 00:25:19,832 a watchful little spider at the hub of your web, 307 00:25:20,194 --> 00:25:21,584 reigning over Paris: 308 00:25:22,571 --> 00:25:24,819 you command the North by Avenue de l'Opera, 309 00:25:25,162 --> 00:25:26,990 the South by the Louvre colonnade, 310 00:25:27,276 --> 00:25:29,771 the East and west by Rue Saint-Honore. 311 00:25:34,909 --> 00:25:36,395 You have everything still to learn 312 00:25:36,655 --> 00:25:38,538 everything that cannot be learnt: 313 00:25:38,834 --> 00:25:40,018 solitude, 314 00:25:40,125 --> 00:25:41,336 indifference, 315 00:25:41,578 --> 00:25:42,788 patience, 316 00:25:43,192 --> 00:25:44,725 silence. 317 00:25:50,270 --> 00:25:51,561 You are alone, 318 00:25:51,642 --> 00:25:54,682 and because you are alone you must never look to see what time it is. 319 00:26:02,218 --> 00:26:05,365 You are letting yourself go, and it come almost easily to you. 320 00:26:05,742 --> 00:26:08,405 You allow passing time to erase the memory of the faces, 321 00:26:08,513 --> 00:26:10,422 the addresses, the telephone numbers, 322 00:26:10,638 --> 00:26:12,897 the smiles and the voices. 323 00:26:16,263 --> 00:26:18,092 You forget that you learnt how to forget, 324 00:26:18,254 --> 00:26:20,863 that, one day, you forced yourself to forget. 325 00:26:21,751 --> 00:26:23,526 You no longer enter the cafes, 326 00:26:23,849 --> 00:26:26,109 checking the tables with a worried expression on your face, 327 00:26:26,378 --> 00:26:30,252 going into the back rooms in search of you no longer know whom. 328 00:26:31,142 --> 00:26:37,168 You no longer look for anyone in the queues which form every two hours outside the seven cinemas in Rue Champollion. 329 00:26:37,518 --> 00:26:39,670 You are alone. 330 00:26:40,722 --> 00:26:43,036 You learn how to walk like a man alone, 331 00:26:43,170 --> 00:26:45,295 to stroll, to dawdle, 332 00:26:45,591 --> 00:26:48,819 to see without looking, to look without seeing. 333 00:26:49,546 --> 00:26:51,375 You learn the art of transparency, 334 00:26:51,483 --> 00:26:52,532 immobility, 335 00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,469 inexistence. 336 00:26:57,108 --> 00:26:58,588 You learn how to remain seated, 337 00:26:58,803 --> 00:27:00,202 or supine, 338 00:27:00,444 --> 00:27:01,843 or erect. 339 00:27:02,354 --> 00:27:05,555 You learn how to look at paintings as if they were bits of wall or ceiling, 340 00:27:05,824 --> 00:27:10,493 the walls, as if they were paintings whose tens of thousands of paths you follow untiringly, 341 00:27:10,762 --> 00:27:12,672 merciless labyrinths, 342 00:27:12,887 --> 00:27:15,066 texts that no-one will ever decipher, 343 00:27:16,185 --> 00:27:18,148 decaying faces. 344 00:27:35,543 --> 00:27:37,372 You plunge into Ile Saint-Louis, 345 00:27:37,730 --> 00:27:39,317 you take Rue Vaugirard 346 00:27:39,586 --> 00:27:42,492 and head towards Pereire, towards Chateau-Landon. 347 00:27:43,191 --> 00:27:44,563 You walk slowly, 348 00:27:44,697 --> 00:27:46,096 and return the way you came, 349 00:27:46,311 --> 00:27:47,710 sticking close to the shop fronts. 350 00:27:49,067 --> 00:27:51,326 You go and sit on the parapet of Pont Louis-Phillipe, 351 00:27:51,569 --> 00:27:55,900 and you watch an eddy forming and disintegrating under the arches. 352 00:27:56,949 --> 00:27:58,778 Barges pass by, 353 00:27:59,182 --> 00:28:02,117 eventually shattering the play of water against the piers 354 00:28:03,193 --> 00:28:05,076 Motionless anglers sit, 355 00:28:05,345 --> 00:28:08,089 their eyes following the inexorable drift of their floats. 356 00:28:13,383 --> 00:28:19,638 You walk round the fenced gardens, overtaken by children clattering an iron ruler against the palings as they run past. 357 00:28:27,857 --> 00:28:31,984 You sit down on the benches with green slats and cast-iron lion-paw ferrules. 358 00:28:32,367 --> 00:28:36,534 Disabled, ageing park-keepers pass the time of day with nannies of a different generation. 359 00:28:36,643 --> 00:28:41,515 With the tip of your shoes you trace circles on the sparsely sandy ground, or squares, or an eye, 360 00:28:41,894 --> 00:28:45,045 or your initials. 361 00:28:54,473 --> 00:28:56,623 You walked round and round near the entrance to the Catacombs, 362 00:28:57,002 --> 00:28:59,271 you went and stood beneath the Eiffel Tower, 363 00:28:59,608 --> 00:29:01,667 you went up a few monuments, 364 00:29:02,046 --> 00:29:06,081 you crossed all the bridges, walked along the embankments, visited all the museums, 365 00:29:06,552 --> 00:29:09,536 the Palais de la Decouverte and the Aquarium du Trocadero, 366 00:29:09,956 --> 00:29:13,739 you saw the rose gardens of Bagatelle, Montmartre by night, les Halles at first light, 367 00:29:13,950 --> 00:29:16,388 Saint-Lazare station in the rush-hour, 368 00:29:16,682 --> 00:29:19,456 Concorde at midday on August 15. 369 00:29:31,350 --> 00:29:37,529 In the Luxembourg Gardens you watch the pensioners playing bridge, belote or tarot. 370 00:29:38,706 --> 00:29:43,036 On a bench close by an old man stares into space for hours on end; his is mummified, 371 00:29:43,204 --> 00:29:46,146 perfectly still, with his heels together, 372 00:29:46,693 --> 00:29:50,286 his chin leaning on the knob of the walking-stick that he grips tightly with both hands, 373 00:29:50,875 --> 00:29:53,397 gazing into emptiness, 374 00:29:53,691 --> 00:29:55,751 for hours. 375 00:29:56,297 --> 00:29:57,894 You marvel at him. 376 00:29:58,231 --> 00:30:01,551 You try to discover his secret, his weakness. 377 00:30:02,193 --> 00:30:03,726 But he appears to have no weak point. 378 00:30:04,552 --> 00:30:06,300 He doesn't even dribble, 379 00:30:06,713 --> 00:30:08,279 or move his lips, 380 00:30:08,744 --> 00:30:10,070 he hardly even blinks. 381 00:30:11,714 --> 00:30:14,520 The sun describes an arc about him: 382 00:30:15,812 --> 00:30:19,926 perhaps his vigilance consists solely in following its shadow; 383 00:30:20,659 --> 00:30:23,930 he must have markers placed long in advance; 384 00:30:25,015 --> 00:30:26,650 his madness, if he is mad, 385 00:30:26,934 --> 00:30:29,655 consists in believing that he is a sundial. 386 00:30:33,866 --> 00:30:35,288 You would like to look like him, 387 00:30:35,660 --> 00:30:39,912 but - and this is probably one of the effects of your being young and inexperienced in the art of being old - 388 00:30:40,345 --> 00:30:42,201 you get restless too quickly: 389 00:30:43,065 --> 00:30:45,830 in spite of yourself, your foot starts scuffing the sand, 390 00:30:46,067 --> 00:30:47,411 you let your eyes wander, 391 00:30:48,003 --> 00:30:51,756 you are continually crossing and uncrossing your fingers. 392 00:30:52,072 --> 00:30:56,575 Sill you keep walking, wherever your feet take you. You get lost, you go round in circles. 393 00:30:57,089 --> 00:30:59,380 Sometimes you set yourself derisory goals: 394 00:30:59,810 --> 00:31:00,995 Daumesnil, 395 00:31:01,114 --> 00:31:02,339 Clignancourt, 396 00:31:02,536 --> 00:31:04,274 Boulevard Gouvion Saint-Cyr 397 00:31:04,669 --> 00:31:06,881 or the Postal Museum. 