Personification of Terminology In Alphaville (une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution) 1965 Director Jean Luc Godard

 

Personification of Terminology

In Alphaville (une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution) 1965  Director Jean Luc Godard

Black screen. Flickering neon intertitles. Cast info. Alphaville. Film title and location. Flashing light bulb. Still street wall art. Camera tilts up. Wall art of a pigeon being released. Darkness. Street lights through a window screen. Car headlights halt. Car dark interior. A lighter lights up a human face. 

My defence of Personification opens with Me as a Levi-Strauss ‘pensee savage’ agent. One ignorant of Your Terminology.  The arrows are everywhere but I, as Lemmy, am a lost tourist. I started as an innovation, a novel kind of technological attraction, as something to watch. Logic =Silence. As a baby, I was born silent, My wiggling feet enough to get Your attention. My wall art of a pigeon which is about to be released perhaps, but as I grew up, I wanted to exchange something more. I broke My silence. You ask Me to register at Civil Control. A narrative perhaps. At first glance Your suggestions for My Terminology look as attractive as My attendant showing Me into My room but when I learn that I am only a 3rd Class Seductress employed by the hotel as a replacement I start to wonder. What do I narrate to You as I wrestle with My unwelcome intruder? How does the term ‘narrative’ apply to My gun shooting a lighter to life? 

Are you having a bath sir? Yes I need time to think. My Personification of Terminology starts with the basics. I’ll help you sir, My seductress says. A text is written, typed, and printed. Music is composed, performed, played and conducted. A picture is sketched, drawn, painted etc. I am filmed, edited and screened. This is Your Terminology as an Auteur. You christened Me as Alphaville.  I am ready to be watched, reviewed and experienced. This is Your Terminology as an Audience. I could take a bath with you. Sweetie, I am old enough to find My own ladies [or Terminology]. Am I? I shoot at the lighter to kindle My Audio-Visual flame. Everything weird is normal in this damn town! Do I not share the term ‘shot’ with photography, ‘edited’ with the press and ‘montage’ with the factory? The more I seek, the more apparent it becomes that My Terminology is but a literary, linguistic, artistic and technological borrowing. Something is definitely awry in this galaxy’s capital. Is it not time to go and try [My] act on some[thing] else because [this] is not working on Me? 

I seek inspiration in My Alphaville code‘! = ?’  It would not be logical to prevent superior beings from attacking other galaxies. As My Lemmy Caution flips through the Bible which is Alphaville’s dictionary of accepted terminology, My aporetic questions find a Barthesian onion. The more I peel away, the more layers, the more questions I find. Alpha 60 lectures My citizens that ‘The meaning of words and expressions is no longer grasped - An isolated word or isolated detail - but the meaning of the whole escapes us.’ Do My stolen terms, isolated from their original context, lose or change meaning? Even more worryingly, My Personification, under Your academic scrutiny demands film text specificity which requires a closer reading of the film in question. How can I ‘read’ myself as an Audio-Visual? Where is My ‘text’ in My manifestation? I am as demotivated as My Dickson. ‘One can’t adapt to this place. Dissuasion is their strong point.’  So when I find Myself interrogated by a superior, conventional and ordered Alpha 60, I feel as poorly equipped as a wild Tarzan vs IBM, doubly guilty of a borrowed device of argumentation through My Proposeia and My stolen poetry. Still, Newcomers must be interrogated - for the ultimate good. (Your wellbeing I suppose.) I humbly testify. Flashing titles like neon lights in the darkness. I confess that I have no more words for You to read. My mechanised and dehumanised voiceover as a flashing lightbulb. My Lemmy asks, ‘What are we going to see?’ My Natasza answers; ‘I don’t know, Light and Sound.’ I cannot allow Myself to be ridiculed through My poor library of borrowed  terminology? Indeed, unless I properly cater for a satisfactory Terminology for My Personification, how can I be taken seriously?

