Fluidity

This morning, Eric did some shooting around Choranche. He climbed up to the crest of the hill behind my house, where the panoramic view to the east is superb. My donkey Moshé galloped up, to see what Eric was doing, and they were quickly joined by my billy-goat Gavroche. Eric told me he got some fine shots of the animals and the landscape. Then he shot a short sequence, in front of the house, of me talking about Gamone. After that, Eric went off on his own in his automobile to shoot images further up the road, beyond the village of Choranche, in the Gorges of the Bourne. Half an hour later, when he returned to the house, Eric informed me that he had just escaped a calamity by a hair’s breadth. When parking his automobile on the edge of the mountainous road, he hadn’t put the brake on firmly enough. All of a sudden, he saw his automobile sliding slowly backwards. Eric tried vainly to halt the vehicle with his bare hands, but it carried on until it bumped into the stone wall on the edge of the road, causing minimal damage to the rear bumper and taillights. Back at my place, Eric patched up the damaged plastic with cardboard and adhesive tape, while reflecting upon what might have happened if there had been a break in the stone wall at the spot where the automobile was sliding backwards.

On the theme of mountain roads, I told Eric about a recent discussion with my son. Seeing me halt on a steep and narrow road because of an approaching vehicle, François said that, if he were at the wheel in this kind of situation, he would normally accelerate, instead of halting, because he considered that two vehicles could best move around each other “in the fluidity of their respective movement”. (This translation into English might not represent faithfully what my son was trying to say.) I remember being shocked by the point of view of François, who seemed to be appealing to some kind of magic beyond the realities of elementary arithmetic, as if the concept of fluidity could, somehow or other, reduce the widths of the two vehicles... almost like the famous Einsteinian diminution of length due to high velocity. Once again, it was a domain in which the distance between my son and me was a question of wavelengths.

With an eye on the future

Eric M Nilsson is a strange fellow in that he often seems to know what’s just about to happen. Once upon a time, he was making a documentary film in the heart of Stockholm, using the services of a newly-hired but not-very-bright Canadian cameraman. An ideal cameraman sets his machine in action just before the action starts, not after it’s finished. So, he needs to be capable—like Nilsson—of predicting future events. As far as the Canadian was concerned, this was not the case, and tension was developing between him and Nilsson. At the end of yet another’s day unsuccessful shooting, the crew went out to a restaurant for dinner, and they eased the tension by consuming a lot of red wine. The cameraman complained that Eric wasn’t giving him explicit orders on what had to be done. “Well here’s an order,” shouted Nilsson, who was both furious and slightly drunk. “Rendezvous tomorrow morning at 4.30 am on the central square of the city.” After a few hours sleep, and nursing a hangover, Nilsson wandered along to the central square, wondering whether his cameraman would be turning up. The Canadian was already there, shivering in the cold. At that time of the year, there was already sufficient light in the sky to contemplate filming, but neither Nilsson nor the cameraman could imagine what on earth they might shoot, since the square was totally deserted. “Point the camera at that door,” ordered Nilsson, indicating the entry into Stockholm’s underground train system, “and start shooting.” The machine whirred for two minutes, but nothing was happening. Later on, Nilsson would admit to himself that, at that moment, he wondered if he had not become a little insane as a consequence of his stressed and frustrated state of mind. Then the door opened, and a little fat middle-aged man emerged. He was wearing a hat and huge coat, and carrying a briefcase. At the top of the stairs, he took out an aerosol can of paint, walked towards a nearby marble wall, and wrote the words SOCIAL DEMOCRATIE. Without realizing at any moment that he was being filmed, he turned around and disappeared back down into the train station. Nilsson and his cameraman were amazed and elated. They had captured this extraordinary spontaneous scene. In the context of his future film (on the theme of the city of Stockholm), Nilsson was already convinced that these amazing images would start the ball rolling, as it were. In ways he only dimly imagined, the spray-painted words would surely become the departure point of Nilsson’s documentary on the city. However, later that day, when the rushes were developed, Nilsson was terribly disappointed to discover that the Canadian cameraman had been so disturbed by the idea of seeing something unexpected happening at the other end of his lens that he simply forgot to focus it. And the images of the little man with the spray can were totally unusable. Nilsson fired the cameraman on the spot. He then exceeded his budget by having to hire a competent cameraman who could predict the future, but the outcome was one of Nilsson’s finest documentaries.

Why? How?

My filmmaker friend Eric M Nilsson contacted me a couple of months ago, asking me to participate in a documentary of a philosophical nature for Swedish television on the sense of the two questions: Why? How? This is the distinction evoked by Richard Dawkins on page 56 of The God Delusion:

It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn’t even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions.

