Author: Lars Iyer

The ruins. We might come into our own in the ruins. They might make sense of us, the ruins. Bring the best out in us, the ruins.

All our lives, we were preparing to live in the ruins. All our lives, laughing in what we knew would become the ruins. Amusing ourselves in the ruins of the future. With our ruins thoughts. With our ruins humour.


They’re spiritual ruins, of course, not actual ruins. Few people can see them as what they are: as spiritual ruins. Few people feel the phantom limb. But we know what we’re not, what we lack. We know what the university is and is not. We feel it, despite everything. We know the academic Fall.

We have instincts, of a sort. We have moods. We have … melancholies … and dreads … horrors, even. That’s how it registers with us. That’s how it echoes through us – even through our stupidity.

And we lack a great deal. Everything – pretty much. But we feel it.


A campus without the humanities is a ruin. A campus without the humanities is a hollow campus.

And it’s hollowness echoes out in our stupidity. Our stupidity is where the humanities should be. The empty heart of the humanities is our heart. The empty brain of the humanities is our brainlessness. Is our stupidity.


We need a ruins-leader. To lead us through the future ruins. To lead us through the ruins to come.

And Mother’s saved us, philosopher – you and me. Even you – who despises Mother, or thinks he does., has been saved by Mother.


This isn’t real, Philosopher. It doesn’t even feel real, philosopher. Admit it. We’ve been saved. We’ve been given this … pocket world to live in. This … simulation. And we’re going to live this day forever.


We’re immortal, philosopher. We’ve achieved immortality. In the mind of Mother.

She likes to listen to us here. She likes us walking up and down her coast, the edge of her sea. Her beach.

She’s running a Shiva simulation and a Uma simulation and just listening in.


These aren’t our real bodies and these aren’t our real lives, probably. These aren’t our thoughts. This isn’t even us. Our real bodies are long gone.

Mother resurrected us. For her amusement. Mother rules the world now. Organisational Management has utterly triumphed. It’s the year 2525, or something. Five hundred of years after the O.M. takeover.  And Mother plays back moments from before the Organisational Management world-triumph. Just to amuse herself. Just to tickle herself. Just to remember what once was.


This is the afterlife. This is new Jerusalem.

New Jerusalem looks an awful lot like Whitley Bay. There’s Spanish City in the afterlife. There’s St Mary’s Lighthouse? The Rendezvous café.

It’s actually quite warm for midwinter, in the afterlife. There are still ships in the ferry. You can still find our where they’re going on Veet, or whatever.

Even in heaven?

Even in heaven. And the planes – you can find our where they’re going, too.

Do you have a God app, on your phone? Can you track and trace God?


Can you take holidays in heaven? I hope you can. I’m looking forward to Marbella. Supposed to be flying out there. To the second house. Imagine that – a second house. Bought with consultancy money. From Alan’s escapades in Bulgaria.


What if this is God’s world? What if God destroyed the old world? And this is heaven. This is the New Jerusalem.

What if we’ve been resurrected? In the flesh?

These are real limbs. These are our real fingers. That is the real sky. And that is the real sea.


We’re supposed to learn something – that’s what they say, isn’t it? In each incarnation into which we were born. There’s supposed to be some takeaway.


I read a book about past life regression. Who were you in a past life, philosopher? Was it philosophers all the way back?

This is what Christianity was about. Drinking at a table. At the heart of the empire. And saying, fuck the empire. Fuck Caesar! Fuck Alan! Fuck Babylon!

So communion is just one big fuck you to the world?

It’s about sharing a cup, sharing fate. Between equals. Between those brought together at the heart of empire. At a table! An ordinary humble table. And at that table, salvation is eaten and drunken, not just believed.

Come on then, say the famous words. Do this in remembrance of me, and all that. That’s what Jesus said, isn’t it: drink this in memory of me? I am the true vine, and so on. What does that even mean?

So you had Israel, which was supposedly God’s vine – the people of Israel. God plants the vine – Israel – and cares for it. And the wine of Israel is supposed to be the redemption of the creation. When we sit under the fig trees, and the mountains drip sweet wine, and all that.

The wine is the image of the new life. Of the arrival of the Kingdom.

But God’s vine fails to produce good fruit. Or it goes wild. It fails to bear the fruit of justice, faithfulness and love. That’s, basically, half the Bible.