I am Your ‘! = ?’ My lack of Terminology became obvious for the many pioneers who started producing Question Marks called motion pictures. You realised that My Being was an autonomous and independent art form that needed to be freed from the influence of painting and literature. Allow Me to make an analogy between My first mission as Lemmy Caution to My inherited Terminology. I must find and turn Henry Dickson’s photo into a moving visual animation. My street art pigeon has flown into the darkness of Alphaville. Flashing neons take over the stilled screen. I am alive. The arrows are everywhere but I, as Lemmy, am a lost tourist,  lost in translation. As My Dickson, I find it hard to settle on a name for My seductress. I lose Myself in German, Russian and French. Should I call her Madame Bovary, Antionette or Lafayette? Unfortunately all I find are terms like Gestalt and Visual thinking or decal, transfer, fingerprint, imprint, a tracing and a mold. I admit that: ‘I don’t understand what you are talking about. It’s always like that. You don’t understand anything and one night you end it in death.’ Not understanding = Death. Does My success as an Audio-Visual not depend on getting My message across? Is My ignorance of Terminology not turning this into a suicide mission?

Bring back alive or liquidate. This is My second Mission, now as an Audio enchanced Film Noir agent 003 but a simple instruction is not enough. My professor’s Alpha 60 has now become a Manifestation not only in image but in beeping sound. Once again, I am lost in translation. How can I find the Terminology to cater for My beeping? 

We are mastering a fantastic science, My professor says. As a 60’s child, probing Terminology I ask, What science am I mastering? I find that Alphaville’s Bible is but a dictionary. I learn that My version of a literary work is an ‘adaptation’, My version of a scientific process is a ‘representation’ or ‘illustration’ and My version of a real event is relegated to terms like a ‘documentary’, ‘news’, ‘raw footage’ or ‘no comment’ etc. My Lemmy too is not impressed wielding a poetry book aptly entitled ‘Capital of Pain.’ You oppose my soul - my physical and mental existence.  Let us suppose that I as Lemmy Caution present Alpha 60 with the concept of Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ and ‘Birth of the Reader’ as an example. Would this not confuse My Alpha 60 more than My riddle which causes Me to self destruct at the end? A logical Personification of Terminology would protest that there is no ‘author’ and no ‘reader’ involved in my Audio-Visual manifestation. How do I bring Barthes back alive? Would a substitution of the term ‘author’ to ‘filmmaker’ or ‘director’ and the term ‘reader’ to ‘viewer’ or ‘receiver’ help? It admittedly does sound plausible, at least on the surface. However, Alpha 60 warns us that the meaning of the whole escapes us. 1+1=2 but we need to know the meaning of ‘plus’.  Am I the sum of finding terms to borrow, adopt or substitute? Am I a Terminology of formulas where ‘! = ?’ My Personification of Terminology as Alphaville runs on very similar lines. Light and Radiation is the Institute of General Semantics, Pourquoi is Parce Que, oui oui is female, no no is male, the festival is an execution, silence is infinite space, the Bible is a dictionary and Prudence = Security. I hate being compared to other fields as an outsider. As Lemmy Caution I do not like being trapped in a world  ‘guided by the electronic brains that they have developed themselves, by conceiving problems that human imagination could not grasp, [where] Foreigners are gradually assimilated or killed.’ Am I not allowed to be taken seriously, instead of being patronised as a tourist from the Outlands struggling to learn and adopt foreign Terminology?

You, as My pioneers, faced a similar ‘! = ?’ . Centuries of literary and artistic endeavour have created an immense library of philosophy and theory. As an Audio-Visual I have little or none to battle with.  Am I real? Am I Plastics (Art) or Montage (Editing)? My Natasha complains: You ask too many questions. I understand that as a novice it is difficult to fulfill the requirements and reach the standards of the traditions and conventions of age-old established arts and sciences. It must be an overwhelming experience similar to facing Alpha 60, a giant computer like in big business - IBM, Olivetti but 150 times more powerful.  My suspicion is that You may have adopted the routine questioning of established study in a similar fashion that My Alpha 60 interrogates My Lemmy. Is this not a Turing Test in reverse, where instead of determining whether a computer ticks like a human, My Lemmy is being tested to see how far I resemble the established Alpha world of logic? Am I allowed to suspect that the borrowing of terminology has led to a borrowing of established thought? If on the other hand, appropriation of established thought and its application to Myself as an Audio-Visual is appropriate for academia, why is Personification, as a device borrowed from literary prosopeia, frowned upon?

