Work in Progress

Here I am in your most private sanctuary. Your thought-refuge. Here’s where it all takes place.

You’re taking the piss.

You must think what you’re doing is really worthwhile. That must be your motivation.

I’ve got nothing better to do, that’s all.

Is that it?

I just wanted to find things to do alone in a room. Other than masturbate.

Don’t try and be funny. Don’t try to pass it off.

I don’t know what to do except write. Read and write. Even if I’m not very good at either. I think it’s because my life is essentially empty.

Or perhaps you want it empty – so you can do this. Whatever this is ….

I like staying in. I’m doing this because I don’t like it out there. Because I don’t like … what everyone else likes. Life, or whatever.

So this is a consolation.

You’re a consolation.

Do you mind me being here? Am I a distraction? Do I get in the way of your work? Ha – I quite like getting in the way of your work. What do you think about all day?

I think about you.

All of the time.

A lot of the time.

Do you fantasise?

Sure I fantasise.

What would like to do to me?

I’d like to fuck you.

That’s funny, because I fantasise about being fucked by you. I think about you all day. I’ve been waiting for this all day. It’s what I think about when I was fucking him.

Nice.

It’s true.

I want you. I wish you were around all the time.

Do you, though? I’d get on your nerves. I’d distract you from your important philosophical work. And, who knows, you’d distract me from my important organisational management work. Actually, I don’t actually do much organisational management work. Don’t tell anyone.

Your study. Your studio. And all your stuff. These are your books. These are your notebooks. Can I read your notebooks?

If you must.

I must. I want to get to know you, philosopher. Your mind …

Reading.

Silence.

Do you take advice, philosopher? Do you like it? Do you welcome feedback? Are you receptive to the thoughts of lesser philosophical mortals?

Do I have any choice?

You put a lot into this. Too much, maybe. Isn’t it a bit laboured? I mean, what are you trying to do? Who are you trying to be?

You should write something that’s closer to the way you speak. You don’t speak like this, do you? Just capture some of our tos and fros, for example. Everyday talk.

And there’s so much of it. So you write every day? Every – single – day? So you have that much to write?

I write anyway.

You must believe in yourself, in some fundamental way. You take yourself seriously. Someone, at some time, must have told you that you were great. That great things were expected of you. God, you have such confidence. Like the world wants to know your thoughts …

I wrote it for myself.

You wrote it for posterity. I can tell, and I’m merely a humble organisational manager. These aren’t just notes. You actually think you’re great – or could be. That all this is worth preserving. Like Francis Bacon’s studio, or whatever … I’m lucky to be here. To be admitted into the studio of a genius …

Face it, I’m just the interrupter of great work. A regular villainess. You’re so profound, so melancholic, so romantic … And I’m just shallow, selfish and full of basic needs.

And you, meanwhile are holding out for someone who’ll be perfectly fascinated by you. Be in awe of you and think you’re a real genius. Someone who doesn’t just want you for your body, like I do. But for your – mind. For what’s in your head.

I thought you just said you wanted to know what’s in my mind.

But I can’t understand it, can I? I’m not worthy of it. Whereas she – she’d be quite in awe of you. She wouldn’t disturb you when the Muse visited. When you needed to be alone to think. She’d be fascinated by your literariness. By your philosophicalness. She’d tiptoe around you. Of course, she’d have to be very young. Terribly young. With stars in her eyes. Are there girls like that anymore? I don’t think there are, unfortunately for you … Of course, the other unfortunate thing is that you probably aren’t a genius.

I’m definitely not a genius.

Which is very sad when what you want – what you need – is to be taken very, very seriously. For there to be, like, documentaries about you. Special editions of journals on your work. Conferences to be held in your honour.

But you know I think all that stuff is bullshit!

I can see it now, your vanity – which would pose as anti-vanity, of course. In a refusal to appear on camera. In keeping your head bowed at all times, like one of those monks who never looks up to the ceiling of his cell. You’d play all humble. Refuse all the accolades … Shake your head at the encomiums … But all the while secretly enjoying the attention …

You want to be some European throwback. A throwback to some culture you weren’t even part of. Philosophy’s something you’d like to be good at, but are never really sure you’re good at. What are you going to have to show for your life? Your notebooks. Your would-be poetic philosophy. The ruins of your magnum opus. It’s not much, is it?

I … I always wanted to write the perfect book, and then kill myself. The Work, I called it. Everything was about the Work.

The Work … a very plain title. So plain, that’s it’s the opposite of plain. That it’s pure melodrama …

And did you ever write it?

Maybe I’m writing it now.

So I read a few pages of the work. Isn’t that an honour? And are you going to kill yourself?

That’ll never happen. Because I’ll never write anything perfect. Or even any good.