398 00:31:13,637 --> 00:31:16,757 You wander into bookshops and leaf through a few books without reading them. 399 00:31:24,829 --> 00:31:30,438 stopping conscientiously in front of every painting, leaning your head to the right, squinting, 400 00:31:30,675 --> 00:31:33,796 stepping back to get a better view. 401 00:31:34,197 --> 00:31:39,491 On your way out, you sign the book with large illegible initials accompanied by a false address. 402 00:31:40,715 --> 00:31:43,046 You sit at a table at the back of a cafe 403 00:31:43,335 --> 00:31:46,503 and read Le Monde, line by line, systematically. 404 00:31:46,803 --> 00:31:49,007 It is an excellent exercise. 405 00:32:18,357 --> 00:32:22,446 Five hundred, a thousand pieces of information have passed in front of your eyes so scrupulous and attentive. 406 00:32:22,665 --> 00:32:25,386 But your memory has carefully avoided retaining any of this. 407 00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,105 You read with an equal lack of interest that Pont-a-Mousson was weak 408 00:32:29,380 --> 00:32:30,586 whilst New York remained steady, 409 00:32:31,016 --> 00:32:34,967 that one may have complete confidence in the experience of the oldest credit bank in France 410 00:32:35,019 --> 00:32:36,861 and its network of specialists, 411 00:32:37,653 --> 00:32:41,613 that the damage caused in Florda by typhoon Barbara would cost three billion to repair, 412 00:32:43,429 --> 00:32:47,595 that Jean-Paul and Lucas are proud to announce the arrival of their little sister Lucie. 413 00:32:50,131 --> 00:32:54,091 You are still capable of being amazed by the way in which the combination, according to a few ultimately very simple rules, 414 00:32:54,189 --> 00:32:59,371 of thirty or so typographic signs is able to generate, everyday, these thousands of messages. 415 00:33:01,084 --> 00:33:03,013 But why should you eagerly devour them, 416 00:33:03,495 --> 00:33:05,096 why should you bother deciphering them? 417 00:33:07,084 --> 00:33:10,269 All that matters to you is that time should pass and nothing should get through to you: 418 00:33:10,510 --> 00:33:13,386 your eyes follow the lines, deliberately, one after the other. 419 00:33:42,674 --> 00:33:46,496 Indifference to the world is neither ignorance nor hostility. 420 00:33:48,921 --> 00:33:51,848 You do not propose to rediscover the robust joys of illiteracy, 421 00:33:51,882 --> 00:33:55,291 but rather, in reading, not to grant a privileged status to any one thing you read. 422 00:33:57,126 --> 00:34:03,804 You do not propose to go naked, but to be clad, without this implying either elegance or neglect. 423 00:34:04,140 --> 00:34:08,277 you do not propose to let yourself starve to death, but simply to feed yourself. 424 00:34:08,993 --> 00:34:10,069 You eat, 425 00:34:10,225 --> 00:34:11,008 you sleep, 426 00:34:11,337 --> 00:34:12,601 you walk, 427 00:34:12,930 --> 00:34:14,245 you are clothed, 428 00:34:14,598 --> 00:34:18,315 let these be actions or gestures, 429 00:34:18,577 --> 00:34:21,485 but not proofs, not some kind of symbolic currency. 430 00:34:24,407 --> 00:34:29,009 Your dress, your food, your reading matter will not speak in your stead. 431 00:34:30,465 --> 00:34:35,420 Never again will you entrust to them the exhausting, impossible, mortal burden of representing you. 432 00:34:53,767 --> 00:34:56,236 you ingest, once or twice a day, rarely more, 433 00:34:56,581 --> 00:34:59,939 a fairly precisely calculable compound of proteins and glucosides, 434 00:35:00,334 --> 00:35:02,606 in the form of a piece of grilled beef, 435 00:35:02,853 --> 00:35:05,618 strips of potato quick-fried in boiling oil, 436 00:35:05,915 --> 00:35:07,495 a glass of red wine. 437 00:35:08,038 --> 00:35:09,470 In other words it's a steak, 438 00:35:09,618 --> 00:35:12,137 but it is definitely not a tournedos, 439 00:35:12,751 --> 00:35:15,565 and chips that no-one would dignity with the name French fries, 440 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:19,466 and a glass of red wine of uncertain, not to say dubious origin. 441 00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,812 But your stomach can no longer tell the difference. 442 00:35:24,355 --> 00:35:27,269 Language has proved more resistant: 443 00:35:27,664 --> 00:35:30,627 it took a while for your meat to stop being tough, 444 00:35:30,726 --> 00:35:33,491 your chips to stop being greasy, the wine vinegary, 445 00:35:33,736 --> 00:35:36,896 for these pejorative adjectives, which at first evoke the sad fare of the soup-kitchens, 446 00:35:37,045 --> 00:35:39,662 to lose little by little their meaning, 447 00:35:40,205 --> 00:35:44,551 and for the sadness, the misery, the poverty, the need, 448 00:35:44,699 --> 00:35:48,501 the shame that has become inexorably attached to them - this fat become-chip, 449 00:35:48,748 --> 00:35:52,254 this hardness-become-meat, this bitterness-become-wine - 450 00:35:52,501 --> 00:35:54,081 stop hitting you, 451 00:35:55,168 --> 00:35:58,032 stop leaving their mark on you. 452 00:35:58,919 --> 00:36:02,129 No explanation marks punctuate your meals. 453 00:36:02,475 --> 00:36:04,549 You drink your red wine, 454 00:36:04,746 --> 00:36:08,005 you eat your steak and fries. 455 00:36:24,146 --> 00:36:26,041 You devise complicated itineraries, 456 00:36:26,463 --> 00:36:29,416 bristling with rules which oblige you to make long detours. 457 00:36:30,812 --> 00:36:32,068 You go and see the monuments. 458 00:36:33,288 --> 00:36:34,451 You count the churches, 459 00:36:34,547 --> 00:36:35,693 the equestrian statues, 460 00:36:35,795 --> 00:36:36,853 the public urinals, 461 00:36:36,941 --> 00:36:38,175 the Russian restaurants. 462 00:36:38,589 --> 00:36:41,583 You go and look at the major buildings works on the banks of the river, 463 00:36:42,099 --> 00:36:44,467 and the gutted streets that resemble ploughed fields, 464 00:36:44,725 --> 00:36:46,124 the pipe laying, 465 00:36:46,447 --> 00:36:48,491 the blocks of flats being razed to the ground. 466 00:36:50,445 --> 00:36:54,405 You go back to your room and collapse onto your too-narrow bed. 467 00:36:55,245 --> 00:36:57,311 You count and organise the cracks in the ceiling. 468 00:37:05,848 --> 00:37:08,667 You often play cards all by yourself. 469 00:37:09,937 --> 00:37:13,402 You deal out four columns of thirteen cards on the bed, 470 00:37:13,660 --> 00:37:15,102 you remove the aces. 471 00:37:15,554 --> 00:37:17,982 The game consists in arranging the forty-eight remaining cards, 472 00:37:18,016 --> 00:37:21,442 by using the four spaces left by the removal of the aces, 473 00:37:21,993 --> 00:37:24,111 if one of the spaces happens to be the first in a column, 474 00:37:24,303 --> 00:37:25,715 you are allowed to put a two there; 475 00:37:25,973 --> 00:37:27,833 if it follows, say, a six, 476 00:37:27,953 --> 00:37:29,640 you can insert the seven of the same suit, 477 00:37:29,891 --> 00:37:31,113 a seven can be followed by an eight, 478 00:37:31,561 --> 00:37:32,766 an eight by a nine, 479 00:37:33,007 --> 00:37:34,729 a jack by the queen; 480 00:37:35,435 --> 00:37:36,967 if the space follows a king, 481 00:37:37,061 --> 00:37:39,420 you may not lay anything and the space is dead. 482 00:37:39,954 --> 00:37:43,191 Chance has virtually no role to play in this patience. 