Work > Literature > Lament of an outcast (EN)

LAMENT OF AN OUTCAST, 2010

Here we are.

It’s one of those nights where tiredness beats me square on my downcast brow, my drifting neck, my weary shoulders, my motionless loins. But it’s already too late to go to sleep and insomnia comes easily. My pinhole camera has nothing left to offer after my night shift and without enough sleep it is hard for me to use my full imagination. So what’s left? Writing? What else? And after that? I have given up two years of my life as a sample, flagship product. So do you like my drug? Now you must queue up to refresh yourself at the store or walk to the bookshop. Essentially, apart from a bit of megalomania, I’m hollow, but big enough to eliminate.

No more alcohol, no alcove, not enough twilight, never any dawn. At anytime, I take the only opportunity available to me. Nervously, I search for the black cord, all tangled up. I strip it apart, following the ball of wires, finally arriving at the TRS connector to stick into the Mac. Click, connect. Once it is plugged in, I feel like a part of something and that reassures me and ressembles me. Because the thing in question asks for no answers from people.
As I return from my matrix, I consult the definitive mood of my playlist, hesitating between the avant garde and the basics. The showcase or the dust? You wonder which, but at this point in my tale is hanging on by the tiniest pin, only a half-truth could satisfy me. Even if it was well-advertised and corrupted by a radio edit.

Their art does not stick to the timetable from now until dawn, but only horror can be heard. I cut myself off from the world of silence, from the creaking chair, from the sound that leaks through the double glazing. Through mildly autistic ears, I become detached, invisible, invincible and irascible. I press play, complain to my neighbours. I regret the inside of a car or a pregnant woman whose water is breaking. I exhale all of the air trapped inside my thorax in one go to make way for the brick-like tune, the vicious eurythmics and the deathly bass. I’m vibrating, I would even go so far as to say that I’m alive!

I am plunged into a full-fledged universe, both deadlocked and in motion. I’m out of my depth as I try to retrieve my pulse, my time, my voice, my complexion and a few memories of you. End of the line, blank. The first cracklings of the next one begin. I did well to leave these vinyls. 
Beaches file past, the covers heralding colours, eras and flashbacks. Oh how nice it is here in the shade, to be finally free, in my time machine. One of the best factories where my nape was born and the happiness that invaded every part of my being. Drunk with unhappiness at ninety beats, I see hope in the darkness, in my ivory tower with a sufficient number of titles, artists, to replay the match, to satisfy history. But, when all is said and done, the more I listen to the mirror, the more I understand what I have become. A piece of music measuring one metre eighty with a folder for a smile in front, a track-listing as my CV and sales figures as my life expectancy. A product of the time, a label tattooed onto the skin in pursuit of a place in the sun beneath some cellophane arranged for the beam of a lifetime. I think about turning down the volume.
I got lost late in life without finding anything, then my alarm clock rings and I come back down to earth.

My ears readjust to the hum of urban traffic, to the sweeps of breaking news, to the spluttering noises coming from my neighbour’s shower and to the refus of cod-liver oil from the youngest child lodged behind the party wall. Here I am again back in the very heart of my life in the land of the unknown.

I’m leaving this parallel universe where all comes to an end when I want it to and where each thing is in its place like in my memories. It’s moments like these- the only ones- where I like museums, not because they resemble me, but because for a fragment of a second they resemble all of the pieces of me that could no longer coexist. And then, I get nostalgic for the future, so living through the past appeals very little to me. I leave this pleasure to others and I will take another dose in one of those moments when I lack of nothing, when I forget everything.
This time I mute the sound. She passes before me, smiles as she wishes me good morning, embraces me, wraps herself around me, lodges herself in the nape of my neck, then disappears into the bathroom without saying or asking anything. Without a sound, nothing. Every morning her single stays with me, and oh, how I love her music…    

Text : Sylvain Souklaye - Translation : Sophie Inge