Lola Lafon thus presents this beautiful collection of sentences that touch us and mobilize us.
“This book is a story in progress. That of a yesterday so close and a tomorrow that trembles a little. This present which shakes up, mishandles, how to inhabit it, in what sense to grasp it? How narrow it is , that gap, between yesterday and tomorrow, in which the news looks at us. It reflects the world, but also tiny events in us, memories, questions, concerns. a conquered territory, a piece of land marked with certainties. This book is the story of what passes through us, a story that we would associate with all the singulars.
You link the “big news” to that of our lives crossed by this news.
There is a sort of separation which is completely arbitrary for me. On the one hand there would be the news which is happening outside and which unfolds before us like a spectacle. While obviously it tells us about the world in which we live and in which we have a role to play. This artificial separation seemed interesting to me to question and to show that the current affairs of each of us are made up of passages that we will all share: growing up, moving away from childhood, losing a parent, losing a friend. I told myself that we would have to go back and forth between the news that is around us and that which is specific to us and which obviously never makes the headlines in the press.
You often seem discouraged in front of the world, as if hope has gone.
It’s true that we’re not going through a super encouraging and joyful moment. But the thing is, we’re going to have to make do with it, do something with it. This story starts from a somewhat helpless observation, it’s like having bricks everywhere and asking yourself: what am I going to build with this since I have no choice? I can’t escape from the world. The question is therefore not that of hope but of what we will be able to do.
Can words act?
I still hope that words can provoke an exchange. Obviously, I have undoubtedly transparent opinions, but I tried to move away from this posture of saying ‘that’s it’, ‘that’s not that’, because that then doesn’t provoke any exchange. We see it in life when you are at a dinner party is that everyone gives their opinion. For me, they are monologues. I have hope that words can provoke what I love: conversation. When we put ourselves aside a little, when we place ourselves outside of the desire to give our opinion on everything. It means taking the risk of being disturbed by the opinion of others. Of course, I include myself among the people who are afraid of it and I said to myself: at what point do you let the words of others really get to you instead of arriving with your castle of certainties? When am I ready to let myself be changed?
On a subject like Gaza, dialogue is difficult.
The dialogue should absolutely be there, especially there. It’s the only hope we have. This war is not in France or Belgium. If we can no longer talk to each other here, in our countries, how would it be possible to talk to each other there? We have the responsibility to be able to discuss, to exchange.
Heartbreaking story from Lola Lafon at the start of a night in Anne Frank’s Annex.
With the Trump era, freedom takes precedence over equality and fraternity.
There is only freedom without fraternity. We brandish the freedom of this or that. But there is also the responsibility that we all have to live together, because we will not have the possibility of extricating ourselves from this community in which we were born. It is very disturbing to see the extent to which, even in political struggles, the “we” has disappeared and is replaced by incarnations, by people who embody a struggle. It’s very fragile when it depends on just one person.
Wokism is castigated everywhere without the word being defined?
It’s a bit astonishing to see the extent to which a word is taking hold that barely emerged in the United States and that wasn’t a movement, it was just an adjective to say that we were “awake” to the requests of others, to everyone’s differences, which was rather good news. It’s frightening that there was such a pushback against something that didn’t actually exist, pointing the finger at it as the cause of all evil. This is worrying because it makes it very convenient to put aside demands for equality. A Mark Zuckerberg thus advocates disguised masculinism, undoubtedly a way of getting closer to Trump’s power. But we must realize what will become of women, trans people, racialized people, when we say that we no longer want to deal with discrimination, with powerful men who advocate this kind of ideology. Because, behind these words, there are lives.
These last few months have shown many more crises.
I always hope that this is what we see through social networks and live news. But, if we take a step back, we can also rejoice that, in real life, we can often talk to each other much better. Concretely, there are ideas which are more accepted than before in real life. You won’t necessarily always find yourself in front of a guy like Mark Zuckerberg.
So what is the role of artists?
It’s quite a responsibility when you can say something. I don’t think this fundamentally changes the course of things. It is not artists or athletes who can influence everything. But nevertheless having a voice is something that must be used.
Do you make a virtue of worry?
Maybe because I’m a very worried person myself and that suits me. But it’s true that by looking at the etymology of the word, I saw that it designates someone who is in movement. I told myself that we must walk with this feeling which is an awakening, a way of being on the lookout, of not giving in.
You also write that sometimes you have to take the risk of going out to sea.
I have this impression that, sometimes, we cling to the edges, to everything that seems safe, and then it doesn’t work out. Sometimes you have to risk drifting completely for a while to find yourself again.
You write that getting older means no longer being asked, just responding to your daughter “thank you for calling me” again.
I have observed it with my own mother and with friends’ parents. This moment is a bit strange where the slightest attention you have is greeted with so much gratitude. So we would be there, with this feeling of abandonment when we get older that we will thank a call from our daughter as if we were strangers.
Other people are outside of society, in psychiatry, the unemployed…
There is this classification of people between effective and not effective. It’s something in which we all walk, we run towards it, we want to be recognized, to have a social place, to be effective, but in reality we are in a society with a system which puts you aside as soon as you are a little damaged. I’m not just talking about old age. I remember an unemployed man I met who told me: “I don’t have any friends anymore.”. It’s terrible if what you are is due to your job alone, your social status alone. It’s terrifying. It’s certainly great to be able to do something you love, but how then can retirees and the unemployed still respond to this injunction?
Lola Lafon, “The little communist who never smiled”
You raise the big question of ‘What are we doing here?’ Is writing a commitment?
I’m looking for the answer to this question like everyone else, I do it by writing. It’s a form of commitment even if I don’t phrase it that way. I want to talk about certain things in my columns, to put certain words, certain ideas in what I write at the center of the debate with readers, to say what haunts me, what occupies me. I see the numerous reactions to my texts in Libé. They can be debated. There are certainly also immediate reactions of two-word insults on social networks from people who often have not read me. What we don’t have with books.
Your writing is very beautiful as in this passage: “All of life is a text crossed out and with innumerable repetitions, with disheveled stylistic errors, but no matter, it will have been ours, an incomparable and clumsy work.”
I work on the texts in Libé in the same way, with the same care, that I work on novels. There is no hierarchy. The act of writing is both a necessity for me and also a proposal to try together to find other paths along which we could go so that the world is more bearable.
Lola Lafon, It was never too late, Stock, 227 pp., €19.50