And you’d like some young beauty to save you from your fate. Of course you do. Not me – I’m too cynical. And too old.

You’re not so old.

Old enough to see through all this. And to see through you.

What’s your study like? Do you have, like, a home office?

We actually have his and her studies. Not quite side by side.

How bourgeois. Mr and Mrs academic … And what do you get up to in your study?

We don’t fuck, if that’s what you mean. We used to. Once upon a time. Long, long ago. But actually … I learn German.

Is that right?

I’m rather good at it, actually. I’m going to become fluent. I’ll bet you think German’s wasted on me … All the Germanic things I could be reading … I’ll bet you don’t even speak German.

I read it.

But you don’t speak it, and that’s the difference …

You know what: I like you up here. I like you being here. This is where the real drama of your life is. You and your magnum opus. Wrestling with its very possibility. Or impossibility. That’s your drama. That’s what’s keeping you occupied.

And I like it in you, your determination. I even admire it. I like your intellect. There, I’ve said it. But I do. I like your dedication. I like the fact that you really want to do something. Even if I also like the idea of distracting you from doing anything.

I like your ambition, philosopher. I find comical. And charming. And admirable. I like that there might be Important Thoughts in that dome of yours. Which I, no doubt, will never understand.

And you know what else I like? Taking you in hand, philosopher. Touching you. I like taking you in my mouth. Like this. I like the fact that I can make you think of nothing else but fucking. It turns me on. And I like to be turned on …

My flat.

Bed

Look at my cheeks – I’m blushing, Priya says.

That’s a post-orgasmic glow, I say. Do you think your husband will notice?

I think my husband might be out with a lover of his own, Priya says.

Do you think? I ask.

It would make things easier, wouldn’t it? Priya says.

Priya, in my dressing gown.

All the things we talk about. All the questions we ask … No one’s going to answer, are they? No one’s interested.

Maybe they aren’t questions, but prayers, I say. Maybe they’re ways of praying.

To who? Priya asks. To what?

God, maybe, I say. The sky, maybe. The light, maybe.

I’ll miss our talks, Priya says. I’ll miss talking like this.

It isn’t over yet, I say. We’ve only just begun, as the Carpenters sang …

It is though, really, Priya says. It was always and already over. It’s like we’ve outlived ourselves. We’re already dead. It’s like we’ve been dead for the longest time. We’re just waiting for death to catch up with us.

Death has other things to do, I think, I say. Death’s fucking busy …

What do we add up to, we two? Priya says. What do we add to the universe? Sharing our nothings. Our… insignificances. Contemplating the nothingness of the day and our nothingness and our obscurity and … and … what … what, philosopher?

These are the skylight dialogues, I say. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy.

It feels like philosophy’s winning, Priya says.

Priya, examining my bookshelves. All your books are written in revenge, philosopher, she says. They’re written by people who didn’t know how to live. So they wrote books instead.

Is that the secret? I ask.

Our tastes diverge, philosopher. I ever read a Stephen King book. On holiday. That’s right: I took a Stephen King book on holiday. Under the Dome. Have you ever read Under the Dome?

I read every Stephen King up until Tommyknockers, which was shit.

I don’t believe you.

And I’ve read shit-tons of science-fiction.

Read in the past tense. In your misspent youth. Before you got all serious and high European. Last night, do you know what, I watched an episode of Morse. I watched Morse. An old episode of Morse. Even Alan was disgusted by Morse. Even Alan got up to do something else. But I was perfectly happy with Morse. Does that disturb you? It does, doesn’t it?

You think we should all be improving ourselves. You think it should always be a matter of edification. I watched Morse, philosopher! That’s the kind of person you’re with: someone who watches Morse.

Morse is about people, philosopher. And it’s very melancholy. And there are murders. And there’s a plot. Plots are for stupid people – I’ll bet that’s what you think. You probably like talky arthouse. No – slow cinema. Where nothing happens, solemnly. And no one laughs. I like to laugh, philosopher.

And you actually read the London Review of Books, philosopher. People like you really exist. You’re not just made up. People actually read the London Review of Books – imagine that.

… And classical music, philosopher. You actually listen to classical music. Or rather, you only buy classical music CDs. You only put your classical music on display, on your bookshelves. Alongside your arthouse Blu-rays.  Your Angelopolous collection. Who the fuck is Angelopolous? God. You’re a dinosaur. Listen to me: the voice of the common person, philosopher!

You should stick with others of your kind. You should stick, loves high culture, in your dating profile. How many are of there of your kind, up here in the northeast?

Priya, opening a book. Rainer Maria Rilke: I’ve heard of him, I know the name; don’t think I’m totally ignorant. The Dunio Elegies. Is the kind of thing you read – really? … It’s like intruding on something, opening these pages. On some old European dream … What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we be reached by this stuff? Why aren’t we touched by this?