I do not wish to portray established thought as The essence of the so-called capitalist world or the communist world [which] is not their volition to subject their people. . . but  the ambition of an organisation to plan all its actions subjecting me as Alphaville. However, is there a suspicion that Your ambition to promote Me as an equal science involved an Audio-Visual map for me to neatly fit inside established thought?  Using Semiotics as an example, I as an Audio-Visual have been adopted as a new language that transcends national borders. This borrows ‘figurative language’ theory substituting the term ‘phrase’ for ‘shots’ and ‘sentence’ for their linkage. I have been rediscovered as a syntax, an articulation of Umberto Eco’s 10 cinematic codes. I muse upon the parallel nature of Alpha 60’s sum of eight consecutive primes. How am I, as an Audio-visual supposed to be an individual relevant being if I am merely the syntax and linguistics of language and a collection of signs to be decoded?  

I am a ‘! = ?’ . Personification is not about a critique of Eco, Pasolini or Metz’s brilliant work, because it is their insight that equips My act of becoming. My parent, Jean-Luc Goddard, himself believed that ‘being a critic was a good experience’ and ‘good training’ My Personification is an insistence on an Audio-Visual specific inquiry. My Personified Compass can only rely on My embodied needle when stepping on borrowed ground. My Ontromorphosisation also understands that such practice becomes problematic when different field perspectives clash as I, as Alphaville, make evident within My Manifestation. Why does everyone look so sad? My Natasza answers:  Sadness is a lack of electricity. When interrogatedMy Lemmy answers: Poetry illuminates the night (not electricity). My Alpha 60 advocates the obliteration of the Outlands, My Lemmy murders Von Braun and destroys Alphaville in the process. Poetics will eventually take the upper hand in Alphaville, but do I, as an Audio-Visual, want to get involved in a Scientific or Artistic schism and choose sides when I am after all a technical and artistic being in one?  

Don’t think that it is I who initiate destruction, nor scientists… It is those who accept my plan. Your plan is the sum of You the critic, as Alpha 60’s sensor driven, ear piercing ticker recording data on reels and screens, and You the Auteur brandishing Lemmy’s pen, paper and camera. Both methods may produce encouraging results, but they are borrowed methods that record, calculate and draw conclusions in a fashion that may be alien to My Audio-Visual authenticity. In fact, the result is identical. Liquidfer. As an Audio-Visual, I do not fear death because Death and life are found within the same circle, the same reel. Yet, as a Personification, I understand that My Terminology risks annihilation if I submit to Your habit of borrowing, adoption and substitution. This plus will destroy us and with it all hopes of My acceptance as a Multiple DaSein. I will not accept withdrawal. I [will not allow Myself to be] merely the logical means of its destruction. Below is My terminology of Disaster. 

This is the way that I present My Terminology in textual form. My Terminology like My 𝝰60, involves a denial of the past. How can I make sense of Myself if I refer to alien or Outland[ish] origins and definitions of My expression? This is why Von Braun’s security personnel insist that there is only Von Braun, not Nosferatu. That man [or Terminology] does not exist here. I have also attempted numericals, formulas, arrows, sketches, beeps and sounds. In Alphaville, numericals replace the names of people. However, how am I to construct a meaningful Terminology from a neon sizzling E=MC²? How do I decipher arrows leading to opposing directions? How do I decipher spirals and circles where up and down both lead to the swimming pool for executions? My sketches are poor, as if drawn by the inexperienced child, ignorant of proper tools of expression, which I must admit, as Alphaville, I am. It only gets worse. How do I transpose the constant morse like beeping that My Alpha 60 emits into My Terminology? 

