Work in Progress

Our new accommodation.

Why's our new accommodation purple? Did anyone ask for them to be painted purple?

Not me.

Was Cicero consulted? Did she have a say in this? 

Who knows?

Someone’s attached to purple, anyway. And all the shades of purple!

Maybe it’s some psychological warfare thing. Some demoralising thing. Maybe purple’s a uniquely depressing colour.

Googling psychological effects of purple.

A blend of a high energy colour, red, and a calming colour, blue. So it can be energising or relaxing, depending.

What about depressing? Does it say anything about depressing?

Toned down hues like lavender are soft and feminine, but darker hues can lead to impatience, frustration and irritability.

Well it's very fucking dark. They're clearly trying to provoke us.

Shades of purple: amethyst, lavender, lilac, mulberry, orchid, plum, puce, pomegranate, wine. And there’s royal purple … Associated with royalty, extravagance and aristocracy … King bloody Charles wore the Purple Robe of Estate after his coronation, apparently …

Would you call this royal purple?

It’s just, like, too much purple. Totally saturated purple. Like, deep purple.

And there’s the Prince connection. He associated purple with the end times, apparently. The pouring of red blood from the heaven, mixed with the sky’s natural blue …

I think purple’s the colour of the endless end times.

Are the purple walls on our side?: that's the question. Is the purple with us or against us? What powers does it represent? Who does it answer to?

The purple … if you pressed your hand against it … if you placed your forehead on it … would you think what it thinks? Would you think with it?

It’s as if the purple was listening. As if the purple was covered in sensors. Purple walls, listening to us as we teach. Absorbing our thoughts. Is it some new smart colour. Some new kind of uni surveillance. Like that stuff they’re putting into fabric.

I don’t believe it. The purple is its own thing.

Really!? Should we should regard the purple as an ally? As on our side? Is it in league with us?

I don’t know … It needs careful thought.

With Kitty on the ferry to North Shields.

I always feel like I’ve got the bends, coming out after a day of study. Like I’ve got some kind of decompression sickness after ascending too quickly from the depths.

You reach depths?

The world doesn’t feel real. Not when it’s just been me and Susan Taubes all fucking day.

How’s it going, anyway? Are you making progress?

Don’t even ask me those kinds of questions – they’re tasteless. Fuck. Actually, I’ve been reading too much Susan Taubes, I admit it. She’s, like, the heart of fucking darkness. But I’ve got a total crush. Susan Taubes was so beautiful. So fucking chic. All intelligence and melancholy and attitude. She was even Hungarian – imagine that. Who spoke perfect, perfect better-than-us English. And French. And all the other languages.

And she was brilliant – utterly so. You should read her letters to her husband. Brilliant and idealistic and full of love for him, which he didn’t deserve. A Mitteleuropean emigre, married to some absolute philosophical maniac. Who drove her to suicide, basically. Or maybe that was her philosophy, which was pretty fucking gloomy.

Disembarking.

No one reads anymore but us – you do realise that, don’t you? Do you know anyone who actually reads books? Civilians, I mean, not academics.

What do you think?

It’s a philistine world, right?

And we’re the fucking philistines. We’re worse than anyone. What we call reading … There should be the philosophical equivalent of game reserves, where books are allowed to wander about, freely. Where they’re allowed to be themselves without being read by the likes of us.

There should be book reserves, into which you cannot enter, into which you can only look on from afar with the equivalent of binoculars, where European philosophy is allowed to rewild.

There should be signs: No trespassers. No translations. No explanatory introductions. No books of commentary. There should be patrols along the perimeter. Bouncers, to show our kind off European philosophy premises.

Let it retreat back into itself, European Philosophy. Recover itself. Let it wander in its own milieu, just as their authors intended, and not made palatable to an Anglophone audience.

Susan Taubes’s books have just been reissued, haven’t they?

Reissued and repackaged and reviewed and publicised on podcasts. And all the details of Susan Taubes’s life dug up. Don’t remind me. Don’t be tiresome. God, how much longer do we have to live? What’s the right age to gracefully bow out? When will we have done our time? The way we’re just living on. Just going on. It’s so tasteless. It’s as tasteless as these new flats.

They are tasteless.

Of course they’re tasteless! Of course they’re disgusting! Of course they’re appalling! They have to ruin everything. Which is all they do – ruin and destroy things. We should just throw ourselves into the Tyne. If we ever get to the Tyne. If we ever reach the Tyne. If it wasn’t just blocked by all these disgusting new flats. No – we don’t need to throw ourselves in – too histrionic. Protesting too fucking much. We should just let ourselves slip into the ocean. Just gently lower ourselves in.

And you’re not even hungover.

Is it more poetical – or philosophical – to drown yourself in North Shields or South Shields, I wonder? I could walk out to the end of the North Pier and jump off. Or to the end of the South Pier, and do the same.

You could just dive from the Priory.

You’d have to pay to get in there. Forget it.

Anyway, the last thing I want is to be rescued, after I jump in: I want you to remember that. Or even worse, resuscitated. Just when you thought you’d drowned yourself, the fuckers would bring you back to life. How embarrassing! Coming to, coughing on the sand. Being taken off to be counselled, or whatever. Being referred to some suicide prevention clinic. Wouldn’t that suck? Having to talk about your suicidal ideation. All ideation is suicidal, that’s what I’d tell them.

I’m sure Susan Taubes would agree.

Susan Taubes drowned herself, of course. Her best friend Susan Sontag identified her body. That’ll be your job. You’ll have to identify my body when the time comes. When I was up in North Shields. Or South Shields. I’m still not sure where I’m going to drown myself.

Actually, suicide’s too easy now. Euthanasia’s part of the whole depopulation thing. They’re offering it to angsty teenagers in Canada. To, like, anorexics in Australia. To the homeless. You’re supposed to euthanise yourself now. Living on is basically the new suicide. You can’t be a martyr to thought anymore.

They’ll offer euthanasia to all Philosophy students as a matter of course. To all humanities students, probably. It might get them off their debts. Euthanasia will be promoted as the only way to claim bankruptcy.

Sure – study, learn stuff about how shit the world is, then die. Might be worth it. Might give a certain urgency to your study.

I’d just like to die, really. Right now. Painlessly. Wouldn’t that be something? … I wish the universe would just switch me off. No I wish it had already turned off the life support. That I hadn’t even been born. That I wasn’t here, saying these things.

