Author: Lars Iyer

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or with … everything. Is it the poison? Is it the poison seeping into me? Am I mad? I think I might be. I think it drives you mad, the poison. I think I’m going mad.

Help me – someone help me. I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this. With these thoughts. Every day. I can’t think this way. Who’s let me think this way? What’s wrong? What’s so wrong?

It isn’t just me. It’s everything. It’s the whole universe. Everything’s bad. It’s gone bad. It runs with poison. And evil. Everything. Every cell, every atom. Every tiniest thing. The tiniest part of ever tiny things.

 

And I’m destroyed. I’m a demolished … person. I can’t find my way out of the lies. I can’t make my way out. I can’t speak – in my own name. Because my own name is a lie, too. Because I can’t use it: my own name.

And if I weep, they aren’t my tears. You don’t realise – none of you – how demonic this is. You don’t understand what’s invaded us. That there is no escape. Even escape is its escape.

 

Am I going mad? Am I? Is this what’s madness is like?

 

And I can’t talk of this. I can’t say a word – not a word. And I can’t kneel – because it’s kneeling inside me. For me. It kneels in my place. And I can’t pray, because it would pray in my place. And use my words. And use my life.

 

I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what’s in my hands. I don’t know what to say. What words to use. What signs to make. I don’t know … I don’t know anything.

 

When I wake up, it’s from the bottom of the world. The lowest possible place. I wake up from the abyss. I wake up in the grave of everything. I wake up from death.

I begin with death and end up with death. I wake dead and sleep dead. And I can’t escape it. And it’s heavy – so heavy. And it’s crushing. And I’m heavy with death.

I like how we have instinct for what isn’t disgusting. It’s like flowers automatically growing towards the sun.

Heliotropism. Yeah, that.

Non-disgusting-o-tropism. Not-making-us-want-to-kill-ourselves tropism.

 

We started low. And we’re reaching high.

That’s probably the advantage of starting low. It sharpens your instincts.

 

Above our station: that’s what we wanted to be. Because our station was so low. So base.

Which is why we chose philosophy. Which is about as far from our natural stations as anything could be.

Philosophy! Of all subjects! But we sensed the light. We felt it. We knew it was higher than we were. We knew it was better.

 

What are we going to amount to? This is it – this is already our peak. You realise that, don’t you? This is as good as it’s going to get. It’s downhill from here. Of course it is. This is it, the highest we’ll ever get. Enjoy the view.

These are our last untroubled days. Our last hours as free philosophers. Our last months!

These are the balmy days before the storm. Our last spring! To be followed by our last summer! And then the most poignant end of summer. It’ll be an Indian summer, probably … When things really begin …

 

The screws aren’t being turned yet. They’re not actually torturing us. They’re not actually doing anything. They’re trusting us to do it for them. Which is kinda worse. Because they know we will. They know the kind of cowards we are.

 

They want plans. Proposals. Concrete things. New modules. Which we’re going to provide them with.

Speak for yourself. I can’t be fucking bothered.

Listen to you, Miss Bravado! So daring!

 

We’ve got to get serious. Get business-y. We’ve got to frame it all in a way they get. That makes sense to them. Take dictation!

You take dictation.

 

I have an action point. Minutes are for pussies. It’s all about action points now.

Where did you learn that from – your pal, Alan? Who you’re cuckolding.

 

Fiver – forget taking minutes! Do you have any visions, by the way? We could do with a vision. Something positive this time. Something summery.

Fiver, shaking his head.

 

Helmut, what’s your contribution? No contribution. Nada. You can’t still be following your vow of silence.

 

We’ve got to have a Plan – a larger Plan, I mean. About how we survive. About how we strike back. The Resistance! Come on, people!

 

The Postgraduates. They’ll know what to do. Not our postgraduates, idiot. The ones who went underground.

Hölderlin – that’s the name of the campus AI, by coincidence.

Hardly a coincidence. A deliberate desecration. Seriously – you called your AI after the greatest philosopher-poet who ever lived? Who thought of that? Who around here had even heard of Hölderlin?

 

It’s deliberate – that’s what gets me. It’s like deliberately mocking everything precious and noble and good. Everything that isn’t, like, totally disgusting.

 

Fucking Hölderlin. It’s called Hölderlin. I’ll never get over that. They have to take everything. They have to appropriate everything. They won’t let us have anything of our own.

 

Hölderlin … Quote some Hölderlin in German, Helmut. Oh you can’t. Your vow of silence.

And the fact that he doesn’t speak German. For which his vow of science is a very convenient cover.

 

Hölder-who?

Stop pretending. He’s the philosopher’s poet. The philosopher’s philosophical poet. Like Herr literaro-philosophical. The original literaro-philosophical gangsta.

 

Are you going to be the British Hölderlin? Do we need a British Hölderlin? Are you going to be quotable? Are you going to inspire idiots like us two hundred years after you die? Are you going to go mad and live in a tower?

Not a bad option.

Actually, Fiver’s the one who’s going to go mad. Do you write poetry, Fiver? You should. You’ve got the authentic mad thing going on.

 

Are you going to change your name to Hölderlin? Why didn’t Cicero nickname you Hölderlin?