Speak for yourself, I say.

This just zooms over your head, too, Priya says. Don’t pretend. This doesn’t mean anything to you either. Except as some talisman. As something to worship from afar. When Rilke wants to open us … to God, or whatever. To the sky, or whatever. To death, or whatever. All those things. All those things our grandparents might have understood, back in India …

Once upon a time … once people would have set themselves to learn it by heart, Priya says. To be able to quote this. To remember it all, line by line …

All your books, philosopher … These old books, Priya says. They’re from a different time and about a different time, only you haven’t understood that yet … They’re outdated … they’ve been left behind. Haven’t you realised that yet?

You know what I think about your book-filled bedroom? Priya asks. About your life up here? You’re playing at being a philosopher and I’m playing at having an affair with a philosopher. You’re following your blind alley, as I’m no doubt following mine.

What’s your blind alley? I ask.

Romance, maybe, Priya says. This romance … Which will only last for a while – that’s what I tell myself. It will last for a while and burn itself out, and then you’ll forget me, and I’ll forget you, and that’s how it should be.

And you’ll still be with hubbie? I ask.

That is my fate, I’m sure, Priya says. I’ll be with him forever … It’ll just go on and on …

One day, a long time from now,  you’ll tell your husband all about our affair, I say. One day, when you’re feeling particularly close. On your fiftieth wedding anniversary, or something. On his birthday, or yours … You’ll tell him about your love affair – that’s what you’ll call it. About reading Rilke with your philosopher lover. Reading Rilke in bed, the pair of us! The Dunio Elegies! 

But we’re not even reading Rilke, she says. We’re talking about reading Rilke.

That’ll teach him not to take you for granted, I say. To show him that you could have lead an entirely different life had you chosen to. That would add an unexpected twist to your anniversary dinner, wouldn’t it? That would make him sit up and listen …

You know, if you met someone else, I’d be terribly jealous, Priya says. Which makes me think you should be more jealous of my husband than you are. Unbearably so. Tormentedly so.

I am jealous, I say.

Don’t feign, Priya says. I know when you’re lying. See, I’d like to matter. Like everyone wants to matter. I want to be someone for whom someone else would live or die.

Your husband, I say.

Maybe him, though probably not, Priya says. Okay – I want you to want me. Desperately. Seriously.

I do want you, anyway, I say.

I want you to want me more, Priya says. Not to be able to go on without me.

You’re actually married, I say. Which makes you very greedy.

Maybe I don’t want to be married to him, Priya says. Maybe I’d leave him for you. Which I might do, if it wasn’t for … your work. Your life or death work which comes between you and me.

See, you think you’re exceptional …, Priya says. That you’re better than the rest of us … to stay up here in your eerie and write your stuff … You and your philosophical muse.

Maybe you’re my muse, I say. My new muse.

Maybe you’ll have to court me – properly, Priya. You have to make some effort. Everything just comes to you. I just drive out here.

I’ll write you a love letter, I say. I’ll send it right to your door. Rilke wrote a lot of love letters, you know. He wandered round Europe writing to various women. Who he never actually wanted to see.

It’s easy to love people when they’re absent, right? Priya says. You can imagine me exactly as you like. A philosophical me. A profound me. Who could join you in revering these old books. Rainer Maria Rilke, or whoever …

Priya, getting dressed.

What if I left Alan?

Idle thoughts.

Not so idle. What if?

We’d get a dog, have children. Get a house.

In that order? And then what?

Live, like everybody else.

Is that the life you want?

Is that the life you want?

See you soon, philosopher.

My flat.

In bed.

You have an optimistic and trusting nose, Priya says.

How can you tell? I ask. What have noses got to do with anything?

You can see everything in the nose, Priya says. And the chin. And in the shape of the eyes. And you have such kind fingers, though your thumb looks rather stubborn.

Is this how lovers talk? I ask.

I really wouldn’t recall, Priya says.

What about with Alan? I ask.

That was years ago, Priya says. I’m not sure I want to remember.

Was there a honeymoon period? I ask.

There’s always a honeymoon period, Priya says. Then there was a humdrum period. Then there was a blue period – a fifteen-years-together-and-what-for? period.

And what period are you in now? I ask.

The illicit period, Priya says.

You’re what they would call an attractive couple, I say.

Oh I’m sure we are, Priya says. But I really don’t want to think about it.

You must be comfortably off, I say. Your joint salary …

We’re the bourgeois you no doubt despise, philosopher, Priya says. Upon whom you’re getting your revenge right now.

Is this what this is about?

