Manifeste de la poésie vécue (1994) - Alain Jouffroy

Un manifeste surgit d'un manque de parole et d'écoute. Il révèle ce qu'Amiel appelait une conscience consciente d'elle-même, porte l'attention sur ce dont on ne parle pas, ou trop peu, s'oppose en toutes lettres à une invivable domination. Écrivant un manifeste, on projette une idée, qu'on juge nécessaire, sur ce mur où il est plus que jamais "défendu d'afficher" ce dont on se sait le plus intimement convaincu, ce mur qui sépare chacun de tous au lieu d'être abattu par tous.
(p. 21)


Le premier point d'ancrage qui a disparu, c'est la croyance au pouvoir de la poésie dans la vie.
(p. 23)


Ce qui résiste le plus, c'est notre extraordinaire tendance à l'aveuglement. Nos paupières sont distraction de nos pupilles et paupières. Et cela, dans un temps où, dans les mégapoles, la lumières est envahie par ce gris plombé qui pétrifie l'espace et le temps tous les dimanches après-midi, un temps où les fenêtres allumées en pleine nuit se font partout de plus en plus rares.
(p. 30)


Peindre non la chose, mais l'effet qu'elle produit.
(p. 33)


L'utopie qui m'anime consiste à restituer une part plus grande de la réalité du monde, des univers visibles et invisibles qui le composent, à l'intérieur même de chaque geste, de chaque action-création poétique.
(p. 47)


Je considère que les pages des livres sont les lieux de rencontres réelles avec des individus qui, sans leur lecture, vivraient leur propre pensée comme une insupportable séparation.
(p. 48)


Un poète n'a pas une obligation d'écriture. Il n'a qu'une obligation de regard.


Le regard est cette interrogation inlassable, qui met en contact l'appréhension que nous avons du monde avec le monde lui-même.

Une révolution permanente du regard est la condition de la réalisation dans la vie.
(p. 55)

Comment voyager avec un saumon (1992) - Umberto Eco

A part ça, vous avez la lavasse. Généralement composé de chicorée pourrie, d'ossements de cadavres et de quelques grains de café récupérés parmi les déchets d'un hôpital pour syphilitiques, il est reconnaissable à son incomparable arôme de pieds marinés dans de l'eau de vaisselle.
(p. 53)



En somme, et pour conclure, la règle d'or du présentateur de catalogue d'art est de décrire l'oeuvre de manière que la description s'applique non seulement à d'autres tableaux mais aussi à l'expérience que l'on a en regardant la vitrine d'un boulanger. Si le PDC écrit "Dans les tableaux de Delacroûte, la perception des formes n'est jamais adéquation inerte à la donnée de la sensation. Delacroûte nous dit qu'il n'est point de perception qui ne soit interprétation et travail, et que le passage du senti au perçu est activité, praxis, être-dans-le-monde comme construction d'Abschattungen découpées intentionnellement dans la chair même de la chose-en-soi", le lecteur reconnaît la vérité de Delacroûte car elle correspond aux mécanismes grâce auxquels il distingue, chez le boulanger, un pain de campagne d'un bâtard.
(p. 116)



Au début, les médias nous ont persuadés que l'imaginaire était réel, maintenant ils nous convainquent que le réel est imaginaire, et plus les écrans télé nous donnent à voir de la réalité, plus le quotidien devient cinématographique. Jusqu'à ce que nous en arrivions à penser - ainsi que le voulaient certains philosophes - que nous sommes seuls au monde, et que tout le reste est le film que Dieu ou un malin génie nous projette devant les yeux.
(p. 139)



Une telle montre permettrait de ne plus prendre en compte le monde extérieur. Il suffirait de la consulter toute notre vie durant, et le temps raconté par elle se transformerait, passant d'une image immobile de l'éternité à une éternité en acte, où le temps ne serait qu'une fabuleuse hallucination produite par ce miroir magique.
(p. 164)



En outre, certains citrons siciliens présentent un camaïeu chromatique strictement identique à celui des canaris portugais, on a la preuve que la méthode chromatico-naturaliste pour la nomenclature des couleurs ne présente aucune garantie scientifique.
(p. 255)

Espèces d'espaces (1974) - Georges Perec

                                                                         Je vais
   à la ligne. Je renvoie à une note en bas de page (1).
                                                    Je change de feuille.
_________________
1. J'aime beaucoup les renvois en bas de page, même
si je n'ai rien de particulier à y préciser.