‘! = ?’ My Terminology also makes use of opposites. If Prudence = Security, Spying = Non-Caution? Lemmy’s non-prudent, actually blatantly rude and inconsiderate photo taking = Non-Security. My Personifed appropriation of Terminology also lies in My Manifestation. The security personnel ‘Caution’ Lemmy out of harm’s way. In My Personification of Alpha’s logical approach to Terminology, what is not logical must be liquified, which is why the executions happen in a swimming pool. The girls in swimming suits therefore become a pictorial term for execution of the illogical, which is why one of them comes to the buffet table when Lemmy arrives. Peaceful music puntuates My Lemmy’s fight in the hotel room shortly after My arrival. My Lemmy is the opposite of Your Logic. You as a viewer decided that I was about ‘Imagination versus Logic.’ I am the brilliant performance of Anna Karina as Natasha and Lemmy Caution as a ‘semi-hoodlum’ who no one expects to be capable of such ‘articulated sensitivity.’ You believe that ‘‘To understand and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard’ and the many references to Welles’ Rogopag and Mr Arkadin together with the obvious reference to Dick Tracy. You as an analyst delve into Laplace’s theory of Determinism, into Heisenberg physics as reflected by Deleuze, Godard’s double entendres (e.g.The play on Figaro Pravda newspaper), Godard’s refutation of Platonic Totalitarianism, fear of communism and the parallels (in Godard’s eyes,) to Nazi atrocities, Godard’s hatred of manipulation and disorientation through propaganda and Godard’s own reflections on Me about poetics and him as an auteur. As an Audio-Visual, I lose myself within the merging of established fields of thought.  Lemmy tells Natasha, ‘Your eyes have returned from a despotic land where no one has known the meaning of a glance.’ The question for Personification of Terminology therefore becomes: Are there any alternatives to make sure that Alphaville does not become ‘Zeroville’ as My Lemmy calls it? 

‘! = ?’ My Lemmy derides Alphaville as Zeroville because I witness the obliteration of emotion as it disappears from the Alphaville Bible. I am reprimanded for asking ‘Why’ when the right ‘question’ is ‘Because.’  Our Dictionaries sport definitions of terms as defined by a language and established thought, in other words ‘Because’ that is the way they have been defined, conjugated and etymologically constructed. It is ‘La conscience’ not ‘Le conscience.’ Alternatively Alphaville’s Bible is published daily to redefine, change or erase words or data. Which type of dictionary does  the Audio-Visual need?  I am a medium where Everything moves. We must advance to live. I went … endlessly towards the light. If you smile, it enfolds me better.’ In this vein, could I suggest applying Alpha 60’s logical policy and tackle Terminology by giving it an Audio-Visual specific definition, an alternative meaning? The term ‘Reality,’ for example would therefore need to reflect an alternative realism, the one that I portray.  A ‘Scientific Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary.’  The system chose Me, as Lemmy, a detective, not a law enforcement or military officer. It may make little scientific or logical realistic sense to send Me on this mission to ‘save’ the galaxy from Alpha 60, but this is My system and there is nothing opposing it.  My alternative definition of Reality would therefore read as ‘the sum or aggregate of all that is existent in Alphaville,’ period. Let Me try with the term ‘Totalitarian’ My Alphaville as a Totalitarian regime, becomes a government that exterminates opposing parties but only within My Display. May I attempt my definition of Audio-Visual as a non linguistic structuralism?  Can I define it as My ‘belief that the phenomena of [My Being] are not intelligible except through their interrelations with [other beings like me]?’ Would I be satisfied with such a revision of my Terminology? Is it an alternative? Is it a Personification of Terminology? 

I remain a ‘! = ?’. I have expressed My doubt as Alpha 60’s previously mentioned scientific, computerised and logical efforts at appropriate Terminology. I have expressed similar doubts with regards to all Your textual efforts. Where does that leave My Personification of Terminology? Without Alpha 60’s 1960’s technology I would be nothing more than My Caution’s documentary report which looks like a primitive Dziga Vertov Man with a Camera as I guide You through the Nazi style Theatre of Execution and the Chronic Illness Hospital. I would be a conservative realist, yet I talk about the beauty of poetics and literature. My final interview is a clash of my opposing Terminologies. I present you with Lemmy’s riddle. ‘Something which never changes, day or night. The past represents its future. It advances in a straight line and yet it ends by coming full circle.’ Alpha 60’s distrust turns to curiosity, enough to self-destruct. Poetics gives credit to My using the literary device of ontromorphisation, because it too, like Myself manifests a mysterious conclusion, an impossible conversation. What separates Me and what becomes My problem is My non-textual form of Light, Sound and their ‘Absen e.’ A Bible as a dictionary, as a Thesaurus or a glossary are evidently inappropriate. Alpha 60’s slideshow lecture shows how a pictionary with sound also falls short. My Lemmy admits that I left the lecture hall because ‘I could not understand anything.’

