Loneliness

An excerpt from Deleuze on Godard.

I can tell you how I think of Godard. He’s a man who works very hard, and it follows that he is completely alone. But this loneliness is not the common sort: it’s filled by a huge assortment of things. Not dreams, fantasies or projects, but actions, things and even people. It is a many-faceted, creative loneliness. It’s what lies behind Godard’s ability to operate powerfully on his own, but also as part of a team. He can deal on equal terms with anyone, with big organizations or the powers that be, with a cleaning lady, a manual worker or the insane. In the television programmes, Godard’s questions are always straight. They trouble us, the viewers, but not the people they are addressed to. He speaks to the insane in a way which is not that of a psychiatrist or that of a fellow madman or someone pretending to be one. He speaks with workers without being a a boss or another worker or an intellectual or a film director with actors. This is not because he can switch his manner to suit the occasion, because he is a skillful operator, but because his loneliness somehow opens him up to anyone and everything. In a way, it’s always a question of stammering.

We fool ourselves too often. We love ourselves too much. We have too much dreams but too little actions. Why? Quote some words from the movie, The Prestige. “Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it, because, of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.”