Drunken Song

The importance of drinking. Of drunken self-confidence. Of drunken be-who-you-are.

Let us become these drunkards, these unashameds. Let us become these cosmic drinkers, unafraid. Unabashed!

Let us become the barbarians we are. An affirm it: our barbarianhood. Let us come into our barabarianism. Our inner intellectual Visigoths. Our philosophical Ostrogoths!


No why to our drinking. The explosion of whys. And wherefores.

We drink because … there is no why. Drinking has no why. It’s not about the why.

The drunken question – that’s what we want to hear. The question we can only ask when drunk. That can only sing through our drunkenness. Exalting our drunkenness. Lifting it higher.

The drunk before the sky. The drunk, under heaven. A kind of holy drinking – and a holy drinker. A toast to the night. To the lightning. To the fire of the stars.

Let’s never be sober again.


A great alcoholic influx. Into our veins! Into our bloodstream! The swelling of a mighty alcoholic river. That carries us away!

And don’t we want to be carried away! Don’t we want it to be carried away: our mediocrity! Our Britishness! Our inner organisers! And managers! Our inner analytic philosophers!


Idiocy’s song is a drunken song. The drunkard sings of idiocy and sings idiocy. Our idiot cries! Our drunken cries!


Is there a drunken god to which we cry? Is There a Dionysus in our sky? A wine god? A Bacchus for our revels? To whom we direct our drunken prayers? To whom we pour our drunken libations?


Our drunken sacrifice – of philosophy. Of all philosophical sense. Of all reasonableness. Of all measuredness. Drinking is the sacrifice of analytic philosophy. Of the analytic philosophers inside us. Of calm, measured sober philosophy. Of philosophical tranquillity. Of philosophical peace.


We’re waking up our philosophical neighbours. We being raucous – philosophically raucous. Unreason, unleashed. Passions, unleashed. The drunken attunement: unto what does it open us? What does it let us declare? What are we attuned to?


The drunken earth and drunken sky. The drunken stars in the drunken night. The whole world as drunk, and the earth as drunk. We see it all: the world’s inner drunkenness. The world’s drunken song. Its bacchanial revels.


Is there a drunken wisdom? Are there drunken profounds? Drunken fundaments? Are there drunken philosophies – philosophies that you understand when you’re drunk?

 Or is drinking only ever the ruin of philosophy? The sacrifice of philosophy? Of philosophical reason? Of the philosophical logos?


To liquefy philosophy. To render it fluid. Fluent – in another tongue. Tbe carried away by drink.

The philosopher torn apart in the drunken flood. The philosopher-Orpheus, singing in his pieces.

Let us be these drunkards. Let us drink ourselves to death – to the death of the philosopher inside us. And let us philosophise from this drunken death, this drunken dying.


Our bloodshot eyes! Our wine stained teeth! Catching alcoholic cancers of the mouth and throat!

We’re drinking ourselves to death and beyond death. We’re drinking-dying, which is better than sober-dying. We’re drinking endlessly during the endless end.

We’re dosing – not even micro dosing. We’re macro dosing. Overdosing. As the world becomes more unbearable …


Our drunken fantasia. Our inebriation … Our incapacity … the impossibility of thinking. Of living. Of being alive.

No more living in this world. No more accepting it – this world. No more, it’s terms and conditions – this world. We’re tearing up the contract – the social contract.


We’re antinomian in drink.

We’re the drunken Alcibiades, not sober old Socrates. We’re drunken Cynics.


Were there ever drunken schools of philosophy? But drunks are always philosophers. Drunkards always have a theory of it All. Something momentous to impart.

Drunkards think of themselves as being on the brink. As bringing the drunken good news. The drunken gospel.

There is such a thing as a drunken messianism. As the feeling of an imminent world shift. Of drunken prophecy. The drunk is a prophet. But of what world. Of what world cataclysm.

The drunk KNOWS. A spurious knowledge. A dubious knowledge. A distorted knowledge. A know nothing knowledge. An idiot’s knowledge, which is to say a non-knowledge. But a knowledge nonetheless.


Drunk in the world’s night … Drunk in the age of the world picture … Drunk in the technate …

*Drunken assurance. Drunken confidence. A drunken mission.

We drink to forget stupidity. We drink to consummate our idiocy. To think that idiocy is enough. That it will take us to where we need to go.

To sail away on our drunkenness. On our drunken boat. Over the drunken waves. Under the drunken stars. Full of our drunks’ song. Full of our drunken lament. Our drunken cry.

And our drunken souls will sing upwards. Our drunken cries. We’ll drink all the way to second innocence. We’ll forget all the enchantments. All the songs of experience.

A second childhood, in drunkenness. We’ll be children again, but drunken children, in the world’s morning.