All this culture. These posters. This framed art. These blu-rays. These CDs … I’ve barely ever seen a CD before.
Like some capsule. Looks like solitary confinement to me.
I’m glad I’m even allowed in. Am I allowed in? Are you regretting inviting me? Am I disturbing your solitude?
I pity the woman who ends up with you. I pity her. Unless she’s another philosopher. Unless she has a capsule of her own.
Do you think you can hold the barbarism at bay? You think you can stay in and party like it’s 1955, or whatever?
The ground zero of your intellectual life. Your thought base. Your hide-out camp. Your fortress of studious solitude. Your favourite island.
You don’t want me here, do you? How do I fit in? What am I disturbing? Your European dreams. Your arthouse dreams.
Like these things matter anymore. Your personal pantheon. And these gold framed reproductions.
Who are you kidding?
It’s like in fairy tales, where the ogre buries his heart in a chest at the bottom of a lake. This is where you’ve buried your heart. Your would-be heart …
But I don’t believe it’s real. It’s only as if you loved these things. As if you loved old Europe. As if they meant something. As if, as if …
Because without this ballast, you’d float away, wouldn’t you? Who would you be then? Who would you be, without philosophy? Just an ordinary Joe.
Imagine that. No sage. No mage. No intellectual glamour. Is there such a thing as intellectual glamour anymore?
See, if you lived on the continent, in Paris or something, then you’d make sense. But you don’t make sense, do you?
Which is why you retreat here. Which is why you cower here. From an indifferent world.
This is where you come to restore your strength. For European-culture power-ups.
This is your life raft. As though European culture could save you.
The old European names, like incantations. Their artwork on the walls …
Your sanctum. Your holy of holies.
Love you, love your room, is that how it works? Love you, love your taste. Love these relics. These touchstones.
You’re like a dresser crab, making your shell out of all this stuff you’ve found. Must have taken a lot of time – and money.
Culture, philosopher … Your favourite things … like the Julie Andrews song. When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when you’re feeling sad. You simply remember Albert Ayler and Sun Ra and so on. And then you don’t feel so bad …
The sanctum of the humanities. The human treasures of European civilization.
We Business Studies types just have James Bond Blu-ray collections and a Netflix subscription. That does us …
A Europe of the mind.
So much to meet the eye. So many delights. The eye’s refreshed. The ear’s refreshed.
Alan has an interest in classic design. I like swinging London stuff. Jean Shrimpton and so on. We haven’t got your European panache.
Really, Alan doesn’t have any taste, coming from Middlesborough. He leaves it up to me. But I don’t have any taste either.
All your cultural capital. I’ll bet you could hold forth at tedious length on each and every thing here. I’m sure you could bore me to death, philosopher.
You’re really in denial, philosopher. No one cares about this stuff. No one gives a fuck. You don’t need to own things. To collect things. Very anal. It’s all streamed now. We’re streaming people …
I take Alan to design museums in London. I drag him around. That’s how I cultivate myself.
Of course, in the future, Mother will be able to make whatever you want. The internet of things, philosophy. I’ll be able to just 3D-print your favourite Terence Conran stuff.
You’re the last of something, philosopher. The last of Europe. The last of imaginary Europe.
Work in Progress 