Where’s a stray bullet when you want one? I’d just love to be caught in some crossfire. Some North Shields shoot out. Does that happen do you think? Or just hit by some runaway car …

I’d actually quite like to be assassinated. It’d be very flattering. For someone to pick me out – me – and assassinate me. It’d be like they understood me, in a way. That they’d divined the secret of me. That it was time for me to die. And wouldn’t it be great, having my heart stopped? Having my lungs no longer fill and empty. Having my thoughts – stop.

You’ve been working too hard.

I have been working too fucking hard. Anyway, they want us dead, so we need to live. We need to live in defiance of them. No, we need to die more deeply. We need to die the deepest possible death. A death they can’t reach. Can’t defile. A death that would be our own fucking thing …

But we’d be dead, right?

But unreachable in our deaths. Totally fucking undisturbable. But you wouldn’t be, would you? There’d always be some cunt interpretating your suicide.

Oh Susan Taubes, send us a sign. Susan Taubes is, like, my spirit animal. What would Susan Taubes do?: that’s what I ask myself … Marry a madman Have a string of affairs. Write brilliant philosophy, and then write unreadable fiction instead. Kill herself when she read the review of her first novel.

Is that what happened?

Look, there’s almost some sun. I think we should get some pickled mussels. And cockles. Not whelks – they’re too chewy. A crab sandwich, maybe. And sit in the sun and eat our feast. And maybe I’ll read you some Susan Taubes.

 

The quayside.

A real fishing port. A real working place. A real place, doing real trade. It’s authentic. And it doesn’t actually have that end-of-the-world feel. It’s actually bustling. Things happen here – real things. It isn’t unbearably middle class.

So you’re up close with an organisational manager. What’s her soul like? Does she have a soul?

I think so.

Maybe you can save her. Turn her. Convert her. Is that your aim?

Maybe.

I’ve been thinking about my romantic life. Or lack of it.

Since Cicero, you mean?

Since Cicero, sure … That was a long time ago … Should scholars have lovers?

Other scholars, maybe. Not civilians. They wouldn’t understand the demands … The solitude we need …

I work too much, that’s the problem. We all do! Jane Birkin – God rest her soul – said Serge Gainsbourg was so much fun. He didn’t want to stay in working all the time. Writing songs, or whatever. Recording stuff. He wanted to be out – with her. Having adventures. Going places. Driving off to some remote beach and making love in the surf. That kind of thing.

My lover would make me want to be out – with her. Our in the sun. Out in the day. I wouldn’t be thinking about work all the time. I wouldn’t be all about sitting in the dark.

And when I did work, when I had to work, she’d be in the room with me. Watching over me. Doing her own thing, but watching over me. Making sure I didn’t go too far into Susan Taubes world. Into all the doomy stuff.

You like the doomy stuff.

Did you ever read Marguerite Duras’s book, Practicalities? About the daily life of living with her young lover, Yann Andrea? All this stuff about shopping and cleaning and cooking and just hanging out. And what they read and what they did. And gardening. All the domestic stuff, right? I like knowing those details. How she lived. How they lived. I’d like to live like that.

I don’t believe a word of it. You’re utterly undomestic.

There I’d be, working at my desk, and there she’d be, feet up on my table, long legs in jeans and cowboy boots, reading Proust. Reading Swann’s Way. She’d be the most beautiful Proust-reader who ever was. There, sitting as I wrote, reading Swann’s Way and occasionally gasping over the beauty of the prose. Occasionally reading a sentence out loud. Oh honey, listen to this.

Yes, that’s how I see her: reading Proust in her white jeans and cowboy boots. Feet up. In a taupe blouse, like some lady explorer. So beautiful. As beautiful as Proust’s sentences. And reading out Proust sentences that she liked. Oh honey, so beautiful.

And I’d read to her from Susan Taubes, and she’d wrinkle her nose. Yuck. Too death-haunted for her. Too deathly for her. Too dark, for her. Too morbid, for her. Nothing to do with the garden.

So you have a garden now?

In my fantasy, yes. With a lily pond – we’d have a lily pond, in my fantasy. And sometimes we’d drive out to the countryside – we’d have a car, in my fantasy …

Imagine that!

And my lover would pioneer, like, Proust reading chic. She’d be the Anita Pallenberg of reading Proust and looking fabulous …A silk scarf round her waist. A tiara. Pearls. I love pearls. A pearl necklace. Pearl earrings. Sometimes twinset for that irresistible posh, posh look. With white jeans. And her cowboy boots. Wouldn’t that be something?

Of course, she’d eventually want someone with money. With a lifestyle. Some rich woman. Or some rich man, maybe. Who could keep her in style. Fly her here and there. Take her off around the world.  Show her the great world-capitals.

But for the moment, as she read Proust, long legs perched up on my desk, as long as she could potter round my garden, I’d do.

She liked to be adored, of course. Loved. Admired. With her so-feminine features. With the delicacy of her nose. Her cheekbones. She’ll say, honey don’t ignore me. Just because I’m reading Proust.

She'd like to be taught about cultural things. Shown refined things. I'd introduce her to Blossom Dearie. Or Nancy Wilson. Or whoever else. Play things that would delight her. Make her a playlist.

And she’d be ballet-trained. She’d run like a ballerina. I’d love to watch her run, ballerina-style. They have a special way of running, ballerinas. She’d be so graceful. The way she moved.

She’d tell me about her ballet training. And the finer points of ballet appreciation. And what was so great about Syvlie Guillem. About ballet choreography. Yes – that’d be her world. Her elegance.

So why would she be with you?

Because she admired intellectual things, Shiva. Because she loved the intellectual world. The literary world. Of which I was a comparative aficionado. Which is why she could just sit there, lost in Proust. Sighing this is so beautiful every now and again.

She’d do yoga every day. Just, like, in the flat. She’d always be doing yoga. Like that woman in that film Wim Wenders made about Nicholas Ray. Cultivating her body. Or pilates, maybe.

And what would you be doing?

Writing, of course. Dreamily writing. And dreamily reading. In no danger of losing myself in the depths.

But you’d know you couldn’t keep her, right?

I’d know that. And she’d know. Sometimes she’d talk of afterwards – when we split up. She’d begin, After all this – when we’re not together anymore … And ask whether we’d keep in touch. Whether we’d send email to each other. Whether I would keep sending her book recommendations.

And then she’d look a little sadly and say, But I don’t want to think of afterwards.

She’d be in love with me for the moment, and I would obviously be in love with her, and wouldn’t that be just fine? She’d look over at me and I’d feel it in my heart. Like a stab in my heart. I’d catch my breath. I’d think: she’s so beautiful.

