Arrêtez, arrêtons, arrête

…Si la réalité n’existait pas, la littérature, la danse, le théâtre, etc, n’existeraient pas, n’est-ce pas ? La réalité c’est surtout pour cela qu’on l’aime, son utilité. C’est d’elle qu’on part mais ça s’arrête là…

… If reality did not exist, then literature, dance, theatre and so on would not exist, isn’t that so? It’s above all for that, for its usefulness, that we like reality. It’s from reality that we start but that stops there. A sort of root on the surface allowing us to descend into our caves, tunnels, basements, maze-like at times, blind alleys at others, dead ends. Dead end indeed, maybe there, what you are going to see. Mathilde asked herself “what is the inner state of a being?” What do we do with this kind of question? The inner state of a being cannot be communicated. At the outset she asked herself “is it the confinement that fascinates me so much?” We changed subject, fearing the journalists’ questions, wishing to cut it short. We changed subject a number of times, we skipped from subject to subject, before finally choosing “stop barking you filthy dogs”. Because the inner state of beings is just that. The confined state of beings is that: Things inside you and around you that bark. Things that bark through you. That scream or wail or that are there. We have taken as subject the things that are there. In our head, what we hear, that are there. Those things that sometimes we ourselves bark out. All those sentences. That are there. In silence, in our head, that pass, even the deaf must hear them. We don’t know. Precisely, we don’t know what is confined inside beings. All those sentences, even when you watch a show, or at night. Like a cat, it doesn’t linger, it leaps very quickly from one thing to another, it always returns obsessively to more or less the same spots. It marks pauses. Or not, sometimes it doesn’t come back. Like a cat, the body each time that stands still and the gaze too, to quickly move to a higher branch. A lower branch, or a cupboard. Without ever hurting itself, that’s it…

Source: Christine Angot. June 1997