How long is it since we were postgraduates? Years … several years … But very important years. The part-time ditch years. The whoring-pit years. The abyss of part-time desperation years. When we lost all our delicate postgraduate hope.

 

We matured. We hardened. We became what we are. We passed through the wringer. We were destroyed and reborn …

 

We were thrown to the mercy of the four winds.

Outside the university. Lacking an institutional home. Freewheelers! Buccaneers! On the high seas of precarity!

 

We lost our youths. We gave up our youths. Our youths were destroyed.

We were sensitive souls. Too sensitive. It’s amazing we survived. And really, did we survive? Can we be said to have survived?

 

Do you know what a postgraduate is to us? A reminder of promise. Of … potentiality. When we hadn’t become … what we are now.

What we could have been … How we didn’t have to be anything …

 

The postgraduate dreamworld. The only thing they have to do is finish their dissertation. Pass their viva voce. Other than that – nothing, if they’re on a scholarship. Nothing …

The British Asian experience. Reflect on that. The fruits of the Indian diaspora. Studying European philosophy. Why don’t you do Indian philosophy?

You have to have Sanskrit.

Like you have … European languages?

I know the important philosophical vocabulary, yes.

Have you even been to Europe?

I am a desperate provincial.

And proud of it! Well, I actually speak German, philosophy. And I’ve actually been to Germany. I spent a year in Germany. And I speak a little Hindi.

I speak a little bit of Tamil.

How much is a little bit? Could you get by in the motherland?

I’ve hardly been, actually. I’m a provincial, as you know.

So you’re more a European.

I’m just a Brit. And Indo-Brit.

 

I’ll bet you’re a tennis lover. Do you and your husband play tennis?

We do, actually.

Do you take tennis lessons?

What could you possibly have against tennis? Is it a working-class thing?

A working class Southall thing.

Cicero thought she could produce the perfect nihilist.

What’s that, anyway?

 

The perfect nihilist is the one who says a perfect prayer. But to no one. The perfect nihilism is the perfect philosophical psalmist. Saying psalms to nothing.

 

The psalms of a perfect nihilist: is that what you’d like to write?

Formlessness, hate and death. That’s the world.

 

The world is a gift of love.

Fuck off! No it isn’t!

It’s a debt. It’s guilt. All life is guilty, right?

 

It’s enchanted. Sanctified.

It fucking isn’t.

 

This nihilistic, horrific vision of the world. The return of the horrific repressed.

 

Formlessness, hate, death, meaning-dearth. That’s what nihilism shows. The horrific vision. Creation stripped to the bone. Stripped down. Naked fucking facticity …

 

Nihilism can be brought into the heart of religion. That’s the point. That’s what we have to do.

 

The permanent fucking catastrophe. The fucking revolution. The permanent apocalypse now, right?

 

Everything’s just dissolving. Everything’s dust and ruins. 

 

General apocalyptic fright.

 

Creation is not God, right. And it fucking shows. Amorphy. Disintegration. Death, bringing everything to dust.

 

The abysmal fucking … matrix.

 

God and the world are antagonistic. They’re counter-principles. Creation is the disaster.

There’s an absolute difference between world and God.

 

There’s such a thing as a messianic nihilism. That nihilises the world. That shows that the world is not some holy gift. That it doesn’t have some magical hold over us.

 

There’s a nihilism that empties the world of everything but what it really is. That shows the world as it really is.

It’s messianic disenchantment.

 

None of this gift bullshit! I hate the gift bullshit!

 

You can’t just passively accept all this stuff. You have to hate it. None of this communion with the divine stuff.

 

The horrific vision. The fallen, horrific status of the creaturely world. None of this mystical passive private reconciliation between the created world and God, right? There can be no fucking truce between you and this.

 

We need negativity! We have to hate things! To negate everything up to a saving catastrophe.

 

We need dread and fucking ruin. The more negative the world is, the greater the chance for redemption.

 

We need our hatred. We need to reject all this. Reality – what’s called reality. Which is only worthy of being destroyed.

 

Everything’s got to sink to its lowest level. It’s got to show it itself as guilty. As wholly culpable. The world is only worthy of being destroyed, right?

That’s a negation too far. It’s Manichean. When does Judaism become Gnosticism?

 

You can’t praise and glorify all this. The architectonic order of creation, or whatever. You can’t just promote naturalism.

 

A new form of revelation. That’s what nihilism is.

 

Perfecting nihilism. Completing it. And that’s when it will happen?

When what happens?

A new opening of meaning. The conversion. That’s what it’s called: conversion.

This false … day.

I like false nature, don’t you?

False nature really does look very real. It’s supposed to be drawing on our memories. And dreams. Both of us together.

 

Does it remind you of anything? Does it look like anything? Your distant youth? Before … philosophy. Before anything …

Is it supposed to?

 

There is no countryside in Southall. Osterley Park. I remember that. That was countryside-y.

 

Fake greensward. Fake river. Fake rushes in the river.

 

Don’t deny yourself, philosopher. Give ib.

 

You could almost forget.

I can’t forget.

That’s because you’re insufferable … a bit.

