Author: Lars Iyer

What was Cicero’s role? Was she here to be the Harvester? The Coordinator? Who pulled it all together?

Wasn’t she there to understand our Significance? To teach it to us: the meaning our Significance? To explain to us what we could do. What we were for. What our role was.

Isn’t that why she gave us apocalyptic names? Just like Captain Beefheart renamed the Magic Band. We had to have new names too.

 

Cicero never wanted to intervene. She gave us an occasional word of guidance, that’s all. Something mysterious, whispered like Miles Davis was supposed to whisper to his sidemen. Some paradoxical instruction …

And didn’t Cicero sometimes direct us towards certain books? Ramanuja was a particular favourite. She bought us all copies of Ramanuja. Slipped them into our in trays. And Scholem’s Religious Nihilism, which she translated herself. We each had a copy of that, too. She presented it to us solemnly, without comment.

And then there was the framed paintings on the philosophy foyer walls. From her own collection. That she paid for herself. Why Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights? Why Bacon, Portrait of Isabelle Hawthorne?

And her library. She was a selector of books. A book curator. A book DJ. Almost random. Why Prigogine? Who’s Esterlin? Why those lurid books about bloodlines? Some still sealed in plastic. Was she being sent them by publishers?

Cicero’s things. The infinite intrigue of Cicero’s things. On Cicero’s shelves. Why that inverted globe? Why those miraculous medals? Why an EMF meter? What did she want to measure?

Cicero’s world. Where did she come from? What was her life like before? Why did she turn to us – to our kind? How did she Know? What prepared her? Didn’t she want to achieve anything in her own name?

A few articles here and there – all of them occasional. Intervening in this or that debate. Half forgotten. Hopelessly obscure. You never understood the context. What they were supposed to be saying? Where was her philosophy? What belonged to her? Hard to answer. Hard to work out.

Despair – that you can’t fake. That can’t be bought. Despair as an attunement – to what? To what is worth despairing about. To what is despair-worthy. Which is to say, everything. Which is to say, the total state of the world. Which is to say, the state of world collapse. Global spiritual ruination. And actual ruination.

 

A despair bias is absolutely necessary to correct the general positivity bias, Cicero said. And a horror bias is necessary to correct the general glee bias.

What has to be thought can only be done so through despair and horror, Cicero said. Despair and horror reveal what is to be thought, what is most worthy of thought.

 

Only the dead are strong enough, Cicero said. Only those who expect nothing. The already destroyed. The already ruined. For whom the apocalypse is a given.  For whom every day is the Last Day.

 

The fools aren’t fooled, Cicero said. The stupid aren’t stupid.

 

Our blood ran fast, despite everything. We were never depressed, Cicero noticed that. Never down, for all our talk of the end times. The apocalypse.

Our idiot energies, in spite of everything. Our animal spirits. Our perpetual good cheer.

Weren’t we, as Cicero said, the best company? Wasn’t she at her happiest borne along by our high spirits? Didn’t she throw over her old friends to hang with us? Didn’t she tell us that she didn’t know the meaning of fun until she met us?

Our unserious seriousness. Our cheerful despair. Our fun-filled sense that there was nothing to be done.

She liked to watch us drink, Cicero. She liked to watch us down pint after pint. She like to find us in the zone – the drunken zone. On the drunken plateau. And maintaining it, our drunkenness, for hour after hour. How she admired it! Our pacing. Our deliberation. Our steadiness. The fact we were out for the long haul.

 

Sometimes Cicero saw the desperation in us. Sometimes she saw our horror, surfacing. Sometimes she saw the despair. Sometimes she saw our deaths – the deaths we carried with us.

Cicero marvelled. She admired us. You have souls, she said. You have … complications. Depths. There was a contortion that was ours. A unique contortion in every case. Each of us, uniquely twisted. Each of us, crabbed in our own particular way.

That’s why she put us before prospective students at our Open Days. They’ll sense it in you, she said. The authenticity. The grit. You are people who’ve suffered. You’ve walked the line. You fascinate. You have some outsider charisma. You’re raw. You’re edgy. You’ve been places. Psychologically, I mean.

Divine violence needs a mediator, Cicero insisted. It needed to be transformed from violence into love. Into love? we asked, amazed. Into love! Cicero said. The lightning had to be directed towards the ground of the creaturely condition. Which is to say, towards love.

