Tag: exquisite pain

Sophie Calle, from Exquisite Pain

Sophie: 88 days ago, the man I love left me.
The scene wasplayed out on January 25, 1985, at two in the morning. I was in room 261 of the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, he was in Paris. The split was done and dusted in three minutes, over the phone. An ordinary story. He had met another woman – a more docile one, I suppose. He would not be coming.

Unknown: I was twelve. It was in 1965. In May. At Arcachon. My mother and I were resting under a chestnut tree. It was midday. My father had left the house in the morning and we were waiting for him. Suddenly, he came out of the garage at the end of the garden, looking dazed and wild-eyed. He told us he had locked the door and tried to asphyxiate himself with exhaust. And he added, “Then I saw you, like the Virgin and Child, in a halo. And I decided not to kill myself.” There and then I jumped on my moped – I remember it was two-colored, orange and gray – and rode. Mad with pain that my dad was such a loser. Disgusted with the image that he gave of his suffering. I rode, straight ahead, for more than fifty kilometers. And then I came back.

Sophie Calle, Exquisite Pain, 2000
Embroidery, photo panels

Left page: He was a friend of my parents. He was very handsome. By the time I was ten years old, I was in love with him, but I had waited for more to declare myself. Then he made himself known to me. He went so far as to offer me beautiful scenes of jealousy. When I accepted this course of study in Japan, he warned me that it was too long: he was likely to forget me. I loved him but I left. I was sure he was merely trying to scare me, to punish my insubordination. He would wait for me, I wanted to believe it. On January 24, 1985, after a separation of three months, we were to meet at the airport in New Delhi. He did not make the rendezvous. He had sent a message: “M. cannot join you. Accident. Paris Hospital, Contract Bob. Thank you”. Ten hours of imagining the pitiful scenarios, before joining him at home to learn by phone that he had fallen in love with another woman. Distraught, I spent the rest of the night fixing a red phone in room 261 of the Imperial Hotel. To reproach me for this journey, this challenge. Yet the solitary, monastic life he offered was not made for me. Too rigid. One day or another, I would have given it up. Only he stole my vitality. He did not give me time to leave him first. 

Right Page: It was in 1964. a September evening at the terrace of a cafe of Saint Germain des Prés, L’Old Navy. It was hot. We were twenty-two years old, and I had been living with her for six months, a total, absolute love. I knew she was married. that her husband had been missing for over a year. She had not wanted to say more, but she had warned me that if he returned, she would follow him. At around seven o’clock, in the crowd, someone broke off, approached. quietly. she told me in a calm tone: it’s him, he’s back. He said, "Hello!” she replied, “I’m introducing you to a friend” he sat down. He asked me what I was doing. he had a suspicious elegance of thug. After a few banalities, a coffee, he said to her, “Well, are you coming?” She got up, greeted me with “One of these days maybe?”, And they left. I’m riding in my car, a convertible green Oceane Simca. I lowered the hood, thinking to rush into the Seine. I finished the night under their windows, park on the parking lot of their suburban HLM.