Anyway, we can’t drink ourselves to death yet. I mean, if we did now, there’d be no one to say, They showed such promise. What they could have been, were it not for their fatal flaw. There’d be no one to say, What a loss. What a wasted talent. What they could have been. What potential.
No one’s trying to snatch the pint glass from our lips. No one’s decided to stage an intervention. No one’s saying, Don’t you think you’ve had too much?
Destiny still regards us as randomers. As random fuckheads. Not as, like, philosophy-princes in waiting, or anything. We haven’t been abroad as serious players. As philosophical contenders. No one’s expecting anything of us.
There’s nothing tragic about mediocrity, that’s the thing. We’re not mad, or even half mad. We’re not alcoholics, or even half-alcoholics. The instinct of self-preservation’s too strong in us.
Mediocrity’s not at war with itself, like genius. Mediocrity doesn’t find life unbearable, like genius. Mediocrity’s happy to cruise on, self-satisfied. Mediocrity’s happy enough with itself as it is.
Which is why our professed despair is only ever mediocre despair. Why we’ve never been really on our knees. Never utterly desperate. Never praying to be anything other than we are.
We’re not actually mad, that’s the thing. We show no real signs of madness. Madness isn’t driving us to brilliance. We’re not fundamentally imbalanced. There’s not some basic chemical error in our makeup. We’re sane – terribly sane! Boringly sane! Mediocrely sane!
There’s no Friedrich Hölderlin amongst us. There’s no Antonin Artaud. There’s no Anne Sexton, no Sylvia Plath. And we’re not perturbed about that! We don’t mind about that!
We read the wild stuff, but we’re not wild. We comment on the mad stuff, but we’re not mad. There’s not a flame we don’t want to dampen. There’s not a fire we aren’t drawn to smother.
Sure, you’ll hear intense talk from us. You’ll bear burning the world down talk. You’ll hear revolutionary talk. Turning the world upside down talk. You’ll ever hear desperation talk. To think, we even specialise in that: desperation talk.
But we’re unlearning intensity, even as we speak. We’re forgetting desperation. We have jobs. We’re not poor. We’re have places to live. We’re not couch surfing. We don’t burn with resentment anymore. There’s nothing left of late adolescent zeal. Of excluded-from-the-world hatred.
Work in Progress 