Author: Lars Iyer

The degree of our despair. The intensity of it.

We’ve been driven deeper. We’ve been crushed. We’re underneath. We’re broken beneath it all – beneath everything.

We know the catastrophe – we know it. We feel it. It’s registered in us. It rings its bells inside us.

There’s a Significance to despair – to our despair. If we feel it truly. If we know it sincerely. If it becomes acute in us, our despair. If it enters its acute phase. Then what? What can it bring from the future?

We need to lift our despair. To offer it. We need to bring our despair to God. Present it to God. Understand it as a gift to God. As our offering. As our sacrifice. The sacrifice of our happy lives to God.

The disaster’s gathered us towards it. It’s pressed us to it. It’s brought us close.

A terrible proximity. We’re close to it. We’re its favourite sons and daughters.

We haven’t lied. We won’t lie – not anymore. Our despair is what will not lie within us. It’s what makes us decry all lies. Despise lies.

Our mental illness. Our madness. Is that what it is: madness? The bells ringing inside our heads.

Are we just going to get madder and madder? Are we just going to sink into madness? Or will madness rise inside us? Will madness try to break the surface through us? To break into the world? To surface into the world?

Some … illness. Some distortion of the mind. Some dread of the deep soul.

Dying can be bliss, too. Dying can be falling – a giving up. Like a falling in love. A falling into death. Death as falling. Into the arms of – what? Of who?

To fall out of life, philosopher. To fall out of everything. Just to fall. To fall in love? No – not that. Just to fall. And am I falling with you? Falling into … nothingness.

Are the angels of death? What are their names, the angels of death? I want them around me. I want to feel their presence. Are they there?

I want to close my eyes and know that they’re there, the angels of death. I want to feel their presence.

The End. I want there to be an End. I want things to Stop. For me. Death is angelic. Who understands that?

The world’s already ended: don’t you understand that? It’s already over. There’s no farther to go.

All our days are days in death. The passing years are just years in dying.

We’ve all got terminal cancer. We’re all dying of cancer. We’re all terminal cases. But it takes a lifetime to die.

We’ve already died. Death shouldn’t frighten us. We died long ago. We were born dead, right? We’re used to death. We at home with dying.

Dying’s all we’ve ever done. All we’ve ever wanted is to come to term. To die, finally. To meet the Limit.

We’re in suspense. We’re in Limbo. Until … until. The death sentence is finally carried out.

And in the meantime? Infinite dying. Dying, just dying.

We want God to strike down as death. We want God to come as death, as Grim Reaper. As an earthquake. As some … catastrophe that’s bigger than this. That’s bigger than all Organisational Management’s plans.

The greater death. Vast death. This whole senseless universe. The depth of the darkness. Of the senselessness – the great Nothing. The Void – call it that. The dark matter that even Organisational Management can’t manage. Can’t organise.

The true God is the God of death. The dead God, indistinguishable from the void.

We’re so awake. And we don’t even want to be awake. It’s like we’re looking out for something. Like something wants us to notice it. We’re watchmen, right? But what are we watching for?

The disaster.

But the disaster’s already happened.

The way the disaster’s unfolding, then. The way it’s opening. The way it’s blooming in some disgusting way. And that’s what we’re tasting, in this wine. That’s what leaves this taste. It’s what we’re disgusted by: the bouquet of the disaster. The rancidity of the disaster.

This is the grove of the postgraduate soul. In the former postgraduate halls …

They’ve made a clearing.

They’ve lined it with books – humanities books. All the humanities books.

What is this? A ceremony? The rite of postgraduate spring? But it’s not spring yet. It’s the depths of winter. It’s the postgraduate dance of the shortest day. Of the longest shadow. The opposite of midsummer! The dance of midwinter. The most sacred of the postgraduate festivals.

The postgraduates wanted to show us this. They wanted to express … what? Gratitude?