Eric arrived at Gamone yesterday, and we talked about the project during dinner last night. I suggested that he might like to shoot the interview in the fields alongside the splendid monastery of the Grande-Chartreuse, an hour away from my home. I felt that the background image of the great monastery would create a nice harmony. The thirty monks who spend their existence in that glorified prison, allegedly praying night and day for all of us on the outside, are convinced that the why question is valid, and their unique answer is Jesus. As for me, I explained on camera (like Dawkins) that the why question, applied to our human existence, is no more than a nonsensical alignment of words, not a valid question, and that science is obliged to carry on answering how questions exclusively.

Here I am in the snow-covered fields, answering Eric’s questions:

It was a delightful sunny outing. The only thing I regretted was that I hadn’t brought my dog along with us to participate in the discussion. Sophia could have clarified certain issues. After all, “dog” is “god” spelt backwards.

Village life

I was spoiled by living for many years in the heart of Paris, in the Marais neighborhood. Among other things, I was incapable, say, of moving to a small village in rural France, where your neighbors are perpetually looking over your shoulder. One of the greatest things about life in a metropolis is anonymity. On the other hand, I welcomed the idea of settling here in the wilderness of Choranche, where my closest neighbors (Madeleine and Dédé) are out of sight. Sure, if I fell off a ladder and broke my neck, it’s likely that nobody would find me for a week or so, by which time there wouldn't be much left to find. But you only die once, whereas you have to live with prying neighbors for years on end.

This morning, exceptionally, I did some shopping in the nearby village of Pont-en-Royans. A spirit of agitation and excitement had invaded the main street, because everybody was aware that the Big Move would be taking place tomorrow. Big Move? Yes, the local grocer would be moving into slightly more spacious premises some fifty yards up the road. Events of that nature are rare in a village such as Pont-en-Royans. It’s like dismantling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and reassembling it down on the Place de la Concorde. To mark the forthcoming event, I decided to purchase a couple of cans of red beans in the old shop. My casual friend Chantal, too, was doing some last-minute shopping there. In her typical flamboyant style, she threw her arms around me and exclaimed:

“William, I haven’t seen you for ages. Where have you been hiding? Would you believe it: I’ve sold my café in St-Marcellin, and I’m now officially retired. I’m looking for a fifth husband, and I must inform you, William, that I’ve put you on the list of possibilities, with high priority.”

“Great, Chantal, let's call in on the priest,” I muttered, looking for words to express my dubious feelings about marrying this great blonde man-eater. Meanwhile, Chantal turned to the grocer, and asked:

“You know William, I suppose? He's one of our most interesting citizens.”

Before waiting for the grocer's reaction, I intervened by saying no: the grocer probably didn’t know me at all, because I rarely set foot in the village, since (as I said) I don’t particularly like village life. I’m a solitary being, like my dog, my donkey, my goat...

“Of course I know him,” replied the grocer. At that moment I was about to be stunned by a trivial anecdote that demonstrated how you can leave lasting impressions on people without ever realizing it. “Several years ago, William came down from the hills with his midget billy-goat, for the village fair at Pont-en-Royans. He led the goat by a cord, as if it were a dog. And the two of them strolled silently from one end of the street to the other and back. Then they disappeared back up into the hills. I’ll never forget that apparition of William and his goat in the main street of the village, like a couple of Martians.”

As for me, I had totally forgotten that, once upon a time, I used to go out walking (before the tourist traffic got too heavy) with my dog, my donkey and (more rarely) my goat.

As far as village life is concerned, another thing that disturbs me is that you often come upon weird people. You know what I mean: village folk. Strange backwoods individuals who wouldn't normally be at large in the relatively refined atmosphere of a civilized metropolis such as Paris. Like a guy walking a goat along the main street of the village...

Monsieur Hulot

In most of the films he directed, Jacques Tati [1908-1982] played the role of a comic character called Monsieur Hulot. This pipe-smoking eccentric, constantly attired in a gabardine raincoat and hat, was modeled upon a real individual: an architect who rebuilt Saint-Malo after the bombing of Normandy.

Today, the architect’s grandson, 55-year-old Nicolas Hulot, is rapidly becoming one of France’s most-celebrated personalities: not merely the familiar and talented producer of the spectacular Ushuaïa TV series on the wonders of the natural world, but now the leader of a dynamic program aimed at promoting ecological awareness in political spheres.

During my recent visit to Australia, I was surprised to discover that, whereas most people recall Commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau [1910-1997], nobody seems to have heard of Nicolas Hulot, or seen his extraordinary TV work... which nevertheless exists now on DVD. Hulot is Cousteau in overdrive: an exponential power shift. If Cousteau were to be likened to a basic automobile, Hulot is in the Formula 1 category.

Nicolas Hulot, at the head of the 10-year-old Fondation Nicolas-Hulot pour la nature et l’homme, recently published a so-called ecological pact, which he has been proposing to candidates for next year’s French presidential election. Piles of this document are on sale in every bookshop and supermarket in France. The pact includes five engagements:

— Appointment of a deputy prime minister in charge of durable development.