Love!? But what did Cicero mean by love? Something on fire? Passion, raging? The love of the neighbour, Cicero said. That was how the world was to be redeemed. Redeemed! we exclaimed. We didn’t want it redeemed. Only burnt up. Only destroyed …

The world was the old order, and we wanted the new one! we said. The new world, that would be revealed after the flames! Cicero was impressed by our faith, but she did not agree. This world needs mending and fixing and repairing, Cicero said, not destroying. It needs to be lifted from the lower realms, not plunged more deeply into them.

We saw through it all – the ordinary world, Cicero knew that. We weren’t just good little nihilists. We didn’t live in their world, the good little nihilists.

This was an island in a great chaotic sea, that’s all: that’s what we knew. This island Earth. This island world. And beyond, the great Futility. The night. Which laughs at what we do. Laughs because it doesn’t laugh. Mocks us because it doesn’t mock us. Roars in its silence …

 

We saw through the world, Cicero knew that. Meetings. Offices. The usual politenesses. Our smiles were always the smiles of the outside. Our laughter came from all the way from the Outside. And when we drank, it was only to regain our relation to the Outside. Only to channel the forces of the Outside. It was put them to work – to the opposite of work.

That was our anarchy. The anarchy in all things, which was our anarchy, too. Which was the anarchy in our hearts. Releasing us from Pomposity. From High Seriousness. From all the usual alibis and excuses.

We’d died to the world, the false world. We’d seen through the fakery. We lived outside this world, within it. We lived in the larger world – the larger non-world. We lived in recurrence. In the indeterminable. In the beginningless and endless.

They’ll never know what you know, Cicero said of her academic colleagues. They’re not close to it, like you are. The secret of life is known only by those who’ve seen to the world. Who’ve died to it and come back. Who went beyond it, but had to come back.

There are those who know the world as a game, Cicero says. Who laugh at it: the whole world as a game. Who’ve learnt the lesson: that it’s all a game, a great game. That the Madness is greater than we are. That things just Happen, and we can’t do much about it. That the Contingency is greater than anything we might impose. That it towers over us: our powerlessness. The fact that we can do very little. That we’re dwarfed. Towered over …

And yet, we also know that the contingent has no ultimate reason for being the way it is. There’s no ultimate reason for anything. So you can’t complain, can’t mourn. It’s not all about the ur-trauma. About the withdrawal of the ground. About the absence of Necessity. About the great Indifference … the great Nullity … the great Void … threatening to devour everything.

Life is lived in midst of this. Forgetting the great Powers. The terrifying Sublimities. Forgetting all about the Storm of it all.

That we could laugh forever at the killing joke. At the arbitrariness of our fate. At the fact that what happens is in nobody’s hands. Even the rulers of this world. The great Planlessness. The great Randomness. The great Meaninglessness.

Man thinks and God laughs. We laugh – and laugh at ourselves thinking. Wasn’t that it, our philosophy. Our laughing philosophy?

Our lectures.

The sense that these are the last human-born students, pretty much. And certainly the last humanities students.

Homo sapiens, or whoever will be, will only be born artificially from now on. In artificial wombs. There’ll be no mothers and fathers. Homo borg genesis will be born from machines and raised by machines.

And they’ve been preparing for years. We’re already robots, really. The great robotization is ongoing. The change, when it comes, will only be a matter of degree. They’re only be completing what they’ve already begun.

 

Our lectures.

The last words of philosophy. The last words, before the last audience of unaltered humans. To the last unaltered members of homo sapiens. Before the synth takeover. Before the new Creation, the fake creation.

Before the great hollowing out. Before the great gutting. Before we were to be made receptables of the dead, of demons. Before we circuitised. Before we’re filled with molecular machines. Before our colonisation by neurotech.

 

Our lectures.

The great cull is probably taking place before us. Their genes are probably being eneg-edited as they sit there. Their frontal cortices are being dismantled. They’re probably being sterilized before our eyes. At any moment they’re going to morph into zombies.

Our lectures.

We were raw. Sometimes, words strained. Sometimes,  voices trembling. Sometimes, drops in volume. Whispers. The students had to lean in … Students were all but confidants. At other times, build. Break out. Crescendoes. Great peaks …

Were the students moved? Were the students stirred?