And she’d be looking to me. For life. For adventure. And that’d be the making of me. I’d become an adventurous person. An emboldened person. Not just a dry old scholar thinking constantly about death.

And she’d need me for reassurance. To tell her I loved her. It’d matter to her, that I loved her. Imagine that! She’d look to me for affection, for attention, for whatever. And I’d be good for something. I’d praise her beauty.  And her grace. It would make a woman of me – a real woman, not just some dusty older reader of European books …

I’d be an expert in her beauty. Her own private connoisseur. It’d be like The Duke of Burgundy, did you ever see that? She and I, that’s all. She and I and no one else, pretty much. Me with my work and she with … whatever it is she was doing. Practising her guitar.

She plays guitar now?

In between reading Proust and gardening, yes.

And we could take tea in the garden – in our imaginary garden. Mid morning and mid afternoon. Imagine it, taking tea. Sipping tea. From China cups. Pouring tea from my teapot. In the  garden, in the sun.

And if the move took us, off we’d drive. Around the Northumbrian countryside. We’d get to know it: the Northumbrian countryside.

We’d have a convertible. We’d drive along, playing great music. Summer music. I’d choose the music. She’d be delighted. That would be my job, as you know: to delight her. To find the right music for her. And I’d like that. That would be what I was for: delighting her.

And driving, I can actually drive, in my fantasy. I had had lessons. Passed by test. I could drive. And I even had a car. An unaffordable, impossible car. And I’d drive her around. We’d have daytrips. We could plan them. Consult maps. Plan out a lovely day for ourselves. A jolly time …

Driving along, on the open roads. Country roads.

And we’d stop off somewhere lovely. Like the beach by Bamburgh Castle. And walk along together.

And I’d be wondering what I’d done to have such a beauty on my arm. And she’d like being the beauty on my arm. And we’d walk along, my liking the beauty on my arm and she liking being the beauty on my arm. And wouldn’t that be just dandy?

Buying mussels and crab sandwiches.

And we’d go on holiday, my lover and I. To Italy.

Italy!

To the Mediterranean. I’ve never been to the Mediterranean. In fact, I don’t think I even believe in the Mediterranean. Is there any such place as the Mediterranean?

I wouldn’t know.

You sound about as well-travelled as I am … She and I could fly out to Italy and the Mediterranean, proving that they existed, which I’m sure they did. And she’d wear her big floppy sunhat, like Grace Kelly’s in To Catch a Thief. And be even more gorgeous. Effortlessly. Chicly. And I would have to delight her. That would be my job: to delight her. I’d have become a delighting-my-lover machine. In the Mediterranean!

What would you actually do in the Mediterranean?

Throw a beach ball to each other, or something. Punt it to and fro on the sand. Or play beach croquet.

Is that a game?

Or boules. Or we’d just sun ourselves. Or take a dip. Any, the crucial thing is that we wouldn’t talk about work. Or writing. Or Susan Taubes. I like the idea of that.

And my soul would grow … expand. I’d open myself to everything. To the whole world. What’s the opposite of an agoraphobe?

An agora-phile, I guess.

I’d be one of those, an agora-lover. And agora-phile. I’d never want to be indoors again. Or rather, I’d understand the inside to be but a temporary folding of the outside. A temporary enclosure. And I’d understand the point of life was to unfold all the foldings … To turn everything to the light.

We need to be brought outside, you and I. By our lovers.

So I have to have a lover as well?

You need a lover, I need a lover. We all need lovers. We need to be educated in the arts of life. In fine food and fine wine. All the things we’ve missed out of. Fine dining. Fine life. We’ve studied too long. We’ve been in the dark too long. We need to plunge into life for ourselves. We’d need to be there, in the midst of life. Splashing around in the surf, or whatever.

I can’t actually swim.

Nor can I.

Or drive.

Me, neither.

Or do DIY. Or anything …

You and me both.

You have to be able to do some of these things in a relationship.

But our lovers would embolden us. They’d make us do stuff. Backstroke. Hand point turns. Getting handy with hammer and nails …

 

Mussels and crab sandwiches on a bench, looking out beyond the piers to the sea. 

We could sail off somewhere. Get a ferry from Tyne Dock.

And where would we go?

To Amsterdam, maybe. Or Copenhagen.

Have you ever been to Amsterdam?

I can’t believe in Amsterdam. There is no Amsterdam.

What about Copenhagen?

I can’t even conceive of Copenhagen. There is no Copenhagen.

Where do the ferries go then?

They fall off the edge of the world.

What, one after another? You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you?

Enough of your inanities. Shut up and listen.

If there is something to be healed, the brokenness is within the world. To ask for the eradication of brokenness as such is to wish the annihilation of the world. To heal the broken relations within the world, requires first that we acknowledge the reality of these relations (instead of fleeing into the imaginary) + then drawing from the tree of life, science, art, wisdom, cultivate + transform them. The powers of creation, of life are also the powers of destruction: every transformation passes through chaos.

That’s weapons-grade Susan Taubes. Black fucking belt. From a letter. That she wrote when she was twenty-one. Could you write such a thing at twenty-one, in a letter?

No.

Nor could I. Nor even at thirty one. Or even at thirty-seven, which is how old I am now.

Heidegger published Being and Time at thirty-seven.

And Hegel published The Phenomenology of Spirit – don’t remind me.

And Derrida published those three books.

And Hyppolite published his great commentary on Hegel. How old are you?

Thirty-three.

Merleau-Ponty had published The Phenomenology of Perception at thirty-three. Simone Weil was writing her best notebook stuff, and would be dead at thirty-four. And you know what Kierkegaard had published by that age: a fucking library.

Fucking Schelling was published at seventeen. Hume wrote his Treatise at twenty three.

We could always be late bloomers.

You’re going to bring up Kant, aren’t you? Someone always has to bring up Kant.

He was fifty-seven when he published The Critique of Pure Reason. Fifty fucking seven …

We could still bloom at fifty-seven …

Delusion.

But it’s an enabling delusion. It makes us feel like we could have something to say. Philosophy’s generous like that. You don’t have to give up your philosophical hopes until you’re positively ancient …

Which means you spend your whole life living in a dream. Which we do already.

You’re going to write your book, Kitten. And it’s going to be really good. I have big hopes for you. You’re going to succeed. For all of us. You’ll sail the good ship Kitten right out of here. Leave us behind.

You’re taking the piss.

I’m not, for once. You’ve got what it takes. The philosophical right stuff. You’ll be out of here.

And where will I go?

America, maybe.

The problem with you and the others are that you’re the philosophical version of indie music. All twee and infantile and shambolic and non careerist and wilfully underachieving and despising ambition. Or if you do, burying your work in some obscure, unranked journal.