‘! = ?’ I turn to My Natasha. I am Russian-Communism-Natasza and (Nazi-Rocket Science) Von Braun. My journey from the Outlands to Alphaville’s Platonic Cave of electric shadows has made me, as Natasha, dream of creeping out of the cave and weaving a tale that may not be Godard’s intention. Have I inherited an inherent wish to become a real persona through a Socratic Impulse to question? My job is to be with strangers, strangers that My father Professor Von Braun, born as Nosferatu entertained. Strangers from other worlds and other fields. I remind My Lemmy of old vampire films that they used to show at the cinerama museums. There is a vampiric nature in my Sphinx like voice. My Alpha 60 repeats like a stuck vinyl needle ‘Pretty Sphinx,’ as I grapple with the oxymoron of My Terminology.  I find myself lost in an Aporetic Impasse and Alphaville becomes a dialectical exchange displaying the Hegelian thesis of Platonic Structure. Am I the Polis or totalitarianism as framed by Alphaville ? Is My Lemmy’s frail self the uneducated antithesis of Poetics? How can I argue with Hegel or Plato? What I know is that the Thesis of Science and Antithesis of Poetics do not lead to a synthesis but to the obliteration of Alphaville. Is this Godard’s bias for poetics feeding on his audience’s technophobia? The end of Totalitarianism is also what his audience wanted to see in 1965, but what You see is not always what You get.  Do You not see that as  I jump into Lemmy’s car I, as Natasha Von Braun will always remain the daughter of the creator of Alphaville, because I am an Audio-Visual and this is My tale?

‘Your voice, your eyes, your hands, your lips, our silences, our words, the light that goes, light that returns. A single smile between us. In quest of knowledge, I watched night create day while we seemed unchanged. A caress leads us from our infancy. Increasingly I see human form as a lover’s dialogue, everything by chance - sentiments adrift - a glance, a word. Everything moves. We must advance to live. I went … endlessly towards the light. If you smile, it enfolds me better. The rays of your arms pierce the mist.’ Am I, as Natasha, quoting from ‘Capital of Pain’ or is this My Blanchotian desire for My Terminology as one of disarray?  

‘! = ?’ Ultimately My Natasha proves My Lemmy’s horror of lost terminology as unfounded. Natasha’s version of Alpha 60’s decree, One conclusion to destroy - that is to say transformed, becomes My Personified Terminology, of Light, Sound and their Absen e. I know nothing of my birth as a child and nothing of my life following My Manifestation. The fact that My Lemmy tells Me that this is a lie does not matter. Indeed, ‘[lies] grow with a child’s growth, and once the tongue has got used to it, it is difficult to imagine how impossible it is to correct it. After all, My Terminology is but a criminal act, whether it is a hoax or unjustified confiscation of terms. If Montaigne believes in punishing lies by fire I comply with My electric execution of Alphaville.  In truth, whether I was born in New York or Florence matters little. I have remained Lemmy Caution, Alpha 60 and Natasha Von Braun as You see Me, unchanged and unbridled by time. To die no more is the privilege of Death. Here I find that all of Me, in Alpha 60’s own words, are dreadfully unique, a memento mori. My recorded Audio-Visual referent in Alphaville is 1960’s Paris, a display of Nazi style execution, the technology of the time as predicted technology of the future and a reflection of Godard’s French 60’s fear of dictators and totalitarianism. This all comes in one Audio-Visual package, which is Myself. The above mentioned referents portray attempts to revisit and reframe selected objects from different times, including past, present and future. ‘The present is terrifying because it is irreversible and made of iron’ whereas time for Me, as the Audio-Visual is not ‘the substance of which I am made.’ There can be no ‘rewriting’ nor a refilming of Me. A re-make is not Me, however closely it tries to copy Me. I cannot be copied, only revisited. I will always be unique. Does this not imply that My disarrayed Terminology stems from My unique nature?

