Clever

I know what it is: intellectual stimulation. You need to read clever things and try to write clever things. Because you’re clever. And because the world doesn’t give you enough clever. Enough stimulus.

So you sit up here, in your high room, which you’ve turned into cleverland. And I’m allowed up here, because you have other needs, and not just intellectual ones. Which I’m sure you despise.

You read these things to feel clever and to exercise your cleverness. To take your cleverness for a walk.


The clever despise the not-so-clever, I know that, philosopher. Different levels of intelligence shouldn’t mix, should they? I shouldn’t even be up here, I know that. I don’t know my way through arthouse film. I don’t follow the latest developments in … literary fiction, or whatever. I don’t have an intellectual life. I don’t study at all, not like you study. I never get lost in books.