So when Jesus comes along and says, I am the true vine, his audience knew what he meant. True means real – ultimate. Definitive. Jesus isn’t, like, one vine among others. He’s the true fucking vine – the new covenant. The source of life itself. And his disciples are the branches of the vine.

There’s false wine – Babylon’s wine, where Babylon stands in for any empire, Rome, in the case of the time of Jesus. False wine, in its golden cup. Which looks beautiful. Which promises pleasure and power. But only produces drunkenness.

What’s wrong with drunkenness? I like drunkenness.

Jesus calls it the old wine, in old skins. When he talks about new wine in new wine skins, he’s referring to the coming of the Kingdom.

About the return of the messiah. But first, he has to die.

This is my blood, poured out for many – that’s what Jesus said. That’s what communion wine is. I’m already being poured as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. That’s what he said at the Last Supper.

And communion is about participation in the life of the vine. It’s not just about following Jesus, doing what he did, as though he were some famous Stoic philosopher or whatever. It’s about sharing his blood, his body – his life.

And sharing his death.

Listen to death-boy. It isn’t all about death. Jesus promises to drink wine again in the Kingdom. Which means the resurrection must involve real bodies – bodies who can drink. So it’s about dying to this world – now, but coming back to life after. In the time of the New Jerusalem.

And you believe this?

I don’t believe it. I eat and drink it. Whenever two or more are gathered in my name …

It’s hardly Jesus’s name, though, is it? It’s Livia’s name, if it’s anything. So what’s Livia doing with her wine? Are we supposed to be pouring Livia out as a libation, or whatever?

A disgusting libation.

Is it about Livia’s disgustingness – and she could be disgusting? Are we meant to be sharing the disgusting body of Livia? Actually, I’m not sure I want to be sharing the disgusting life of Livia.

Isn’t it blasphemy to do communion with Livia’s wine?

Jesus turned water into wine. But Livia turned wine into whatever this is.

Vinegar?

It’s worse than vinegar.

Notes of original sin. Of cosmic curse. Of general damnation. Notes of all the circles of Hell.

I think it’s actually bubbling. Or frothing …

With sheer satanism, I reckon.

Notes of rabid dog’s spittle. Notes of cancer – can you taste cancer? Well, this is what cancer would taste like. Notes of paedophilia, probably. Of Jimmy Saville. All the disgusting things.

Livia wanted to invert things. She wanted to complete the inversion. She wanted to perfect nihilism. To see it right through it to the other end.

She wanted to exacerbate the tensions. To deepen them. Strife – that’s what she wanted. A rift. An eruption. A violence. That would reveal everything anew …

A crucifixion right? Livia was the Antichrist: discuss.

Don’t you suspect that all this is a teensy-weensy bit blasphemous?

What’s going to happen – is God going to get cross? Is he going to zap us with thunderbolts?

Don’t be such an sceptic. Atheists are tedious

Look at you, Shiva – draining your cup. Drinking right down to the sediment.

What is the sediment? It looks especially foul.

You’re Livia’s perfect child. Her truest servant. You’re the one who was most loyal. Who most believes. It’s sweet, in a way. Dutifully chugging your wine. Pretending to savour it. A connoisseur of disgust. Livia would approve.

You have an instinct for servitude, Shiva. It suits you in some way. Putting the M in S&M. You’re persistent. You have discipline. The way you’re forcing down her wine. Stubbornly determined that it’ll give you some … enlightenment. That you’re going to learn something.

You’re nothing if not dogged, Shiva. Seeing things through the end, endlessly. The most faithful Gnostic.

The truth is that this wine went off, long ago. Just like Livia went off, long ago. All Livia was a going off.

There are only degrees of poison. And degrees of being poisoned. There are only varieties of lie. The lies we tell ourselves. The lies others tell us. We wouldn’t know the truth. We wouldn’t be able to tell truth from lies. The truth would be entirely wasted on us, we who live by lies. Who have been fed nothing but lies.

So just pour it into the earth, where it belongs. Pour the poison into the poisoned earth.

Silence.

This wine calls to the other wine – the true wine. The disgusting calls to the non-disgusting. The anti-disgusting. The false wine calls to the true wine. To the true feast. To the wine of the marriage supper of the Lamb.

