I remember the sweet summer nights of school vacation. As a bored teenager, after a day of hanging about, I couldn't sleep. I wandered through books and television channels all night, sometimes stumbling upon obscure films that shaped my love of cinema.
It was the delicious pain of boredom. The feeling of being so close to exploding that a single spark could blow it all away, yet nothing bad ever happened. The sounds of the night: crickets, gentle warmth softened by a cool breeze, and always reading. I would finally get to the difficult books, because time was going to pass anyway, so why not have Goethe under my belt?
I sometimes wonder whether the wealthy Parisians in those films know that exact feeling. Do they ever get bored in quite the same way? For them it actually does not stop when school starts up again. They seem to drift from one trip to the next, reading, practicing an instrument, lingering over lunch, carrying on the occasional love affair. I know that's probably a romantic fantasy as much as a reality, but I can't help envying the freedom those lives appear to offer.
People often say that work gives life meaning. Maybe it does. Yet whenever I hear that, I picture another walk along the Seine instead of another eight-hour shift. I've never met anyone who, given complete freedom, chose more labor over more time. Perhaps that's naïve. Perhaps the films only show me the beautiful parts. Still, I can't shake the feeling that there must be another way to spend a life than waiting for the weekend.
I miss the boredom of the summer vacation and the creativity it sparked.