Jean-Luc: I Hate You!

This long-form poem was written by Whitehead as an expression of the extent to which he sees Godard as a figure of influence upon his work. It was originally published in Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 2006), a text issued to coincide with the 2006 Centre Pompidou exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie, Jean-Luc Godard, 1946-2006."

Free, free! Free at last, at last, I escape you,I sleep a whole night without dreaming of you.Your haunting is over. Je peux finalement Vivre MA Vie!Blue Letters. Adrift in the Cosmos. It's weekend. Saturday. Unreal city.To HMV to buy DVD, Made in USA. Usual crap. Feel like a tourist.Dead in this city, dead in every city. Anna Karina standing against wall.   Street corner Alphaville. Every day is Alphaville. Everyville.I ask her how much? She smiles and recruits me on the spot.She says: To night we shoot to kill. She's an eco-terrorist.We must kill my father! When did you last see your father?His name? Professor Werner Googleville. President Orpheus Inc.He stole my voice! She weeps. I drift away, I can't take her misery.Tried to buy a music CD. You have British Sounds? Misraki?You idiot! We ARE British Sounds! RED WHITE and BLUES . . . she said,Anna Wiazemsky in Victorian lace dress, Fleurs-de-Lys embroidery."I am a Virgin" button on her left breast."I flew Virgin to New York" button on her right breast.You buy CD, DVD? Special offer, One plus One for the price of One.Let's get a subway train to Paris! I say. We drift to local hotel.Poeland Street, arrive breathless. Oval mirror on wall, her face is of ECHO,   your voice on sound-track. I pay in dollars and leave.Girl at the door. Name is Corrine. Or Carmine. Red flag. Red name. Red letters. Carmen. I'm looking for an incurable romantic! she says.You found him! Not sure if it is me or him. Blue Letters.(I bump into Brice Parain on a street corner, hit him so hard he drops down dead. I feel no guilt. Godard showed it could happen.)Come Pierrot! She says: Before we fuck I must read the lines.I offer her a book. Capitale de la Douleur. No, the lines on your hand!"Merde," a poem by Rimbaud! Ach! Non, it's by Jean-Luc Godard!A re-vision of Voyelles. Salopard! Into the sea you idiot.But it explains everything, my whole life! I say. Total scrapheap.I'm very well, thank you, not at all. I send you a scenario.With Rimbaud in Africa. No reply. I look at my hand. Made of glass. Translucent. He saw right through me! The map of Red arteries and Blue veins is a map of the Paris Metro. You need a bypass! she says.No, I always drift, I say. Driven by you into the broken heart of darkness.   Derivegauche au Place de l'Opera. I am falling apart.The city my body I no longer inhabit. I see myself everywhere.Cracked flagstones, adverts on posters. Shop windows. My mind? Stolen, I say! She laughs. She takes off her bra and pan ties. Retrouvé!Le soleil se couche avec la mer. My face in the Oval mirror.Blue. Narcissus or Dorian Gray? All your fault Jean-Luc!You were my mirror and stole my soul.But I walk on. Paris calls me. Hotel Scribe, now moved to Piccadilly?We bought it? Eros in the rain. You imagined Alphaville. THEY made it.Crash! Misraki music. Cadillac DeVille embedded in a Renault Espace.Head on. Young couple in back fucking, but Corinne is now dead.The angel of death you loved all along, wearing only a bra and pan ties.Ripped now. Blue Letters. ANAL: ISIS: PAR ISIS: CITY OF ISIS: ISIS UND OSIRIS. Red Letters. City of Dismemberment. Thirteen fragments. The fourteenth? Not found. From now on we must imagine the penis . . . CITY of the Temple of Isis. PARIS. Basilique St Germain.Seberg, breathless, soon to be burnt at...