Wine, Postgraduates

Maybe our false euphoria is a way of controlling the opposition. Maybe our drunkenness corrals us. Diverts our revolutionary energies. It’s how we’re sidelined … Contained …

Alcohol is just a refuge of the impotent: isn’t that the implication. They allow us this. We can still drink – for the moment. But for how long? No doubt they’ll allow us our ration of alcohol in the new world they’re creating. For a period of adjustment, at least.

It’s a safety valve. This is our permitted ranting. A little rumspringa before we get on with the real business of life. We’re just doing the things they allow us to do. But even this will be withdrawn from us in time.

 

The young don’t drink anymore, we know that, postgraduates. You’re entirely more sensible than we are. Which means entirely more conquered. Look at you guys, sober as judges. Wine, postgraduates! Wine! Let yourselves go! Free yourselves up!

Ah, but you’re probably high on substances of which we cannot conceive. Isn’t that right, you rogues?

Don’t count on it.

 

Wine has a history, postgraduates. A philosophical history! A philosophical dignity! It’s refined! It requires discernment. Judgement. You need to be trained to appreciate wine.

Look at us: do you think we were brought up with vino? Of course not. We come to it as aliens. But we learned something about it. We cultivated ourselves. As we are going to cultivate you.

Wine can be frightening, we know that. There’s a snobbery to the wine-world. Of course! But if we can develop a taste for wine, then so can you, postgraduates.  

 

Wine is a philosophical accelerant, postgraduates. It’s a thought-catalyst. There’s a culture to wine. It isn’t just about glugging. We’re cultured people. We’re part of a tradition of wine drinkers. Connoisseurship. Good taste.

It’s about the palate, postgraduates. There is a culture of wine. It’s not about alcohol count. We’re not just pissed, we’re wine pissed. It’s positively classical. Positively Greek. We might as well be intimates of Socrates, as we drink.

 

Of course it should really be mulled wine, on a night like this.

 

Wine, postgraduates! Get it down you! The frozen campus doesn’t seem so freezing, when you drink, does it? The world doesn’t have such a tight grip upon us. We’re not in a stranglehold, not for a time. We’ve been allowed some distance. We can breathe. Take a few moments. Look up from our labours. Release ourselves, for a time. Know some leeway. Some freedom. Pull ourselves out of the trap. 

 

You need to drink to numb the shock. The future shock. The present shock.

The blurred world far preferable to the lucid world. The smeared world. The soft-around-the-edges world. Even the Organisational Management world. It all becomes so much more bearable.

There’s even euphoria to be snatched from the ruin of the humanities. Of philosophy! Despair can be altered into joy. Hopelessness can be raised a notch, and then another notch. We don’t feel so utterly defeated. We don’t feel quite as crushed. We can crawl out from under our stones.

We’re no longer buried – not as deeply. We’re not completely lost in the wreckage. It isn’t quite the end of the world – not anymore. There’s life in death – imagine that! It’s not entirely horror. The world’s no longer screaming in our ears. We’ve gained agency – a strange kind of agency. We’re able to do something, even if it’s only vomiting up the world. Even if its just spewing all this up.

Death isn’t just pressing into death. Horror-world isn’t quite as horrible. We can open our eyes in Hell. Laugh at our revulsion. Everything seems laughable, that was previous unendurable. Even ourselves! Especially ourselves!

 

The possibility of drinking.

A life to death. Life midst destruction. Desolation is not quite as desolate. There’s a gap! A break! An opening. My God, we can breathe, if you can call this breathing. Some last, late gasp. Our negativity howling.

It's not revolution. It’s not the overturning of the world in blood and fire. But at least it’s a gasp. At least it’s something. At least we can see it all and hate it all and stand back from it all. At least we’re not entirely victims.