They wanted for us to see how deeply they felt it – the chance to study. They wanted to share their joy.

We’re touched. Moved. What a privilege.

It’s like Footloose, but for postgraduates. Kick off your Sunday shoes and so on.

Their yearning … It’s beautiful.

This is how the postgraduates dance in secret. We’re very lucky to be admitted here.

Did we used to dance like this?

I can’t remember. Were our memories wiped?

Why are they letting us see this?

They’re dancing for the Rapture. They want the postgraduate Rapture, where they just disappear. Where they’re beamed up to … a better universe. To sit at the right hand of God, or whatever. To join the postgraduate angels, up there in heaven.

The last postgraduates are dancing. Look at them dance! Look at them whirl! What joy is there in them.

Almost inscrutable, their dancing. There’s no mourning in their dancing. No regret. No sense of lastness. It’s not eschatological, their dancing. There’s no sense of doom.

There should be a part time dance, too. We should dance our part-timism.

It’s too late for that.

We should dance the memory of our part-timism.

I don’t think we can remember. Not now. Not as full-time lecturers. We can’t think our way back. We can’t feel our way.

Of course we can! Our five-year sentences – out there. Eight years, in Helmut’ case – out there, in the world. Years of soul-crushing. Of soul-distortion. Years of thwarted hopes. Of part-timer’s glut. Years, when the supply of our kind exceeded demand …

We should dance our passion of part-time dancing. The saddest dance. The deepest dance. Having been shown the academic world, and then left it behind. Having experienced academic delights, and then left them behind.

Postgraduate sadness is always only ever wistful. The postgraduate has escaped the world – there’s joy in that; even in postgraduate despair. The postgraduate knows they’ll likely have to re-enter it, the world. That they will be lost out there anew. But the part-timer is actually out in the world again, exposed to the cold winds of the world. The part time is exposed to the worst elements of the world.

We should do part-time butoh. Expose the heart of part time darkness.

Fiver’s part time-butoh. Nobody does it better.

Slow agony. The refinement of indignity. Dancing in his chains. The humiliated dance. The broken-one dance.

He’s dancing self-disgust. And auto exploitation. It’s beautiful. It’s disgusting – both at once.

This used to be postgraduate town. But there are no more postgraduates coming through.

What’s a university without postgraduates? The humanities?

It’s like Children of Men. When there’s no more youth in the university. When there’s no more youthful joy. Where’s no longer the passion of postgraduate ardency. When the postgraduate knife-edge is no longer held to our throats?


You can actually feel it: the absence of postgraduates. All the empty study-bedrooms. The empty communal kitchens. There’s no postgraduate laughter. No merriment in the courtyard.


There was postgraduate joy here, not so long ago. Postgraduate friendships – very intense, burning into the night. Postgraduate romances. And study – deep postgraduate study. Days and nights of study.


But there are no postgraduate passers-through, not anymore. No internationals, from all over the world. No one to inhabit the study bedrooms in the postgraduate halls. The communal kitchens! No one to play flamenco videos in the communal area!


The empty corridors. The empty study bedrooms. As if an entire civilization had vanished. The whole postgraduate Marie Celeste.


This place doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s intolerable.

Won’t the university just tear it down? Won’t they just sell the land and let it be torn down. Redevelopment! Anything’s better than letting it stand here, haunted by the ghosts of postgraduates past.


The hollowness of a university without postgraduates. The cold wind blowing through. Howling through.


Where are the young? Where is the youth of the humanities?

All that’ll happen is that the humanities will get older and older. More and more senescent. And more and more irrelevant.

The aging humanities. Without fresh blood. Without the postgraduate transfusion. Without the lifeblood of the university.

It’s querulous side! Its questioning side! Its gauche side. It’s not yet professionalised side! Its exploratory side! Its tremulous side! Its still-at-stake side! What is a university without the postgraduate question mark?


And now? Why do they want to have a party here? The last party, with the last postgraduates?