Laurent bouleversé

Last Friday marked the first anniversary of this page, which opened with this portrait and the phrase, under development. How little that description could be faulted today. Over the past week, however, an unease has hovered here, while the occasion telescoped, foreshortened the year in some implicit demand for assessment, which the posting of the year's last day openly protested. Only by passing through that gate has one been able to turn, and dismiss it for being as irrelevant as one would wish it to be. With its false auspiciousness behind, it was easy and natural to feel the internal process return, exactly as before. There was Laurent.

But not until quite late this morning could one have said what this process has been. Ostentatious terms don't catch in one's throat only because we're raised to renounce them; they choke because they are large. This process is a creative act, the very thing one would never allow to be said for such obvious, albeit fundamentally necessary play. It is sometimes almost hammeringly lonely. And it is never more lonely than when one stops to appraise it. The creative act calls forth the thing within the heart to exist and to be seen, as nobody has said any better lately than John Logan, in his play, Red. It has to be done, and when not subjected to artificial frames, is what its consequence is, demanding.

In this project, never conceiving of it in any particular terms, I seem to have been the last to realise how widely known this is. Late this morning I discovered greetings gathered elsewhere, in a page of my regular reading, all addressed to Laurent, to the effect that it is OK to be doing this. 

But the quite moving and certainly unforgettable thing, is that this assent was showered upon the page by some of the most wonderful figures I know for doing the same thing, to my constant awe and respect. All this time: who knew?




Suddenly, clearly, I saw this one wonderful being called forth from the heart to exist and to be seen, and I felt his fellowship. I have looked upon him since I was his age, and today I felt I knew him. For the help of Mmes Victoria Thorne, P. Gaye Tapp, and Beth Nelson, and of Valéry Lorenzo, Bruce Barone, and the man who shoved me out, Ivan Terestchenko, in giving me this understanding, I can still only borrow to give thanks - but as they teach me, I borrow well. Merci.

Jean-Pierre Léaud

  Antoine Doinel

François Truffaut, director,

  writer, producer

Henri Decae, cinematographer

Les quatre cent coups

  The 400 Blows

Les Films du Carrosse, 1959©

John Logan

Red

op. cit.