Julie Delphy in Before Sunrise’s pivotal conversation about love, language, and understanding declared that, “the answer must lie in the attempt.” My life has never been the same.
I think often about why I can't simply exchange social currency and call a good time a good time. Why does it feel like I'm always looking for more? More understanding, more unity, more alignment? Is it an attempt to fill some eternal lack in me? Some impossible boredom? Or is it just autism/a sociology degree? Or have I just inherited too much femme fatale control freak from my mother?
That's all definitely a part of it. But when it all comes together, I think to me, it looks a bit more like faith.
When I was 18 I described the driving force of my life as a counsel of nudges pressing on the small of my back. Today I’d phrase it more like- The spine knows.
Not with intention. Intention is always just a familiar story, a myth. Intention is the story that allows you to do something more than what really makes you do something. What actually makes you do something is desire, or if you really want to be charitable- meaning.
It really just is the shape of a moment.
The tryer takes the shape of the moment, in a matrix of gravities. The trier finds herself oriented, having a face, and facing. The trier knows time moves forward, so she gladly accompanies it. She loves her desire. She knows no shame. She simply wants to see it through.
And maybe that's a habit she picked up because nothing else was working. Or maybe that's just how she was born. But once all you can see in things becomes the attempt of it all, there's no stopping the machine. It's all mechanics to and beyond the grave.
And fuck yeah, I'll call that faith.
Every bad thing in the world was done by some man who thought he was delivering God’s will. Never his own.
What I have to offer is my own dance, and little else. It's the only way I can describe the song.
That’s crazy 🫀