It’s about showing why Livia’s disappearance wasn’t a defeat. That Livia never lost. That it wasn’t a retreat – or only a tactical retreat. That Livia meant to disappear. That it was a Gnostic strategy. Part of the Gnostic game. The game she played with the universe. You’re a true believer, Shiva.

Face it, no one actually wants to lead. We’re leaderless. Rudderless. And we’re heading over the waterfall.


Let’s get horizontal. It’s not helping. Just lying down isn’t going to solve anything. The floor of dread’s a bit tedious, actually.

If you don’t need the floor of dread, don’t lie on the floor of dread.


Cometh the hour, cometh our true leader. Come actual competence! You don’t know how we’ve needed you, Gazelle. To lead us out of our mire! To lift us from the floor of dread!


Gazelle, leap above us. Let us ee your leap. Across us. Above us, our recumbent bodies. Flashing through our sky. Like a meteor. Except exiting. Burning its way out of the atmosphere. Heading off on some unfathomable voyage. To the end of night? Through nihilism and beyond!


Yes, we’re bored of being alive. Someone light the fuse. Light the fuse of life! There’s life in death yet! There’s life in our dull ol’ dying! There are still a few more turns in the labyrinth. We aren’t entirely spent. Aim us at something. Shoot us at something. Blast us off.


Postgraduate reps, you’re the most alive amongst us. We’re defeated. Are you defeated. There’s a little life in you, isn’t there?

Lead us somewhere. Take us away from this. We need a new hope. We need to believe. Take us to the paragrads. Take us to Nimrod. Take us underground, to the old department.


Our heads are too full. We’ve known too much. We’ve lived too long. Simplicity – that’s what we want. A postgraduate gesture. Aren’t we tired of being alive? Tired of incessancy! Of the tired old endlessness! Of the on and on. Tired of the same remaining the same. And oppressively the same.

We need real leadership. The leadership of holy fools. The leadership of those least qualified, and therefore least corrupted. The leadership of innocents. The leadership of fools. We’ll take anything.


We’d settle for Fiver’s leadership, but he’s silent. He’s all too quiet.

We’re headless now. Without Livia! Shiva’s leading us only into the grave.

If it were up to Shiva, we’d simply lie in our graves, waiting for the Resurrection. Waiting for something to save us from without. Agency! That’s what we need! Purpose! If it were Shiva’s call, we’d just sink into the floor of dread, letting it engulf us. Letting it swallow us. Torpor! Indolence! General giving up! Gelassensheit, eh Helmut?


Time for the postgrad reps report. Anything to say? Postgraduates, shaking their heads. Nothing to report. Too bad. No postgraduate’s report. Nothing to tell us.


Wine! That’s what we need! Forget mead! We need to be disgusted. We need our disgust to lift us – to rile us. We need to be angry.

Are we really still alive? It astonishes me that we’re still alive. How can we actually still be alive? Really? It’s incredible that we’re still alive.

Are we alive, though? Is this living? Is this supposed to be living? Isn’t this just some sickness. Some sickness of life.


All these leftover religious beliefs. So grotesque. Feasting on religious scraps, like dogs. This and that. This religion and that religious. Some disgusting … syncretism. Some bricolage.

Is this supposed to be religion? Can you just make it up? Religion spits on us. Or it would do, if it wasn’t dead. Religion has absolute contempt. God would despise us, if he knew us. God would laugh at us. Just as we laugh at ourselves.


We all have some condition … there’s no question about it. There’s something wrong. Very wrong. We all suffer from it. But what is it? We’re mad – of course we’re mad – but it’s not even an interesting madness.


There should some … symptomatology of the end. Some reference guide to contemporary madness.

We could be a case study.


We’re not even mad enough to be mad. We’re all too sane. All too lucid. I mean, the mad don’t say they’re mad. They just get on with being mad.

What’s the matter down there, Shiva? Is it all too much for you? It’s all too much for us, but you’re our leader. Rouse us! Inspire us! Give us one of your Gnostic speeches.

They’re always impressive, your speeches. The way you’re able to whip up the torment. But you’re in your depressive phase now, aren’t you? Too bad. We prefer manic Shiva. We prefer borderline Gnostic psychotic. We prefer mantic Saivite messianism, or whatever. We like our leader mad – but manic mad, not depressive mad.


An adrenaline injection. Just punch it through the rib cage. Like in Pulp Fiction. That would wake you up, wouldn’t it? That would zap a bit of life into you.