(p. 23)



Les toits de Paris, couchés sur le dos, leurs petites pattes en l'air.
Raymond Queneau
(p. 119)



De temps en temps, pourtant, on devrait se demander où on (en) est : faire le point : pas seulement sur ses états d'âme, sa petite santé, ses ambitions, ses croyances et ses raisons d'être, mais sur sa seule position topographique, et non pas tellement par rapport aux axes cités plus haut, mais plutôt par rapport à un lieu ou à un être auquel on pense, ou auquel on se mettra à penser. Par exemple, lorsqu'on monte, aux Invalides, dans le car qui va vous conduire à Orly, se représenter la personne que l'on va attendre en train de passer à la verticale de Grenoble, essayer, tandis que le car se fraye un chemin difficile au milieu des embouteillages de l'avenue du Maine, de se figurer sa lente avancée sur une carte de France, la traversée de l'Ain, de la Saône-et-Loire, de la Nièvre et du Loiret... Ou bien, d'une manière plus systématique, s'interroger, en un moment précis de la journée, sur les positions qu'occupent, les uns par rapport aux autres et par rapport à vous, quelques-uns de vos amis : recenser les différences de niveaux (ceux qui, comme vous, vivent au premier étage, ceux qui vivent au cinquième, au onzième, etc.), les orientations, imaginer leur déplacement dans l'espace.
(pp. 164-165)



Écrire : essayer méticuleusement de retenir quelque chose, de faire survivre quelque chose : arracher quelques bribes précises au vide qui se creuse, laisser, quelque part, un sillon, une trace, une marque ou quelques signes.
(p. 180)

Art Conteptuel, une entologie (2008) - Gauthier Herrmann, Fabrice Raymond, Fabien Vallos

"Le concept art, dit-il, est avant tout un art dont les concepts sont le matériau, de même que le son, par exemple, est le matériau de la musique. Dans la mesure où les concepts sont étroitement liés au langage, le concept art est une forme d'art dont le matériau est le langage." (Henry Flint)

The Dumb Day - Brad Pike

Some days I wake up, and I am dumb. Who wrote Margot at the Wedding? What’s the word for an erection lasting longer than four hours? What’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s name? I used to know this information, but it’s floated away, drifted into the ether to join all my other lost knowledge like the name of Jabba the Hutt’s father, the color of polar bear skin, and how electricity works (if the government revealed that electricity is actually magic, I would absolutely believe them). And it’s happened so fast, happened overnight. My God, I’ve spontaneously developed late-stage Alzheimer’s. One day, I am unspeakably impossibly brilliant, and the next, my brain’s delicate mechanisms are clogged with glue and gak. It’s as if while I was sleeping, my brain rotted like meat left in the sun for too long, as if someone started it in safe mode, as if a small child has been monkeying around with the buttons and levers. Lost in a mental fog, I stare at a Comcast pamphlet for five minutes. Eye amoebas drift across my vision. Somewhere nearby, William Shatner’s voice issues from a television. I think, ‘I am so dumb right now, I can hardly summon the mental energy to keep breathing.’

I find myself standing in the dark bathroom, staring into the mirror. What if I’ve always been this way, and I just never noticed before? What if this is actually a Smart Day, and I’ve suddenly become cognizant of my lack of cognition? Maybe this is the first day of the rest of my dumb life as a dumb man, thinking dumb thoughts and writing dumb things, only dumb things. ‘Everyone’s always known you were a dummy,’ I think to myself. ‘They were just too nice to tell you.’ But I can’t be dumb; I used the word cognizant and sometimes I use semicolons. ‘Dumb people use semicolons all the time,’ I think. ‘And using “pertinacious” in a sentence only means you know a word.’ But what if I use an em dash? — ‘No.’

A friend calls me, and I’m intensely aware of how dumb I sound. It’s as if I have nothing to say for myself, like I don’t have a thought in my head. I say “yeah” a lot. Then I find myself saying “it’s fine” over and over like someone on the verge of a mental break. I say “like, you know…” and then I keep starting every sentence with the word “apparently.” ‘Say something interesting! Something witty!’ I think to myself. I say, “I feel like I’m getting dumber and less interesting the older I get.” He says, “You are. Ha! Just kidding.” There’s a long pause. I can’t think of anything else to say, and then I drop a fork on the floor. “What was that,” he asks. “I dropped a fork,” I say. “Oh.” Another long pause. “Well, I’ve gotta go,” he says.

The Dumb Day seems to stretch on and on. I forget where I set down my phone, and when I find it, I can’t remember who I wanted to call. My roommate asks me why the oven is on, and I realize I forgot to turn it off after baking mozzarella marinara chicken patties. I keep knocking over cups and boxes. I forget where I left my keys, then forget why I wanted to go out in the first place. It’s got to be brain chemistry, some random combination of foods, beverages, sleep cycles, UV light exposure, and humidity that has crippled cognitive function. Maybe if I drink coffee, chew gum, and complete a crossword, I might reverse the descent into dumbness, but I doubt it.