You’re all about getting drunk instead. Or being hungover instead. Or sitting in the corner at conferences, scowling and hating everybody and imagining you know things, which you don’t. And all the time, pulling each other own. Drugging each other through the mud and mire. With your in-jokes and pisstaking and general bad attitude.

You used to be one of us.

I did, didn’t I?

Do whelks cure hangovers?

Don’t keep talking about your hangover. I’m tired of your hangover. Really, you should use your hangover. Francis Bacon always painted hungover – did you know that? A night on champagne and oysters and the next morning, up early, to paint, hungover.

Because it’s when we’re hungover that we truly experience our conditions. Where we know the irremissibility of it all. Where we know ourselves to be animals, caught in a trap. When we experience our very existence as fate. As inevitability. With no escape. No evasion. The unbearable heaviness of being, right? The unbearable crushedness of being …

Tell me about it.

The hangover lowers the coffin – as it should be lowered! The hangover seals the tomb – as it should be sealed! Tell me, do we really have to meet the others? Are the others going to be bearable? Drunk, they’re bad enough. But hungover …

An express lift, pinging for each floor we ascend.

Out, thirty-three floors up.

Looking down at the foyer, hand in hand.

They’re going to install a great waterfall here at some point. That’s the plan, anyway. It’s modelled on something in Singapore. My husband’s very keen on Singapore …

I’m sure he is. Total authority. Total control.

We could thrown ourselves down – all the way. A love death. That’s what they’re called, isn’t it? We’ll be together in death.

Except we won’t even reach death. Where you are, death can’t be. You never actually die.

So you can’t just throw yourself off the ledge and, like, die?

Sure you can.

And your body will go splat, thirty-three floors down?

We won’t feel it. It’ll be too late for us

I think we’re bad – very bad for each other, philosopher. Talking about these things. Even thinking these things.

How deep does this building go?

As far down as it goes up – that’s what I heard.

What’s down there?

A whole secret bunker. An underground city, with its own energy sources and food pods and whatever.

For who? Why? It doesn’t show much confidence in the future of the Organisational Management world, does it?

The Observatory.

Over to the windows.

The Northern Lights … Are they real?

I don’t know. But they’re beautiful.

That’s not enough. I want to know whether they’re real. Do you think that the real sky? The real sky, Laure. Not the … Skynet sky. Not the all-set-up-for-holograms sky. The real sky … which is a tearing of the fake sky. That burns up the fake sky …  

You can see for miles. Night time Newcastle. Can you see the river? It’s there. The Glasshouse. The Tyne Bridge …

These views …

Are majestic! Magnificent! Even you can’t deny that.

I don’t want a panorama ...  

Give into it. Enjoy it.

This is where you and Alan come to gaze over your kingdom, right?

It really isn’t like that.

It’s where you look over the new campus and beyond. All the way out to the stony wastes … Knowing that you’re doing your bit for the Organisational Management empire. That you’ve set up the new capital of the northeast. The newest node in the network …

It’s actually one of the first nodes. They’re starting in deprived places first. Newcastle is just an Organisational Management testbed.

The horror …

Everything’s so still, up here. And calm. We’re in the still eye of the hurricane.

The Organisational Management hurricane.

Which is turning all around us. Wheeling around us.

But even Organisational Management is afraid. Even Organisational Management builds bunkers. Why, I wonder? What’s the threat?

The unorganisable, maybe. The unmanageable.

There’s this science fiction film: Alphaville. Jean-Luc Godard, from the ‘60s. A futuristic city, ruled by a evil AI, Alpha 60. That outlaws free thought. Bans all creative expression. And interrogates all those who show emotion, before killing them. In a giant swimming pool, strangely, with all these synchronised swimmers …

There’s this great interrogation scene. They haul Lemmy Caution in – he’s the protagonist, the hardboiled detective type. What transforms night into day? Alpha-60 asks him. Poetry, he says. What is your religion? I believe in the immediate inspirations of my conscience, he says. What is the privilege of the dead? he’s asked. To die no longer, he says.

Poetic questions, for a computer.

Caution quotes from a book by Paul Eluard, the poet. The Capital of Pain. And tries to make Anna Karina’s character tell him she loves him. Love is totally banned, you see.

Does she love him? Does love destroy the supercomputer? Does love win in the end?

They escape. They drive off into the outer realms.

That’s what we have to do: fall in love and escape. To die no longer … is that what you want?

The Organisation Management building.

Through the corridors.

This building reads us, apparently. Like, our minds. Or our moods. It’s supposed to respond to us, detecting when we’re stressed. Changing the lighting. And spraying stuff into the air. Hormones, or something … Have you heard of sick building syndrome? This is the opposite of that. This is a health-promoting building. It actually makes you healthier.

What about your husband: won’t he be wondering where you went?

He won’t have noticed.

I’ll bet he has.

He’s preparing to give his speech – there’ll be a welcome Philosophy speech, you know … Actually, that’s why we’re leaving. I don’t like his speeches.

Won’t he mind?

I … do … my … own … thing. He knows that. He’s used to me disappearing. Wouldn’t you love to be married to me? I make everything … unpredictable.

Upstairs.

I like wandering around the building at night. Wandering past the offices. I like the open space. I like the darkness.

They’re all curved, these corridors …

Getting lost can be productive. Wandering is part of thinking.

Even business thinking?

All thinking, philosopher.

The infinite ranks of Organisational Management offices … All the Organisational Management that must get done here …

These are the offices of the up-and-coming. Young, thrusting types. Really going places.

Upstairs.

And this is superstar row. These are the big name professors. The big guns, from Penn State and Harvard and so on. The Organisational Management elite … Busy keynoting and publishing in the big ten journals … They have, like personal administrators. And superstar offices.

Upstairs.

In there, the hospitality suite. I don’t have access. For entertaining the grandees from government and business. We have everything ready in case Bill Gates flies in …

Upstairs.

And here we are: the Pulse, a bit of a work on progress. Our version of a holodeck – or it’s going to be. There’s, like, an AI that can create virtual landscapes.

Now I actually do have access to this. It’s my baby, this …

Laure, twiddling a dial. The Pulse will put you anywhere you want in the world. That’s the plan, anyway. We have virtual world developers who work on this stuff … It can actually turn into a disco. Watch.

A disco ball, descending. Laser beams, flashing …

And there are gaming options as well … Great for team building. I’ll bet you just love team building …

I’ll set it to temperate woodlands. All green and leafy. Pretty convincing, isn’t it?

