This is the grove of the postgraduate soul. In the former postgraduate halls …
They’ve made a clearing.
They’ve lined it with books – humanities books. All the humanities books.
What is this? A ceremony? The rite of postgraduate spring? But it’s not spring yet. It’s the depths of winter. It’s the postgraduate dance of the shortest day. Of the longest shadow. The opposite of midsummer! The dance of midwinter. The most sacred of the postgraduate festivals.
The postgraduates wanted to show us this. They wanted to express … what? Gratitude?
They wanted for us to see how deeply they felt it – the chance to study. They wanted to share their joy.
We’re touched. Moved. What a privilege.
It’s like Footloose, but for postgraduates. Kick off your Sunday shoes and so on.
Their yearning … It’s beautiful.
This is how the postgraduates dance in secret. We’re very lucky to be admitted here.
Did we used to dance like this?
I can’t remember. Were our memories wiped?
Why are they letting us see this?
They’re dancing for the Rapture. They want the postgraduate Rapture, where they just disappear. Where they’re beamed up to … a better universe. To sit at the right hand of God, or whatever. To join the postgraduate angels, up there in heaven.
The last postgraduates are dancing. Look at them dance! Look at them whirl! What joy is there in them.
Almost inscrutable, their dancing. There’s no mourning in their dancing. No regret. No sense of lastness. It’s not eschatological, their dancing. There’s no sense of doom.
There should be a part time dance, too. We should dance our part-timism.
It’s too late for that.
We should dance the memory of our part-timism.
I don’t think we can remember. Not now. Not as full-time lecturers. We can’t think our way back. We can’t feel our way.
Of course we can! Our five-year sentences – out there. Eight years, in Helmut’ case – out there, in the world. Years of soul-crushing. Of soul-distortion. Years of thwarted hopes. Of part-timer’s glut. Years, when the supply of our kind exceeded demand …
We should dance our passion of part-time dancing. The saddest dance. The deepest dance. Having been shown the academic world, and then left it behind. Having experienced academic delights, and then left them behind.
Postgraduate sadness is always only ever wistful. The postgraduate has escaped the world – there’s joy in that; even in postgraduate despair. The postgraduate knows they’ll likely have to re-enter it, the world. That they will be lost out there anew. But the part-timer is actually out in the world again, exposed to the cold winds of the world. The part time is exposed to the worst elements of the world.
We should do part-time butoh. Expose the heart of part time darkness.
Fiver’s part time-butoh. Nobody does it better.
Slow agony. The refinement of indignity. Dancing in his chains. The humiliated dance. The broken-one dance.
He’s dancing self-disgust. And auto exploitation. It’s beautiful. It’s disgusting – both at once.
Work in Progress 