 

Our lectures.

Pure pathos. Half remembered quotations. Citations ‘from memory’. Sudden … accelerations. Decelerations. Hushed speech. Exhortations. Enconiums. Horatory stuff.

 

Our lectures.

Following our notes at first. Following our slides. And then? Putting aside our notes. Turning off our slides. Extemporising. Letting words come.

An opening out. A widening. Our words, reaching the Open. Our words, sun-touched. Sun-dazzled. Light breaking across them.

A shimmering across the surface of our words. Like light on water. A lambency. A coruscation. Light – brilliance. A sparking across.

We said the words and the light came. The light dazzled. The light sparkled.

The breath of God over the waters. And our words were the waters. Trembling under God. Our words, laid out. Quivering with light.

 

Our lectures.

A calmness. Of which we were incapable in any other sphere of life. Lapidary. Sentences, short, unfussy, simply following from one another. A logic that wasn’t even ours.

We spoke through the horror. Calmly. Quietly.

 

Our lectures.

Moments of calm in our teaching. Of stillness spreading around us. When we achieved a kind of simplicity. A limpidity. When we laid everything out, in a series of declarative sentences. Anaphorically. In a wisdom of despair – achieved despair.

That we’d reached an open grove of speech. That what we were saying was an opening. A widening. That we’d reached the sky. That we stood before the sky. A moment of grace … A reprieve in speech … That, for a time, the sentence was suspended.

That’s where our lecturing led. To … blessed moments. To happiness in speech To small utopias, where speech wandered into truth. Into illumination. Where we let speech receive light from above. From transcendence.

A kind of testimony. The way they were spoken. The way speech stood up. Stretched itself upwards. In its plainless. In spoken simplicity. Without technical terms. Without terms of the art. Without jargon.

 

Our lectures.

No, it wasn’t about our speech. It wasn’t what we said. It’s what spoke through us. What used us. What spoke by way of us. What was allowed to come to Earth. As though we were lightning rods. The light flashed down. A kind of … revelation. But of what? What was being shown?

 

Our lectures.

Did the students sense it? Did it Awaken them? Did they have a sense of light? Of a light from above? Did they have a sense of being led somewhere?

 

Our lectures.

And we had the common touch.

We didn’t close our eyes and pretend we were at Oxford. We didn’t speak to our students as though they were scholar-princes-and-princesses of yore.

We took questions. We listened. We read the room. Took the temperature – the spiritual temperature.

None of this was to be over their heads. None of this was to be as if to no one, to the open air, to ghosts of the academic past. We were addressing them and only them. They were the audience we wanted to reach.  

Looking out at them. At their faces. Reading their eyes. Did they follow? Were they involved? Would they rather be somewhere else? Were they daydreaming? Woolgathering? Thinking about other things?

The effort to regain their attention. To say something shocking. Moving. Hilarious. Something – anything so as not to lose them. So as to deserve their focus.

Relating to them – them. Speaking to them. Making all of it real – about something real. Something vital. Something important. Making them feel it: the Seriousness. Of the topic. Of our discussion. Making them remember this lecture. This encounter. Now. Right here …

An urgency. A matter of life of death. Of utmost importance. That something would be missed if you hadn’t attended. If you haven’t been present here. Today …  

To reach them. To think with them. Together. To draw them into thinking – your thinking, the class’s thinking. To think collectively. To think now, here …

 

Our lectures.

Our … intuitions. Flashes of insight. Sparks – of what? Mini-revelations. That we’d say without understanding what we said, like savants.

We’d reach a plane. A threshold. Just by talking. Just by talking into the air.

 

Our lectures.

How did we find our way to what we said? We didn’t know. Like we were undergoing hypnosis – or some counter-hypnosis. Like we were waking up – or falling asleep: which? Like we were lucid dreaming.

The truth of the world spoke through us. Echoed through us. Reverberated through our voices. Thickened them. Like some kind of Sprachgesang to invisible music.

We spoke … we said things … We were spoken. A kind of ventriloquy. A kind of thrown voice. But from where was the voice thrown? Philosophy itself? Philosophy – speaking through us?

Philosophy, innocent: speaking through us. Philosophy, amnesiac. Philosophy, stranded. Left behind.