 

The holodeck, right?

A sky like God made used to make them..

The blue fake sky. No chemtrails. No particulates.

It’s actually bright.

No one’s fucking with the weather.

You think people fuck with the weather?

 

Give in. This is the countryside we’ve made.

 

The water feels like water, doesn’t it?

Sure.

Can you see the fish?

Could you catch a fish?

Not sure. Don’t push it.

 

See, you’re curious, aren’t you? You want to know more. And it is intriguing, isn’t it?

 

You can have meetings by the pond.

Fuck the fake pond. Fuck everything.

Are you in a bad mood now?

 

The lull – the great lull. That’s how we’re going to live: in the great lull.

 

What’s the setting?

North east England.

Do you want high summer?

That’d be too much.

Spring? Autumn?

Sure – Spring. I want to see fate Spring.

 

This is so beautiful

It’s like Blue-Ray beautiful. 4KD beautiful. It’s in such high resolution. It’s too bright. Like it’s all … backlit.

 

The thing is, it’s not just an imitation of the world. It’s an imitation of Paradise. Of the New Jerusalem.

 

Did you ever see a sky as beautiful as that? Isn’t it the most beautiful sky in the world? The eternal summer, to our eternal winter.

It’s unreal. It’s lifted somehow. Made higher than it is.

 

This whole … box was made by Satan. It’s total deception. And lies.

But I like the lies. There’s such a thing as pretty lies.

 

Don’t you breathe more easily, philosopher? Isn’t your blood pressure lowering? This is, like the last temptation.

 

Wouldn’t you like to escape into summer?

Sure I would.

It makes you feel so much better. All this natural-unnatural light. Can you remember a sky like that? The skies of your childhood. Of summer holidays. Without chemtrails. Without particulates.

 

The Imaginarium … I’m not sure how it works. Or what it is. It’s supposed to stimulate ideas.

How does it do that?

It reads your brain in some complicated way. I suppose your brain will be entirely too deep for it, philosopher. And too despairing. Not least at the Imaginarium. It’ll probably cause it to self-destruct.

 

The Imaginarium … It’s hard to say.

Very grand name.

 

Do you believe in telepathy, philosopher?

Shaking my head.

Thought not. Or in anything supernatural. So where do we go after we die, philosophy? Do you know the answer to that kind of thig? Do you have an opinion?  Do you believe in an afterlife?

 

Wander the meadows in your mind.

 

It’s just an empty box.

It’s very far from an empty box.

 

Even better than your Northern Lights show.

 

A lush, verdant paradise. You can actually pick and eat the berries here.

No way.

Actually, I’m not sure you can.

 

You can do a whole solo Imaginarium journey thing. What you see is personal to you. You have to lie face down on this pillow thing. Close you eyes. Relax. Just let the images come to you.

Fuck off.

It’ll make you feel so much better.

I don’t want to feel better.

 

The building’s got all the life-support mechanisms. It’s built to withstand ever kind of disaster.

Comforting.

Even zombies. I don’t know why they always include zombies.

 

It’s like guided meditation, apparently. Let it guide you.

No!

 

It’s sort of sentient. It speaks, sometimes. I’ve heard it speak.

What does it say?

 

People cry uncontrollably – senior organisational managers. Curled up into a ball.

 

You can get totally addicted to it. Like an opium trance.

 

So what do you experience in the Imaginarium?

Falling. Endless falling. But that I like. Faster and faster. But I fall upwards, philosopher. What do you think of that?

 

It's supposed to be the English countryside. Drawing on the English imaginary. At the heart of the campus.

 

All these fake worlds.

 

The Pulse is supposed to show you who you are.

So who am I?

 

Absolute lies. But beautiful lies. Necessary lies.

We’re going to need it in the future. When they close up the countryside.

Is that what they’re going to do?

 

This is the future, isn’t it? Lying, dreaming in a place like this.

It’s disgusting. You’ve conquered the sky. The outside world. Now you’re going to conquer the inside world, too. Our dreams.

 

Just lie down, philosopher.

I don’t want to meditate. I don’t want to be lulled. I don’t want … illusions.

Not even beautiful illusions?

 

I want to see something pretty. Instead of all the steel and glass. I want to see something living. Are you alive, philosopher? Am I alive? Or is it only circuits and wires beneath the skin?

 

It’s a virtual platform … thing. A VR environment. You can conjure up all kinds of stuff.

 

Give in … it’s pretty. It’s better than the endless Newcastle winter, right?

 

Where the falsehood is at its greatest. Where it’s at its most terrible.

 

All these false worlds.

All these fabulous pseudo worlds.

 

And a fine yellow sun.

Shall I tell you a secret? You’ll have to lean in, philosopher.

Ok.

I’ll whisper it: I feel … dead.

Dead? Like, bored to death?

Not dead – but … like I’m dying. What if I said that I’m terminally ill?

Are you terminally ill?

Do I appear terminally ill to you? I could be terminally ill. But I’m not. I’m not terminally ill … I’d like to be terminally ill, maybe. It might give some meaning to my life. The idea of the end being close … That things wouldn’t just go on forever … Because they're in serious danger of going on forever …