We won’t be able to visit nature anymore – that’s the plan. It’s going to be closed off. Rewilded. Kept just for billionaires. We’ll just have the metaverse version. Which is what you have right here …

So paranoid.

Upstairs.

And here’s the common room. Which you guys will be welcome to use.

A noticeboard. Quotations in colour, at jaunty angles. Reading:  Planting seeds of kindness. Kindness is Contagious … Pass It On. A spider diagram. Arrows between compassion, empathy, kindness and equity.

They’re from our away-day. Some brainstorming thing about the things we value as a business community, supposedly … You’ve got a lot to look forward to. You haven’t lived until you experience an Organisational Management awayday …

An animated poster. Positive organisations are developed through the creation of: a positive climate; positive relations; positive communication and positive meaning, including an emphasis on compassion, forgiveness and gratitude among employees.

A framed photo of the Dalai Lama. No one can agree on the word, compassion, but we agree on kindness. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

It’s kindness week. Or kindness month. Or kindness season. Actually, I think it’s permanent kindness now.

Journals, on the rack. Critical Management Studies. Bulletin of the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research (CCARE).

Flicking through Journal of Global Social Responsibility in Business. The tagline: Facilitating discussion among business stakeholders on issues related to local social responsibility and sustainability. Snappy. Inclusive Capitalism: Making Capitalism more Equitable, Sustainable and Inclusive … Greater Good in Action: Sharing research practices for fostering happiness, resilience, kindness and connection …

See, we not all horrible capitalists, you know. Even corporations are, like, anti capitalist now.

You can look down on us all you like … But there’s nothing terribly terrible about Organisational Management. Nothing awfully awful … I know some of this kindness stuff is kind of cringe, but you can really do things here. Effect, like, change. We have the ear of politicians … NGO types … This is the way the world is going.

I mean why should the moving of Philosophy into Organisational Management be, like, the end of the entire universe? We’re a broad church.

It's a hostile takeover of Philosophy, and that’s that.

Not so hostile. It isn’t exactly the Gulag Archipelago.

Sure, because they’re smarter than that now. They don’t have to be so obvious with their total domination.

Who are they, anyway?

You don’t think Organisational Management is being played by greater forces?

Possibly.

You don’t think there’s something Vaster going on, capital V?

Maybe. I don’t know.

This is not just about the way the world’s going. None of this is happening by chance. There are people steering this.

People … mysterious people …

I thought you said you were the madwoman in the Organisational Management attic.

Maybe I am … maybe I’m not …

Like, what percentage of you is Organisational Manager?

About … thirty-two … twenty-seven … nineteen … I don’t know. The point is that it won’t actually be that bad being part of this. Everyone’s actually manageable, once you find the levers.

You didn’t just say that …

Management doesn’t mean all the horrendous top-down stuff. Models of leadership have come a long way. Alan, for example, thinks of himself as more of a facilitator. As an underleader. He leads from below, very humbly.

Oh God.

Why do you have to be so cynical?

You’d like to think you’re totally unique, totally uncontrollable, totally … I don’t know, anarchist, but you’re not. Face it. You’re not some terrible threat. You’ll fit right in.

I thought you wanted some anarchy.

I don’t know whether I actually believe in anarchy.

And what about madness? And being dead?

You’ve already been screened. You’re safe.

I’m not – safe.

Do you seriously think you’re a challenge for Organisational Management? Don’t you think we’ll just swallow you up, for all your so-called unmanageability?

That’s your agenda: swallowing us up. You’ve said it.

It’s about interdisciplinarity. We want to reduce Organisational Management groupthink. We want … cognitive diversity, not just demographic diversity. We want to question everything … our basic beliefs. That’s the only way we can address global problems.

God …

Don’t you believe there are global problems?

I don’t believe you can manage your way out of them. Management’s the problem.

Some models of management, maybe … But we’ve moved on from those.

You say you want … dialogue. To reduce groupthink. But what if someone questioned the need for Organisational Management? What if we said Organisational Management shouldn’t exist at all?

That’s allowed.

What if someone said Organisational Management was evil – the greatest evil?

Everything’s open to discussion.  

Everything – which means nothing. Everything’s allowed, which means nothing’s allowed … What is Organisational Management, anyway? When did it start? How did it get that name? Why wasn’t it even heard of before, say, five years ago?

Business studies just sounded too … business-y. Organisational Management was a better name for what we were about. But I think we might abandon that, in turn. Just call ourselves Sustainable Futures or something …

God … God …

Maybe you’ll turn us all philosophical, whatever that means. All subject-areas become philosophical, as they mature, my husband says. Every subject, that once split off from philosophy, returns to it in its moment of deepest need. In its deepest questioning. Which is why there’s a philosophy of maths and a philosophy of physics.

Of course

A philosophy of … literature … And art …

Art’s all about philosophy.

So why not a philosophy of business studies? Why can’t Organisational Management become question-worthy, or whatever?

Because it would destroy Organisational Management. The question of Organisational Management would swallow it whole ..

Maybe it should be destroyed … Maybe we’re too much … Maybe our campus is too big … Maybe we’ve become too powerful … And we don’t ask about fundamental things. You see, I feel these things too, philosopher. I want to … rebel, or whatever. Maybe I don’t know how. Maybe that’s what I’m doing now: rebelling by walking through the building with you.

There are supposed to be philosophers in Business Studies. Pragmatic ones, who went where the money was. Who got Business Studies scholarships to fund their PhDs. Smart move, now that humanities PhD funding has dried up. And who found themselves Business Studies or Organisational Management jobs … Which allow them to hide in plain sight …

There are probably some amongst you, leading secret philosophical lives. Recognising each other by secret handshakes. Nodding in the corridors. Occasionally meeting in secret for philosophy reading groups. You could be one of them …

I’d know if I was one of them.

Maybe they caught you and brain-wiped you. Reprogrammed you, like an Organisational Management version of Jason Bourne. But maybe you’re still part of a secret philosophy sleeper cell. You just need to hear the right trigger word.

So what’s the right trigger word?

I don’t know … Wittgenstein?

Doesn’t do anything to me.

Heidegger? The good beyond being?

Nope … nothing.

Upstairs.

This is the Dome. It’s, like, a contemplation space.

Are those lava lights?

Sure. They’re supposed to be restful.

They’re changing colour.

They’re responding to you. This is an interactive environment. They’re trying to calm you down – do you see?

I don’t want to be calm.

They’re trying to slow your heartbeat. Calm your breathing.

