THE JOY OF POLITICS Julien Cahu
ON FRIENDSHIP
Julien,
You may be surprised to hear from me.
I’m also surprised to write to you.
For a long time, I thought I had managed to forget you.
Yet today, I read your book...
And suddenly, all this time I spent with you,
All this time I thought was lost,
came back.
No, despite all my efforts
I hadn’t forgotten you...
Do we know each other?
I do know you.
Your name is Guillaume.
That’s true.
You wrote the text about Pericles.
“The” text?
Yes. “The” text.
I really like when you relate that
some of them had to get up at 2am to go to the assembly
Because they lived far away And were going there by foot.
I like to imagine them walking
Yes, but it was not everyday like this
Yes, I know,
they could go ploughing too.
Why do you learn that?
If you wanted to make money, You wouldn’t study that.
Then, why? There must be a reason.
I don’t know.
You don’t know...
No, I don’t know...
Well, I do, I like the past.
You like the past...
Yes, I like the past.
What about the future? Don't you like it?
The future?
I don’t know the future, so I don’t know.
Yes, but how do you see yourself in 20 years?
I can’t see myself in 20 years.
Are you suicidal?
I don’t think so.
Then, how do you see yourself?
Just as a teacher?
Yes, why not.
You don’t think this knowledge could be useful for something else?
I don’t know. What’s the purpose of the past?
THE JOY OF POLITICS
So?
It’s crazy.
It’s just a draft.
But you get the basic idea, right?
Don’t you think that...
it would be great to think politics in a different way?
To get rid of the sadness,
for people to participate in because they want to,
because they are passionate about it.
Like the story of the Athenian farmers.
That’s why I think it’s important to relate that.
Those Athenian farmers getting up at 2am to go to the assembly,
that’s history.
It tells us that something happened,
and can happen again, in a different way.
In a new way.
Past is like another world.
It’s something that happened, that existed,
but won’t exist anymore.
And it means that the world is changing.
That nothing is permanent.
And that there are things to create.
To think the past, it’s like to think the future,
It questions the present.
It bothers it.
I do believe,
I want to believe...
that one day, it will be possible
to take things in hands
to create another way of living together,
in which we would all be responsible, all truly equal.
And we would all work for the common good.
But not for a question of morale and all that, no.
Because it makes us happy.
Don’t you think we feel great when we don’t think about ourselves?
When we are outside of ourselves, outside of private interests?
I (do) think that nobody should fight for themselves.
I think feminists should fight for the undocumented workers,
the undocumented for the casual workers, the casual workers for the workers...
Because this is fair...
And not because we win something with that.
Well, there are a lot of things to work on...
But you’re going to help me, right ?
I don’t know at all how I can help you.
Well, you will take care of the past
And I will take care of the future.
Is it OK for you like this?
Where do you sleep?
I have work to do.
This night, I was feeling so good,
in such an intimacy,
that I was shaking.
You worked until dawn on a translation.
You were never sleeping.
I found you so brilliant.
You intimidated me a bit, too.
I thought it was good.
I thought it was fair to be intimidated by you.
I was basically seeing some generosity.
As if restlessness was your sole wealth
and you wanted to share it with me.
For two years, nearly every day was like the day of our meeting.
We were seeing each other,
we worked together,
we were talking all the time,
we attended conventions, lectures,
assemblies, demonstrations...
Yes, every day looked alike,
and yet there was still something new.
We were like a two-people world
travelling in a bigger world,
a small world in which we never being boring.
So you are Guillaume?
Yes.
Julien told me a lot about you.
He said you would tell me a lot of stuff on the Greek democracy.
If you want to, yes...
Yes, I do...
She was in a bar, with some friends of her,
it was a horrible event, a bachelorette party,
they were all disguised in Minnie Mouse,
With mouse ears... They were drunk...
Saying bad jokes...
And then she fell next to me,
spilling the beer everywhere.
She apologized,
and we started talking.
In fact, she wasn’t dumb.
Her friends are dumb, but she is not.
She is a richie rich.
Her father owns a window factory, double glazing.
And she studies business, some Masters...
in order to work with her father,
but she doesn’t care at all.
In fact she likes poetry.
But she especially likes Mallarmé.
That’s funny, she doesn't look like she likes Mallarmé at all.
In the democracy, there was the assembly.
It was called Ekklesia.
It was composed of all the citizens.
That is to say, 40.000 people.
They met four times a month
and they voted laws, war, peace, etc.
Of course, there was a lot of work left.
You can’t do everything by only meeting four times a month.
So there was the Boule.
It was a council of 500 citizens, selected randomly.
Not elected,
selected randomly.
It meant that everyone could take part in it.
They checked if nothing in your past could prevent you to take part in.
