objet petit a

It’s a hot summer day in Montreal. I am wearing an ill-fitted suit from Winners and a cheap dress shirt that sticks to my melting skin.

Hot. Everything around me is hot.

The air, the buildings, the pavement under my very feet as I scale up to the Plateau from the pit of corporate centre-ville.

People continue to valse past me as if on springs, the slope adding a gentle hop to their every step. The most beautiful girls, men, women and exceptionally well-trimmed little dogs trickle down the mountain.

One after another, after another, à la prochaine!

I glance, I stare, I smile, I am dizzy.

Your gaze is something you can never really put away.

You may put away your wallet, your car-keys and your phone. But you wield your gaze as long as you are alive, living and seeing in the world.

In so many ways, it is you.

Your focus. Your attention. Your look.

I curse my lack of control as I once again find myself mindlessly staring-down a very cute girl.

Why? I don’t want this. I feel powerless at the restlessness of my mind. Like a squirrel out in a forest, I twitch and turn towards a fallen branch or anything that takes the shape of a nut.

A hungry, restless lust.

At the mercy of a primal instinct, I feel ill. I want to go home, lock the door and bury my face in a pillow. I try to reason my way out, hoping to find a way to calm this wave of grasping. Of clinging on and reaching for.

But for what? What am I seeking?

Love. Comfort. Validation. Attention. The gaze of another.

Am I aware of that?

No, I am only aware of it’s absence, I can only feel its void.

Seeking in this way can be a deeply consuming and painful process, burning the subject from the inside out. Endlessly chasing something that is always out of reach, always out of touch.

Like every addiction, it is fueled by love, or rather a deep sense of its absence and the frantic attempts to reclaim it.

To posses it, as if love is something that could be possessed.

Bought and sold to the highest bidder.

Snorted, inhaled and gobbled down.

Fucked silly or spanked into submission.

“Love me!” it begs, “for I cannot.”

In grasping we are often blinded to love.

To that which we seek, that which is enteral and is held humbly in the fragile vessels of our human hearts. In the creative potential of every soul.

In this grasping for love, we may lose ourselves and our ability to love.

The shape shifting nature of this grasping makes it the greatest challenge of our lives. As nebulous toxic plumes rise up from the bubbling swamps of unconscious as endless additions of addiction.

Another car? Another lover? Another cigarette?

When will I ever taste enough?

I march on, finally beating the steeper hills of St Laurent. Now I am now on the Plateau. I am on even-ground.

I decide to conduct a little experiment. The amateur scientist that I am.

For the next few blocks, every time I find myself grasping or staring or reaching out, I will utter a “I love you” silently in my head.

Isn’t this more creepy? How could I love a random passer-by? Why would I even want to try?

I observe myself as I continue down the street for another block. I catch sight of a very beautiful woman who seems to have a hurt look on her face. Occupied by her emotions she is trying to put away her gaze.

I pull my gaze away but when she passes by utter “I love you” in my head.

Immediately something interesting happens.

I begin to open up to her complexity. The hardships and struggles that she might be experiencing in her life as well as the thrills and joys that come through simply living. I begin to see her as a full complex human being, an extension of my world. A rich and boundless subjectivity that occupies this world with me, alongside me, a part of me.

I am immediately moved by this discovery, I understand I can never posses her, as her life is only hers to posses, and it is beautiful and rich without ever having anything to do with me. I feel a sense of joy and relief as I am moved to tears by the depth of human experience. I cease to grasp and simply observe.

In allowing the subjectivity in the Other, we begin to lay a path towards love. A love of ourselves, of the world and of humanity.

Seeping in the plurality of experience, we begin to unclench the fist that grasps and begin to receive. We begin to listen to a rich and bountiful world and all the wonders that it can reveals to us.

The depths of discovery is paradoxically linked with your ability to let go. To allow. To accept and to bring into awareness.

Hone into the love, in your loving attention.

A challenge I often repeat on stage, but my focus has often been on attention, however with out love as the vector, this attention can guide you astray in a million one different ways.

Honing your loving attention means taking responsibility for your gaze, your presence and your awareness and pointing it all towards love.

One glance at a time.

Sanya - 29/5/23