Reading: A space for contemplation. An area that has no purpose. A whatever space. A spatial remnant. Pure potentiality. For whatever use we want to make of it.

Alan’s idea.

I can’t believe you guys are taking over contemplation. And purposelessness.

Why, does philosophy own it?

Laure: how did you get that name, anyway? Are you French?

Half French.

You know who the original Laure was, don’t you?

Was there an original?

She was the mad girlfriend of Georges Bataille. Have you heard of him?

I … might have.

He was a mad philosopher. And she wrote deranged poetry and mad essays. And died terribly young.

Is he your hero, Georges Bataille?

You pronounce it beautifully.

I studied Business Studies with French, philosopher. Imagine that. I spent a year abroad in Paris.

I’ve never been. I’m desperately provincial.

And proud of it, I’ll bet.

The lights on the wall, changing.

I don’t believe anything you said about Organisational Management

Nor did I.

Life, for Georges Bataille and Laure was a breaking of forms. A breaking with nature, the laws of nature. A breakout from prison – from the natural prison. From the order of this world.

Is that true?

Life, for them, was about the unmanageable. About becoming … un-organisable. About contamination. The mixing of things that shouldn’t mix. General defilement. The dissolution of natural boundaries, limits.

It’s about revolution.

You humanities types still believe in that?

In … apocalypse. The destruction of the present order of things. When chaos is unleashed. When a kind of lightning strikes.

Do you think we’d survive the apocalypse, you and I?

I think we’d go right down with the world.

But would we rise again?

There’s a desire in us to … destroy. To twist. To invert. And it’s a desire for truth. A desire to … stop lying. To stop … mocking meaning.

Organisational Management’s destroying meaning – it’s quite deliberate. It’s a … nihilism factory. It’s sucking all the meaning out of the world. The better to organise it. The better to manage it. But it will perish by what it creates. It’s perishing now.

This building … this tower … Is already dead. It’s a shell. This whole campus … It’s the void – nothing else. In the real night, beyond the fake one … In the real darkness … there’s just Meaninglessness, because all meaning is exhausted. Chaos, because all ordering has failed. That’s what lying in wait, behind the fake sky …

But we in Philosophy have special powers. And that’s why we bear the alien fire. We can make meaning from meaninglessness. That’s our magic. We live against the world – against your world. Against any word …

In a world that’s gone dark, meaning withdraws. You can find it only in the questioning of meaning – of what’s called meaning … And there’s meaning in that – do you see?

What does meaning mean, anyway? I’m confused …

You know what it means. You know it because you demand it. You shake the bars of the world, crying out for it. And crying out for it makes the prison no longer seem so bad.

The questioning of meaning … What does that mean?

It means this world isn’t enough for us. That we’re dissatisfied with the world itself … When the world becomes a purely functional mechanism, the conditions of meaning come from outside. Our despair – our crying out – doesn’t even come from us. It comes from outside – out there. In the night of the world.

Outside – outside what?

Outside this tower. Outside this campus. Outside Organisational Management. Meaning’s transcendent or not at all. Meaning arrives from without – only from without. That’s how it is now. Meaning is not given in the order of things. It’s given in the destruction of that order. In its sacrifice. In its calling upwards. And meaning, when it comes, will strike down like lightning. Meaning will set this whole world on fire.

The apocalypse.

Yes, the apocalypse.

You’d like this to be the last night of the world – of this world. The last night there ever was. But it won’t be, will it? There’ll be another night and another one …

This isn’t yet the night of the world, philosopher. This isn’t yet the last night. This is the penultimate night. The night before the last night – the endless night. But at least we have a corner of the night all to ourselves. Where we can do whatever we like …

Where do your friends think you’ve gone, do you think ?

Off with a beautiful and mysterious organisational manager …

Are there really such things? They’ll think I’ve kidnapped you. Turned you. They’ll think I’m a walking honey trap …

And was it? Did Alan put you up to this?

You’re already trapped – you know that. If you are trapped, that is …

I’m the sort of person you ought to loathe, philosopher. So why don’t you? You’re in the enemy’s camp. With the enemy’s wife. You’re a traitor …

You’re a traitor, too. You don’t believe in all this – in Organisational Management. Even when you say you do. Especially then.

I think it’s possible that I willed you into existence. That you didn’t exist until I … wanted you to. I think you were born from my … deadness. I dreamt you up, one night I couldn’t sleep. I conjured you up out of my desire for the opposite of Organisational Management …

Nothing matters on a night like this. None of the normal rules apply. They’re all suspended. This is a state of exception.

Silence.

Laure, drawing close.

This is the part where we kiss, philosopher.

Kissing.

Are you still dead?

Still dead. More dead than ever.

Haven’t I woken you up?

You’ve woken up death, destroyer of worlds. Destroyer of Organisational Management.  

Kissing.

How long will you stay dead?

Forever. I’ll never be alive.

And will you ever die – finally?

Death isn’t going to come. There’ll be no end for me. I’m immortal, philosopher. Wouldn’t you like to be immortal?

There is just one eternal day, without morning or evening. That’s what Augustine said.

That’s how it is. And on that day – tonight, right now, we’re going to live forever. We’re living forever right now, right here. Am I allowed to say things like that?

Kissing.

I think we should fall into a question together. How do we do that?

We’re doing it now.

I’ll be Laure, and you can be Georges Bataille. We’ll both be mad.

Her phone, buzzing.

That’s my husband. He wants to know where I am.

Does he know you’re with me?

Maybe he does.

What are you going to say to him?

That I was with you. Maybe. Not really. I don’t know. I’ll lie.

What will you say?

That I had a migraine. That I had to go back to my office to lie down.

Won’t he come looking for you?

He knows I like to be alone sometimes. And he wouldn’t be so tasteless to pursue me. Anyway, I’ve got to show you one more thing.

The Organisational Management Christmas Party.

Laure, she says, shaking my hand.

I know who you are, I say. I saw you at the meeting,

Oh – the meeting. You wouldn’t eat anything of the buffet – that’s what I remember. And it was a luxury buffet. The best Organisational Management could offer. With prawns and everything. And you were just sitting there with folded arms –

I wasn’t going to dignify the occasion –

– like a spoilt child. Like Dr fucking Sulky. Too good for the meet and greet … You and the rest of your Philosophy Department, sitting their with your arms crossed. Actually, I was impressed, kind of. Like it was our job to win you over – all seven of you, in your failing department, rather than the other way round.

Assimilate or die, right?

Actually, Alan – the Head of School, who’s also my husband as you probably know –

– I know.

