Drinking should always be a turning from the world, according to Cicero. A drunken reaching. A drunken conversion, even. A drunken way of experiencing the creaturely condition – which is pure yearning.
Anything so long as it was void-drinking – not connoisseurship. Or pubism, which was just as bad.
I thought she liked us drunk. So long as it was a void drinking … Not pubism. Drinking was an exposure, not a refuge.
Drinking our way out of academic politesse. Out of academic timorousness.
Until we could say great and terrible things about the world. Apocalyptic things! Wild baseless generalisations!
Until we could give philosophy over to roaring! To rumbling!
To wake up, through drink. To open eyes in the night. Attain a terrible vigilance. To see through all things – to the end of all things. To become drunken prophets …
To sail perpetually at the edge of alcoholism. That’s the trick. Without falling into it! Without succumbing!
We must let ourselves drown in alcohol – our old selves.
And no doubt some of us will be picked off by alcoholism. A couple of us at least will die in the gutter. But it will have been worth it.
This is how philosophy will be reborn: on drunken nights like this. Nights in which we’d forgotten so much. When we’d left behind all scholarship. All hedging. All shoring up of our positions. All rigour, probably – so called rigour. When we’d left behind our reading.
Work in Progress 