LE MAL DE VIVRE

(enchant:?page,(bg:(gradient: 269, 0,#c2255c,1,#7048e8)))Do you own an air filter? [[Start game (audio on, please).|s1]]

maldevivre: https://morganlevine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Cecile-McLorin-Salvant-Le-Mal-de-Vivre.mp3

"Le Mal de Vivre" is a long song, so I can give you the whole thing. { (track: 'maldevivre', 'loop', true) (track: 'maldevivre', 'playwhenpossible') } [[next|s2]]

I don't speak French and I hope you don't either so that we can be equals here. [[next|s3]]

Ça ne prévient pas, ça arrive Ça vient de loin Ça s'est promené de rive en rive La gueule en coin Et puis un matin, au réveil C’est presque rien Mais c’est là, ça vous ensommeille Au creux des reins Le mal de vivre Le mal de vivre Qu’il faut bien vivre Vaille que vivre On peut le mettre en bandoulière Ou comme un bijou à la main Comme une fleur en boutonnière Ou juste à la pointe du sein C’est pas forcément la misère C’est pas Valmy, c’est pas Verdun Mais c’est des larmes aux paupières Au jour qui meurt, au jour qui vient Le mal de vivre Le mal de vivre Qu’il faut bien vivre Vaille que vivre Qu’on soit de Rome ou d’Amérique Qu’on soit de Londres ou de Pékin Qu’on soit d’Egypte ou bien d’Afrique Ou de la porte Saint-Martin On fait tous la même prière On fait tous le même chemin Qu’il est long lorsqu’il faut le faire Avec son mal au creux des reins Ils ont beau vouloir nous comprendre Ceux qui nous viennent les mains nues Nous ne voulons plus les entendre On ne peut pas, on n’en peut plus Et tous seuls dans le silence D’une nuit qui n’en finit plus Voilà que soudain on y pense A ceux qui n’en sont pas revenus Du mal de vivre Leur mal de vivre Qu’ils devaient vivre Vaille que vivre Et sans prévenir, ça arrive Ça vient de loin Ça s’est promené de rive en rive Le rire en coin Et puis un matin, au réveil C’est presque rien Mais c’est là, ça vous émerveille Au creux des reins La joie de vivre La joie de vivre Oh, viens la vivre Ta joie de vivre [[next|s4]]

Here is my translation: You can't keep it from coming, it arrives It comes from the pelvis It separates the rivers With guile and wealth The morning reveals A precious laugh More than that, an ensemble The crux of laughter The bad of life The bad of life What the good life lacks Goes where you live On foot you saw it playing music It blew a kiss as you went And ate a flower from your hand Before shooing you away It's beyond force Beyond apology It's more like two ragged animals Turning as they smell you on the wind The bad of life The bad of life What the good life lacks Goes where you live In Rome or America In London or another place In Egypt and all of Africa In port Saint-Martin On your prior memories On your fainting couch At the renaissance festival even Where you rode it like a horse It's beautiful to think about What comes in the general night Comes like a saying Don't come, please don't come William Carlos Williams is dancing in silence He's the happy genius of his house You would come and break his thoughts? You would bring in no cash at all? The bad of life Reads itself And returns itself To the lending library You can't keep it from coming, it arrives It comes from the pelvis It separates the rivers With guile and wealth The morning reveals A precious laugh More than that, an ensemble The crux of laughter The joy of life The joy of life Oh, life comes To a joy of living Is that right? [[next|s5]]

When I was living far away from everybody my family cat died and I listened to this song on repeat. I made no intrusions into the language, it explained itself, it was nice and opaque and smooth like a wooden duck. [[next|s7]]

Imagine an oil miracle like happens on some holy statues but it's just a wood duck crying regular tears. [[next|s7]]

Lyla dying made me sad but it was more Lyla dying while I was far away. [[next|s8]]

That I had to be told about her dying. Being told is the worst. [[next|s9]]

I'm sure we're all thinking of different moments right now, but you get told good stuff too sometimes. [[next|s10]]

Like I was told via a poster on the street that Cécile McLorin Salvant was playing duo with Sullivan Fortner in a small public plaza the next town over. [[next|s11]]

She didn't sing this song, she sang "Sophisticated Lady" and "Gracias a la Vida" and some others I can't remember. [[next|s12]]

Have you ever seen <a href="https://youtu.be/VfLBDvMyfXs?si=uAzoTg7hhz-x6-HP" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none">that video</a> of Wynton Marsalis performing "Gracias a la Vida" to a huge crowd in Chile? I really recommend it. It's 1990 and there's 80,000 people filling the National Stadium in Santiago. The trumpet is so emotional, like it really believes in and is grateful for la Vida which includes crickets, canaries, hammers, turbines, the tender voice of the beloved, the letters of the alphabet, the light illuminating the path of the soul, and finally the two materials (joy and pain) that form the very song you're hearing. Which is your song and everyone's song and the song itself—that's what the lyrics say. [[next|s29]]

We're talking about this melancholic feather boa of a song. Soon drums will come in. Has it happened yet? [[No.|s14]] [[Ah, yes.|s15]]

Maybe it's wrong to write about Le Mal de Vivre in July. There's a punk band rehearsing a few doors down. A big tree has rained down mullberries in the backyard and pink juice pools on the folding chairs and table. I can see someone grilling zucchini. Is it really so mal to vivre? [[Still no change.|s16]] [[Change!|s15]]