Is all for the move. It wasn’t our idea, but he wasn’t against it. Organisational Management needs a kick up the rear. The only way Organisational Management can improve is by coming up against different views.

He thinks you guys can bring with you a different kind of thinking – something more holistic and relational. The left-brain hemisphere to complement our right one … or is it the other way round? Your yin to our yang. There are interesting conversations to be had. Synergies to develop …

Use the word, synergy again, and I’ll kill myself.

Whereas I would welcome some anarchy. Some madness, even. I’m tired of being the only mad person in the Organisational Management attic.

Everyone’s mad now. All the students are, anyway.

Your students, maybe. Humanities students. Our students are desperately sane. And my colleagues, too …

They’re just pretending.  

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to an actual philosopher before.

We don’t call ourselves philosophers. Philosophy lecturers, sure. But philosopher … it’s an honorific. Something you have to achieve.  

How seriously you take yourselves!

Some things are serious.

I’ll call you philosopher, philosopher … You have a philosophical air. As I, no doubt, have an Organisational Management air.

I don’t think you have a particularly Organisational Management air.

I think I’m actually very philosophical, for an organisational manager. But I don’t expect you to believe that.

Looking down at our colleagues. Alan, talking to Driss. Helmut, mute and glowering. Furio, scowling. Fiver sitting beside Io, looking frail. Sophia talking to a giant organisational manager. Postgraduates, in a huddle.

Alan genuinely loves philosophy. That’s what he says: he loves it. He loves what you guys do.

How does he know what we do?

He reads philosophy. Well, business philosophy. Organisational Management theory …

It’s terrible to be caught up in someone else’s enthusiasm. Because they’ll inevitably be disappointed with you when you’re not what they want.

I think you’re exactly what he wants.

Do you know what Stalin said to Shostakovich? We have criticised you, but we did so because we love you … That was after criticising him in pubic … destroying his career. Because we love you … And it’ll be the same when you guys start telling us to become more business-relevant, or when you strong-arm us to teach Organisational Management ethics, which will inevitably happen …

Just because your subject’s ancient and prestigious and totally useless.

Now it comes out: what you really think.

Well – isn’t it?

It depends on what you mean by use.

You would say that.

Because I don’t believe in what you call, use.

The university does – which is why it moved you.

Sure it does. Which is why Philosophy has become a kind of scapegoat. Why we’ve been made to bear all the sins of the humanities and sent into the Organisational Management wilderness …

Is that what's happened?

Sure. Because Philosophy’s the most supposedly useless humanities subject them of all.

And proud of it.

Pouring me a drink.

Tell me your origin story. How did you become a – philosopher?

I asked a question so big I fell into it. And never climbed out.

And you must have been so intelligent to ask such a thing.

It’s not about intelligence. It’s about the way I felt.

You must have been a genius of feeling. Someone with a special sensitivity. What was the question, anyway?

It was the question of everything. Why things were at all. Why there wasn’t nothing.

A useless and unanswerable question, in other words.

How did become a supposedly mad organisational manager?

It’s not half as interesting, I’m sure. I was just a young, innocent Business Studies student … I hadn’t even heard of Organisational Management. Which was soon to become the latest thing …

You actually studied business studies? You actually signed up for business studies?

I actually wanted to make my way in the world. Not just be another unemployed humanities grad …

I owe everything to unemployment.

So pompous! So contrary! You think you’re very interesting: I can tell. You think you’re perfectly fascinating.

I don’t think there’s anything interesting about me.

See, there you go: nothing interesting. I have nothing to declare … except the great questions I ask. Except the very difficult and interesting books I’ve read … Except the prestige of my ancient subject area … Is philosophy really the oldest subject there is? The oldest subject ever?

All the subject areas were part of philosophy, and then broke off. Maths, physics, law …

Leaving only … philosophy. And what’s philosophy when it’s just what’s leftover?

Questioning.

Questioning things no one can answer? Questions that leave you in exactly the same place as you were before you asked them, only a little more miserable?

I want to know about your madness. Has Organisational Management driven you mad? Has it made you ask questions?

Not questions as deep as yours. God, this is all so meta. Talking about questions, instead of …

What?

Answering them. Or trying to. You’re probably used to this kind of conversation, philosophy. You probably talk like this all the time. Well, I don’t. Not usually. Not even when my husband and I go on long car trips. When we drive down south to see our friends.

What do you talk about? I ask.

All the usual stuff. Friends. Family. Work. All that kind of stuff. My dream business, that I want to set up one day …

Do you have an amazing business idea?

I have several.

I don’t believe you.

Actually, I’m just someone who could go into a business and reorganise it. Make It more efficient. More … productive.

More useful.

More … useful. Exactly.

But what about your madness?

My … madness … I’m not telling you about that …

Is it about what can’t be organised? Or managed? What kind of mad person are you?

I’m not interested in any of the chit chat down there, for one thing.

That isn’t madness – it’s just good taste.

Shall I tell you a secret? You’ll have to lean in, philosopher.

Ok.

I’ll whisper it: I feel … dead.

Dead?

Not dead – but … like I’m dying. What if I said that I’m terminally ill?

Are you terminally ill?

Do I appear terminally ill to you? I could be terminally ill. But I’m not. I’m not terminally ill … I’d like to be terminally ill, maybe. It might give some meaning to my life. The idea of the end being close … That things wouldn’t just go on forever … Because they're in serious danger of going on forever … 

Do you ever feel that you’re falling, philosopher? I do. I think I’m falling. Everything in me is falling. There’s this great sadness. There’s a great sadness that just drifts like a cloud. And is drifting through me. And I’m sad – terribly sad. But it’s not even my sadness …

I feel like I’m falling, philosopher. When I close my eyes, I get vertigo. I’m falling into the night. Faster and faster. I’m dying inside. I’m numb inside. I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel … life. And I’m tired of pretending to feel alive.

And I’m going to sink lower, philosopher. There’s further to fall. It’s like I have to let myself fall. Give myself over to falling. It’s like I shouldn’t resist anymore. But let despair claim me. Drown me. I should just close my eyes in despair. But I’m too frightened to do that.

There’s a depth I haven’t reached, not yet. There’s something that has yet to be fulfilled. I have to go to the limit. But I don’t want to go to the limit. I have to let myself fall – fall through my life. To reach – what? I don’t know. I don’t know, philosopher.

If only there was something to break it, my fall, philosopher. If only there was an end to it. Something to be broken against. And just … destroyed. If only it was possible to finish dying. To die and to be free – both at once. At the same stroke. Now, I’d say to myself. Here, I’d say to myself. But I wouldn’t say anything, because I’d have finished dying.

