But beautiful and aesthetic at the same time. With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don’t see much else that can nurture human life. I’m still too young to claim to know much about love and friendship. But Art…if I had more time to live, Art would be my whole life. Well, when I say Art, don’t get me wrong: I’m not just talking about great works of art by great masters. Even Vermeer can’t convince me to hold life dear. He’s sublime, but he’s dead. No, I’m referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us. The Journal of the Movement of the World will be devoted therefore to the movement of people, bodies, or even – if really there’s nothing to say – things, and to finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning. Grace, beauty, harmony, intensity. If I find something, then I may rethink my options: if I find a body with beautiful movement or, failing that, a beautiful idea for the mind, well then maybe I’ll think that life is worth living after all.
In fact, I got this idea for a double journal (one for the mind, one for the body) yesterday. Papa was watching a rugby match on television. Up until now, at times like this I’ve looked mostly at Papa. I like to watch him roll up his shirtsleeves, take his shoes off and settle on the sofa with a beer and some saucisson, to watch the game as if declaring, ‘Behold the man I also know how to be.’ Apparently it doesn’t occur to him that one stereotype (very serious Minister of the Republic) plus one more stereotype (Mr-Nice-Guy-all-the-same who likes his cold beer) makes a stereotype raised to the power of two. In short, on Saturday, Papa came home earlier than usual, threw his briefcase down any old place, took off his shoes, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a beer in the kitchen and flopped in front of the television, and said, ‘Sweetie, bring me some saucisson, please, I don’t want to miss the haka.’ As far as missing the haka went, I had plenty of time to slice the saucisson and bring it to him, the adverts were still on. Maman was sitting precariously on the arm of the sofa, to show how she was against the whole business (in her holier-than-thou-left-wing-intellectual pose), and she was badgering Papa with some complicated story about a dinner party where the idea was to invite two couples who’d fallen out, in order to reconcile them. Given Maman’s psychological subtlety, this could be a very amusing undertaking. Anyway, I gave Papa his saucisson and, since I knew that Colombe was up in her room listening to music that was supposed to be enlightened avant-garde fifth arrondissement sort of stuff, I thought: after all, why not, let’s watch a little haka. What I knew was that the haka is a sort of grotesque dance that the New Zealand team performs before the match. Sort of intimidation in the manner of the great apes. And I also knew that rugby is a heavy sort of game, with men falling all over each other on the grass all the time only to stand up and fall down and get all tangled up a few feet further along.
The adverts finally came to an end and, after credits showing a lot of beefcake sprawled on the grass, we had a view of the entire stadium with the commentators’ voice-over and then a close-up of the commentators (all slavish cassoulet addicts) then back to the stadium. The players came onto the field and that’s when I got hooked. I didn’t really understand what was going on at first: there they were, all the usual images, but they had a new effect on me; they caused a kind of tingling, a sense of heady anticipation, sort of an ‘I’m holding my breath’ feeling. Next to me Papa had already knocked back his first barley beer, and was preparing to carry on in good Gallic fashion by asking Maman, who had just got up from her sofa arm, to bring him another. As for me, I was holding my breath. ‘What’s going on?’ I wondered, watching the screen, and I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing and what was giving me that tingling feeling.
Then when the New Zealand players began their haka, I got it. In their midst was this very tall Maori player, really young. I’d had my eye on him right from the start, probably because of his height to begin with but then because of the way he was moving. A really odd sort of movement, very fluid but above all very focused, I mean very focused within himself. Most people, when they move, well, they just move depending on whatever’s around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading towards something, probably an armchair. And you can tell from the way she’s moving: she is heading towards. Maman just went by in the direction of the front door, she’s going out shopping and in fact she already is outside, her movement anticipating itself. I don’t really know how to explain it, but when we move, we are in a way destructured by our movement towards something: we are both here and at the same time not here because we’re already in the process of going elsewhere, if you see what I mean. To stop destructuring yourself, you have to stop moving altogether. Either you move and you’re no longer whole, or you’re whole and you can’t move. But that player, when I saw him go out onto the field, I could tell there was something different about him. The impression that he was moving, yes, but by staying in one place. It’s crazy, isn’t it? When the haka began, I concentrated on him. It was obvious he wasn’t like the others. Moreover, Cassoulet Number 1 said, ‘And Somu, the formidable New Zealand fullback – what an impressive player, with a colossal build: six foot eight and eighteen stone, runs a hundred metres in eleven seconds, a fine specimen indeed, ladies!’ Everyone was enthralled by him but no one seemed to know why. Yet it became obvious in the haka: he was moving and making the same gestures as the other players (slapping the palms of his hands on his thighs, rhythmically drumming his feet on the ground, touching his elbows, and all the while looking the adversary in the eye like a mad warrior), but while the others’ gestures went towards their adversaries and the entire watching stadium, this player’s gestures stayed inside him, stayed focused upon him, and that gave him an unbelievable presence and intensity. And so the haka, which is a warrior chant, gained all its strength from him. What makes the strength of a soldier isn’t the energy he uses trying to intimidate his opponent by sending him a load of signals, it’s the strength he’s able to concentrate within himself, by staying centred. That Maori player was like a tree, a great indestructible oak with deep roots and a powerful radiance – everyone could feel it. And yet you also got the impression that the great oak could fly, that it would be as quick as the wind, despite, or perhaps because of, its deep roots.
So I watched the game attentively, constantly on the lookout for the same thing: compact moments where a player became his own movement without having to fragment himself by heading towards. And I saw them! I saw them in every phase of the game: in the scrums, with one clear point of equilibrium, a player who found his roots, who became a solid little anchor giving his strength to the group; then in the phases of deployment, with a player who would find the right speed without thinking any more about the goal, by concentrating on his own movement and running as if in a state of grace, with the ball stuck firmly to his body; and in the trance of the kicker, cut off from the rest of the world in order to find the perfect foot movement. But none of them came near the perfection of the great Maori player. When he scored the first try for New Zealand, Papa sat there dumbfounded, his mouth wide open, his beer quite forgotten. He should have been completely pissed off because he was rooting for the French team but instead, wiping his hand across his brow, he said, ‘What a player!’ The commentators were sort of hung over but they couldn’t hide the fact that they’d seen something really beautiful: a player who was running without moving, leaving everyone else behind him. And the others, who seemed by comparison to move with frenzied and awkward gestures, were incapable of catching up with him.
So I said to myself: There, I have managed to witness motionless movement in the world: is that something worth carrying on for? And at that very moment a French player lost his shorts in a maul and suddenly I felt totally depressed because it made everyone else laugh so hard they cried, including Papa who had himself another beer to celebrate, despite two centuries of Protestantism in the family. I felt as if something had been profaned.
No, then, that won’t be enough. Further movements will be necessary to convince me. But at least this one has given me an idea.
I
