SIGNS OF MEDIOCRITY

Love. Violence. Mysterious Signs. Deception and Wasted time. No, it isn't the new Steven Spielberg movie. It's the book by Gilles Deleuze that I have been reading non-stop recently: Proust and Signs, the complete text.



The book takes a close look, or "reading" of ... yep, you got it, signs and semiotics in Proust's À la Recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time). There's a lot of talk about love, time, memories, sleep, and above all, how all these things relate to the interpretation of signs.

Love and Signs. How the two are interrelated. Take a look at what Deleuze says on the topic:

"... what a profound and intelligent man says has value in itself, by its manifest content, by its explicit, objective, and elaborated signification ; but we shall derive little enough for it, nothing but abstract possibilities, if we have not been able to reach other truths by other paths. These paths are precisely those of the sign. Now a mediocre or stupid person, once we love that person, is richer in signs than the most profound intelligence. The more limited a woman is, the more she compensates by signs, which sometimes betray her and give away a lie, her incapacity to formulate intelligent judgments or sustain coherent thoughts."

Proust says on intellectuals: "The mediocre woman one was amazed to find them loving, enriched their universe much more than any intelligent woman could have done."

Deleuze again: "With the beloved mediocre woman, we return to the origins of humanity, that is, to the moments when signs prevailed over explicit content and hieroglyphs over letter: this woman 'communicates' nothing to us, but unceasingly produces signs that must be deciphered."

Who knew that love, the origins of humanity, and the history of interpretation of signs could all be unified within the brackets of one individual: the mediocre woman.

As a beloved, mediocre woman in my own right, I shall leave this post as a sign to be interpreted by those who, perhaps, won't betray me for my simple lies.