Voiceover of an imaginary film – or, better, voiceover without a film, or that could be spoken over all films, any of them. Speech that wanders: errant speech that speaks for its own sake, which speaks only to keep itself speaking. That which is said is irrelevant; that it is said is everything.
I speak. Who speaks? No one speaks. Language that is no longer a sign of absent things, but a sign of itself. I would like to attain that indifference, the indifference of a language which no longer refers, but sinks into itself. That continues to be born from itself, out of itself. I am spoken. No: there is language, and by way of everything I say, I write.
Reading back over the last posts, I think: but I am not even close. I am not near attaining it. When will it be as though all the details I relate, all the elements of a story, no longer occupy background or foreground. When, by way of those details, will the dispersal of a story let speak itself?
Speech that gives itself, of itself. I dream of a profound continuity, of a speaking pursued by itself, doubled, that is caught at the threshold before it signifies. Speak of yourself, language. Speak of what you are, even as I speak. Speak of your indifference.
I do not want to be ‘inspired’, or ravished by this other speech, just as I do not want to control it. I would like no longer to be interested in writing, and by way of writing. How to speak like the most committed gossip – how to attain an infinitely idle chatter, that speaks of everything, letting rumours pass indifferently from one to the other?
We speak, but not of us possesses speech. We speak, and speech’s indifference bursts across us. What does it matter what we say? Language is our habit. We speak, so as not not to speak. There is speech and so does language seem to double itself, becoming a play of simulacra. Language speaks of itself. Language lies down, stretches and yawns, and speaks of itself in this lassitude. Language says: ‘I am nothing at all’, or ‘I am everything’ – what does it matter?
But I write too heavily – always the same. Language doubled is light – as is the voiceover of my imaginary film. Too light to narrate, or to draw together the strands of an argument. Nothing concludes. Speech speaks for the light joy of speaking.
Reading Muriel Spark, I discover the lightness of speech I’ve missed. Language, now divided between the voices of the girls of slender means, that is purely inconsequential. What does it matter what is said? Nothing is important, or everything is; there’s a war on. And language is as light and sinuous as Selina (with whom I am mildly in love), who looks at the world from under her lashes and cares nothing of the Important.
‘You are too heavy’. – ‘Yes, I know that.’ – ‘You emburden words, you do not free them.’ – ‘Yes I know.’ Laughter: ‘why must you discover lightness in such a heavy way?’
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