Because you’re dragging us down, Shiva. We’re all sinking. We’re all going to end up on the floor of dread.


Get up, Shiva! On your feet!

Someone inject him with something.

Try mouth to mouth resuscitation.

A poop transplant – that’s what he needs. Have you heard of those? It’s supposed to transform your gut biome. You’ll be a new man, Shiva. Not half as intense. You wouldn’t be waiting for the messiah to solve all your problems.

But who’s going to donate their poop? Do you have good poop, Helmut? Authentically Heideggerian poop? Maybe it should be Christian poop, Io. Do Christians have a good gut biome?

And there’s the question of who’s going to perform the poop transplant.


A cure – that’s what you need, Shiva. A cure for thought. Can they do brain transplant yet? Or bits of brain transplants? What’s the equivalent of a biome in the brain? That’s what you need, Shiva: something to fix your brain biome. You’ll be back to thinking healthy thoughts.

Did Shiva ever think healthy thoughts?


A lobotomy, maybe – that’s what’s required. Just take the neocortex out. There used to be this virtuoso doctor who could perform the operation with knitting needles shoved up your nose. He used to do it on live TV, as a party trick. All in one go. All at once. And zap – no more thought.

Was his name Dr Benway?


You should have been Russian, Shiva. You have a Russian intensity. You’re running a Russian fever. The fever of Dostoevsky. Of Chekhov. Of Bogdanovich. Who knows?

It’s so incongruous in a second generation Indian immigrant. Your identifications … as grotesque. Your European madness. All our European madnesses. But we’re all mad with Europe. What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we just settle down to a life of being a UK NPC? All these books that supposedly mean so much to us. We’re all running a European philosophy fever.


We should plead insanity. Just tell Organisational Management, that we’ve gone mad. Our leader’s gone mad! Shiva’s gone mad. He’s turned inwards. He’s gone catatonic. He’s not saying anything.

You can’t just go into deep Hindu meditation, Shiva. That’s not what this is about. We need leadership. We need to be shown where to go. We can’t lead ourselves.

We need lucidity. Need Intelligence. A guiding light! A lighthouse! A strategist. A philosophical Napoleon! Someone who would come into their own in a moment of crisis. Suddenly show himself as the leader we need.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Are you that man, Shiva? Where are you going to lead us?

Of course, if you were a really firm leader, we wouldn’t take the piss quite as much. We’d have respect for you. We’d shut up, obey orders.

Lead from the front, Shiva. Show us how it’s done. We respect authority – legitimate authority. We’d fall in line. Do what you say. Do what’s needed.

How about a rousing speech? Something with plenty of blood and fire. Something to stir up our loins. Look at Fiver – don’t you think he needs his loins stirred up?

Someone to light a fire in our bellies. We can’t face this all by ourselves.

Your people are scattered, Shiva. We need to be brought together. Assembled.

So blow your horn. Sound your bugle! Lead the charge!


Stop hibernating, Shiva. Step up! Be a man! Be the Hindu we want to be. Channel Ghandi, or whoever. Ashoka. Some Hindu God. The real Shiva, who knows?, with all his badassery.

Or someone else lead. Gazelle, this is your chance. Maybe we need a mutiny. Maybe this is your chance, Gazelle. Take charge. Seize power. How about a coup? We’d back you. Well, I would. This could be a night of the long knives. A regular putsch. No offence, Shiva.

Look at you Shiva, drinking it down to the sediment.

You’re a perfect child. Livia’s perfect child.


You’re Livia’s truest servant. You’re the one who was most loyal. Who most believes. It’s sweet, in a way. Dutifully chugging your wine. Pretending to savour it. A connoisseur of disgust. Livia would approve.


You have an instinct for servitude, Shiva. It suits you in some way. Putting the M in S&M.


You were her favourite. So full of world-disgust. Do you really hate the world quite that much? Every bit of the world?

What’s so wrong with you, Shiva? What vital thing went wrong in your childhood? How did you reach boss level of world disgust? Whose fault is it?


You’re nothing if not dogged, Shiva. Seeing things through the end, endlessly. The most faithful Gnostic.


You’re persistent. You have discipline. The way you’re forcing down her wine. Stubbornly determined that it’ll give you some … enlightenment. That you’re going to learn something.

And you think we’re not?


You haven’t learnt the vital lesson. That there’s nothing to learn. That Livia was a liar, just like everyone else. That she was a poisoner. And this wine is just poison.