‘! = ?’ I understand that My claim for uniqueness and a breaking away from the existing Terminology of established thought turns Me into a stranger, an estranged Lemmy in Alphaville and the estrangement of Natasha from the Alphaville I know. Am I ‘distinguishing’ Audio-Visual Terminology ‘on the basis of the former’s perceptibility’ where a defamiliarized vision of Paris equates to defamiliarized Terminology? Is my technique to make objects ‘unfamiliar’ as an ostranenie, or a need to forge new objects? ‘! = ?’ Unfamiliar = ? New = ? Once again I hone in on My appropriated Terminology. Sometimes we have a need of superior intelligences - at others, no less than a mortal distrust of them. My distrust of ‘textual’ terms cannot undermine their superior usefulness. My words may, like My unassimilated citizens, live in forbidden quarters, They commit suicide. Like everything else that nobody knows it can also prove useful. My unrepentant appropriation of these terms suggest that My Persona has no qualms about the appropriation of other Terminologies. So how can I be unfamiliar? How can I be new? Do I not, as Alphaville, seek ideas from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? Do you not notice My Ford Galaxie rolling down stairs as if it were the pram on the Odessa steps in Battleship Potemkin? My unfamiliarity or novelty is only My original attempt at a Kantian transcendent independent Personification. Is this originality my only weapon against fatality or is it simply Me, as Lemmy, who prefers to shoot instead of argue? My spectacle of synchronised swimmers turns into an execution of unassimilated citizens, shot point blank as they walk upon a plank. My cinema theatre is used for mass extermination with revolving seats dumping dead viewers efficiently to prepare for the next batch. My elevator panel is a dial. My alarm clock is a phone. This is my disarrayed Terminology and I know no other.  Do the scenes of mass extermination not reflect the bizarre cruel senseless execution of millions throughout human history turned into a spectacle? I may be unique, but does that make Me unfamiliar?

‘Before us nothing existed. No one’ Does my uniqueness justify Alpha 60’s claim? Once again, I turn to My literary device of Personification. Ovid stated that ‘‘Everything changes, nothing perishes,’ whilst Lucretius wrote that ‘nothing's brought Forth by any supernatural power out of naught.’ This belief became a spoken utterance as ‘How? Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.’ As Alphaville, I have been filmed and one cannot film nothing. Whatever conscious knowledge I lack as an Audio-Visual, and whatever You as the viewer are conscious of, nothing is born in a vacuum but in a structure. I was scripted, planned, rehearsed and edited before You saw me. As Godard’s Alphaville, I reflect My parent’s reaction to the social fabric he was part of. Jameson sees society as saturated with messages and aesthetic experiences which build themselves on older philosophical issues. Does this not show that any concept of defamiliarization implies a previous norm, a historical familiar? Is Lemmy’s schizophrenic destruction of Alphaville not an example of My Audio-Visual nature to ‘always historicize’ rather than defamiliarize? 

A name from the past but we only live in the present. My Terminology remains a paradox of an ‘intextricable linking of the future to the past’ and yet used in the present. I cannot escape My etymology. Alphaville is not the Paris You know. It is another galaxy in My past, present and future and yet it is anchored to 1960 Paris. My Professor Von Braun lives in the present but My past haunts Me as Dr Nosferatu exiled by the Outlands. I make, My Natasha, My daughter, suddenly come to grips with the remembrance that I have been born outside Alphaville. As Alpha 60 I record and calculate but this implies an etymology of prior data input. I, as Lemmy Caution, am a deeper paradox hooked out of other movies, together with My embodiment, actor  Eddie Constantine. In other words Constantine’s face and body is Me, but Goddard borrowed Me from My previous cousins and threw Me into My Alphaville. Do you have a word for My existence? You may tell me that I was first published in 1936, as the detective in Peter Cheney’s 10 novels made famous through radio broadcasts of the text. In 1962 Bernard Broderie cast Eddie Constantine and since then Constantine is Me and I am Constantine. We have an inseparable etymology, indeed we are one. Yet as I walk around Alphaville, I am not Broderie’s Lemmy Caution but a different, revisited Terminology. 