483 00:37:43,698 --> 00:37:48,071 You can foresee a long time in advance the moment when the four cleared spaces would bring you up against kings, 484 00:37:48,140 --> 00:37:51,127 and therefore failure, if you were to play them in order; 485 00:37:51,523 --> 00:37:53,365 you don't have to: you are allowed to use one space, 486 00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,895 then a different one, come back to the first, jump to the third, the fourth, 487 00:37:56,989 --> 00:37:58,281 back to the second again. 488 00:37:59,779 --> 00:38:02,034 Nevertheless, you rarely succeed; 489 00:38:02,301 --> 00:38:04,504 there always comes a point when the game is blocked, 490 00:38:04,728 --> 00:38:07,535 when, with half or a third of the cards already in order, 491 00:38:07,613 --> 00:38:10,918 you can no longer fill a space fill a space without turning up a king every time. 492 00:38:11,728 --> 00:38:14,241 In theory, you have the right to two more attempts, 493 00:38:14,431 --> 00:38:17,607 no sooner does the game appear lost than you scoop up all the cards, 494 00:38:17,848 --> 00:38:21,360 shuffle them once or twice, and deal them out again for another attempt. 495 00:38:22,714 --> 00:38:27,260 You shuffle the cards, deal them out, remove the aces, and take stock of the situation. 496 00:38:27,879 --> 00:38:29,493 You begin more or less at random, 497 00:38:29,601 --> 00:38:32,936 taking care only to avoid laying bare a king too soon. 498 00:38:33,313 --> 00:38:35,384 Gradually, the games starts to take shape, 499 00:38:35,690 --> 00:38:38,838 constraints appear, possibilities come to light: 500 00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:41,339 there is one card already in its proper place, 501 00:38:41,666 --> 00:38:45,674 over here a single move will allow you to arrange five or six in one go, 502 00:38:45,970 --> 00:38:48,525 over there a king that is in your way cannot be moved. 503 00:38:48,848 --> 00:38:50,920 You hardly ever get the patience out. 504 00:38:51,538 --> 00:38:55,064 You cheat sometimes, a little, rarely, 505 00:38:55,598 --> 00:38:57,096 increasingly rarely. 506 00:38:58,376 --> 00:39:00,253 Winning doesn't matter to you, 507 00:39:00,339 --> 00:39:02,405 for what would winning mean to you anyway. 508 00:39:13,735 --> 00:39:15,431 But you play more and more often, 509 00:39:16,007 --> 00:39:17,849 for longer and longer, 510 00:39:18,435 --> 00:39:19,829 sometimes all afternoon, 511 00:39:20,043 --> 00:39:21,403 as soon as you get up, 512 00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,573 or right through the night. 513 00:39:24,528 --> 00:39:27,817 There is something about this game that fascinates you, 514 00:39:28,385 --> 00:39:31,776 perhaps even more than the game with the water under the bridges, 515 00:39:34,635 --> 00:39:39,439 or the imperfectly opaque twigs which drift slowly across the surface of your cornea. 516 00:39:40,489 --> 00:39:42,916 Depending on where it is, or when it crops up, 517 00:39:43,252 --> 00:39:46,334 each card acquires an almost poignant density. 518 00:39:46,523 --> 00:39:47,642 You protect, 519 00:39:47,677 --> 00:39:48,572 you destroy, 520 00:39:48,658 --> 00:39:49,674 you construct, 521 00:39:49,725 --> 00:39:52,152 you plot, you concoct one plan after another: 522 00:39:52,448 --> 00:39:55,568 a futile exercise, a danger that entails no risk of punishment, 523 00:39:55,790 --> 00:39:57,391 a derisory restoration of order: 524 00:39:57,834 --> 00:39:59,831 forty-eight cards keep you chained to your room, 525 00:40:00,004 --> 00:40:02,724 and you feel almost happy when a ten happens to fall into place 526 00:40:02,913 --> 00:40:05,014 or when a king is unable to thwart you, 527 00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:09,447 and you feel almost unhappy when all your patient calculations lead to the impossible outcome. 528 00:40:11,074 --> 00:40:15,670 It is as if this solitary silent strategy were your only way forward, 529 00:40:15,912 --> 00:40:18,528 as if it had become your reason for being. 530 00:40:25,748 --> 00:40:27,091 It's dark. 531 00:40:28,218 --> 00:40:29,785 You close your eyes, 532 00:40:30,164 --> 00:40:31,300 you open them. 533 00:40:31,984 --> 00:40:36,254 Viral, microbial forms, inside your eye, or on the surface of your cornea, 534 00:40:36,305 --> 00:40:38,148 drifty slowly downwards, 535 00:40:38,397 --> 00:40:39,516 disappear, 536 00:40:39,706 --> 00:40:41,066 suddenly reappear in the center, 537 00:40:41,186 --> 00:40:42,305 hardly changed, 538 00:40:42,374 --> 00:40:43,648 discs or bubbles, 539 00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:48,787 twigs, twisted filaments, which, when brought together, produce something resembling a mythological beast. 540 00:40:49,286 --> 00:40:50,715 You lose track of them, 541 00:40:51,043 --> 00:40:52,506 then find them again; 542 00:40:52,790 --> 00:40:54,357 you rub your eyes 543 00:40:54,632 --> 00:40:56,113 and the filaments explode, 544 00:40:56,509 --> 00:40:58,110 proliferate. 545 00:40:59,179 --> 00:41:00,918 Time passes, 546 00:41:01,727 --> 00:41:03,690 you are drowsy. 547 00:41:05,102 --> 00:41:09,182 You put down the book beside you on the bed. 548 00:41:10,472 --> 00:41:11,746 Everything is vague, 549 00:41:12,271 --> 00:41:13,735 throbbing. 550 00:41:15,646 --> 00:41:19,106 Your breathing is astonishingly regular. 551 00:41:41,048 --> 00:41:46,644 As the hours, the days, the weeks, the seasons slip by, 552 00:41:47,349 --> 00:41:50,466 you detach yourself from everything. 553 00:41:50,940 --> 00:41:54,160 You discover, with something that sometimes almost resembles exhilaration, 554 00:41:54,263 --> 00:41:55,399 that you are free, 555 00:41:55,813 --> 00:41:59,273 that nothing is weighing you down, nothing pleases or displeases you. 556 00:42:01,193 --> 00:42:05,790 You find, in this life exempt from wear and tear and with no thrill in it other than these suspended moments, 557 00:42:05,884 --> 00:42:07,778 an almost perfect happiness, 558 00:42:07,950 --> 00:42:08,880 fascinating, 559 00:42:09,379 --> 00:42:11,772 occasionally swollen by new emotions. 560 00:42:15,405 --> 00:42:22,117 You are living in a blessed parenthesis, in a vacuum full of promise, and from which you expect nothing. 561 00:42:22,580 --> 00:42:27,441 You are invisible, limpid, transparent. 562 00:42:27,750 --> 00:42:29,678 You no longer exist: 563 00:42:30,064 --> 00:42:32,472 across the passing hours, the succession of days, 564 00:42:32,657 --> 00:42:35,805 the procession of the seasons, the flow of time, 565 00:42:36,291 --> 00:42:39,068 you survive, without joy and without sadness, 566 00:42:39,315 --> 00:42:41,167 without a future and without a past, 567 00:42:41,414 --> 00:42:45,241 just like that: simply, self-evidently, 568 00:42:45,611 --> 00:42:49,130 like a drop of water forming on a drinking tap on a landing, 569 00:42:49,376 --> 00:42:52,463 like six socks soaking in a pink plastic bowl, 570 00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:54,710 like a fly or a mollusc, 571 00:42:54,957 --> 00:42:59,957 like a tree, like a rat. 572 00:43:05,512 --> 00:43:08,907 In the course of time your coldness becomes awesome. 