cutriver

You know the joke about the religios zealot (I don't know if he's supposed to be a Jehovah's witness or what) who gets caught in a flood and, as the waters are rising and he takes refuge with his family on the roof, his neighbours come past in a row boat and say, 'Jump in, we'll take you to dry land!', and the zealot says, 'No no! God will save us!' Later, a lifeboat comes by, and the lifeguards say, 'Jump in, we'll save you!', but the zealot says, 'No no! God will save us!' Off goes the lifeboat and, later still, as the family is clinging desperately to their chimney, a helicopter flies over, lowers a rope ladder, and the pilot says, 'Climb aboard, we'll take you to safety', and the zealot says, 'No no! God will save us!'
So the zealot and his whole family drown in the flood, and they go up to Heaven, and the zealot says to God, 'I was stranded with my family, why didn't you save us?' And God says, 'I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more do you want?'

I only mention this because it happened to me yesterday. Having spent the morning watching a documentary about veteran French film director Jacques Rivette, the subject of my next book, the reason for my being in Paris in the first place, then having spent too long in the afternoon reading under the bright library lights and growing tired and irritable, having, furthermore, messed up my connection in the metro, then wasted half an hour browsing in a crowded, ill-stocked and ill-organised bookshop, irritable as hell by now, I went to the cinema to watch Robert Duvall's Assassination Tango. And who should I see coming out of the cinema but Jacques Rivette himself. Tiny, white-haired (he's in his seventies), but still with his unmistakeable Cheshire cat grin, Jacques Rivette. And did I talk to him? Did I fuck! As he was with a group of people, I felt self-conscious about approaching him and hung around, pretending to read the flyers in the foyer, wondering whether I'd have the courage to approach him. I needn't have wondered. The moment I hesitated, it was already too late. I hopped around from foot to foot as he chatted with his entourage, then watched him walk up the street and turn the corner and, eventually, I went and sat in the cinema and allowed my self-hatred to boil up around me.

At this point - and I don't want to alarm you here, friends, but here it is - at this point, the thought of suicide assailed me with more force, more cold, implacable logic than it has done for years. Because, I reasoned, it's one thing to be unable to approach beautiful women in the street about whom I know nothing; it's quite another to be unable to approach a film director whose work I know inside out, whose work is the basis of my own work and occupies my thoughts for several hours every day. And, I said to myself, if I'm unable to take advantage of a situation such as this, then why bother to go on living? If the irrefutable proof of the existence of a god drops into your lap, are you just going to ignore it, and, if so, what the fuck are you living for, what more do you want?

This is not the first time that I have been faced with a sign of this nature, a nature that is - I'm sorry - unequivocally divine - and simply looked the other way, ignored it, snubbed it, refused it. Well no longer, my friends. i figure, you only get so many chances, like the zealot on his rooftop, with the waters rising. Today is the day I change my life for good and all. Of course, I've said this before, and failed to carry out my intentions. Because, changing one's life requires a movement that inspires a vertiginous terror. What would it have meant for me to approach Jacques Rivette yesterday? It would have meant unlearning a lifetime's experience. If I am to change the way I live, then I have to learn to act on my instincts, to do what I want, to stop reflecting so much before acting. But, paradoxically (Jesus, there's always a fucking paradox: yeah, fuck you too, Nietzsche), I can only do this through a constant vigilance, by being perpetually aware of what I would have done in this situation and, by working backwards through the possibilities, identifying what, in some distant and never-properly-identified state of my consciousness, I might have wanted to do...

Oh help me, I'm drowning...