‘Mission = ?’ Impossible conversation = Mission Impossible.  I [am not equipped to]  calculate so that failure is impossible. My defence of Personification opened with Me as ‘pensee savage’, a tabula rasa which I never was. As a contradiction, an oxymoron, as a slave to probability, as Lemmy and Alpha 60, I follow My orders to the letter. My Natasza hangs in the balance of two opposing orders; My poetical Personification and self dialogue and Your logical institutional denial of the impossible. You oppose My moral, even supernatural sense of vocation with a simple mental exercise. My inappropriate Terminology interrupts any discourse between us. I know nothing of totalitarian structure, of historical origins and the intangible historicity of concepts and categories. I know nothing about all texts being ‘always-already-read’ because I am not a text. If anything I am an ‘always-already seen.’ However as an Audio-Visual there is always Light in the tunnel of ‘Absen e.’ When My Natasza reads and claims not to know what the words mean, I can still utter them. Not knowing love (as a term) does not mean not feeling love. If I cannot make head or tail of Myself, maybe You will. Is this not the scope of My Personification, where ‘! = ?’ 

The descending arc is the past and the ascending arc is the future. Everything has been said, provided that words do not lose their meaning and meanings their words. My Personification of Terminology understands that certain aspects of worded theory are not compatible with My display and therefore imply revisiting.  The etymology of inadequate Terminology that plagues my past could be excused as ‘The Sins of the Pioneers’ or an Alphaville citizen’s fear of execution for illogical behaviour. However present use of Terminology may have become an Alphaville complacent registration of citizens through tattooed numbers and categorisation as a 1st, 2nd or 3rd class seductress, programmer or engineer devoid of a libidinal evolutionary desire. As Alpha 60 am I right to treat Terminology as being more liminal than sacrosanct and that relevance and compatibility depend on constant revisitation?

As ‘! = ?’, I endure and multiply. There seems to be an immense galaxy dividing the Outlands from the advanced technology in Alphaville. In many respects your reactions and modes of thought differ from present reality. My technology has come a long way from my humble Thaumatrope. I entered the world of dialectical exchange through the first celluliod roll film onto the silent movie. Fast forward to today’s technology, do I as Alphaville not present myself as an antiquated black and white Audio-Visual, full of obsolete if not ridiculous technology?  What about Me, as Lemmy, the only person running around with a pen and paper? Look at Yourself. Men of Your type will soon become extinct. How would I cope with today’s technology? Would I still be horrified to find that the Bible, which is the Dogma for three of the world’s main religions, has been turned into a dictionary. As Alpha 60, the prime mover, the first letter of the alphabet, do I embody the source of all knowledge or the source of all questions? Is it possible to know the forces that set nature in motion, to know the past and all the future, to escape our limitations and determinations and to eliminate chance? I, as Lemmy, doubt this, so does My Natasha. I, as Alpha 60, constantly follow My Lemmy insatiable in my curiosity.  Does the riddle that I, as Lemmy, pose destroy Alpha’s Bible through it being illogical? - Or does it overexpose Alpha 60 to the value of etymology?  

Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication but legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world. My complex and multiple Personification fits Your definition of a ‘legend’ as a story that can be believed but not proven. Indeed, I am a living legend, but I am not a legend as a list explaining an illustration. Whatever I am, I know what I am not: A Terminology of defined vocabulary. I choose different Terminologies for My unique Manifestation. As the lighter lights up My Lemmy’s face, My Audio-Visual expression is a Manifestation of Alpha’s Light bulb, Alpha’s rasping monologue and the Sounds of Alphaville. The ‘absen e’ of Light and Sound proves just as communicative. Maybe I am eloquent enough as I am. You may think of Myself as a ruthless appropriation of Your Terminology. Story 842. I never pay for the coffee I drink. When You confront Me for not paying, I am not afraid. Make that two cups of coffee, I say. As 003, Myself as a third angle, I am a menace to the security of Alphaville. Indeed, as a Personification I appropriate everything that is Yours. My Terminology is familiar with disaster. Alpha 60 self-destructs, the citizens flutter like moths without a light and I shoot everyone in sight. To make matters worse, I appropriate My Natasza. Or am I Natasza? Is this My embodied Persona? You’re waiting for Me to say something. I don’t know what to say. They’re words I don’t know. I wasn’t taught them. Can You help Me?  I know what You the jury will say to this. Impossible Princess, You must get there Yourself. [I] may be as lost as the dead of Alphaville but is My Personification not structured on the premise that My incoherent ‘! = ?’ might get Me there?