573 00:43:09,339 --> 00:43:11,808 Your eyes have lost the last vestige of their sparkle, 574 00:43:12,302 --> 00:43:15,696 your silhouette now slumps perfectly. 575 00:43:16,561 --> 00:43:22,795 An expression of serenity with lassitude, without bitterness, plays at the corners of your mouth. 576 00:43:24,447 --> 00:43:27,162 You slip through the streets, untouchable, 577 00:43:27,471 --> 00:43:30,249 protected by the judicious wear and tear of your clothing, 578 00:43:30,434 --> 00:43:33,026 by the neutrality of your gait. 579 00:43:33,952 --> 00:43:36,915 Now, your movements are simply acquired gestures. 580 00:43:37,470 --> 00:43:41,791 You utter only those words which are strictly necessary. 581 00:43:43,952 --> 00:43:48,581 You never say please, hello, thank you, goodbye. 582 00:43:49,013 --> 00:43:51,544 You do not ask your way. 583 00:43:52,248 --> 00:43:53,482 You wander around. 584 00:43:53,729 --> 00:43:55,334 You walk. 585 00:43:56,322 --> 00:43:59,902 All moments are equivalent, all spaces are alike. 586 00:44:00,457 --> 00:44:03,852 You are never in a hurry, never lost. 587 00:44:04,469 --> 00:44:06,568 You are not sleepy. 588 00:44:07,062 --> 00:44:09,654 You are not hungry. 589 00:44:10,457 --> 00:44:15,888 You let yourself go, you allow yourself to be carried along: 590 00:44:18,052 --> 00:44:21,077 all it takes is for the crows to be going up or down the Champs Elysees. 591 00:44:21,385 --> 00:44:25,891 all it takes is for a grey back a few yards in front of you to turn off suddenly down a grey street; 592 00:44:26,262 --> 00:44:29,101 or else a light or an absence of light, 593 00:44:29,286 --> 00:44:31,447 a noise of an absence of noise, 594 00:44:31,632 --> 00:44:34,162 a wall, a group of people, a tree, 595 00:44:34,471 --> 00:44:37,434 some water, a porch, a fence, 596 00:44:37,619 --> 00:44:41,014 advertising posters, paving stones, a pedestrian crossing, 597 00:44:41,369 --> 00:44:45,505 a shop front, a luminous stop sign, the name plate of a street, 598 00:44:45,814 --> 00:44:52,356 a haberdasher's stall, a flight of steps, a traffic island... 599 00:44:58,652 --> 00:45:00,751 You walk or you do not walk. 600 00:45:00,998 --> 00:45:03,035 You sleep or you do not sleep. 601 00:45:03,282 --> 00:45:05,380 You buy Le Monde or you do not buy it. 602 00:45:05,874 --> 00:45:07,602 You eat or you do not eat. 603 00:45:07,973 --> 00:45:11,306 You sit down, you stretch out, you remain standing, 604 00:45:11,596 --> 00:45:14,065 You slip into the darkened auditoriums. 605 00:45:14,250 --> 00:45:16,164 You light a cigarette. 606 00:45:16,596 --> 00:45:19,312 You cross the street, you cross the Seine, 607 00:45:19,559 --> 00:45:22,460 you stop, you start again. 608 00:45:23,077 --> 00:45:26,595 You pall pinball or you don't. 609 00:45:39,481 --> 00:45:42,135 Indifference has neither beginning nor end: 610 00:45:42,259 --> 00:45:45,530 it is an immutable state, an unshakeable inertia. 611 00:45:46,271 --> 00:45:49,295 All that remains are elementary reflexes: 612 00:45:49,604 --> 00:45:52,196 when the light is red you do not cross the road, 613 00:45:52,690 --> 00:45:55,591 you shelter from the wind in order to light a cigarette, 614 00:45:56,190 --> 00:45:58,721 you wrap up warmer on winter mornings, 615 00:45:59,462 --> 00:46:05,819 you change your sports shirt, your socks, your underpants and your vest about once a week. 616 00:46:18,890 --> 00:46:23,211 Indifference dissolves language and scrambles the signs. 617 00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:28,612 You are patient and you are not waiting, you are free and you do not choose, 618 00:46:28,998 --> 00:46:32,701 you are available and nothing arouses your enthusiasm. 619 00:46:33,010 --> 00:46:37,871 You hear without ever listening, you see without ever looking: 620 00:46:38,179 --> 00:46:41,883 the cracks in the ceilings, in the floorboards, 621 00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:45,895 the patterns in the tiling, the lines around your eyes, 622 00:46:46,281 --> 00:46:49,598 the trees, the water, the stones, 623 00:46:50,061 --> 00:46:56,465 the cars passing in the street, the clouds that form...cloud shapes in the sky. 624 00:47:01,626 --> 00:47:04,712 Now, your existence is boundless. 625 00:47:05,162 --> 00:47:07,690 Each day is made up of silence and noise, 626 00:47:07,975 --> 00:47:09,555 of light and blackness, 627 00:47:09,745 --> 00:47:13,537 layers, expectations, shivers. 628 00:47:13,790 --> 00:47:16,128 You slide, you let yourself slip and go under: 629 00:47:16,525 --> 00:47:19,749 searching for emptiness, running from it. 630 00:47:20,002 --> 00:47:22,814 Walk, stop, 631 00:47:23,257 --> 00:47:25,643 sit down, take a table, 632 00:47:25,979 --> 00:47:29,095 lean on it, stretch out. 633 00:47:29,922 --> 00:47:31,747 Robotic actions: 634 00:47:31,988 --> 00:47:35,724 get up, wash, shave, dress. 635 00:47:36,180 --> 00:47:37,695 A cork on the water: 636 00:47:37,953 --> 00:47:39,382 drift with the current, 637 00:47:39,451 --> 00:47:42,326 follow the crowd, trail about: 638 00:47:42,955 --> 00:47:44,762 in the heavy silence of summer, 639 00:47:44,969 --> 00:47:46,691 closed shutters, deserted streets, 640 00:47:46,975 --> 00:47:48,404 sticky asphalt, 641 00:47:48,593 --> 00:47:51,089 deathly-still leaves of a green that verges on black; 642 00:47:51,658 --> 00:47:54,326 winter in the cold light of the shop-fronts, 643 00:47:54,610 --> 00:47:57,864 the street lights, the little clouds of condensing breath at cafe doors, 644 00:47:58,174 --> 00:48:00,171 the black stumps of the dead winter trees. 645 00:48:01,781 --> 00:48:03,709 It is a life without surprises. 646 00:48:04,002 --> 00:48:05,172 You are safe. 647 00:48:05,540 --> 00:48:09,585 You sleep, you walk, you continue to live, 648 00:48:09,933 --> 00:48:15,053 like a laboratory rat abandoned in its maze by some absent-minded scientist. 649 00:48:19,833 --> 00:48:21,508 There is no hierarchy, 650 00:48:21,824 --> 00:48:23,246 no preference. 651 00:48:24,180 --> 00:48:29,743 Your indifference is motionless, becalmed: a grey man for whom grey has no connotation of dullness. 652 00:48:30,312 --> 00:48:33,440 But insensitive, but neutral. 653 00:48:33,598 --> 00:48:36,443 You are attracted by water, but also by stone; 654 00:48:36,807 --> 00:48:38,830 by darkness, but also by light; 655 00:48:39,020 --> 00:48:40,853 by warmth, but also by cold. 656 00:48:41,421 --> 00:48:43,349 All that exists is your walking, 657 00:48:43,539 --> 00:48:45,783 and your gaze, which lingers and slides, 658 00:48:45,972 --> 00:48:50,207 oblivious to beauty, to ugliness, to the familiar, the surprising, 659 00:48:50,604 --> 00:48:55,660 only ever retaining combinations of shapes and lights, which form and dissolve continuously, 660 00:48:55,850 --> 00:48:57,714 all around you, in your eyes, 661 00:48:57,999 --> 00:49:01,697 on the ceilings, at your feet, in the sky, 662 00:49:01,841 --> 00:49:04,369 in your cracked mirror, in the water, 663 00:49:04,559 --> 00:49:07,214 in the stone, in the crowds. 