Classical guitar plays. The wind blows. The leaves in the nearby trees whisper to you, “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.” You take a look at yourself in the mirror; you are Juliette Binoche. You open a nearby tin, its surface embossed with criss-crossed candy canes. Inside, chocolate. Brittles, bordeaux, truffles, and butterchews. All so sumptuous, so sweet, so rich. You, Juliette Binoche, pick up a chocolate. You consider it, the way its surface melds to your fingers, bent by the heat of your touch. You bite, and you remember: Johnny Depp doesn’t even like chocolate.
Liar
The lies the people are fed! You Juliette Binoche, can’t stand it. He starred as Willy Wonka, a goddamn chocolatier! He lied to us, just like he lied to us about being an interesting actor. You begin to contemplate how it’s all just a lie, nowadays. You remember that time you visited Russia, the way everyone looked great, in balaclavas. You remember that it wasn’t forced, not as it is now.
Said fashions are being encouraged by the government, with the defense ministry having commissioned this line of ultra-patriotic menswear from designer Leonid Alexeev. You’re frightened by this. Juliette Binoche, how would you combat such obvious politicking?
Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead are combating scalpers by creating two new “farewell” shows in Santa Clara. You understand that the true fans of this or that band deserve to see them, and that scalpers are stopping them from that.
The world is conflict. Even entertainment is always built from conflict. Two men, or two women, or one woman and one man — they always struggle against one another. Sometimes this happens in a wrestling ring, and conflict is elevated to some kind of entertaining existential height. The things wrestlers do, the moves they make and the marks they hit — they are really just actors, players on the world’s stage. Hulk Hogan is Juliette Binoche, and Juliette Binoche is everyone.
But not Game of Thrones’ Hodor. Only Hodor is Hodor, and he lets you know it. He says it over and over again. It is such an odd character trait, as if George R.R. Martin wanted to pay homage to some balding Pokémon giant. But he unknowingly gave this gentle giant a real disorder, something called expressive aphasia. This is a real disorder that, as its name suggests, will phase you. It is related to brain damage in the left brain hemisphere.
Why would you, Juliette Binoche, despite having just starred as the glamorous Maria Enders in The Clouds of Sils Maria, care about someone being under-dressed when there are unfortunate souls walking around the world with brain damage, fated to utter a single word over and over? There is so much to care about in the world that sometimes it is just easier for you, Juliette Binoche, to flash a quick smile, and forget everything else. Worrying about everything is the same as worrying about nothing, so why worry at all?