Beyond the creativity of an intellectual achievement

“Why do I you write?

I write, because, I didn’t have any more books to read and couldn’t find new stories, so I invented them. VD

KLARA BUDA
Featured Video Play Icon

Back in Brussels, Vincent Delecroix

Klara Buda – In your lyrical story, Back in Brussels, it is easy to find you, the author. It was fun to discover that you are part of those rare species that may still fall in love.

Vincent Delecroix – No, they are not at all rare; on the contrary, I think there are many! I’m not an exception.

Simply put, the motivation of this book was an exceptional situation; in fact, is an extremely banal situation at the same time. I worked more around the souvenir, an exceptional situation between two trains, a relationship that is doomed to failure since the beginning. What interested to me about this book was the challenge to revise, to restart, and to re-connect this story with places in the city. This is why the book is titled “Back in Brussels.” I wanted to paint the portrait of the city through this story and to show that Brussels is the incarnation of this melancholic memory. Brussels provides the memory of this melancholic story.  Brussels is a fascinating city; it is not as fascinating as New York, but it is amazing. Really amazing and it presents many memories.

KB – You mentioned New York. How is New York represented in your mind?

VD – I can answer this question in 10 years. We can see each other in 10 years, and I can tell you then. One thing I am sure of is the extraordinary experience it would be to visit there. I’m here for two days. In my 42 years I have never been to New York − the city absolutely shocked me. I will be unable at the moment to tell you what it is about New York that fascinates me. The way I consider this, all I can say is that it is an unimaginable place for me. I had the impression that I was in a movie, I had the impression of being in another world, but at the same time it was familiar to me. I have been here for only 36 hours and am in permanent exaltation.

For now, all I can tell you is that it is unimaginable.

II

– Impression of Manhattan

KB – It is your first time in NYC. Can you describe your first impression? Your feelings? –

VD – Monumentality.

It is not simply a vertical city. This is amazing, because it is a vertical city, it is monumental, colossal, but you do not feel totally crushed. There is an intense life that flows through it. All that I see are images. And those images are extremely plastic. They are all linked with a cinematographique memory. You have the impression of being permanently in Scorceze’s universe; it is unbelievable, it is an unbelievable sentiment.

Last night everything was dim through the fog (mist).

I had never seen anything like that, an atmosphere like this… it provided an intense light, an enormous life, and at the same time it was perfectly ghostly, and one can see only 10 or 20 meters ahead; beyond that, everything is drowned in the fog, the lights are totally erased, it is an extraordinary atmosphere… It is at the same time vibrant and ghostly − it is strange.

KB – Are there any precious things you would be willing to fight for?

Things to fight for: inequalities, butchering the “politics” and make it a place of total decomposition.

VD – Yes, I believe so. There are inequalities that upset me, there are political situations that upset me, there is a current drift that upsets me and disgusts me. Since a few years there’s been a way of butchering the “politics”, to degrade it too. To make it an instrument of domination and that is too much to say. But to make it a place of total decomposition and this worries me and upsets me.

KB – Why do you write?

I write, because, I didn’t have any more books to read and couldn’t find new stories, so I invented them!

I don’t know, to be honest. And I try to avoid this question, because I’m afraid it would sterilize me. I started to write because I didn’t have anything else to read, and I wanted to continue and write stories like the ones I was reading, but I didn’t have any more books to read and couldn’t find new stories, so I invented them, that’s how I started to write, and it never left me. The idea that the first thing

to do is tell a story. It’s absurd; it’s childish, very puerile. But that never left me, as well as the tendency to lie, which is also linked to… Play and lie with reality. That too, alarmingly, never left me.

KB – Can you tell me Some things that you want to hide?

VD -It would be hard and quite paradoxal to answer. But i believe that one can write to hide.

Vincent Delecroix Interview was hosted, directed and edited by Klara Buda and filmed by Andamion Murrataj