Author: Lars Iyer

That’s it – I’m deciding to die.

You don’t just decide to die.


Seize the day!

I don’t want the day. The day can fuck off.


Every day, some new humiliation ritual.

So close to the centre of the earth. The gravity’s heavier here. We weigh more.. I think we might be more profound. Our thoughts are heavier.

There’s a gravity to our thinking. There’s a depth. There are thoughts we can only have here. Thoughts we can only undergo under the earth. That are thoughts of the earth.


We’re experiencing the full weight of our stupidity. We’re crushed by it, out stupidity. We experience it like fate. Like predestination.


We haven’t died enough. We haven’t died deeply enough. We haven’t discovered the depths of death.

It tastes old, this wine. It tastes senescent. Like it’s the oldest wine that ever was. Like ashes. Like something burnt out, long ago.

It’s posthumous wine, for posthumous drinkers.


Are there anti-sommeliers, who know all the disgusting wines? All the tasting-notes of disgust?


Last wine, from the last harvest. From the last vines. From the last vineyard.


Tastes of rotting – no, this is beyond rotting. Its already rotted. It’s done with rotting. It’s on the other side of rotting.


Ruin wine, right? The thirteenth bottle. Livia’s final lesson. It has a big thirteen written on it. Were we supposed to drink all the wines in order?

We were supposed to drink this last, that’s all I know.


I can taste ashes. I taste earth. Thick, heavy earth. With a side order of ashes.


This wine can’t even be bothered to be disgusting. It’s given up being disgusting. It’s so disgusting that it’s reached the other side of disgusting.


It’s bubbling. It’s like a geyser. Is it going to erupt.


Ingest the poison. Drink it more deeply than anyone. Drink it into your depths.


The Abomination. That’s what you have to become. To know the world as abominable, and yourself as the abomination.


Drink, and the destruction of the world in you will be complete. Disgust will have reached its end.

Disgust will never reach its end.


World encompassing disgust – that’s what we’d like to reach. A hatred greater than the world. A disgust that is greater than the universe – the known universe, the unknown universe. All the dimensions.


Drink it down and maybe you’ll become the true Leader. The Master of Loathing. The Chief of Disgust. The emperor of Horror. The Deepest Gnostic.


The death of God, that’s what we’re tasting. God, rotting in the barrels. God’s rotting corpse: that’s the terroir. God’s festering. God’s fermenting, possibly. God’s decay.


What would an analytic philosopher make of disgusting wine? Would an analytic philosopher drink this? Of course not. Which is why we should drink it. Only the true European philosopher could drink it down.


The thirteenth bottle.

Are there any other permutations of disgust? Is there anything we’ve missed, about disgust? Are there any disgust-avenues that have gone unexplored? What further training in disgust might we need?


In wine is truth.

In wine is death.


Is this anti-wine, like anti matter? Dark wine, like dark matter?


At least we’re disgusted – think about that. At least we feel disgust. At least we’re appalled. At least we’re horrified.


A philosophy of disgust. A philosophy of retching.

The lessons of disgust. The lessons of gagging.


This wine is, like, the concentrated essence of everything.

Of everything that sucks.

Everything does suck.


It’s because we’re wrong that we see the wrong as wrong. It’s because we’re disgusting that we can see the world as disgusting.


The most stinking thing, out of all stinking things. The most festering thing, out of all the festering things …

The most decayed thing, out of all the decayed things. The most rancid thing, of all the rancid things.


Can we get drunk on what we hate?


Can we keep it down long enough to get drunk?

This is the last day, philosopher. The last day there ever will be. This is the day that will stretch forever. And you and I will escape into it.

Will we? And what will we do there?

I don’t know Just rest. Just stay still. We’ll live out our lives in this supernumerary day.


Because I might say something profound. Just by chance. I might wander into a zone of profundity. Something profound might say itself through me. Then you’d have to sit up and take notice, wouldn’t you?


I don’t know anything. I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what happened yesterday or will happen tomorrow. I don’t know, philosopher.


We’re lost. We’ve been cast out of the succession of days. We’re not part of time, not anymore. Or we’ve found some other relation to time.


And what does eternity say? Does eternity have words? The word, eternity – is that eternity’s word?

The genius of Gnosticism is the idiot. The idiot is the Gnostic genius. It’s dialectical, or something. It’s about opposites and inversion …


We’re Livia’s idiots, right. Which is to say, Livia’s geniuses.

And you’re the figurehead, Shiva. You’re the one through which idiocy speaks. And never louder!


And true genius lies in drunken idiocy. That’s what the wine’s about. It’s supposed to help us reach genius in, like, anti-genius.

You should write a memoir, Helmut: our part in your downfall.


Maybe you were sent by Heideggerians from the future. To save us all.


Do you have your own Black Notebooks? I think you should. Your musings on why life is so unNazi. And those rootles cosmopolitans, eh?


Why did Livia hire you, that’s the question?

You have to have a bit of political dubiousness in a European philosophy department. Something political suspect and probably a bit racist.

Our lives, our lives – why does it never feel like we’re living? Why does it never feel like we’re alive? What is it we’ve been doing, instead of living?


We’ve lost, and don’t care that we’ve lost. We wanted to lose. And to lose this deeply. We wanted to be fucked over, and to be fucked over this profoundly.

The worst thing for you, philosopher, is that things would simply go on, with no apocalypse, no massive death event, or whatever. The worst thing is that day should simply follow day, as it undoubtedly will.

The worst thing is that we’re all all going to live into our nineties. Into our hundreds. Or maybe we’ll never die. Maybe they’ll reverse aging by then. And then what? We’ll live forever, philosopher. Which will put you out of a job.


What are we dying of? Are we even dying? Maybe we’ll live forever – and that’ll be our curse. That we’ll go on, whilst it all dies. That we’ll go on, even as we want to die. Like Valdemar. Like the Wandering Jew.


Don’t we all live too long these days? Don’t we go on too long, and in perfect sanity? Aren’t we entirely too sane, these days?


We’re Wrong. Our heads are Wrong. Our thinking is Wrong.

What about our philosophy – is it Wrong?

Our philosophy is right because it’s Wrong.

Our personality problems aren’t even real problems. We hold down jobs, don’t we? We function, sort of. We get by.

Because Livia employed us.


The danger is that we forget our origin story. That we forget our idiocy.

Livia never let us forget it.

But we need to continue to remember.

Our conversations are becoming more and more idle. You should despise that, philosopher. You should want me to say something profound. Our conversations have less and less actual content.

We’re wearing speech away. To nothing. Or something.

One day, we might just wander into truth. Just say things and they’ll be the truth. They’ll stand in the truth. They’ll bear the truth like light. One day, truth will happen to us, philosophy. Truth will befall us. Can that happen? Is that madness? One day, truth will be where we are. The question is: will we know it?