Where'd the pace come from? Is change possible? The cat in the yard next door is compelled to walk through a folded-out tube, knowing exactly what's on the other side. It is a form of diversion. When I listen to this song the first four minutes are my tube. [[next|s15a]]

This song is a cover actually, it's originally by the singer Barbara. She was a cabaretière in Paris in the 50s before she started writing her own songs. Her life was very dramatic, and so is <a href="https://youtu.be/9aTzp6w1-O0?si=Gl5GcnPo0S333cgm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none">her recording</a> of this song. [[Still no change.|s17]] [[Change!|s15]]

The best part of that recording is the totally unexpected sound of a saxophone coming in halfway through the song, with a tone that feels shockingly contemporary. And it dies off just as fast, replaced by a more appropriately despondent accordion. [[Still no change.|s18]] [[Change!|s15]]

The saxophone is like a premonition of a better, clearer future that will not come. So it gets snatched away. [[Still no change.|s18a]] [[Change!|s15]]

"Still no change" over and over again is so July vibes. The only clear indicator to me that summer is real and happening is that my room is a mess. Every year it happens, as if the effort of picking things off the floor is just too much in the heat. And clothes come on and off constantly, cyclically. [[Still no change.|s20]] [[Change!|s15]]

They come off inexplicably. Let's rejoin the group. [[Okay.|s15]]

Meanwhile the crescent red light on my air purifier is staring at me like a crack into hell. [[next|s22]]

The air filter is a reverse fan for evil. A cleric captured in a plastic bullet. [[next|s23]]

It sweeps up the evil and takes it to a separate, enclosed dimension. [[next|s24]]

I imagine the tiny nefarious particles, miniature opportunists, little ballerinas almost. I feel affection for them but they have to go. [[next|s25]]

They get sucked away in a divine whirlpool. The voice obliterates any idea of a permanent way of being. The words are revealed to have no meaning at all, just sound. How else could a change like this have happened? I breathe in the air and it's the same as before. [[next|s26]]

I'm reminded of those energy snipping videos where a benevolent stranger pulls invisible threads from your eyes and snips them with their fingers. I prefer the fingers to when they use real scissors, since we're already in the fantasy. If I can believe in the threads I can believe in the hand cutting them. [[next|s27]]

Does that kind of thing work for you? [[next|s28]]

Do you feel better?

I don't want to say anything bad about the tube. The tube is essential to believing in transformative possibility. I gather orgone energy in my tube. I scroll the New York Housing Lottery website in my tube. I rest, ice, compress, and elevate in my tube. Sportswear logo. Thrumming sound. Wry, baritone voice. What do you do in your tube? [[next|s21]]

Of course you don't hear the words in this rendition but you believe them. The whole thing feels like a curtain opening. In the video he's so lit up it's like he's been green-screened in. Anyways "Gracias a la Vida" segues into "The Majesty of the Blues" and then he just does his thing. [[next|s30]]

The most famous part of the video actually happens later when Wycliffe Gordon unintentionally plays a phrase that resembles a popular soccer chant and the massive crowd picks it up and carries the chant for the rest of the song. You can hear them singing behind Wynton's solo that follows, and especially in the bass solo after that. And it fits perfectly. It's a real Music Is The Universe moment that makes you believe in an overarching human communication, true empathy, understanding beyond experience. But that's not what we're talking about. [[next|s13]]

But Cécile isn't playing tricks like that. We live with Cécile in a future with an outlandish variety of tones, textures, sounds that enter and exit through their own portals into the rooms of our music. The effect that has on me is that a consistent configuration of sound has become more emotional. [[Still no change.|s18b]] [[Change!|s15]]

What I mean is that at one point people probably would not have said that a piano sounds human, but now I think it does. [[Still no change.|snotes]] [[Change!|s15]]

Do you want to hear some human sounds from this month? [[Sure. (still no change)|snotes1]] [[Change!|s15]]

//(text-colour:#ce2788)["all the stars or the planets fell out of the sky"]// My friend Anne said this one night when they were talking about a video game. I thought how could that be possible. And it wasn't even a big thing, all the stars (or the planets?) falling out of the sky, it was just part of the situation where the video game happened. [[Still no change.|snotes2]] [[Change!|s15]]

//(text-colour:#ce2788)["I believe David should be canonized. It's hard to read aloud after hearing David read aloud."]// Nan Goldin said this about David Wojnarowicz. [[Still no change.|snotes3]] [[Change!|s15]]

//(text-colour:#ce2788)["friends and neighbors"]// This doesn't really mean anything to me on its own, and I don't know who said it. Maybe I was in a state of mind where the concept of friends and neighbors felt profound. [[Still no change.|snotes4]] [[Change!|s15]]

//(text-colour:#ce2788)["he was the rubix cube genius of the world"]// I think my friend Lina said this but I can't be sure. Obviously they were talking about the Rubix Cube Genius of the World. [[Still no change.|snotes5]] [[Change!|s15]]

//(text-colour:#ce2788)["beyond description"]// This is a compliment that my boss gave to a work of art. I loved hearing it. I wish I could feel that way all the time and I do so maybe I wish I could believe it, let that feeling stop me. Unfortunately I am addicted to describing. What did Spicer say? (align:"<==")+(box:"==XXXXX===")+(text-style:"shadow")+(text-style:"expand")[I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddenly covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem—a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger.] [[Still no change.|s19]] [[Change!|s15]]