To you, my dear friend
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Woiler, October 21, 2023
Dearest,
The difference between a crowd and an individual is motion. A crowd stands still, whereas an individual is always on the move, evolving. The paradox is that this crowd is made up of these complex, dynamic elements. Like the view of a peaceful Tuscan landscape composed of an astronomical number of elementary particles in superimposed states.
I don't want to wait for the other to explore, I have nothing more to say, I'm silent. Neither apathy, nor indifference, nor contempt for the other should reach me. I waste my life trying to break through the crowd to find out who's dancing, who's uplifting, who's provoking me. I still prefer hatred to indifference or deference. Both exasperate me, because I feel I have no one in front of me, no one to talk to. In German, object is called "Gegenstand", that which stands before, ob-jectus. The word "person" comes from the Etruscan Latin "persona", the theatre actor's mask. The mask always expresses a single, pure, idealized emotion, it is frozen like the crowd, like a symbol, like the nation that subdues its subjects, from "sub-jectus", submissive. In French, the word "personne" means both a person and nobody.
Submission is a convenient way of drowning in the crowd, of not exposing oneself, of not taking the risk of living, of disappearing. I shouldn't be part of this world, I should be absent, "ab-sentia", present far away, elsewhere. I should learn to silently exhibit what cries out within me. In silence: most of the time, talking is indecent.
My dear friend, tell me how you are, where you are, where you want to live.
With love,