664 00:49:07,340 --> 00:49:09,299 Squares, avenues, 665 00:49:09,552 --> 00:49:13,029 parks and boulevards, trees and railings, 666 00:49:13,250 --> 00:49:16,505 men and women, children and dogs, 667 00:49:16,964 --> 00:49:19,366 crowds, queues, 668 00:49:19,728 --> 00:49:21,087 vehicles and shop windows, 669 00:49:21,773 --> 00:49:23,935 buildings, facades, 670 00:49:24,634 --> 00:49:26,718 columns and capitals, 671 00:49:27,362 --> 00:49:30,088 sidewalks, gutters, 672 00:49:30,444 --> 00:49:32,932 sandstone paving flags glistening grey in the drizzle. 673 00:49:33,802 --> 00:49:37,396 Silences, rackets, crowds at the stations, 674 00:49:37,713 --> 00:49:39,925 in the shops, on the boulevards, 675 00:49:40,201 --> 00:49:43,401 teeming streets, packed platforms, 676 00:49:43,948 --> 00:49:46,161 deserted Sunday streets in August, 677 00:49:46,437 --> 00:49:48,452 mornings, evenings, 678 00:49:48,610 --> 00:49:52,244 nights, dawns and dusks. 679 00:49:53,271 --> 00:49:55,681 Now you are the nameless master of the world, 680 00:49:55,997 --> 00:49:58,447 the one on whom history has lost its hold, 681 00:49:58,723 --> 00:50:02,397 the one who no longer feels the rain falling, who does not see the approach of night. 682 00:50:03,740 --> 00:50:06,348 All you are is all you know: 683 00:50:06,950 --> 00:50:10,584 your life that continues, you breathing, your step, 684 00:50:10,782 --> 00:50:15,207 You see the people coming and going, crowds and objects taking shape and dissolving. 685 00:50:16,321 --> 00:50:20,232 You see a curtain rail in the tiny window of a haberdasher's, 686 00:50:20,430 --> 00:50:23,116 which your eye is suddenly caught by, 687 00:50:23,985 --> 00:50:26,395 you continue on your way, 688 00:50:26,553 --> 00:50:33,467 you are inaccessible, like a tree, like a shop window, like a rat. 689 00:53:39,839 --> 00:53:44,855 But rats don't spend hours trying to get to sleep. 690 00:53:46,244 --> 00:53:52,185 But rats don't wake up with a start, gripped by panic, bathed in sweat. 691 00:53:54,268 --> 00:53:59,669 But rats don't dream and what can you do to protect yourself against your dreams? 692 00:54:01,493 --> 00:54:03,499 But rats don't bite their nails, 693 00:54:03,731 --> 00:54:09,981 especially not methodically, for hours on end until the tips of their claws are little more than a large open sore. 694 00:54:10,752 --> 00:54:16,153 You tear off half of the nail, bruising the spots where it is attached to the flesh; 695 00:54:16,539 --> 00:54:21,863 you tear away the cuticle nearly all the way back to the top joint until beads of blood start to appear, 696 00:54:22,326 --> 00:54:25,258 until your fingers are so painful that, for hours, 697 00:54:25,644 --> 00:54:29,270 the slightest contact is so unbearable that you can no longer pick things up 698 00:54:29,425 --> 00:54:31,971 and you have to go and immerse your hands in scalding hot water. 699 00:54:32,410 --> 00:54:37,546 But rats, as far as you know, do not play pinball. 700 00:54:38,069 --> 00:54:40,583 You hug the machines for hours on end, 701 00:54:40,686 --> 00:54:44,164 for nights on end, feverishly, angrily. 702 00:54:45,274 --> 00:54:47,874 You cling, grunting, to the machine, 703 00:54:48,132 --> 00:54:51,420 accompanying the erratic rebounds of the steal ball with exaggerated thrusts of your hips. 704 00:54:52,152 --> 00:54:53,788 You wage relentless warfare on the springs, 705 00:54:53,908 --> 00:54:57,369 the lights, the figures, the channels. 706 00:54:58,479 --> 00:55:02,439 Painted ladies who give an electronic wink, who lower their fans. 707 00:55:03,145 --> 00:55:05,452 You can't fight against a tilt. 708 00:55:06,028 --> 00:55:08,043 You can play or not play. 709 00:55:08,869 --> 00:55:10,574 You can't start up a conversation, 710 00:55:11,667 --> 00:55:14,077 you can't make it say what it will never be able to say to you. 711 00:55:15,167 --> 00:55:16,579 It is no use snuggling up against it. 712 00:55:16,717 --> 00:55:18,387 painting over it, 713 00:55:18,473 --> 00:55:20,935 the tilt remains insensitive to the friendship you feel, 714 00:55:21,503 --> 00:55:23,173 to the love which you seek, 715 00:55:23,448 --> 00:55:25,579 to the desire which torments you. 716 00:55:32,748 --> 00:55:34,366 You drift around the streets, 717 00:55:34,452 --> 00:55:36,139 you enter a cinema; 718 00:55:36,862 --> 00:55:38,223 you drift around the streets, 719 00:55:38,464 --> 00:55:39,703 you enter a cafe; 720 00:55:40,581 --> 00:55:41,993 you drift around the streets, 721 00:55:42,131 --> 00:55:43,422 you look at the trains; 722 00:55:44,267 --> 00:55:45,954 you drift around the streets, 723 00:55:46,212 --> 00:55:50,448 you enter a cinema where you see a film which resembles the one you've just seen, 724 00:55:50,999 --> 00:55:52,023 you walk out; 725 00:55:52,402 --> 00:55:54,485 you drift around the over-lit streets. 726 00:55:55,208 --> 00:55:57,825 You go back to your room, you undress, 727 00:55:58,024 --> 00:56:00,245 you slip between the sheets, you turn out the light, 728 00:56:00,451 --> 00:56:02,225 you close your eyes. 729 00:56:03,421 --> 00:56:07,570 Now is the time when dream-women, to quickly undressed, crowd in around you, 730 00:56:08,121 --> 00:56:10,928 the time when you reread ad nauseam books you've read a hundred times before, 731 00:56:11,212 --> 00:56:14,724 when you toss and turn for hours without getting to sleep. 732 00:56:15,654 --> 00:56:18,770 This is the hour when, your eyes wide open in the darkness, 733 00:56:19,002 --> 00:56:22,411 you hand groping towards the foot of the narrow bed in search of an ashtray, 734 00:56:22,583 --> 00:56:25,579 matches, a last cigarette, 735 00:56:25,914 --> 00:56:29,220 you calmly measure the sticky extent of your unhappiness. 736 00:56:36,577 --> 00:56:39,335 Now you get up in the night. 737 00:56:39,926 --> 00:56:41,775 You wander the streets, 738 00:56:42,011 --> 00:56:46,483 you go and perch on bar-stools and there you stay, for hours, 739 00:56:47,021 --> 00:56:48,534 until closing time. 740 00:56:48,871 --> 00:56:53,915 with a beer in front of you or a black coffee or a glass of red wine. 741 00:56:56,013 --> 00:56:58,434 You are alone and drifting. 742 00:56:59,678 --> 00:57:03,074 You walk along the desolate avenues, past the stunted trees, 743 00:57:03,276 --> 00:57:06,269 the peeling facades, the dark porches. 744 00:57:06,636 --> 00:57:10,368 You penetrate the bottomless ugliness of Les Batignolles, and Pantin. 745 00:57:10,671 --> 00:57:13,697 Your only chance encounters are with Wallace fountains which long since ran dry, 746 00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:16,959 tacky churches, gutted building sites, 747 00:57:17,194 --> 00:57:18,943 pale walls. 748 00:57:19,443 --> 00:57:21,495 The parks whose railings imprison you, 749 00:57:21,831 --> 00:57:23,949 the festering swamps near the sewer outlets, 750 00:57:24,084 --> 00:57:26,270 the monstrous factory gates. 751 00:57:26,774 --> 00:57:32,692 Steam locomotives pump out clouds of white smoke under the metallic walkways of the Gare Saint-Lazare. 752 00:57:32,894 --> 00:57:35,181 On Boulevard Barbes or Place Clichy, 753 00:57:35,498 --> 00:57:38,793 impatient crowds raise their eyes to the heavens. 