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If only Cicero were still with us.

Cicero, our erstwhile organ grinder! Cicero, the old head of the philosophy dept! Cicero, who handpicked us – us – to work here! Cicero, who plucked us – us – from our provincial universities! Cicero, who scouted the conferences for … what? Not the up-and-coming, we were never that …

The desperate! The put-upon! The cornered! That’s who we were …  

Cicero sought out the prospectless! The defeated – spiritually! Financially! The lower class! The skint! The manner-less! The pretty-much-down-and-out! The bordering-on-resentful! The all-but-embittered! The personality-disordered-from-sheer-prospectlessness! Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university! Us: who else?

Cicero actually wanted our kind around her. Part of the end times will be a parade of deformities and grotesques, she said. Not physical, but, like, mental deformity. There’ll be mental sports! Psychic twistings! Cognitive contortions! Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting, but in thought …

And only the thought-freakshow would be able to understand the end times, Cicero thought. Would be able to communicate it. Which Cicero herself, with her European education, with her great list of notable publications, with her command of languages, ancient and modern, with dozens of keynote speeches behind her, could never do. Which Cicero herself, with her deep philosophical culture, with her personal philosophical library lining the walls of her flat, with her decades-long immersion in philosophical life, could never hope but aspire to.

We were to be the doom speakers of the end times. We were to voice disgust’s disgust. Horror’s horror. We were to voice the truth of our times: the mad truth. Which is why Cicero wanted to make a place for us.