Author: Lars Iyer

We’re contemplators. We’re starers-into-air. We’re puddles under the sky. We’re moon-starers. Beach-walkers. We’re daydreamers. Dawdlers. We’re sippers of drinks. Drummers of fingers. We’re doodlers.

We’re not-listeners. We’ve no chat. We’re no-small-talkers. We’ve nothing to say. We’re zero-contributors.

 

We’re not meticulous. We’re not diligent. We don’t care, greatly. We’ve switched off, tuned out. We’re not here, really. We’re elsewhere. We’re daydreaming. Woolgathering.

We’re unalert. We’re disengaged. We’re not following. We’re thinkers about other things. We’re non-concentrators. Our minds are elsewhere. We’re not tuned in. We’re not followers of the action. We’re non-smilers-at-jokes.

 

We want broader horizons. We want skies, vistas. We’re sublime-ists. We’re vista-mongers. We’re for the illimitable. We’re for the unlimited. We need space on all sides. We need the sea at our feet.

 

We’ve got the dull meeting blues …

 

We’re must-we-be-heres? We’re is-this-really-necessary?

 

We’re screamers inside. We’re inside howlers. We’re inside bellowers. We want out and out and out …

We’re this-is-intolerable. We’re utterly impatient. We’re bored of this.

This is what our affair’s all about. The sky. The open sky. And time. And sharing time. And sharing the sky. And sharing this … mood … whatever it is. This mood, or whatever. This whatever …

Maybe that’s the word for it: whatever. Maybe that’s the word for everything: Whatever. Or maybe whatsoever. Or maybe whatso-fucking-ever.

 

Dare me. Dare me to do something crazy. Dare me to tear up my life. Dare me to destroy my life. Dare me to laugh at my life – laugh until I die. Dare me, philosopher. Dare me to start what I can’t finish. Dare me to go mad. Just to let myself go mad. Just to open my head. Take off the top of my head. Dare me, philosopher.

 

I could talk forever. But really, it’s talking, not me. It’s spinning out. This is the infinite’s work. This is the sky’s work. I’m speaking the words of the sky. I’m speaking as the sky would speak. This is the forever speech. This is where I touch forever. This is where I reach it, and it reaches me. And I don’t want anything else to happen but this. It’s mad, it’s my madness, but it isn’t even mine.

 

This is the last time I’ll come. I don’t need anymore.

The memory of it all will grow in me. Will grow right through me. It will saturate me. I will be nothing other than what has happened here.

I’ll seem … distracted. I’ll seem … turned away. Impersonal. And when asked, what will I say? I was remembering. I was remembering what it was to be forgotten. To be totally obscure.

And for this to be madness, my madness, my legitimate madness.

 

This is our intimacy. This is where we both disappear. This is where we are lost, in the afternoon. Together by not being together. Together, with the whole afternoon between us.

This is where we’re lost together. This is where we’ll find ourselves lost, and together.

 

This is the speaking. This is speech. This is the way of letting it resound. Letting it echo through what I say.

I’d call this God. I’d say God was speaking. If I believed in God.

We’re just two poles of a relation, philosopher. But the relation’s the thing. The in-between. What happens or doesn’t happen between us.

 

Sometimes you have to get lost, philosopher. To get vague. We’re vague, aren’t we, philosopher? We’re lost in vagueness.

 

See, I’ve entered the zone. I’ve entered some kind of zone. I’m in the zone speaking out of the zone, don’t you think?

I’m saying something profound. Only it’s not my profundity. Actually, I’m not sure it’s even profound. I’m not sure it’s even deep. Profound superficiality. The superficial profound. That’s the paradox. Saying nothing, saying everything: both at the same time.

 

Nothing ever happens, does it? Nothing ever happens. No – it’s that something undoes what happens. Makes it unimportant. Erodes its memory. There’s an unhappening that happens, too. There’s an unevent that turns things from what they’re supposed to be.

 

Fuck, fuck, FUCK! It’s like being muffled. Like no one can hear me. You can hear me, can’t you? You know what I’m saying, even if I don’t. God … I want to get OUT! I can’t get OUT!

It’s like I’m trapped up here. Trapped with you.

 

And I want to shout it out. Scream it up. To the skylight. To the eye of God. To the eye of non-God. The eye of the God who is not there. The eye of no one. No one’s eye. And it’s not even an eye.

 

Who sees us? Who watches us? Who watches over us? Who cares for us? Who cares at all?

 

If I ask any more questions, then … What? If question falls into question falls into question, what? If questioning just becomes, like, infinite, what? If I question everything, and question questioning and things just get deeper, then what?

 

Life is long, isn’t it, philosopher? Life’s terribly long.

