The French Connection - "..Encore!"...

I think we like to think we know what "Encore..." means. It's one of those French-isms that has been globally exported as successfully as "joie de vivre.." and "je ne sais quoi-t-ever". It shouts "More..." or "another round"... One last song before the lights come up. It’s a strong and crowd-friendly, shouty word, associated with appetite, enthusiasm and thunderous applause...

"Encore" is a loud, but quite polite insistence that something that good should not yet end. At least not while we are clapping with such unreserved glee. It has become a common noun. "An encore", so much do we crave to yell it. It could be viewed, through the eye of the uncompromising cynic, as borderline self-congratulation for having got tickets to whatever the event is, that we want so much more of. Ooh.. that does sound a bit meanly misanthropic... oh well.

The modern use of "Encore" only tells part of the story. Its older meaning is quieter, more embodied, and like many of our "French Connection" wordy, lexicological digs, far more revealing.

Encore has it's linguistic roots in the French "en corps" meaning "in the body". Not in the way we might ask Rick Astley to never consider giving you up, but the sense of "your perfomance is still inside our bodies". A physical sentiment. Not to demand repetition, but to describe the desire to remain within an experience that was still alive and kicking. To stay in the rhythm and the energy. In its physical presence. The body - not the clock - decided when it was finished. I think, this distinction - as well as being mildy interesting for abut 3 minutes - actually matters.

Somewhere along the way, Encore shifted from an embodied state to a quantitative one. From "your performance lives in me" to "Play it again, Sam". From presence to extension. What was once about inhabiting a moment became about prolonging it. And yet, the original meaning still lingers, perhaps more felt, than expressively understood. I mean.. I really like the V.O. of the word.. It would just sound so weird to Mr. Astley if I shouted "Rick...you are inside me", from row 248, at the O2 Arena.

Think of the moments when the encore desire rises instinctively, before we over-think the performy shouting of it. A performance so effing amazing. One that lands in the body before it lands anywhere near the mind. Music or theatrical performance that literally rearranges our breath. A conversation or a TED talk so absorbing, that time gives up and goes home. We don’t want more because we’re needy and greedy - we want more because we are still inside what’s happening.

Encore, in its truest sense, is not about repetition. It’s about the continuity of aliveness.

This is why the word encore feels different from words like again or more. Those two needy imposters ask for extension. "Encore" requires actual immersion. It signals that something has not yet completed its natural arc. That my body hasn’t reached its ending, even if the usher is telling me to leave the auditorium with his torch in my face.

There’s something quietly instructive about that, especially now.

We live in a culture that rushes us from moment to moment, appetite to appetite, experience to experience. Finish, move on, optimise. Even pleasure is often scheduled, consumed, and checked off. In that context, encore has been flattened into a request for more output rather than a signal of ongoing presence.

But the older meaning offers a different lens. What if encore is not a demand, but a form of listening? Listening to the body that says, I’m actually not done here yet. Listening to attention that hasn’t been snuffed out. Listening to an inner joy that hasn’t yet burned out. Seen this way, encore becomes an argument for staying — not lingering out duty or show, but remaining because something is still alive and asking to be lived fully.

It seems to moi, that this has implications beyond the stage or the theatre. How often do we leave experiences too soon because someone decides it's finished? How often do we rush to the exit because movement feels more appropriate than sticking around?

The original feeling of the word Encore helps us tell the difference. It reminds us that aliveness has a texture. A felt sense. It cannot be rushed, and it cannot be forced. It completes itself as and when we feel ready. I mean take a sunset... we don't jump back into the car, or take the dog home as soon as the fire dips below the horizon. We carry on living in it a bit longer. We express it. The colours, the streaks. It is probably the best sunset we have ever seen, until tomorrow. We don't necessarily need nature to re-wind so we can see it again, we just need the Universe to know that the experience is still carryingh on the party, somewhere in our souls.

In French culture, this embodied intelligence shows up everywhere: in meals that stretch without agenda, in conversations that wander, in the refusal to hurry moments that are doing important work simply by unfolding. Encore belongs to this way of being — not indulgent, but attentive.

To ask for encore was once to say: I am still here. This is still happening in me.

Perhaps that’s why the word endures so effortlessly across many diufferent languages. We recognise the feeling even if we’ve forgotten the origin. We know, instinctively, the difference between wanting more and wanting to stay inside what matters.

And maybe mid-January, when energy is way lower, time feels heavier, and attention wants to narrow rather than expand. That, dear readers, is exactly the right moment to remember this older meaning.

Not everything needs to be repeated. Not everything needs to be extended.

But when something is still alive and emotionally klicking, encore is not a request for excess...

...It's just an appreciative pause. Try saying it that way.. people will think you're weird.

Yay...