Desire

“We wanted to say that up until now you speak abstractly about desire because you extract an object that’s presumed to be the object of your desire. So one could say, I desire a woman, I desire to leave on a trip, I desire this, that. And we were saying something really very simple, simple, simple: You never desire someone or something, you always desire an aggregate. It’s not complicated. Our question was: what is the nature of relations between elements in order for there to be desire, for these elements to become desirable? I mean, I don’t desire a woman – I am ashamed to say things like that since Proust already said it, and it’s beautiful in Proust: I don’t desire a woman, I also desire a landscape that is enveloped in this woman, a landscape that, if need be – I don’t know – but that I can feel. As long as I haven’t yet unfolded the landscape that envelops her, I will not be happy, that is, my desire will not have been attained, my desire will remain unsatisfied.”

Gilles Deleuze, D for desire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrZdOZzr4as