Jean-Luc Godard (1930—2022) I’ve been thinking about Godard’s death for over a decade now — for reasons I will explain elsewhere — and now that it’s actually here, what is there to say. The act of writing only seems to come to me anymore in the immediacy of hearing of someone’s death. Every death is the end of the epoch to which that life lent its vitality. Especially since Godard’s last film, Le Livre d’image (The Image Book), is — amongst many things — a kind of prism through which to recall and reassess his own past, the work that belongs to it, as well as the present moment inhabited by us. Did you know that the last colour Borges saw, before he went completely blind, was yellow? Over 30 years ago, I stumbled across ‘Pierrot le fou’ on my 14-inch Toshiba TV, late one night, when such content was scarce, and inconceivably precious. I’d never seen any film like it. Funny, but tragic. High on art history. Anna Karina’s murderous bob, Rimbaud, ‘blood and thunder.’ David Thompson described it as, ‘an American film noir, shot in the sunny countryside of Renoir, re-edited by a Soviet montage maniac and then presented as a lecture about itself.’ How could cinema be so agile with thoughts and feelings? I forever found Godard’s depiction of the romantic-intellectual couple a kind of ready-made truth. ‘Work is the result of love,’ he said, ‘and love is the result of work.’ ‘I always feel that a man and a woman, who do not like the same films,' Godard once pronounced, ‘will eventually divorce.’ (True.) Deep into his 80s, Godard upended octogenarian expectations: his output did not mellow with the passing of time. It did the opposite. His examination of what form can do, grew exponentially with age. Once, Godard and his partner, Anne-Marie Miéville, were caught on Google Street View. During the pandemic, he appeared on Instagram Live. Antic TikTok jump cuts are the great-great-grandchildren of ‘A bout de souffle.’ I’m listening to George Delerue’s heartbreaking music for ‘Le Mepris’ on Spotify, on loop, and I can say, with all the force of piercing conviction, that I would not be the person I am today were it not for you, JLG. Le fin.