Opening text Mobilis in Mobile 2025
Translated version in english
When I was a child, sitting by the sea one morning in June a very long time ago, I could never have imagined that I would be here with you today, facing this sumptuous landscape of vineyards and sea, from which one senses the delicacy of a unique wine, imbued with wind, salt, rocks, flowers, fruits and fragrant herbs, no, I could not have imagined that I would be describing to you this very brief moment that was so formative for me.
So, on that June morning, I got up very early to get to the beach before the others, because I already knew that sometimes you have to be alone to fully appreciate the beauty of things. I was eleven or twelve years old, and my villa was a few metres away from the water, near the ruins of Carthage. I took off my sandals and walked towards the sea. I walked slowly, not wanting to disturb the landscape. I put my feet in the clear, warm water and it was as if I were entering a whole new world, both familiar and foreign.
The sand was still cool, I sat down at the edge of the water and the beach, an old wooden boat was overturned right next to me, bits of dried seaweed were still clinging to its sides. It was called Isabelle, I can still see the letters clumsily painted in white. I looked at everything very slowly, as if for the first time. I was mesmerised. The tiny waves, the reflection of the sun, the ripples in the water in the distance, the horizon blending into the sky, the deserted beach, the giant ants, the plump beetles, the swallows that suddenly joined this scene,; it was a kind of morning celebration, a celebration of the world, I felt complete empathy with everything I saw, but how beautiful, how beautiful, I repeated inside. There were golden drops in the air and at the bottom of the sky, resting on the water, a white ship was slowly heading towards Marseille.
Everything was so calm and so magnificent that I was suddenly overcome by panic. I turned around, but there was no one there to whom I could say: look, it’s so beautiful, it’s crazy, how lucky we are to be part of this whole, of these harmonies. No one faced this sea conductor who led and directed all of nature. Even the very fragile solo coming from the eucalyptus branches swaying slightly, even the almost white caress of the sand, I took them with me, and everything is still intact today.
My sudden realisation that I was alone in the world and forever was beautiful and brutal. I was the only witness to this incredible spectacle. And I knew that this moment would disappear, which is why I panicked. What would become of it? How could I stop it, grasp it, keep it, protect it, make it exist for others, hold on to it and recount it?
I was indeed the only one who could bear witness. But yes, who else but me would be able to describe the emotion of that precise moment, which would disappear in a few seconds?
Of course, there would be many other eyes watching the same scene later on, billions of eyes that had looked at the sea in the same way, and would look at it again a thousand times over, in every country, but at that moment, in that exact place, in that fleeting moment before what seemed to me to represent infinity, I was the only one experiencing it, I understood it and felt it for the first time.
So, I made up my mind.
In a matter of seconds, I made up my mind.
I would forever take on the role of witness, which would allow me to grasp everything I experienced as if it were the first time. Above all, I had to remember this scene, never forget it, and I had to do the same for all the moments I had already experienced and would experience in the future, so that they would not disappear. I was responsible for their lives, I didn’t want them to die, it was in my power to protect them. I was young and naive to believe that we could remember every moment. And yet, it was from that June morning, when summer was just beginning, that I began to train my memory.
In fast motion, every day, I mindlessly scrolled through as many scenes and images as I could remember, the ones that had stayed with me. The process first welcomed this immense, untouched sea, without beginning nor end, like a gigantic screen that could receive everything, and I placed on it the faces, the bodies, the books, the things, the flowers, the plants, the animals, the feelings, the voices, the eyes, the words, the smiles, both the days of love, of pure joy, of happiness, of hope, and the nights of distress or ancient fears, everything could be inscribed on the sea, it was simple, because there was space, a dizzying, unlimited space. And each time I thought that the sea was my ally, that it was waiting for me to offer it my memory. It had become my memory. And through this exercise, I told myself that I would never be alone again, that a secret movement towards others would always guide me.