754 00:57:52,997 --> 00:57:55,922 Unhappiness did not swoop down on you, 755 00:57:57,066 --> 00:58:00,095 it insinuated itself almost ingratiatingly. 756 00:58:00,830 --> 00:58:05,962 It meticulously impregnated you life, your movements, the hours you keep, your room, 757 00:58:06,341 --> 00:58:08,654 it took possession of the cracks in the ceiling, 758 00:58:08,865 --> 00:58:13,282 of the lines in your face in the cracked mirror, of the pack of cards; 759 00:58:14,249 --> 00:58:18,035 it slipped furtively into the dripping tap on the landing, 760 00:58:18,624 --> 00:58:22,789 it echoed in sympathy with the chimes of each quarter-hour from the bell of Saint-Roch. 761 00:58:23,911 --> 00:58:27,739 The snare was that feeling which, on occasion, came close to exhilaration, 762 00:58:28,075 --> 00:58:29,674 that arrogance, 763 00:58:30,347 --> 00:58:33,880 that sort of exaltation; 764 00:58:34,301 --> 00:58:37,919 you thought that the city was all you needed, its stones and its streets, 765 00:58:38,297 --> 00:58:41,032 the crowds that carried you along, 766 00:58:41,429 --> 00:58:45,468 you thought you needed only a front stall in some local cinema, 767 00:58:46,351 --> 00:58:48,833 you thought you only needed your room, 768 00:58:49,127 --> 00:58:55,269 your lair, your cage, your borrow. 769 00:58:56,383 --> 00:59:01,010 Once again you deal out the fifty-two cards on your narrow bed. 770 00:59:03,029 --> 00:59:06,941 Your powers have deserted you. 771 00:59:08,433 --> 00:59:13,775 The snare: the dangerous illusion of being impenetrable, 772 00:59:14,322 --> 00:59:20,043 of offering no purchase to the outside world, of silently sliding, inaccessible, 773 00:59:20,702 --> 00:59:24,362 just two open eyes looking forward, perceiving everything, 774 00:59:24,741 --> 00:59:26,718 retaining nothing. 775 00:59:27,643 --> 00:59:32,649 A being without memory, without alarm. 776 00:59:36,066 --> 00:59:38,211 But there is no exit, 777 00:59:38,716 --> 00:59:40,230 no miracle, 778 00:59:40,651 --> 00:59:42,460 no truth. 779 00:59:42,923 --> 00:59:46,120 Your legs dangling above the Seine. 780 00:59:49,589 --> 00:59:53,333 You withdraw the four aces from you fifty-two cards. 781 00:59:54,300 --> 00:59:57,750 How many times have you repeated the same amputated gesture, 782 00:59:58,086 --> 01:00:00,737 the same journey's that lead nowhere? 783 01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:05,846 All you have left to fall back on are your tuppeny-halfpenny boltholes, 784 01:00:06,207 --> 01:00:07,946 your idiotic patience, 785 01:00:08,174 --> 01:00:11,463 the thousand and one detours that always lead you back unfailingly to your starting point. 786 01:00:11,979 --> 01:00:13,667 From park to museum, 787 01:00:13,925 --> 01:00:15,285 from cafe to cinema, 788 01:00:15,604 --> 01:00:16,999 from embankment to garden, 789 01:00:17,343 --> 01:00:19,306 the station waiting-rooms, 790 01:00:19,392 --> 01:00:20,941 the lobbies of the grand hotels, 791 01:00:21,260 --> 01:00:22,310 the supermarkets, 792 01:00:22,517 --> 01:00:23,653 the bookshops, 793 01:00:23,877 --> 01:00:25,237 the corridors of the metro. 794 01:00:25,934 --> 01:00:27,656 Trees, stones, 795 01:00:27,845 --> 01:00:29,291 water, clouds, 796 01:00:29,515 --> 01:00:31,288 sand, brick, 797 01:00:31,478 --> 01:00:32,459 light, 798 01:00:32,735 --> 01:00:33,475 wind, 799 01:00:33,630 --> 01:00:34,835 rain: 800 01:00:35,584 --> 01:00:37,702 all that counts is your solitude: 801 01:00:38,063 --> 01:00:40,250 whatever you do, wherever you go, 802 01:00:40,310 --> 01:00:42,376 nothing that you see has any importance, 803 01:00:42,514 --> 01:00:44,235 everything you do, you do in vain, 804 01:00:44,528 --> 01:00:46,181 nothing that you seek is real. 805 01:00:46,602 --> 01:00:50,872 Solitude alone exists, every time you are confronted, every time you face yourself. 806 01:00:54,930 --> 01:00:58,373 You stopped speaking and only silence replied. 807 01:01:00,009 --> 01:01:02,660 But those words, those thousands, 808 01:01:02,953 --> 01:01:05,466 those millions of words that dried up in your throat, 809 01:01:05,903 --> 01:01:08,158 the inconsequential chit-chat, the cries of joy, 810 01:01:08,408 --> 01:01:10,853 the words of live, the silly laughter, 811 01:01:11,111 --> 01:01:13,315 just when will you find them again? 812 01:01:14,434 --> 01:01:17,073 Now you live in dread of silence. 813 01:01:18,433 --> 01:01:21,016 But are you not the most silent of all? 814 01:01:35,388 --> 01:01:37,282 The monsters have come into you life, 815 01:01:37,523 --> 01:01:40,243 the rats, your fellow creatures, your brothers. 816 01:01:40,570 --> 01:01:43,756 The monsters in their tens, their hundreds, their thousands. 817 01:01:43,859 --> 01:01:46,998 You can spot them from almost subliminal signs, 818 01:01:47,118 --> 01:01:48,599 their furtive departures, 819 01:01:48,823 --> 01:01:50,079 their silence, 820 01:01:50,165 --> 01:01:54,870 from their shifty, hesitant, startled eyes that look away when they meet yours. 821 01:01:56,471 --> 01:02:00,948 In the middle of the night a light still shows at the attic windows of their sordid little rooms. 822 01:02:02,003 --> 01:02:04,172 Their footfalls echo in the night. 823 01:02:09,602 --> 01:02:11,203 But these faces without age, 824 01:02:11,444 --> 01:02:13,355 these frail or drooping figures, 825 01:02:13,510 --> 01:02:17,212 these hunched, grey backs, you can feel their constant proximity, 826 01:02:17,587 --> 01:02:20,342 you follow their shadows, you are their shadow, 827 01:02:20,428 --> 01:02:22,172 you frequent their hideouts, their pokey little holes, 828 01:02:22,430 --> 01:02:24,290 you have the same refuges, the same sanctuaries: 829 01:02:24,359 --> 01:02:26,442 the local cinema which stinks of disinfectant, 830 01:02:26,511 --> 01:02:30,712 the public gardens, the museums, the cares, the stations, the metro, the covered markets. 831 01:02:31,165 --> 01:02:33,454 Bundles of despair sitting like you on park benches, 832 01:02:33,701 --> 01:02:37,454 endlessly drawing and rubbing out the same imperfect circle in the sand, 833 01:02:38,091 --> 01:02:40,639 readers of newspapers found in rubbish bins. 834 01:02:41,860 --> 01:02:45,889 They follow the same circuits as you, just as futile, just as slow. 835 01:02:46,388 --> 01:02:49,281 They hesitate in front of the maps in the metro, 836 01:02:49,664 --> 01:02:52,626 they eat their buns sitting on the river banks. 837 01:02:53,762 --> 01:02:54,571 The banished, 838 01:02:55,386 --> 01:02:56,264 the pariahs, 839 01:02:56,522 --> 01:02:57,589 the exiles. 840 01:02:58,398 --> 01:03:02,307 When they walk, they hug the walls, eyes cast down and shoulders drooping, 841 01:03:02,501 --> 01:03:04,808 clutching at the stones of the facades, 842 01:03:04,997 --> 01:03:08,170 with the weary gestures of a defeated army, of those who bite the dust. 843 01:03:08,532 --> 01:03:12,388 You follow them, you spy on them, you hate them: 844 01:03:12,646 --> 01:03:15,044 monsters in their garrets, 845 01:03:15,492 --> 01:03:18,040 monsters in slippers who shuffle at the fringes of the putrid markets, 846 01:03:18,384 --> 01:03:20,072 monsters with dead fish-eyes, 847 01:03:20,347 --> 01:03:22,258 monsters moving like robots, 848 01:03:22,648 --> 01:03:24,318 monster who drivel. 