This is a life sentence. We’re sentenced to all these endless days. All these weeks and months and years.

Where is it all going, philosopher? Who’s going to remember these things? This … oblivion. That we share. This passion of forgetting? Who’s going to mark it?

 

It’s like I’m slurring, but in speech. Like I’m really stoned – or what I imagine being stoned is like.

Dissociation: is that it? I’m looking in on this from faraway. From a great distance. I’m here and not here. The distance … between me and me, let along between me and you. It's like some weird trip. What’s doing this to us? What’s happening or not happening or whatever? What’s anything?

Our affair is very wordy, isn’t it, philosopher? And it’s me talking, mostly.

Our affair is thoroughly literary … It’s characterised by a standing apart from it all. From life. We’re not part of anything, are we?

What should we be part of?

Life – just life.

Is that easy? I don’t think it’s easy.

Part of life … I don’t think that’s an option for us. As humans, I mean. When we fuck …

When we fuck, what?

Is that life? It’s not life. I don’t know what that word means. Life: I say it to myself, and I know less and less. What is life? Like we know how to live. Like we know what to do.

That’s the problem: we don’t know what to do. So we’re here, obeying our … instincts. Did instincts lead us here? Are instincts to blame? God, what are we? What animals. Animals plus what? Rationality? Language? God ….

God, the human condition’s so disappointing, isn’t it?

I’m tired of living down here. In the lowlands. In the shameful lowlands. And you’re down here with me.

Do I really feel shame? Am I capable of shame? But I don’t really feel it. Or I feel other things, too. Mitigating things.

Which means I’m always distant from it, shame. Shame should saturate you, if it is to be real shame. It should fill you completely. You shouldn’t be able to … discuss it. To … ironize about it. Shame should prompt some action. It’s supposed to make us behave a certain way. And does it?

 

Desperate – are we desperate, philosopher? I think I might be desperate … in some recess … some buried part of me. The best part, maybe. My soul, maybe.

A spiritual desperation. A desire to be helped. From on high. By the breaking in of some … transcendence. Does that happen? Could that happen?

A miracle – that’s what I want.

 

An abomination … that’s the word I want to use. It sounds very horrifying, doesn’t it? Am I an abomination? Are you? Is this … whole … situation … abominable? Maybe, philosopher.

 

Maybe all this self-disgust will lead somewhere. If it’s really self-disgust. If it isn’t just talk about self-disgust.

 

A tissue of lies. But I don’t mind lying. Or I don’t mind enough.

 

It’s like I live everything at an immense distance. Like I don’t really coincide with anything. I’m not here, that’s what I think. I’m not present. Where am I? Lost in vagueness. In some … impersonal daydreaming.

It’s not even my daydream, or that’s how it feels. I’m not mine. I’m not here. I’m away somewhere. And I don’t think I’d even like to be real. This isn’t my world. I didn’t ask to be born into it. That’s what adolescents always say. Do they still say those things?

 

Emotional devastation – am I capable of that? Is anyone capable of it anymore?

What if my husband found out about all this? Would he be emotionally devastated? Is he capable of that? I don’t believe it. I think he’d be … miffed. Irritated, maybe. But not devastated. I might be wrong. Maybe I should tell him, just to see the effect …

Am I a sadist do you think? Or is it a masochist? Which one means what? Or am I both? I don’t think I’m deliberately cruel. None of this is deliberate. Unless it’s unconsciously deliberate.

 

The torture is that we’re not tortured. But whose torture is that? Our real guilt is that we don’t feel guilt. What’s sad is that we don’t feel sad. We don’t feel anything. We’re muted. It’s like everything been turned down for us. We don’t have an interior … life …

You want to seize on time itself. To grasp time. To ring-fence even that time that isn’t yours, isn’t organised, isn’t managed.

You’ll never just let time be. You’ll never let time be time.

Even this – even what we’re doing now. It’s just time-off. You’re understanding time negatively. Or recuperatively. As part of what makes you a productive person. Of what makes you work with a smile on your face.

 

Organisation Management wants everything we are. It wants to seize on so-called non-productivity. To seize upon just lying about. Upon time for nothing in particular. Time sacrificed to … nothing. Time burning up to the sky, as an offering to nothing.

You can’t understand idylls. Or breaks. You can’t understand the interval. The interstice. The walk outside. The air.

 

Questioning – what’s the temporality of that? Questioning, when you’re not even asking about anything. When you’re asking about everything. What happens then? Or doesn’t happen? What do you do, when you’re doing philosophy? Is this it? Just lying around? Contemplating?

Can you do philosophy in bed? Can you? Just lie around and … think?