— Imposition of a tax on carbon dioxide emission.

— Reorientation of agricultural policies.

— Organization of participative debates on environmental questions.

— Implementation of educational programs in ecology.

This afternoon, the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal met up with Hulot and expressed her overall acceptance of the measures set out in his pact. Meanwhile, Jacques Chirac had invited Hulot along to the Elysée Palace, earlier in the day, and asked him to be a member of the committee preparing a conference in Paris, on 2-3 February, aimed at setting up a World Environment Organization. There's no doubt about it: Monsieur Hulot, these days, is much in demand.

Besides the ecological pact, another little book, published in 1989, is a must for those who wish to understand the force that has been driving Monsieur Hulot in his fabulous media activities and his ecological crusade. It’s an autobiography whose title, Les chemins de traverse, might be translated as Crossroads. Nicolas relates the tragic story of the suicide of his brother Gonzague in the cellar of the family’s Paris flat. It was 18-year-old Nicolas himself who came upon the decaying body on Christmas Eve 1974, when he was helping his sister prepare the festivities. Gonzague had left a paper stating: Life is not worth living. And, ever since that discovery of his dead brother (which was not revealed to his mother and relatives during the entire Christmas evening, to avoid spoiling the get-together), Nicolas has devoted his existence to proving that Gonzague’s words were terribly wrong.

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

My neighbor Madeleine phoned me this morning to ask what last night’s barking was all about. It’s a fact that my dog Sophia has been excitable over the last week or so, and more so than ever last night. For the last few months, many residents of Choranche and the neighboring mountain villages have been convinced that hungry wolves are roaming through our lovely woods during the night, searching for meat. And meat—as everybody knows—could mean more than innocent lambs (of which a certain number have indeed been devoured in mysterious circumstances since the start of autumn). Meat could mean us! So, in phoning me to make sure that Sophia wasn’t barking last night because she had cornered a wolf in my henhouse, Madeleine was simply being vigilant in an everyday sense, like looking to each side before you cross a road, or peering under your bed of an evening before jumping in, to make sure that nobody’s hiding there.

Back in the 18th century, in the nearby Lozère region of France, in a place called the Gévaudan, a mysterious wild beast terrorized the rural folk for three years. Can we be sure, today, that the beast of the Gévaudan didn’t leave generations of descendants that have been hiding away in lonely mountain caves (like those at Choranche) up until now? With monsters, one never knows. In any case, I’m quite excited about the current atmosphere of mild hysteria due to the alleged presence of wolves at Choranche. When I step outside for a late-night pee in the dark before going to bed, I imagine that a wolf might dash out from behind one of my giant linden trees, and devour me, and maybe Sophia too. The next morning, Madeleine and her husband Dédé would find nothing more at Gamone than a pile of clean bones.

To be perfectly honest, when Sophia started to get excited last night, I went outside to see what was happening, and I clearly heard the mournful barking of a roe deer (called chevreuil in French) on the other side of Gamone Creek. They’re solitary nocturnal animals, and the males bark in a strangely muffled way (like a dog with a blocked nose) to attract females. Madeleine was disappointed. “Are you sure it was a chevreuil? Are you sure it wasn’t the bark of a fox?” What she really meant to ask me was: “Are you sure it wasn’t a wolf?”

The British geneticist J B S Haldane [1892-1964] imagined a fascinating dog story, retold by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion. Apparently experiments have demonstrated that dogs can use their muzzles to distinguish between two similar chemical products: caprylic acid and caproic acid, whose molecules differ by no more than two carbon atoms. In human terms, you might say that a dog distinguishes between these two products in the same style that we humans might distinguish between a pale pink ribbon and a medium pink ribbon. Now, there’s a third product called capric acid, with two more carbon atoms. Haldane suggested, as it were, that a dog might be capable of imagining the smell of this third product, without ever having actually encountered it, just as we could move from a pale pink to a medium pink ribbon, and then imagine a dark pink ribbon. When I go out walking with Sophia, I love to think that I’m in the presence of a high-precision molecular detector.

For ages, Sophia has operated as my high-tech alarm clock, trotting up to my bedroom and nudging me when she knows that it’s just the right time for me to wake up. In fact, the first thing I now do of a morning, when Sophia has eaten her morning meal and returned to the warmth of the kitchen after enjoying her first pee out on the slopes, and I’m making coffee in my splendid new De Longhi machine, is to ask her: “Tell me, did your snout happen to pick up any wolf molecules during the night?” Up until now, thank goodness, Sophia has never replied to that question with a firm yes. On the other hand, I must remain vigilant, because Sophia hasn’t actually said no, either.

