The city of solitudes
Barely twenty or thirty years ago, loneliness was still lived alone, among staggering hours, wandering among our furniture or in bars, between two drunkenness or drowned in silence. Human collisions occurred more rarely, at the whim of these accidents tinged with appointments, as if souls, like atoms more or less hooked, remained stuck in the winter of possibilities.
Barely half a century ago, loneliness was struggling on the sly behind the good manners and closed vases of private circles. Human affairs could be bloody, tortuous, and convoluted, wars could mix the blood of all, the mechanics of encounters seemed to be set by the slow clock of Providence.
It’s midnight. I don’t sleep, too much coffee, thoughts, projects, worries, expectations, and dreams. I connect, I start software that stretches its antennas in the solar wind of the Internet. Immediately, by WiFi waves, solitudes appear with, that is progress, the distance that separates me from them. I then resemble those solitary walkers who, to pass the time, linger on a bench to observe the constant agitation of the city.
For twenty, thirty years, as if the phenomenon had its source in global warming, individuals have been more willing to clash in these spheres, which initially all remain virtual, real living pieces of literature, from a syntax of shifting rules. They are bubbling, naked, beautiful, ugly, disabled, liars, young, especially young, aging, and yet just as eager. There no longer seems to be any shame in carrying around their own’s solitude, or even displaying it, masked by pretensions or attire, under the best light or camped in the night of frankness. In some areas of the Internet, solitude, nested with all its personality, no longer carries anything, will appear, for the devotees, outrageous, overworked, good to burn like an American flag under the feet of hardened people.
What is good nowadays, when you remain honest, when you accept to put your image in this mirror that it is others who scroll almost too fast, when you listen, when you play the game, when you get used to living alone, when you no longer know what to say and end up talking to everyone, when you lose the meaning of the sentence, when you quickly find yourself surrounded, desired, abandoned, you end up desensitizing yourself, and very often finding a fragile quietude. Men of my sensitivity will know what this is all about.
A lot of assholes, perverts haunt these places. Paradoxically many beautiful people, honest men, but also natural modesty, and authentic desires. We end up finding Facebook so boring... too much lying, too much like the supposed real life. We end up also lying outside this virtual world yet made of real collisions which, by this alchemy remaining infinitely mysterious, end up giving birth to love, camaraderie, and kindness.
But be careful! This world can be very hard, especially for those who get lost in it, without me being able to define here what damnation it is. I meet old people who are alienated by what they have not experienced, I also meet all these young people who tell me, without telling me that life will happen without me. I come into contact with the male universe, the one that has no complexes, that can ask you for the size of your sex, draws all the blood from your soul, wants pleasure, but also that is thirsty to merge, to die in the arms of a greater force than itself. Yes, men of my sensitivity will understand what I’m saying.
The human being is an adventure, and it surprises me that we lie so much about this truth that inhabits us all.
I remain a fisherman of souls and, in the absence of a companion who would have promised me the future, I walk through a forest of sincere friendships. There is so much to say here, material for literature. And it’s one o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile, the city of men plays the same story thousand times over.