Disillusioned, I turn on Horizon, a science documentary series on the BBC, and suddenly, I’m not just dumb, I’m a Neanderthal, a primate when compared to a scientist constructing mathematical theories about gravitons and dark matter, a physicist working on a particle accelerator, or a neurologist who can induce creativity via radio waves. Their eyes glitter with secret knowledge held only by the supergenius, the unfathomably colossal intellect. I watch a physicist present mind blowing ideas about the make-up of the quantum world using fruit — this pear is a proton, this grape is a top quark, this squash is a graviton — and I think, ‘I am so dumb, the only way he can make me understand these concepts is via a fruit analogy.’

This happens to me about once every couple weeks — The Dumb Day, the day when my self-esteem drops to its lowest, when I realize I can’t think of anything to say to justify my existence on this planet, and I must resign myself to a life spent in a career like “cashier” or “data entry.” At least, I think it’s once every couple weeks. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a day or my whole life because my memories of the Dumb Days are so vivid, they overshadow all the days I wasn’t dumb. Oh, the horror of having a perfect eidetic memory, but only for all the times I said or did something monumentally stupid.


http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/the-dumb-day/

I am a verb - Oliver Miller

I started running yesterday, and I don’t mean started running as in I’m taking up jogging as a regular physical activity. No, I mean at one point yesterday, I wasn’t running, and then I started running, and then I stopped again. I hadn’t run in years. I was trying to catch a bus. I could see that I was missing it from blocks and blocks away. Heyf-ckthat’smybus, I thought, and then I was off and running like Superman, except that it’s the Flash who actually does all the running, but whatever.

As I said, I hadn’t run in years. Two things immediately happened. My boxer shorts wedged themselves insanely far up my ass, and I was instantly — and I mean instantly – covered in a layer of sweat and grime. The other thing that happened is that my legs, lungs, and nerve-endings all started sending desperate messages to my brain. “…Unh? What’s this?” If they could have taken on a physical form separate from my body, they would have taken the form of a frantic bystander, waving his arms at me from the side of the road. “Hey, could you stop running?” they suggested. “Because we might die if you don’t.”

They had a point. Screw exercise. Screw exercise up the ass or something. I don’t need exercise; I mean, okay, I am going to die, sure, but in the meantime, I don’t want muscles. I’ve made it to my mid-thirties and have remained skinny, and if I was a girl, I’d be into skinny neurotic guys, so I’d date me, at least. Apart from the occasional violent revenge fantasy — prompted by, say, a driver cutting me off or someone spelling “theater” as “theatre,” or someone using the word “painterly” in a sentence — apart from the occasional revenge fantasy, as I say, I have no desire to get muscles. And gyms these days all have mirrors in them; have you noticed this? You know in the novel 1984, how they have Room 101? (“…You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room 101.”) Well, my personal Room 101 is me stuck exercising in front of a mirror; I don’t get how anyone can do that.

But, running! Running is good as an occasional activity, if not as a lifestyle. You can’t think while you’re running, and that’s good. It’s very Zen; if I can misuse the word “Zen,” which I can. …Run, run, run. Verb, verb, verb. As I ran, I was a verb. I was a verb who still ended up missing his bus, but that was okay. Running has its own momentum, and I enjoyed seeing the world becoming sped up around me. It’s so primal, running is. “…Speed is the last excitement left, the one thing we haven’t used up, still naked in its potential, the mysterious black gift that thrills the millions.” So says Don DeLillo in his novel End Zone, and he’s got a point there. And apart from the physical aches, you can’t really be unhappy when you’re running; there’s no time for it or something. You can’t be unhappy when you’re a verb.

_____

In college, I minored in Classics, which meant that I took Latin. Minoring in Classics was part of my plan to Never Get a F-cking Job, which I went pretty far with. I minored in Classics and Creative Writing and majored in English Literature. Honestly, it wasn’t really that I didn’t want a job. Until I was eighteen and went to college, I never socialized with real people at all. All I did was read old books, which ended up preparing me for a life in Victorian England, where people actually studied things like Classics. In Victorian English job interviews, if you said on your resume that you studied the Classics, they didn’t say “…What?” or, “Okay, but how does that prepare you for a career here at Wendy’s?” No, you said I studied the Classics, they gave you a secret handshake of some sort, and then they said, “Welcome to the club, old boy! Pip-pip and all of that!” And then they gave you a job and you had it until you died of consumption at age forty.

In college, I had an excellent Classics professor, who ignored the fact that I could only say three things in Latin — “Arms and the man I sing,” “Go crucify yourself,” and “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” all of which are useless in conversation.

My professor was kind of a genius, and I don’t know if you know how Latin works, but I’ll do this quickly to avoid sending you into a catatonic coma. One day, in class, she brightly announced that she had learned that all language started as a verb. “All language started as a verb!” she said, coming into the room, no introduction. She was always very bright and chipper like that.