This decision triggered something in me that resembled happiness, a licence to live more freely that I had given myself. It was like an epiphany, a rebirth. So, starting with that first image of the sea, I got into the habit of bringing back every day (and I still do this today) fragments of moments from the past, very brief, fleeting images that I wanted to keep. In this way, I created a kind of diary that I both written and read, always at a fast pace. It was also, I believe, the beginning of writing, a way of reviving and strengthening my memory. Even though I didn’t yet know that I was going to write, I was already using the same mechanism, which I had intuitively discovered that morning. It was the beginning of a passion for reading and writing that has never left me, welcoming the words of others with joy and trying to invent new ones in my own way. This initial revelation taught me, in a way, to exercise my memory to make it creative and inventive. I dream of books that take me far away, to unknown lands where I will always recognise myself, exhilarated by this feeling.
But if the sea has been fundamental to me, if it has taught me patience, the power of contemplation and observation, it represents above all our collective memory. It is Time with a capital T. The past, the present, the future, all three intertwined, tightly bound, forever inscribed in the nuances of a single colour.
And when we cultivate intimacy with it, simply by gazing at it for a long time for example, it gives us the illusion of knowing ourselves, it has access to our secrets, our silences, our meditations, our torments. That is why so many artists have painted it, why so many poets and authors, both male and female, have found the words to bring it to life. It seems to become one with us, at the deepest level. I am thinking here of a beautiful passage by Albert Camus in Noces à Tipasa. ‘Here, I know that I will never be close enough to the world. I must be naked and dive into the sea, still perfumed with the essences of the earth, wash them in the sea, and tie on my skin the embrace for which the earth and the sea have been longing for so long, lip to lip. Entering the water, there is a shock, the rise of a cold and opaque glue, then the plunge into the buzzing of the ears, the runny nose and the bitter mouth – swimming, arms varnished with water, emerging from the sea to bask in the sun and falling back in a twist of all the muscles; the water running over my body, the tumultuous possession of the waves by my legs and the absence of the horizon.’
We immediately recognise Camus’s inspiration, his great sensuality and his intense love for his homeland.
I am also reminded of Marguerite Duras in Trouville, when, with Yann Andrea, she would gaze out at the sea from the terrace of Les Roches Noires at the sacred hour of sunset, and say to him: you see, Yann, everything is ours, the sea is ours, the sky is ours, everything is ours.
The sea is a philosopher, an accomplice, a witness, always secret, complex, patient, deep, enigmatic. But the sea is also cruel, violent, wild, relentless, angry. Storms, drownings, whirlpools, shipwrecks, floods, tsunamis. Deadly. With the figure of Poseidon wiping out so many lives in a matter of minutes, lives that had placed all their hope in her, she was the starting point for a new life, a chance to leave and start all over again. On the other side of the sea, their freedom loomed. But.
It also contains our oldest collective memory, because we know that at the bottom of the water, rocks and fossils can help us tell the story of the birth and evolution of our planet. The sea bears witness and transmits, tirelessly. In exchange, it asks us to protect it. Conveyor of our dreams, our expectations, our hopes, it also embodies our desire to merge with the world; it is a starting point and a finishing point.
To conclude and make way for the readings, I would like to recall two films that end by the sea, like a new beginning. In La Dolce Vita, when Marcello Mastroianni finds himself on the beach, wearing his legendary white suit, he moves away from his friends and the fishermen who have just caught a huge fish, sits down on the sand, smiles at a young girl, Francesca, who shouts something to him that he cannot hear, the sound of the wind and the waves drowning out her words. He gestures with his hands to say he’s sorry he can’t hear anything and walks towards the sea, but a woman comes to fetch him and takes him back to the others. They leave, slowly exiting the frame. Fellini’s camera lingers on the smile and face of the young girl watching them leave.
And then, a second cult film, Les 400 Coups, when Jean-Pierre Léaud, still a child, as little Antoine Doinel, escapes from a reformatory and runs away on a long journey that will take him to the sea he has dreamed of so much and never seen before. At the end of his journey, he takes two steps into the water, stops, unable to go any further, and turns back towards us, helpless. Truffaut’s camera zooms in on him, the image freezes, and the film ends. It almost seems as if Fellini wanted to reference the ending of Les 400 Coups in La Dolce Vita.
In any case, in both films, it is the sea that brings the story to a end. Concluding with it to usher in something new, something we don’t yet know, another film no doubt, another fiction.
The sea, as the wonderful venue for all fictions.