 

You want to seize this. This nothing time. This purposelessness. When I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it.

Idle hours, right? Idling, right? Spinning the wheels, right? Watching the world go by, right?

It’s not even purposeless. It’s not privative. It can’t be defined negatively.

There aren’t words for it, because they’ve been driven out by organisation management and the ancestors of organisation management. By the regularisation of time. By the Gestell of the universe. The great enframing.

 

I’m a nothing-ist. I’m in favour of the nothing of time. When you always have your laptop open. Waiting to catch something. Waiting for an idea. To turn it into some kind of work.

 

You’re afraid of that kind of time, I can tell. You’re afraid of the afternoon. That’s the real story. The philosopher afraid of the time he’d liberate. That he’s sacrificing.

This is my indulgence hour. This is where I can come and be who I like. Be, like, the opposite of an organisational manager.

This is my Organisational Management fantasy of freedom. Which I call, philosophy. Because philosophy is all about questioning. And deeper questioning. And abyssal questioning. And the opening of questioning-abysses. All the way to madness …

 

Madness: that’s what the afternoon is for me. That’s why I can embrace it. Lose myself in it. I can go mad up in here in the safe space of your studio flat. Up here, in your studiolo.

 

This is afternoon madness. Everyone who studies knows it. This is the passion of the afternoon. Where the sky’s too open. Where I think I’ll disappear into the sky.

 

Afternoon silence. It’s so quiet up here. It’s like the silence wants me to speak. Like it’s drawing speech out of me. Like the silence is a question that I have to answer.

And this is how I answer it. With, like, more questions. Until the questioning just devours itself. Falls. A questioning of everything, even of the questioner. This is how I’m lost. How I fall. Deeper and deeper. Until – until there’s nothing of me. Just a great … questioning.

It’s like being torn apart, but very gently. Like there are hooks attached to me from all four corners of the sky. And they’re just pulling me apart. But delicately. Slowly.

 

How do you stand it, philosopher? Do you even feel it? Do you feel it like I do? This sky-madness. This afternoon-madness. That tears you apart very gently …

 

I’ve reached some pure Zen philosophical plane. Like something’s breathing through me. Just breathing in and out, through me. I think it’s the silence. Can silence breathe? Well, it’s breathing through me, philosopher.

 

These are beautiful days, philosopher. I feel that, too. I think these are beautiful times. Even if … even if I forget them one day. Even if they’re very close to being forgotten right now …

 

These are the good times, philosopher. This is like … contemplation. Like God contemplating the world after creating it and saying, It is good. It’s like the eternal sabbath, eternal Sunday that just says everything is good.

 

This is a forever day. This is a forever time. It opens out. Is its own thing. Spreading wide. Is that it?

You’ve brainwashed the head of Organisation Management’s wife. You realise that, don’t you? You’ve made her speak fluent philosophy. Surely that wasn’t your intention.

Turns out the head of Organisation Management’s wife has a gift for philosophy. She gone from nought to a hundred all at once. She’s gone full philosopher.

 

I’m the head of Organisational Management’s mad wife. I’m the wife who can’t be trusted with a full time job. I’m the head of Organisational Management’s philosophical wife. I’m half mad, which means I’m half philosophical …

 

My madness, my special madness, which should be named after me. Which I’m … pioneering. For which I’m flying the flag. I think it’s a very philosophical madness …

 

I’m terribly seductive, which is part of my … problem. My mental disease.

I become delusional and spread my delusion. I become compelling. I cast a spell. And the one I’m who goes mad, too. And my poor husband has to pick … up … the … pieces.

Do you want to go mad, philosopher? Do you have a high tolerance for madness?

Be careful, philosopher. My head’s more open than yours. Something’s wrong with my neuro-circuitry. And you’re only encouraging me. You’re giving me license to be more mad.

 

I’m ahead of all you philosophers, that’s the thing. Because I’m already there where you want to be. I think things you want to think. Easily. Like, it’s second nature to me.

I’m mad and getting madder. It’s incurable. I’m every kind of delusional. I’ll have to be locked up, you realise that, don’t you.

I’ll spend my lifetime locked up after doing some crazy thing. Like murdering my lover. Like stabbing him. I could do something terrible. Are you afraid of me, philosopher? You should be.

I have these thoughts … these feelings that are too big to contain. And I think about God … constantly. As mad people are said to think about God.

You’ll have to help me. I disappearing into this Moment. This Moment is swallowing me up. This interval. This gap. That’s where I’m going to be lost: in this … gap

And you’ll have to help me. Pull me out. Or maybe God will help me. Maybe I’m God’s beloved. Maybe God loves me and knows me. Maybe God’s going to use me for something, maybe. Maybe I’m God’s tool. I’ll be happy to be that.