Working with wood

I’ve spent much of the weekend building a kitchen cupboard out of 18 mm plywood, to be fixed to the wall above my refrigerator. Yesterday, after assembling the basic rectangular shell, about a meter and a half wide, and 40 cm high, I was annoyed to discover that I had made my measurements too carelessly, and the cupboard was a few millimeters too tall to fit in the space between the top of the refrigerator and the ceiling. So, I had to saw off the top side of the shell, drag out the screws, tear away the glued plywood and clean it all up in such a way that I could assemble a slightly smaller shell. That’s what I like about woodwork. If the structure you’re building is not coming along OK, you can usually break it apart and start again. For me, woodwork allows the same empirical approach that I use in computer programming.

Long ago, back in Paris, I used to know a remarkable fellow named Jean Sendy, who wrote books on scientific themes that might be described as esoteric. For example, Jean was convinced that extraterrestrial visitors had set up a base on the far side of the Moon, which had enabled them to alight on Earth and initiate a gigantic anthropological experiment, using a selected group of human guinea pigs: the Hebrews. When he was not writing on topics such as this, Jean used to earn his living translating English -language films into French, for directors such as Polanski. Well, one of Jean Sendy’s books won a literary prize, earning him a good sum of money, which he immediately invested in a rather unexpected acquisition for a Parisian intellectual. He purchased a huge professional wordwork machine, which he installed in the middle of the empty living room in his big flat on the upper floor of an old building in Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, near the St Eustache church. Using the machine, Jean set to work building the tables and chairs that would furnish his flat. When I met up with Jean (after hearing him talking on the radio about the origins of life), he had just finished building the dining room table, which was a masterpiece in joinery, incorporating several different species and hues of wood.

At that time, I had a young Jewish girlfriend named Nadine Blum, and Jean (whose ancestral origins were Russian and Christian) once spent an entire evening telling us how he had decided to study Hebrew in order to pursue his research into the alleged extraterrestrial background of Judaism. In fact, he was advising Nadine and me to do the same thing. That was around 1974. A few years later, in 1978, I heard (again on the radio) that Jean Sendy had died of cancer. And it wasn’t until a decade later, in December 1988, that I finally discovered the Holy Land and concretized Jean Sendy’s advice about the merits of studying Hebrew.

Since then, whenever I find myself working with wood (which is surely one of my favorite activities), I soon get around to thinking about Jean Sendy, lovely Nadine, the splendid woodwork machine in the middle of a Parisian living room, extraterrestrial Jewish missionaries approaching the Moon in spacecraft like Ezekiel’s celestial chariot, the Hebrew language...

God bashing

In the UK, religion and the religious are being treated pretty roughly these days. A few weeks ago, Elton John was outspoken on this subject, saying: "From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings, and it's not really compassionate." Today, Prime Minister Tony Blair made a thinly disguised criticism of Muslim immigrants, saying: "Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So, conform to it, or don't come here. We don't want the hate mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed." Blair’s explanations included a catchy slogan: "The right to be different, the duty to integrate.” Earlier this year, the Oxford professor Richard Dawkins (author of scientific best sellers such as The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker) made a brilliant attack upon all kinds of religions in The God Delusion.

In Iraq, a suicide bomber sees himself as a martyr who will be rewarded in paradise by being introduced to seventy-two virgins. This sounds like a ridiculous incentive. But is it more absurd than the religious motivations of a George W Bush who was led to invade Iraq because God apparently encouraged him to do so?

In France, the Catholic Church recently criticized medical research using embryonic stem cells, and this criticism was expressed shortly before the Téléthon: France’s gigantic annual call for donations. Most French people were angered by the attitude of the Church, and the president himself stepped into the arena in order to tell the Church politely to shut up.

The French philosopher André Comte-Sponville recently brought out a book whose title could be translated as The Spirit of Atheism, in which he advocates a new kind of “spirituality without God”.

There’s no doubt about it: In the Old World (particularly in the laic republic of France), religion is more and more often an unwelcome visitor. The graffiti is on the wall: God, go home!

Why have I created this blog?

I often find myself saying more or less the same everyday things in e-mails to several friends. Consequently, this blog could be a good way of avoiding such repetition. This doesn't mean that I intend to abandon the idea of sending e-mails to friends. It merely means that certain stuff can be outlined here publicly in my blog, and I can then talk about specific behind-the-scenes things in my personal e-mails. Another down-to-earth reason for this blog is that some of my friends have faulty e-mail systems, which often block my messages because they're judged to be spam. [This is notably the case for Australian customers of Big Pond.] Finally, another good reason for this blog is the possibility of my being able to express freely my feelings in domains that some of my friends judge to be taboo: for example, Aussie politics. So, I'm hoping that this new vector of expression (new for me, that is) will prove to be effective and pleasant to use.