Papel carbón

We do not play anymore, at least any more than it would be necessary, to listen that is. We start by harking, to all the ghosts and all the phantoms, to all the choirs, and the rocks falling. We listen while in an insurmountable impossibility of blinking. The eyes so wide open that we ignore if they are not made of glass. We do not play, as everything does it around us, as we perceive and annotate the rules, while creating new ones. We do not play, unless this is a new kind of game, our kind of game, where we begin by naming, by calling the right names, adjectives, adverbs, and especially those magical unpronounceable words—shouts and whispers. We name by listening, by hearing the right, clever words—by, that is to say, inviting others to tell us the words, to whisper them in our ears. Yes, we are some kind of maze, each and every one of us. Our mazes, and their walls, are pure eyes and mouths, arms and feet, teeth but also tongues, especially tongues. (Nous sommes à la langue, et à ses paroxismes). We built our mazes with our bodies, by wallowing and swimming, by not avoiding but submerging our selves in the mud, by grabbing it, spreading it, licking it and swallowing it. By being mud. We are murky, and as clear and pure as ever. We do not believe that there is another way of thinking. The mud as the words have impregnated our ears, it has become porous too, and created so many new labyrinths—while remaining fluid, as fire. We hark through these walls, through these wholes, as so many fertile frogs. And yet we are not wise, far away from that. We are only here for you, to listen to you, and to return you your name, a new name. This is our game, which is not a game any more, just a matter of opening the eyes (and the mouths, and the arms, usw…) as we listen. We just, you could say, ooze. And yet we are hopeful—with a faith as fertile as our most vaporous words. We believe in these words, as we go through them, making them ghosts or showing how phantasmatic they always wear. Our method, we are the worms—and we know how to wait.



Toute l’âme résumée

Quand lente nous l’expirons

Dans plusieurs ronds de fumée

Abolis en autres ronds

Atteste quelque cigare

Brûlant savamment pour peu

Que la cendre se sépare

De son clair baiser de feu

Ainsi le chœur des romances

À la lèvre vole-t-il

Exclus-en si tu commences

Le réel parce que vil

Le sens trop précis rature

Ta vague littérature.

Mallarmé