There, I’ve said. I’ve made my … confession. Are you impressed? Am I a philosopher, too? Am I the most useless person alive?

I think you’re falling into a question, too.

Come on, let’s go. Let’s escape.

Where to?

I’ll show you the building. It’s quite a building.

Stupidity, contemplating itself. Stupidity, amusing itself. Laughing at itself. Stupidity, entertaining itself. Stupidity is what we do, right? Stupidity is what holds us together. Stupidity is what we talk about. What we talk from. The twists and turns of our stupidity keep us alive. We were a study, Cicero said.

Is our stupidity sincere? Is our stupidity really a wanting to change? Is our despair an actual prayer? Do we merely wallow in our stupidity, dwell in it, rather than actually want to be transformed?

If we felt, really felt, our stupidity, what then? Might something really happen then? If we experienced, really experienced our despair at our stupidity, might we not be idiots anymore?

Open space, at the heart of the camps.

What’s it for? As big as St Peters Square … As Times Square …

There must be some reason for this, Sophia says. Spaces like this are left open for a reason.

It’s a … dreaming space, I say. Pure potentiality. Where the campus is allowed to yearn to be something else. And where it’s not yet anything. Where it isn’t some great tower. Where it isn’t some leisure facility – some park.

Not yet philosophers: that’s what Cicero said we were, I say. Philosophical innocents, she called us. We had an innocent’s enthusiasm for philosophy. We mustn’t lose it, she said.

We used to imagine a whole not-yet-philosophy movement, remember? I say. Like, not-yet philosophy becoming the latest thing. Word spreading through the more alert postgraduates … Through the more vibrant postdocs … Through MA students looking for something really transgressive …

Except not-yet philosophy wasn’t anything – that was the point, I say. It was pure potential. The potential to do philosophy – or not. The potential to take a day off, instead. To laze about, instead.

To contemplate – that’s what Cicero called it, I say. To doss about. She thought we were very good at that.

And drinking – she was always impressed with our drinking, Furio says.

We were at our best when we were talking about nothing, she told us, I say. That’s when we were at peak not-yet-philosophical …

More idle talk, Helmut, Furio says. Don’t scowl …

Pointless rumination: that was our great gift, Cicero told us, I say. Chewing the nihilistic cud. Meta-prattle, doubling up the nonsense. Words and words and words, in total pointlessness. Like an endlessly idling engine. Nihilism’s speech, nihilism’s echoing to nothing …

Except we were actually making something out of nothing, I say. That’s what Heidegger never understood. It’s not about morose solitaries, being anxious all alone. It’s about … this. Our whole Waiting for Godot thing. Our aimless passing the time. Our taking the piss. Our endless permutations of disgust … That’s what saves us, even if you don’t think so, Helmut.

Are you really making a snow angel, Driss? Sophia asks.

It’s supposed to be a snow devil, Driss says.

You’ve given it wings! Io sys.

Sure – bat wings, Driss says.

I can see why Cicero thought you’d be a totalitarian survivor, Furio says.

I actually think I’ve reached a new level of self-disgust, Driss says.

I didn’t think there were more levels, I say.

There are, apparently, Driss says.

There’s such a life to self-hatred, Sophia says. All our thrashings … Our convulsions …

Nothing hates itself like a human being, Furio says. We’re the uniquely fucked up species, right?

Because we know our sin, Io says. And we can do something about it.

But we don’t actually want to, except you, Driss says. And Fiver, maybe. We’re just lost in the coils of evil. Lost in the coiling, the writhing. Lost in the agitation of sin. And we don’t even mind, that’s the thing. Or not enough to do something about it.

On that logic, we should just let Organisational Management destroy us, Sophia says.

We’ll destroy ourselves, thank you very much, Furio says. We’ll do it in our own way. In our own time. With our own style. And we’ll do it with panache. And humour.

Computing building.

That’s where all the computational power is, Driss says. The Organisational Management Brain.

Evil AI, like in every science fiction film, I say.

Alphaville’s the best, Driss says. With the Alpha-60 that outlaws free thought. Bans all creative expression. And interrogates all those who show emotion, before killing them. In swimming pools, strangely, with all these synchronised swimmers …

There’s this great interrogation scene, Driss says. They haul Lemmy Caution in – he’s this hardboiled detective type. What transforms night into day? Alpha-60 asks him. Poetry, he says. What is your religion? I believe in the immediate inspirations of my conscience, he says. What is the privilege of the dead? he’s asked. To die no longer, he says.

Poetic questions, for a computer, Sophia says.

Caution quotes from Eluard, Driss says. The Capital of Pain. And tries to make Anna Karina’s character tell him she loves him. Love is totally banned, you see.

Does love destroy the supercomputer? Sophia asks. Does love win in the end?

They escape, Driss says. They drive off into the outer realms.

That’s what we have to do: fall in love and escape, I say. To die no longer …

Do you think organisational managers approve of love? Io asks. Do they know what it is?

Angels – that’s what we need, Sophia says. Bring on the angels! Angels of Newcastle, like the angels of Berlin in Wings of Desire! Angels with ponytails, who just watch over everyone. Who witness our lives, our joys, our sufferings, and comfort us without our knowing it. Putting an arm around us when we need it …

Newcastle angels – sure.

What about St Cuthbert? Eric Burdon? The guys who wrote Fog on the Tyne …

Lindesfarne aren’t dead, I say.

Is Gazza dead? Driss asks.

He wouldn’t be an angel, I say.

A drunken angel, maybe, Driss says. Are there drunken angels?

Look, angels aren’t ghosts, idiot, Io says. They aren’t angels of people. Angels are their own thing.

We need avenging angels, Furio says. Badass angels, like St Michael. A whole legion of them, to tear down the campus. Do angels do that kind of thing anymore?

Maybe if we pray hard enough …, Driss says.

Are we allowed to pray for vengeance? Sophia asks.

I think it’d be cool to actually be an angel, Furio says. To have an angel’s powers. How do we get those?

Maybe we have to invite them in, like demons in the Exorcist, Driss says. Demons are always looking to inhabit bodies, right?

Sure – possession, Io says. Infestation.

I want to be possessed by something good, not something evil, Driss says. I’d like to be possessed by an angel, and do only good things. Wouldn’t you like to be the instrument of something very, very good?

I’d like to die as an angel, I say. Emptied of all things, all sin. All my twistedness untwisted. All my hatred transmuted into love. All my life, gathered up, offered up. Cured, right? Just an aching soul, crying upwards to be extinguished. And then … extinguished.