How do we regain the lost place of our life? Perhaps, as Artaud's own life suggests, by incessantly searching for it, again and again experimenting with our capacities, trying to find out what our body is capable of, capable of encountering, capable of experiencing — its ‘capacity to be affected’ (Deleuze 1992: 217). Perhaps this is precisely what living is all about, continuously searching for places that offer new ways of living. And perhaps we even have to lose ourselves first, our bearings, our lives, in order to find new dwellings where we can come into full possession of our power of action, and where new modes of existence may be invented.

This poses a twofold problem, which I consider to be the very crisis of experience, creativity and invention, of producing new life opportunities: instigating events, complexifying encounters, offering possibilities of losing and finding our selves ‘in this world, as it is’ (Deleuze 1989: 172). Losing-and-finding our selves in this sense, becoming imperceptible, saying ‘yes’ to what is strange and singular in our existence, to the intensities and singularities that traverse our body, is of course extremely risky, since there is no guarantee of ever finding our way home again. This is why many of us find it safer to perform this existential practice with an eye on worlds beyond this world, to escape into worlds of abstraction providing transcendent points of reference wherefrom this world, this life, becomes judicable.