Philosophy, marooned speaking through us. Wandering without itself, without its memories. And speaking through us.

Why did philosophy fall to us? Why were we the ones to receive it? Of all people? Because we were truly of our times. Because we were most truly of our times. Because we knew the world’s dereliction, and philosophy’s dereliction in the world.

Because we ourselves had been marooned. Deserted. Because we ourselves were lost in the world. In a perfect idiocy.

The truest word, which means the most abandoned word. The lost word, which is also the found word. The last testimony. The last message of philosophy. And so in its final hours, philosophy could say itself, speak itself, coincide with itself. Sum itself up. Through us. And before our students. With Cicero listening.

Wasn’t that what Cicero was waiting for? To receive a message from philosophy – a last message. To hear philosophy’s last words. It’s last will and testament. Before it just blinked out, in disgust. Before it disappeared into the world’s night.

Our lectures.

All our lives in what we said. Our misspent lives! Our derailed lives! Our displaced lives! Our humiliated lives! Our resentful lives! Our lives outside!

 

Our lectures.

Delivered from a life lived. Suffered. From hopelessness – long misery.

And from the joy of being allowed to speak. Unleashed. From the joy of being employed and away from the dreadful world out there!

What we’d waited to say. What we’d always wanted to say.

Our whole lives, offered up. Spoken.

 

Our lectures.

From a lectern – from on high? No! From the pit. From the pit of our lives. From our desperation. From our cast-off-ness. From our being outside. Words that could only be speaking by those who’d been Outside.

 

Our lectures.

Our suicidalism, carried over from our years of whoring. Barely concealing it.

 

Our lectures.

Proving to ourselves that we actually knew things. That we’d actually absorbed something. That we weren’t no marks. That we weren’t the idiots we’d been, pre-PhDs. That we’d picked up things along the way.

All those years of reading! All those evenings, all those weekends! All that reading on commutes!

Our lectures, proving that we knew stuff. That we weren’t idiots. That we knew more than they did, the students.

Now we could be wing-spreaders. Soarers. High altituders. Looking out over all. Seeing all. Surveying all.

We had the big picture. We knew the topography. The mountains. The valleys. The history of thought wasn’t unknown to us. It wasn’t actually terra incognita.

 

That the lectures were a seeking. All of them. It wasn’t about what we knew, what we’d found, but what we sought.

Our lectures were Desire, spoke Desire. Spoke yearning. Held themselves out into Yearning. Spread vast sails …

 

All we had to say – and more. Because the real lectures began after we’d said what we had to say. Only then … only after we’d said everything we thought we could, could we begin.

Our lectures.

All our lives in what we said. Our misspent lives! Our derailed lives! Our displaced lives! Our humiliated lives! Our resentful lives! Our lives outside!

 

Our lectures.

Delivered from a life lived. Suffered. From hopelessness – long misery.

And from the joy of being allowed to speak. Unleashed. From the joy of being employed and away from the dreadful world out there!

What we’d waited to say. What we’d always wanted to say.

Our whole lives, offered up. Spoken.

 

Our lectures.

From a lectern – from on high? No! From the pit. From the pit of our lives. From our desperation. From our cast-off-ness. From our being outside. Words that could only be speaking by those who’d been Outside.

 

Our lectures.

Our suicidalism, carried over from our years of whoring. Barely concealing it.

 

Our lectures.

Proving to ourselves that we actually knew things. That we’d actually absorbed something. That we weren’t no marks. That we weren’t the idiots we’d been, pre-PhDs. That we’d picked up things along the way.

All those years of reading! All those evenings, all those weekends! All that reading on commutes!

Our lectures, proving that we knew stuff. That we weren’t idiots. That we knew more than they did, the students.

Now we could be wing-spreaders. Soarers. High altituders. Looking out over all. Seeing all. Surveying all.

We had the big picture. We knew the topography. The mountains. The valleys. The history of thought wasn’t unknown to us. It wasn’t actually terra incognita.

 

That the lectures were a seeking. All of them. It wasn’t about what we knew, what we’d found, but what we sought.

Our lectures were Desire, spoke Desire. Spoke yearning. Held themselves out into Yearning. Spread vast sails …

 

All we had to say – and more. Because the real lectures began after we’d said what we had to say. Only then … only after we’d said everything we thought we could, could we begin.