She was a tiny woman; a tiny bird-like woman with big clothes; baggy corduroys and a huge purse that looked like a duffel bag on her. But she was always very chipper! I loved her secretly. She was the reason that I was bad at Latin. I was bad at Latin because she never should have been a teacher. She couldn’t resist anything if you asked it more than two times. During a test you’d say: “Hey Professor Hawk, what’s the genitive plural of puella again?” “…I can’t tell you that.” “C’m-ooon, Professor Hawk.” “…I really can’t.” “Just the one time, Ms. Hawk, please? The genitive plural of puella?” (long sigh) “…It’s puellarum, Oliver.” And thus I never really had to learn any Latin. Secretly I was in love with her.

But anyway, she entered the classroom one day and announced that she had figured out that all language started as a verb. “It really did!” And it’s true; she was right. …It was a brilliant idea; she should have written a book about it, but she was too shy. She should have written a book about it and become famous and appeared on talk shows. Instead, there she was, drinking burnt coffee from the teachers’ lounge and explaining it to us. A mute inglorious Milton, she was. …She told us how it worked, and here’s the part where I have to explain Latin. Latin has these things called “conjugations,” which are for verbs. English has these too. But Latin can pack a lot more information into a single word. Like for example, in English, you have to say “I have loved her.” In Latin, that’s just one word: amavi.

So our professor came in all excited, and started talking about these things called Perfect Passive Participles. Let’s explain this quickly before you fall asleep. So, the word amo means “I love.” And the word “amatus” is a Perfect Passive Participle; a different tense of that word; translated, it means “the person having been loved.”

“The person having been loved,” or, in other words, “the lover.” …Do you get it? It’s a verb that works as a noun. So, in Latin and in other ancient languages, you can say complete sentences only using verbs! “The lover loves to love.” That’s a whole sentence of only verbs. “Amatus amat amare.” It doesn’t have to be the same word, either. You can say anything with just verbs. “The refugee feared being captured by the police.” That’s still just verbs: “The-person-having-been-fleeing feared being-caught by-the-ones-having-been-policing.” …Get it?

Now, my professor said; and she always said this in a very sing-song-y voice: “No-owwwww.”
Now, this means that all language started as a verb, she said. You don’t need nouns or anything else. So everything started out as a verb, and then verbs evolved into nouns. When people first spoke to each other, they spoke only in terms of action; past action, present frozen actions, future actions.
…The whole world started out as a verb.

“No-oowww,” my professor said, “let’s start today’s lesson.”

_____

The world as a verb! …Can you see it? I could see flashes of it — momentary flashes — as my tiny professor talked. Flashes through the glass darkly that we all look through. Momentary fiery shadows on the walls of Plato’s cavern.

The world as a verb! Everything around us is alive; atoms crashing, billiard balls spinning, people f-cking, planes flying.

Everything begins as action and then solidifies into non-action. Butterflies start as butterflies, flapping around. Then they die and become crystallized, become fossilized: a butterfly becomes a rock. A butterfly becomes a piece of a mountain, static. You see a pretty girl in a bar, she’s tilting her head just right; you randomly fall in love. You go over and talk to her; the two of you meet. You talk, flirt, date, f-ck, move in together. Now your action has become a thing. You are now a lover.

Everything is a stalactite and a stalagmite. Dripping water, action and flow — building up and freezing over time, becoming a record of itself; jagged teeth in a darkened cave.

_____

…I stopped running. I had missed my bus. I wiped disgusting sweat from my forehead. I commenced retroactively panting. I had started running, I had become a runner, and now I was just a person again. …I stared at the space where the bus had formerly been. I had been so close!

…Having missed my bus, I decided to go back home. I could write an article about this, I decided. I could type it up in frozen words; words, the fossil record of life, of the things that we do and say. I got back home. I pulled out my chair. I started to write.


http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/i-am-a-verb/

Je ne sais pas parler (2010) - Franz Bartelt

"Il n'existe pas de matière plus malléable que la mémoire, et plus docile devant nos espérances. On vit moins lourdement la pire misère si on peut se targuer d'avoir vécu la plus riche opulence.
Les bonheurs du mensonge qu'on se doit pour continuer d'être compensent amplement les vérités tristes qu'on subit jour après jour et qui nous interdisent peu à peu d'exister"
(p. 170)


"Quand on donne de la réalité à l'écriture, elle la transforme en littérature. C'est ce que j'ai fait. A tort. Sans savoir que j'imitais ma mère, sur le principe du moins. Sa littérature vaut la mienne. Nous ne savons plus ni l'un ni l'autre à quel moment nous avons commencé à mentir."
(p. 172)