What is depression?
Depression has something to do with the problem of sense. Sense is
the production of desire. Desire is dissipation.
I am not talking about the subject here, but of the singularity as a
living, conscious and sexual organism, as an organism whose existence
is condemned to dissipation.
Depression is the fallout^3 of the megalomania implicit in the con-
struction of sense. The enunciation that confers sense to the world,
and not simply limited to function in its economy or to answer already
established questions – this enunciation is a struggle to raise new ques-
tions that happens on a cliff overlooking the abyss of depression.
The lightness of existence is a scandal: the word is born of words and
suspends all relations, the organism, society, sexuality, love, the others.
Even time is suspended. But how long can such a dance last?
This is a difficult dance, in which you may fall.*****We will not again start the process of creating sense without facing
depression, without paying our bill.
I want to talk to my friends, to Félix’s friends. Every time we had a
chance to be together we would wear our holiday clothing because
being together was always a holiday.
But we also know that there was a whole other story that we kept
hiding away.
This is the story of depression, and Félix chose not to tell it.
This depression, we called it Joséphine.
Joséphine was Félix’s partner from 1986. Félix came to see me with her
in via Marsili, in the spring of that same year. Joséphine was fragile and
unstable, sexy in her spiky heels and black-and-white polka-dot skirt.*****One day, I went to see Félix. He looked more mysterious than usual, he
smiled sadly and told me, pointing at the medicine bottles on his desk:
you see, I prescribed all these medicines for myself just to become
stupid.
Then we went out to see the Tinguely show at the Beaubourg.^4
He sat down on the floor looking at the cogwheels and the whole
cosmic-archaic-mechanic machinery, and kept staring at that empti-
ness for many minutes.10 Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography9780230_221192_03_cha02.pdf 10/3/08 11:32 AM Page 10