Don’t think you’re the first one I’ve spoken to like this, philosopher. You’re not the first one I fell for … You’re not the first person to tell me I’m beautiful. That word: beauty. That beautiful word, beauty. It’s almost ass beautiful as the word, God. And of course they mean the same thing.

 

I’ll bet you feel sorry for my husband now. What he has to put with. From his mad wife. From her madness.

Until I do something really terrible and get locked up. Which could happen, philosopher.

Are you afraid? You should be. I’m … unpredictable. I can’t predict myself. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

 

Am I sweeping you up in my delusions? Only a philosopher could understand my delusions. Appreciate them. As you would a fantastic work of art. Or as a pseudo-philosophical system. Because I’m sure you find me pseudo-philosophical, philosopher.

 

You’re stepping back from me, philosopher. You need to. You’re watching me … perform. Because that’s what I’m doing.

 

Am I mad? My sanity’s mad, unlike yours. My sanity’s disturbed.

 

What if I were to say that I’m mad, utterly so. That I’ve lost it. What if I were to say that I barely hold it together … Or that the way I hold it together is itself mad. That my organisation and my management are both mad. That I have a direct access to chaos. What about that?

 

My afternoon madness. Which can only be expressed here. By the way I speak – with you. By the way I am – with you. And are you mad, too?

 

I’ve been possessed. I’ve been invaded.

 

I don’t use that word lightly: madness. It’s not a word among others. I have a direct access to it. If I open my mind widely enough, I‘ll be … engulfed.

Do you ever feel that? Do you ever hear voices?

No – do you?

I think I speak in voices. I say things not my own. Of which I’m not the origin. What do I say, philosopher? What do I know?

 

Do you think I’m saying these things just to sound interesting?

 

All this philosophy … We’ve worn philosophy out. Just say the word to yourself: philosophy … just say it. Just repeat the word. Go on … Philosophy, philosophy, philosophy.

I know more about philosophy than you do. I’m more attuned to philosophy. I belong in philosophy. It’s all mine. Don’t you see?

 

Why did the head of Organisation Management marry little ol’ me? Of course, he wasn’t head then. Why did he marry a wild card?

See, he loves chaos. For the same reason that he welcomed philosophy into his School. He’s a masochist. He likes things a little out of his control. Which is why he likes you. He told me he likes you. It’s official. He thinks you’re a good guy. He doesn’t understand you, but he likes that, too.

This is the last battle. This department is like the Nebuchadnezzar in the Matrix. The last true place. We’re red pilled – very red pilled. We’re the last best hope of humanity.

So who’s Neo? Who’s the One?

Cicero was Morpheus, right?

But Cicero fucked off …

Is it you, Shiva? Are you the One?

We have to justify our lives, philosophically. Make something of this. So it isn’t just chaos and blind chance. Or rather, making something out of chaos and blind chance.

A philosophical school … A movement. A cadre.

No, not that … God … Not even that.

Not-even philosophy: that’s an idea. That could be the name of our school. Of our non-school.

Could it?

 

We’ve a chance to become something. Great maybe. Wouldn’t you like to become great? To have books written about you? To have books written about us – about our not-even-philosophy …

And this wouldn’t just be some provincial philosophy department. It would be another continental philosophy department. We’d be known for something. People would come from all over the world to study here.

Look, the point about not-even-philosophy is that it’s not even philosophy. No one would be coming to study anything.

The void … that’s the ultimate topic of our lecturers. Their object. Their subject, too. The void’s what our lectures are about, and what ultimately gives our lectures. What speaks through us, as we lecture.

 

All’s lost, and everything’s lost and there’s no point in anything: that’s what we’re showing them … It means they never have to be fooled. It means they can’t be deceived.

 

The void: that’s the lesson. The nothing at the heart, the hollowness at the core.

 

The void, that isn’t nothingness, isn’t being. The overturning. The neither one not the other. The ceaseless … vacillation. That never settles.

 

There’s no there there. There’s nothing there. Just disappearance. Just wandering. Blankness.

 

The void. Where God unravels. Where God gives unto … what? A roaring. A blankness.

 

The void … that’s what we call it. That’s the only name, The void: and it’s not even a name. It’s the absence of a name.

 

The void’s everywhere. This is the time of the void. The game is fucking up.

Only now is the void revealing itself as what it was, all along. Only now are the true conditions revealing themselves.

This is what revelation was, all along. But now it’s showing itself in its nothingness. As just: the void. As the echoing nothing. As the voiding of it all.

 

Doing the void’s work. Doing the void’s unwork. The great erosion.