849 01:03:24,439 --> 01:03:28,553 You rub shoulders with them, you walk with them, you make your way amongst them: 850 01:03:29,070 --> 01:03:32,048 the sleepwalkers, the old men, 851 01:03:32,312 --> 01:03:34,412 the deaf-mutes with their berets pulled down over their ears, 852 01:03:34,757 --> 01:03:35,744 the drunkards, 853 01:03:35,812 --> 01:03:38,825 the dotards who clear their throats and try to control the spasms of their cheeks 854 01:03:38,997 --> 01:03:40,891 the peasants lost in the big city, 855 01:03:41,012 --> 01:03:43,629 the windows, the slyboots, the old boys. 856 01:03:44,460 --> 01:03:45,993 They came to you, 857 01:03:46,300 --> 01:03:48,085 they grabbed you by the arm. 858 01:03:48,250 --> 01:03:52,066 As if, because you are a stranger lost in your own city, you could only meet other strangers; 859 01:03:52,231 --> 01:03:56,102 as if, because you are alone, you had to watch as all the other loners swooped down on you. 860 01:03:56,443 --> 01:03:57,799 Those who never speak, 861 01:03:58,143 --> 01:03:59,465 those who talk to themselves, 862 01:03:59,983 --> 01:04:02,286 The old lunatics, the old lushes, 863 01:04:02,399 --> 01:04:03,843 the exiles. 864 01:04:04,672 --> 01:04:07,334 The hand on to your coat tails, 865 01:04:07,422 --> 01:04:09,130 the breathe in your face. 866 01:04:09,254 --> 01:04:12,692 They slide up to you with their wholesome smiles, 867 01:04:12,816 --> 01:04:15,196 their leaflets, their flags, 868 01:04:15,464 --> 01:04:17,811 the pathetic champions of great lost causes, 869 01:04:18,156 --> 01:04:20,043 the sad chansonniers out collecting for their friends, 870 01:04:20,583 --> 01:04:22,181 the abused orphans selling table-mats, 871 01:04:22,479 --> 01:04:24,482 the scraggy widows who protect pets. 872 01:04:25,341 --> 01:04:27,622 All those who accost you, detain you, 873 01:04:27,923 --> 01:04:31,009 paw you, ram their petty-minded truth down your throat, 874 01:04:31,089 --> 01:04:32,518 spit their eternal questions in your face, 875 01:04:32,588 --> 01:04:34,615 their charitable works and their True Way. 876 01:04:34,993 --> 01:04:37,343 The sandwich-men of the true faith which will save the world. 877 01:04:38,148 --> 01:04:41,203 The sallow complexions, the frayed collars, the stammerers who tell you their life story, 878 01:04:41,457 --> 01:04:44,520 tell you about their time in prison, in the asylum, in the hospital. 879 01:04:44,876 --> 01:04:47,025 The old school teachers who have a plan to standardize spelling, 880 01:04:47,105 --> 01:04:50,190 the strategists, the water diviners, the faith healers, the enlightened, 881 01:04:50,502 --> 01:04:52,386 all those who live with their obsessions, 882 01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:56,723 the failures, the dead beats, the harmless monsters mocked by bartenders 883 01:04:56,745 --> 01:04:59,539 who fill their glasses so high that they can't raise them to their lips, 884 01:04:59,659 --> 01:05:03,180 the old bags in their furs who try to remain dignified whilst kicking back the Marie Brizard. 885 01:05:06,396 --> 01:05:10,946 And all the others who are even worse, the smug, the smart-Alecs, the self-satisfied, who think they know, 886 01:05:10,998 --> 01:05:14,114 the fat men and the forever young, the dairymen and the decorated; 887 01:05:14,186 --> 01:05:17,578 the revelers on a binge, the Brylcreem-boys, the stinking rich, the dumb bastards. 888 01:05:17,716 --> 01:05:21,349 The monster confident of their own rights, who address you without further to do, call you to witness, 889 01:05:21,486 --> 01:05:25,365 The monster with their big families, with their monster children and monster dogs, 890 01:05:25,503 --> 01:05:27,414 the thousands of monsters caught at the traffic lights, 891 01:05:27,534 --> 01:05:29,101 the yapping females of the monsters, 892 01:05:29,170 --> 01:05:31,115 the monsters with moustaches, and waistcoats, and braces, 893 01:05:31,224 --> 01:05:33,789 the monsters tipped out by the coachload in front of the hideous monuments, 894 01:05:33,893 --> 01:05:36,682 the monsters in their Sunday best, the monster crowd. 895 01:05:36,759 --> 01:05:40,857 You drift around, but the crowd no longer carries you, the night no longer protects you. 896 01:05:40,935 --> 01:05:44,791 Still you walk on, ever onwards, untiring, immortal. 897 01:05:45,486 --> 01:05:49,153 You search, you wait. You wander through the fossilised town, 898 01:05:49,248 --> 01:05:51,383 the intact white stones of the restored facades, 899 01:05:51,469 --> 01:05:54,723 the petrified dustbins, the vacant chairs where concierges once sat; 900 01:05:54,990 --> 01:05:58,812 you wander through the ghost town, scaffolding abandoned against gutted apartment blocks, 901 01:05:58,967 --> 01:06:00,861 bridges adrift in the fog and the rain. 902 01:06:01,352 --> 01:06:04,709 Putrid city, vile, repulsive city. 903 01:06:04,778 --> 01:06:07,090 Sad city, sad lights in the sad streets, 904 01:06:07,159 --> 01:06:10,585 sad clowns in sad music-halls, sad queues outside the sad cinemas, 905 01:06:10,654 --> 01:06:12,760 sad furniture in the sad stores. 906 01:06:12,811 --> 01:06:14,791 Dark stations, barracks, warehouses. 907 01:06:14,860 --> 01:06:17,391 The gloomy bars which line the Grand Boulevards. 908 01:06:17,460 --> 01:06:20,030 Noisy or deserted city, pallid or hysterical city, 909 01:06:20,117 --> 01:06:24,558 gutted, devastated, soiled city, city bristling with prohibitions, steel bars, iron fences. 910 01:06:24,637 --> 01:06:27,943 Charnel house city: the covered markets rotting away, the slum belt in the heart of Paris, 911 01:06:28,029 --> 01:06:30,198 the unbearable horror of the boulevards when the cops hang out: 912 01:06:30,238 --> 01:06:32,786 Haussmann, Magenta - and Charonne. 913 01:06:37,556 --> 01:06:40,138 Like a prisoner, like a madman in his cell. 914 01:06:40,156 --> 01:06:42,824 Like a rat looking for the way out of his maze. 915 01:06:42,893 --> 01:06:44,942 You pace the length of Paris. 916 01:06:45,033 --> 01:06:46,772 Like a starving man, 917 01:06:46,841 --> 01:06:49,819 like a messenger delivering a letter with no address. 918 01:07:05,615 --> 01:07:08,439 Now you have run out of hiding places. 919 01:07:11,646 --> 01:07:13,741 You are afraid. 