(47) The abracadabrante story of Mooon Child

 

Wherever they may be… and they travel a great deal… the half-closed eyes of Pinocchio the Other immediately establish a double belonging. They do not look at the world as a spectacle, and the puppet deprived of its body cannot be entirely absorbed into itself. Its head holds together two worlds: what comes from outside and what takes shape within. In this position, “to hear” indeed becomes more than a simple reception of sounds: it is to let in, and at once to interpret. And it is there that the discreet drama is tied. For if the nose grows when it hears lies, then it becomes the sign of a sensitivity to what does not hold. It no longer betrays the one who speaks; it betrays the one who perceives. It marks the capacity, almost the condemnation, to recognize the false, to understand it, to let it resonate. In other words, this nose does not measure the lie—moral fault as it may be—it measures its own lucidity.
But this lucidity is not triumphant. It embarrasses. It exposes one to a form of shame: not of having lied, but of being caught in a world where lies circulate, and of being affected by them… and more still… of being referred back to an origin that is too faithful. The one that confines within a model already interpreted, laden with innumerable prejudices. To be “like Pinocchio” is to be already understood even before having spoken.

 

 

 

– To believe is to doubt… It keeps running through my mind… and I cannot stop repeating it…
– Tell me… what do you mean by that?
– I mean nothing… I repeat… and it means… It comes and goes…
– “To believe is to doubt”… is that not… a provocation?
– At first glance… certainly, yet, if one lingers on it, the formula does not destroy belief…
– What does it do?
– It puts it to the test, it makes it alive.
For to believe, in the strong sense, is never to possess. The one who possesses no longer needs to believe: he knows, or thinks he knows. Belief, for its part, arises precisely where knowledge fails.
– How so?
– It is born in an open space, uncertain, exposed. It is a way of inhabiting this lack without entirely filling it.
– In that sense, to believe already implies a form of doubt…
– … not a doubt that denies everything, but a doubt that keeps things open.
– Explain yourself!
– If I say “I believe,” I admit at the same time that I might not believe. It is implicit… Belief carries within it this fragility. It is not a block…
– What is it then?
– A tension that holds… but could give way. And perhaps it is this very possibility of giving way that gives it its value.
– I do not understand…
– A belief to which no doubt could attach itself would become an evidence or a constraint… it would cease to be a belief and become an automatism or a dogma.

 

 

 

– One could go further: doubt is not only what threatens belief, it is what makes it possible. Without doubt, there would be no movement toward. And to believe is always to move toward something that does not fully present itself. It is to consent to a partial absence, to an obscurity. Doubt is therefore not the external enemy of belief…
– What is it then?
– It is its inner condition…
– But…
– But one must distinguish.
– Let us distinguish…
– There is a doubt that gnaws…
– … the one that dissolves everything…
– And that prevents any adherence. That doubt does not make one believe…
– It paralyzes.
– And there is another doubt, more discreet, deeper…
– …
– … a doubt that accompanies, that watches, that prevents belief from hardening. That doubt is not a weakness…
– Let me guess…
– … it is a lucidity.
– Thus, to say “to believe is to doubt” is not to affirm that believing amounts to denying what one believes?
– No… it is rather to say that to truly believe is never to be able to rest entirely in what one believes. It is to remain in relation with what escapes.
– Perhaps the Moon Child, in the way he feels himself written, as you say… without knowing by whom, touches on this.
– That is it… He does not know, and yet he cannot not believe that… for him as for us… there is an author.
– Without any doubt…?
– His doubt does not destroy this belief; it makes it sharper, more vibrant. He does not say: “it does not exist.”
– What does he say?
– He rather says: “it exists, but I cannot grasp it.” And it is in this gap that his speech is born.
– In the end, a belief without doubt would be a closure?
– A doubt without belief would be an emptiness. Between the two, there is this unstable, almost respiratory movement, where something seeks itself without ever fully settling. It is perhaps there that believing begins.
– That… I am willing to believe.