It would seem that France Culture has decided to give us, at the start of the summer, a very precious gift. Of those as only the radio can offer, when time and space unfold differently, when, by the force of a single voice, a few sounds and sometimes even silences, we start to dream and go elsewhere.
This time, to England. Or, let’s say, to be more accurate and since the destination is not the ultimate or perhaps even the first goal, that we leave by train, because it is indeed a rail journey as much as an almost metaphysical reflection on this means of transport that the writer Tanguy Viel invites us to do.
For several years now, this jazz lover (Le Black Note, Editions de Minuit, 1998), mad about images and cinema (he co-signed the screenplay for Louis Garrel’s formidable film L’Innocent, released in 2022), author of novels chiseled with a comma, largely reflective, remarkable and noticed (Paris-Brest; Article 353 of the penal code, Editions de Minuit, 2009 and 2017), has had cravings elsewhere. There was Traveling (JC Lattès, 2019), in which he recounted, in turn with his travel companion, the writer Christian Garcin, this world tour in a cargo ship, and in which he sometimes wondered what fly could have bitten him, to leave his sedentary life in this way to find himself in the middle of a largely motionless ocean.
The oldest journey in the world
Then came Icebergs (Editions de Minuit, 2019), a text written, he said, out of a need for flexibility, air and freedom. He then felt the need to open the windows, even, already, to get on the road and on the rails. But if the train then appeared to him as the possibility of inventing a new way of composing a novel, from theory to practice, there is sometimes a step and, by dint of ruminating on it, the book frayed, as if lost along the way over the stations. It was then that Tanguy Viel had the excellent idea of ??talking about it to Aurélie Charon, producer of “L’Expérience” on France Culture. Because, well, we can say it, we can do it, one day, you have to leave your home and “confront the imaginary with the real”.
So, and at the microphone, Tanguy Viel tells. How one day he went to England, the originator of the first locomotive. How, in the Eurostar which takes him to London, he tries hard to imagine the sea so thick above, nothing helps. In the absurd comfort of this ultra-modern train with its ventilated air, Tanguy Viel is like the other travelers, who, monopolized by their screens, do not seem to experience the “slightest underwater feeling” more than him.
It is moved, then, and strong of his new knowledge due to solid documentation, that he redo the oldest route in the world, between Stockton and Darlington (Durham), across the Channel, the first rail link. He then recalls how, at the time (mid-19th century), with trains traveling at 70 kilometers per hour, there was very serious fear (these are scientific journals that raise the problem) that a journey by train would cause congestion of the brain, stiffness of the muscles, or even trigger a possible schizophrenia.
But, shh, the station master has just whistled. It is time to turn on your radios and listen, rather live, motionless but dreamy, this miraculous Experience.