920 01:07:17,104 --> 01:07:19,927 You are waiting for everything to stop, 921 01:07:20,558 --> 01:07:22,297 the rain, 922 01:07:22,784 --> 01:07:24,587 the hours, 923 01:07:25,641 --> 01:07:27,742 the stream of traffic, 924 01:07:28,689 --> 01:07:30,531 life, 925 01:07:31,082 --> 01:07:32,563 people, 926 01:07:33,256 --> 01:07:35,064 the world; 927 01:07:35,822 --> 01:07:37,457 waiting for everything to collapse, 928 01:07:37,561 --> 01:07:39,317 walls, 929 01:07:40,166 --> 01:07:42,060 towers, 930 01:07:42,421 --> 01:07:44,746 floors and ceilings, 931 01:07:45,985 --> 01:07:48,189 men and women, 932 01:07:48,314 --> 01:07:50,518 old people and children, 933 01:07:51,035 --> 01:07:52,550 dogs, 934 01:07:52,636 --> 01:07:54,426 horses, 935 01:07:55,232 --> 01:07:56,781 birds, 936 01:07:56,988 --> 01:07:59,243 to fall to the ground, 937 01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:01,791 paralysed, 938 01:08:02,708 --> 01:08:04,740 plague-ridden, 939 01:08:06,685 --> 01:08:08,648 epileptic; 940 01:08:10,869 --> 01:08:12,952 waiting for the marble to crumble away, 941 01:08:13,887 --> 01:08:16,607 for the wood to turn to pulp, 942 01:08:17,227 --> 01:08:19,896 for the houses to collapse noiselessly, 943 01:08:23,087 --> 01:08:26,548 for the diluvian rains to dissolve the paintwork, 944 01:08:26,651 --> 01:08:30,146 pull apart the dowel-joints in hundred-year-old wardrobes, 945 01:08:30,561 --> 01:08:32,851 tear the fabric to shreds, 946 01:08:33,407 --> 01:08:36,075 wash away the newspaper ink, 947 01:08:42,818 --> 01:08:46,348 waiting for the fire without flames to consume the stairs, 948 01:08:47,587 --> 01:08:50,157 waiting for the streets to subside and split down the middle 949 01:08:50,295 --> 01:08:53,033 to reveal the gaping labyrinth of the sewers; 950 01:08:53,480 --> 01:08:57,698 waiting for the rust and mist to invade the city. 951 01:10:06,144 --> 01:10:11,583 You are not dead and you are no wiser. 952 01:10:11,994 --> 01:10:16,509 You have not exposed your eyes to the suns burning rays. 953 01:10:17,535 --> 01:10:21,743 The two tenth-rate old actors have not come to fetch you, 954 01:10:22,154 --> 01:10:24,616 hugging you so tightly 955 01:10:25,130 --> 01:10:31,903 that you formed a unity which would have brought all three of you down together had one of you knocked out. 956 01:10:32,416 --> 01:10:37,650 The merciful volcanoes have paid you no heed. 957 01:10:37,957 --> 01:10:40,933 Your mother had not put your new second-hand clothes in order. 958 01:10:42,080 --> 01:10:46,986 You are not going to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience 959 01:10:47,873 --> 01:10:52,401 and forge in the smithy of your soul the uncreated conscience of your race. 960 01:10:54,128 --> 01:10:56,280 No old father, 961 01:10:56,676 --> 01:11:01,049 no old artificer will stand you now and ever in good stead. 962 01:11:02,887 --> 01:11:04,643 You have learnt nothing, 963 01:11:05,056 --> 01:11:07,690 except that solitude teaches you nothing, 964 01:11:08,163 --> 01:11:10,677 except that indifference teaches you nothing: 965 01:11:12,709 --> 01:11:18,190 You were along and you wanted to burn the bridges between you and the world. 966 01:11:19,102 --> 01:11:21,632 But you are such a negligble speck, 967 01:11:22,378 --> 01:11:25,237 and the world is such a big word: 968 01:11:25,606 --> 01:11:27,960 to walk a few kilometres past facades, 969 01:11:28,196 --> 01:11:31,592 shopfronts, parks and embankments. 970 01:11:33,203 --> 01:11:35,960 Indifference is futile. 971 01:11:36,667 --> 01:11:39,256 Your refusal is futile. 972 01:11:40,164 --> 01:11:43,190 Your neutrality is meaningless. 973 01:11:44,213 --> 01:11:48,585 You believe that you are just passing by, walking down the avenues, drifting through the city, 974 01:11:48,753 --> 01:11:53,595 dogging the footsteps of the crowd, penetrating the play of shadows and cracks. 975 01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:57,526 But nothing has happened: 976 01:11:58,232 --> 01:12:00,284 no miracle, 977 01:12:00,620 --> 01:12:02,638 no explosion. 978 01:12:05,193 --> 01:12:08,758 With each passing day your patience has worn thinner. 979 01:12:09,676 --> 01:12:12,804 Time would have to stand still, 980 01:12:13,173 --> 01:12:16,234 but no-one has the strength to fight against time. 981 01:12:17,276 --> 01:12:21,009 You may have cheated, snitching a few crumbs, a few seconds: 982 01:12:21,644 --> 01:12:23,561 but the bells of Saint-Roch, 983 01:12:23,661 --> 01:12:27,932 the changing traffic lights at the intersection between Rue des Pyramids and Rue Saint-Honore, 984 01:12:28,369 --> 01:12:32,505 the predictable drop from the tap on the landing, 985 01:12:32,774 --> 01:12:35,027 never ceased to signal the hours, 986 01:12:35,229 --> 01:12:36,137 minutes, 987 01:12:36,372 --> 01:12:39,432 the days and the seasons. 988 01:12:40,721 --> 01:12:43,378 For a long time you constructed sanctuaries, and destroyed them: 989 01:12:43,512 --> 01:12:45,261 order or in inaction. 990 01:12:45,496 --> 01:12:47,312 drifting or sleep, 991 01:12:47,548 --> 01:12:48,624 the night patrols, 992 01:12:48,926 --> 01:12:50,238 the neutral moments, 993 01:12:50,507 --> 01:12:53,701 the flight of shadows and light. 994 01:12:54,777 --> 01:12:57,938 Perhaps for a long time yet you could continue to lie to yourself, 995 01:12:58,174 --> 01:12:59,788 deadening your senses. 996 01:13:00,494 --> 01:13:02,343 But the game is over. 997 01:13:02,988 --> 01:13:06,088 The world has stirred and you have not changed. 998 01:13:06,614 --> 01:13:10,134 Indifference has not made you any different. 999 01:13:11,185 --> 01:13:14,916 You are not dead. You have not gone mad. 1000 01:13:16,071 --> 01:13:18,804 There is no curse hanging over you. 1001 01:13:19,434 --> 01:13:21,326 There is no tribulation in store for you, 1002 01:13:21,693 --> 01:13:24,688 there is no crow with sinister designs on your eyeballs, 1003 01:13:25,101 --> 01:13:32,300 no vulture has been assigned the indigestible chore of tucking into your liver morning, noon, and night. 1004 01:13:32,983 --> 01:13:36,608 No-one is condemning you, and you have committed no offence. 1005 01:13:37,606 --> 01:13:41,967 Time, which see to everything, has provided the solution, despite yourself. 1006 01:13:42,388 --> 01:13:46,906 Time, that knows the answer, has continued to flow. 1007 01:13:47,371 --> 01:13:49,157 It is on a day like this one, 1008 01:13:49,473 --> 01:13:51,627 a little later, a little earlier, 1009 01:13:51,995 --> 01:13:53,834 that everything starts again, 1010 01:13:53,991 --> 01:13:58,195 that everything starts, that everything continues. 1011 01:13:58,930 --> 01:14:02,976 Stop talking like a man in a dream. 1012 01:14:03,502 --> 01:14:05,078 Look! 1013 01:14:05,918 --> 01:14:08,283 Look at them. 1014 01:14:09,018 --> 01:14:11,803 They are thousands upon thousands, 1015 01:14:12,224 --> 01:14:18,363 posted like silent sentinels by the river, along the embankments, 1016 01:14:18,941 --> 01:14:21,515 all over the rain-washed pavements of Place Clichy, 1017 01:14:21,883 --> 01:14:24,090 mortal men fixed in ocean reveries, 1018 01:14:24,251 --> 01:14:27,446 waiting for the sea-spray, for the breaking waves, 1019 01:14:27,709 --> 01:14:31,408 for the raucous cries of the sea-birds. 1020 01:14:32,148 --> 01:14:33,224 No, 1021 01:14:34,401 --> 01:14:37,192 you are not the nameless master of the world, 1022 01:14:37,428 --> 01:14:40,219 the one on whom history had lost its hold, 1023 01:14:40,402 --> 01:14:42,790 the one who no longer felt the rain falling, 1024 01:14:42,991 --> 01:14:45,715 who did not see the approach of night. 1025 01:14:46,469 --> 01:14:52,118 You are no longer inaccessible, the limpid, the transparent one. 1026 01:14:53,071 --> 01:14:55,246 You are afraid, 1027 01:14:55,896 --> 01:14:57,476 you are waiting. 1028 01:14:59,393 --> 01:15:04,302 You are waiting, on Place Clichy, for the rain to stop falling.