They wrote your name on a little piece of wood or copper,
put into a stone machine quite funny,
and then, if your name was drawn,
you were part of the Boule for a year.
And that could happen twice in your life.
During the Boule, Ekklesia’s sessions were prepared.
They came to the Ekklesia, with legislative proposals
and very advanced discussions.
Apart from the Ekklesia and the Boule,
There were magistrates
600 in total,
Most of them were also selected randomly
and it wasn’t renewable.
There were a few exceptions to the random selection,
namely the strategists.
Strategists, who were commanding the armed forces,
were thus elected.
And it was renewable. There were 10. Pericles has often been strategist.
Strategists decided more or less how to do war,
but they were not deciding whether war must be declared or not.
Ekklesia was the decider.
Since they were the ones who were going to war,
who were going to kill or to be killed,
it was thus a decision not taken lightly.
But that’s not the point here.
The point here is the random selection.
In the Athenian democracy,
most of the charges were random selection.
Then every citizen could, at any time of their life,
assume a charge.
- Every citizen... - Every citizen, yes.
But there were no female citizens...
No. No, there were not female citizens.
And there were slaves.
We are not saying we must act like in the Athenian democracy.
What are you saying, then?
We say there are things to learn,
to think about.
We say things are not fixed forever,
and they can’t change.
That’s not true, it’s pathetic to think like this.
Things are what we do with them.
For example, for you,
democracy is election.
Yeah.
We can conclude, thanks to the Athenians,
that it’s not as obvious as it looks like.
For them, random selection is the real democratic system,
because there was a true equality, not only in the choice of the rulers
but especially
in the possibility to come to power.
And as most of it, it wasn’t renewable,
there were no professional politicians,
it was for everyone.
It was also a daily thing.
Not something happening once every five years.
What about the European elections?
What about that?
It’s not true, it’s not once every five years.
There also are local elections, regional ones,
and European ones.
dd European elections...
Jeanne stopped her business studies.
I was impressed to see how she didn’t hesitate.
She argued with her father, who cut her off completely,
to force her into returning to studies,
but she resisted.
She couldn’t stand it anymore.
Do you remember? She used to say:
Now, you are my school,
you better be good.
But you probably don’t know that sometimes, she was saying:
Guillaume, you know, Julien likes you a lot.
He won’t say it to you, but that’s the truth.
And you like him a lot too, I can see it.
I don’t want it to stop because of me.
Friendship is very important.
That made me laugh.
But I told her I was glad she was here.
And that was true,
I was really happy in this three-people life.
What’s the matter?
He is sleeping.
Is he?
He’s been sleeping for 20 hours.
Is he sick?
I think so.
It was very sudden.
I have never seen him like this before.
What can we do?
I’m going to call my brother. He is a doctor.
We haven’t been talking for a while, but I think he will come.
So?
It’s exhaustion.
Yeah, he works all the time.
He needs to rest.
And to take this.
I can’t say how long it will take for him to heal.
It can be a few weeks,
a few months,
or maybe longer.
Here you are.
Thanks.
- Do you have money? - Yes.
Is it true?
Yes, don’t worry.
You know, you can come back home if you want to.
Dad is ready to forgive you.
I have done nothing to be forgiven for.
Jeanne, you are living a wrong life.
No.
That’s it?
That’s when Jeanne’s strength awakened.
In front of the difficulties, it looked like she found herself,
having discovered all her potential.
She was taking care of you,
she worked,
she never stopped.
When you ran out of the little money you had,
we obviously continued your current work,
texts and translations.
It was amazing to see her progression.
As if she had learnt by instinct, by living with you.
Soon, she didn’t need my help anymore.
Articles were published with your signature, that she entirely wrote.
Gradually, you started recovering,
and she was happy,
As if the nature or the fate acknowledged her efforts
and rewarded her.
As if, after this long parenthesis of several months,
everything could resume like before.
Are you OK?
What’s the matter?
Something happened to Julien...
No.
Well, yes...
but nothing serious.
He doesn’t want me anymore.
Why are you saying that?
He told me that.
He had such harsh words...
Guillaume, I want to ask you something.
I want you to come with me.
I want you to be there when I talk to him.
He knows you, he loves you, He will not dare to be like that in front of you.
So maybe I will be able to talk to him.
Are you coming?
You want to make a scene?
No.
Yes, you want to make a scene.
But it’s useless to make a scene.
No, I just want to talk to you.
In front of Guillaume.
You think it will change something but it won’t change anything.
I’m not ashamed of saying it.
I can’t live with her anymore.
But why?
There is no why.
There are no reasons.
We used to love each other and there were no reasons.
You weren’t complaining there were no reasons.
Now we don’t love each other anymore.
And there are no reasons.
I know I’m feeling stifled.
I can’t think, I can’t work anymore.
I’m not living anymore.
I’m not myself anymore.
