Inquietude

In the South, outside London, to the West. The West: there where the houses are almost on top of one another, and when an old one is bought, it is knocked down, and three new ones appear, cheek by jowl. Houses on top of houses, almost like Chagall paintings. Only these are modern, Georgian style houses, side by side in vast estates.

I can see the boughs of the trees swaying in the wind through the double glazed doors. Silence: everything is quiet here. My fingers striking the soft keys of this laptop are already too loud. Yesterday, in a pub in London by the Thames, the river flooded and the water came up so high we had to stand on the tables. Today, we drove beside a tributary of the Thames which was likewise too swollen for its banks.

Evening. I watch Pickpocket; curious to be able to find a film like that, here. But it was easy enough; it was there in Blockbusters alongside other films. Everything can be found; there is nothing that can escape the great archiving, or that’s how it seems. Everything is here, and for all tastes; films, like the books in Waterstones, all weigh the same as one another.

The DVD extras are ineresting. Bresson seeks neutrality from the voices of his ‘models’ (not actors, remember). Neutrality – neither the one nor the other. And Inquietude was the original title of the film. Isn’t that another word for neutrality? For its movement, its wavering? The Book of Disquiet, The Book of Inquietude: how to translate the original title? No matter.

I think there must be many Bernardo Soaress in these suburbs. Many diarists, many writers. But they are all too scattered to know one another, I tell myself, stars who burn along for a while, and then burn out. Stars whose fuel is nothing but youth and ardency: what does it take for such a star to nova? What great deed? That is, perhaps, what Mishima sought: to transform the fuel of his life into a greater conflagration – and to set other stars, too, on fire.

Perhaps. But in the end, life in the suburbs consumes itself and there is nothing left. Isn’t it time, then, to sign up for a course, to retrain, to find yourself a career? No longer a star, who are you? Husk, how will you remember that part of your life when you were nothing but ardent?