Jesus turned water into wine. Livia turned wine into vinegar. Hardly a  miracle.


The wine went off, long ago. Just like Livia went off, long ago. All Livia was a going off.


There are only degrees of poison. And Degrees of being poisoned. There are only varieties of lie. The lies we tell ourselves. The lies others tell us.

We wouldn’t know the truth. We wouldn’t be able to tell truth from lies.

 Yes, we would.

The truth would be entirely wasted on us, we who live by lies. Who have been fed nothing but lies.


Just pour it into the earth, where it belongs. Pour the poison into the poisoned earth.

The nations are drunk of Babylon’s wine. Babylon holds up a golden cup filled with abominations.

It’s a parody of sacred wine. It looks beautiful. It promises pleasure and power. But it produces only intoxication.


Babylon offers wine that makes you forget reality. God’s wine makes reality unavoidable. It’s the wine of truth, right?


There’s the false wine, Babylon’s wine, in Revelations. Oblivion wine. The wine of forgetting. That loses you in dreams of pleasure and power.


Revelations is the rescue of wine. Is the end of false wine. Revelations shows what the world has been drinking all along – how the world was drunk all along. On the false wine. On Babylon’s wine.

Wine is of the coming Celebration, in the Bible.  When the Creation is redeemed. When we sit under the vine and fig trees. When the mountains shall drip sweet wine, as Amos says.


Salvation is eaten and drunk, in Christianity. It isn’t just a matter of belief. It isn’t abstract. Bread is the body. And wine is the blood – his Blood. His life, poured out.


Jesus drinks wine. He’s not teetotal, like John the Baptist. He meets people at the table, right. He’s part of ordinary life.


Jesus promises to drink wine again in the Kingdom. Which meant the resurrection must involve real bodies – bodies who can drink. It’s not just about the spirit.

Physical, joyful resurrection, right. It’s not about Gnosticism. It’s not about escaping material life, just experiencing it more joyfully.

Jesus is the true vine. His disciples are the branches.

So we’re the branches of Livia’s vine?


Was Livia the true wine?

The false wine. The falsest of wine. The wine of lies. To remind us that the world is lies, and nothing other than lies.


You have to drink this in memory of Him, right – that’s what he said: drink this in memory of me.

Are we supposed to drink this in memory of Livia? Is it about making her present to us, even here? About drawing together a community around her absence? After her deus abscondicus trick. Clever.

 So does she want us to worship her now? Is this the church of Livia?


Do this in memory of me, right. Drink this in memory of me. But remembering makes the past present. It’s about repeating the sacrifice of Christ. About drawing the community into it anew.

So we’re repeating the disappearance of Livia? Livia’s desertion?


Jesus poured out his own life. That’s what he said: This is my blood, poured out for many. That’s what communion wine is: his blood, poured out for the many.

I’m already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.


Is this wine about pouring Livia out as a libation? Is it Livia’s disgustingness – and she could be disgusting. Are we part of the disgusting body of Livia? Livia’s anti–church?


It’s about showing why Livia’s disappearance wasn’t a defeat. That Livia never lost. That it wasn’t a retreat – or only a tactical retreat. That Livia meant to disappear. That it was a Gnostic strategy. Part of the Gnostic game. The game she played with the universe.


So you had Israel, which was supposedly God’s vine. That’s what it gets called. God plants the vine – Israel – and cares for it. But God’s vine fails to produce good fruit. Or it goes wild. It fails to bear the fruit of justice, faithfulness and love.

And Jesus says, I am the true vine. True means real – ultimate. Definitive. Jesus isn’t, like, one vine among others. He’s the true fucking vine – the source of life itself. And his disciples are the branches of the vine.

And communion is about participation in the life of the vine. It’s not about just following Jesus, doing what he did. It’s about sharing his life. And it’s certainly not about any institution or law or ritual – any temple, or rituals of the temple. It’s about his life – as the vine. As fulfilling Israel’s vocation. That we experience through the eucharist.


Jesus was the true wine. The source of life itself.

And Livia?

She wanted us to remember the falsehood. And the poison. The whole … atrocity.


Communion, right? Sharing in the life of Jesus. That’s what the eucharist is about.

And are we supposed to share the life of Livia? Actually, I’m not sure I want to share the life of Livia.