But this is not my fault.
I’m not saying this is your fault.
This is nobody’s fault.
This is how it is, that’s it.
You can’t say that.
Why can’t I say that?
Because it’s pathetic.
Things are not like this, and finally it’s over.
Things are what we make with them.
We are going to do something together.
We are going to work, it will work, we are not dumb.
Don't you remember how we lived together?
How we worked?
It happened, right?
It will happen again.
No.
It won’t happen again, Jeanne.
It’s over.
Every day spent with you is a lost day.
That’s it.
I can’t afford that.
I’m not eternal.
I have to think about myself.
You have to think about yourself?
Yes.
You, you have to think about yourself?
Julien.
What?
You can’t do this.
She gave everything for you.
Nobody asked her to do so.
Yes, but she did it.
And she was happy to do it.
She was glad that I was sick.
She was glad to have me there, in bed, doing nothing.
Sometimes, I just woke up and she was there, looking at me.
She might have been even happier if I had been in a coma.
That’s disgusting.
You like her, right?
Take her.
What?
Take her.
I don’t recognize you, Julien.
Maybe you’ve never known me.
You can stay as long as you want.
Thank you.
We have to occupy ourselves, to think about something else.
If you want, you can help me with my work,
and I’ll help you find some translations, publish texts,
under your name this time.
Ok.
We need schedule, discipline, order.
Exercises?
Exercises too, why not.
We need to get tired, to get up early.
Like in the army?
Like in the army.
We spent several months living together.
We were helping each other like brother and sister.
As if we were lost in a big forest,
or shipwrecked on a desert island.
We didn’t want to think about ourselves,
about our feelings.
Always active,
Always talking, moving,
continuously working,
we managed to build a world
in which it was possible to think you had never existed.
A world in which we could, again,
in a different way, be happy.
We loved him anyway, right?
Yes, we did.
It’s like we are scared, no?
No, I don’t know, why?
Yes, we are afraid.
I’m afraid, anyway.
I’m even afraid of saying his name.
It’s not a good thing to be afraid of your own memory.
It’s like we wanted to erase the past
to continue living.
No, we are not erasing anything.
But this is past, we are not there anymore.
Yeah, we are not, but we can think about it, right?
It should help us.
Like thinking about Greeks.
What did you like the most about him?
I don’t know.
Come on, say it.
I think it was the fact of talking to him.
The speed at which we were thinking when we were together.
You know, I grew up with books.
I was kind of alone, I wasn’t talking to anybody...
Books go slowly,
so my thinking was pretty slow.
And when I met Julien,
it was like an acceleration.
I could think and understand things
I would have only thought about after a whole life.
It was like a drug.
It felt like I would never be able to stop it.
You would have done a beautiful couple...
It’s true, right?
I don’t know.
You know,
Before he met you, he told me:
If you had been a girl...
Did he say that?
What about you? What did you say?
Why me? Why not you?
So?
He wasn’t talking anymore.
Yeah.
He couldn’t be a girl...
And you?
What did you like about him?
I know I liked to be with him.
That’s it.
Even when he was sick, I liked that.
Even when he was harsh.
Because he was harsh, sometimes.
You know,
the way I was living before I met you,
I wasn’t unhappy at all.
I was quite happy, I felt good.
But not that much in fact.
I couldn’t care less.
I realized I never really listened to the others,
and that nobody really listened to me.
Talking and living
was mechanic…
But with him
I felt like even the simplest things were fair.
like I really wanted to live that.
There, with him.
Talk,
eat,
fuck,
make the bed, everything.
Like healed without knowing I was sick.
And well, I was a girl...
Guillaume, I don’t want to lose your friendship.
I don’t think it’s only friendship now, Jeanne.
I know.
That scares me too.
I would like to love you.
I mean, love you...
like I loved Julien.
I know it would be good.
For you.
Especially for me.
I know you deserve it.
You deserve to be loved.
But I can’t.
I don’t think I will ever be able to.
But if you want to sleep with me, I’m OK.
I could say yes and think the rest would come.
Is it what you want?
No.
If you had been a girl...
The day after, she was gone.
I tried to find her,
but I couldn’t.
Years went by like this.
All the same.
Without you two.
It was like a dull pain.
I couldn’t talk about it with anybody.
I didn’t know what to do with it,
how to think it.
From time to time, I heard about you.
After tough times, you went to work in an American university.
You were becoming an important teacher.
I was hearing that as if it was about a stranger.
For me, you didn’t exist anymore.
Until today.
Until your book.
I had difficulties to read it.
I didn’t want to like it.
Then, gradually, I found our conversations.
I found your voice.
Your voice from before.
I realized how much I miss
the Julien I had known.
This letter is for him.
If he still exists,
if you see him,
Tell him I miss him.
Guillaume.