January 12, 2011

When I was twenty-three, I wrote a Master's thesis on Houellebecq's work, one of the main features of which is the life journey of the main character, who, after sentimental, professional and other tribulations, after having met many people and witnessed scenes that carry within them the truth of his era in all its specificity, and of life in its naked, eternal truth, gives up his life to content himself with writing his testimony. Ironically, at less than forty years of age, this is more or less the point I've reached myself.

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I reread Plateforme a few days ago, and while it's undeniable that this novel "saved my life", or in any case, saved me from a great deal of grief, I have to say that this new rereading – perhaps because La Carte et le Territoire made me see them in close-up, once and for all – has above all brought home to me the tricks of Houellebecquian writing.

After ten years of rereading, you might say it's about time, but deep down I think I hate analyzing, deconstructing and recontextualizing works of any kind. I remain, and want to remain, a lambda reader, spectator or listener, impressionable and driven by emotion and identification. Because without these aspects, the arts have no effectiveness and therefore no raison d'être; neither literature, nor music, nor painting appeared in the caves, between two mammoth hunts, to give grist to academics, I would say in simplifying, if I were the anti-intellectual poujadist that I am.

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Perhaps it's this disillusionment, this disenchantment – in the truest sense of the word: who has forgotten the authentic trances they experienced listening to music as a teenager? – which has wearied me so much of the music scene I've been part of for the past fifteen years, that I can't even hear about it anymore: when you know the "manufacturing secrets" of records, when you know the history of movements, the genealogy of genres and sounds, when you know the people themselves, what they are individually as well as in their relationships within the milieu, and you wonder whether it's banality or mediocrity that essentially characterizes them (and I include myself in all this), inevitably, the magic of listening is somewhat attenuated.

When I was fifteen or sixteen, I was a sickly fan of Dead Can Dance; it turned into an obsession, I'd dream about them at night, draw them, write about them, it was OK Podium; and the scarcity of information available about them at the time, and even more so, of photos of them, allowed for all kinds of fantasies, all kinds of personal appropriations of their work, but also of themselves, as musicians and quasi-imaginary characters, superhuman in any case. Obviously, after ten years of the Internet and the "gothic" press detailing their history, their spats, their appearances on soundtracks and other trivialities, they no longer have any grey areas for me, nor anything fascinating – people, very talented, making music, and nothing more.

A room with posters, books, a stereo and a bed to snooze in - that's more than enough interface with the world.