This is your banal affair. Your normcore affair. Before you meet some hot and fabulous European. Some Italian, or whatever. Some fellow philosopher. Some continentalist. Who’d actually understand you and your terribly complex thoughts.

Priya, flicking through a notebook.

What’s your theory of the everything, philosopher? Priya asks. Do you have one? What’s the use of philosophy if it doesn’t give you a theory of the universe? Fuck. Okay, a more friendly question: what do you actually write about?

The tohu vavohu, I say.

The tohu … what? Priya asks.

It’s from the Bible, I say. Chaos is the best word for it. Or evil. In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. And the earth was without form and void. That’s how the tohu vavohu is translated in the Bible: without form and void.

So God made chaos? Priya asks.

There’s a whole rabbinical tradition that argues that God made the world from chaos – by shaping the tohu vavohu,  I say.

Who cares? Priya says. Sell it to me, philosophy-boy.

It means God didn’t create the universe from nothing, I say.

So? Priya says.

And that God isn’t omnipotent, either, I say. Because the tohu vavohu couldn’t be definitely ordered. Chaos always threatens to break back in. That’s what happens with Noah’s flood and Jeremiah’s prophecies …

Didn’t God, like, send Noah’s flood to punish him? Priya asks?

Sure, he unleashed the chaos, I say. He unlocked the doors and portals, and let it flood in.

So God was still in charge, Priya says. It was just a matter of creative destruction, or whatever

But maybe God isn’t always in charge, I say. The order of the world – God’s order in the Bible – can’t hold back chaos.

Back to your apocalypse, right? Back for your desire for it all to end. Self-loathing, basically.

World-loathing. This world-loathing.

How did you get like this? Priya asks. How did you get so extreme?

You said you’re a madwoman. You said you were dead. That’s pretty extreme …

Yes … dead …

Does Alan know you’re dead?

I’ve tried to tell him. I’ve – tried – to – tell – him. But he didn’t understand. Do you understand?

Maybe I do.

God, what does all this add up to? Priya asks. Our afternoon together. The beginning of our affair. What does it mean?

Why does it have to mean anything? I ask.

You’re the philosopher – you tell me, Priya says. I mean, what did we just do? What are we doing? In the middle of the day. In the middle of the universe … Look at us, lying around. In disarray. Are we allowed to be like this? Are we allowed to do this?

We can do what we like, I say.

But should we be allowed to do what we like?: that’s my question, Priya says.

Who’s stopping us? I ask.

The light on the floor, Priya says. That beams through the skylight … The parallelogram of light. What is it?

Light, just light, I say.

I think it’s God, Priya says.

God? I say.

I think it’s all we know of God, Priya says. A quality of light. A patch of light. Is God watching us?

No one’s watching, I say. Unless Alan’s on the roof.

God’s watching, Priya says. That’s the thing … I like using the word, God, philosopher. I feel like I’m allowed to use the word, God, here.

Me, quoting: Is God unknown? Is he manifest as the sky? This, rather, I believe.

Don’t say you’re an atheist – I’m bored of atheists, Priya says. Atheism is so dull a position, especially if you are an atheist. You should always be interesting about God.

Do you believe in God? I ask.

I think God believes in me, Priya says. I think I’m a dream in the mind of God.

So God’s dreaming all this, I say. God’s dreaming you and dreaming me.

Maybe – why not? I say.

Why not … why not anything? Priya says. God, I feel afternoon-drunk. Drunk on the afternoon. I feel like I’m falling, just falling. And you, too – you’re falling, too. Because we’re both unanchored. We’ve got no … responsibilities. There’s nothing for us to do, except … this. Whatever this is.

It’s like something’s taking place … through us, Priya says. Despite us, almost. Against us, maybe. Some kind of event – or non-event. Something that’s not happening. That’s subtracting happening from happening. What the fuck am I saying? What is this room doing to me?

I feel so vague, Priya says. Do you feel vague? Are we supposed to feel like this? Like, we can’t think anything. Anything clear, anyway. Anything precise … We’ve been disarmed. We’ve been placed out of service. We’re not needed anywhere. We’re surplus to requirements. We were ordered by mistake, or whatever, and just stockpiled …

I’m falling, philosopher, Priya says. Not falling in love, just falling. When I close my eyes, I get vertigo … Why do I come out here? Why do I feel these things? Does this flat do this to everyone? … It’s like you’ve cast some spell over me. Like you want to keep me here forever.

If I fell asleep now, what would happen? Priya asks. If I feel asleep and woke up and fell asleep and just …

So fall asleep, I say.

I have to get home … Alan will … will …, Priya says. I can’t even finish a sentence. It’s being drunk without being drunk. Fuck, I can’t think a single clear thing … I feel so fucked. God, how will I ever get up? How will I ever do anything again?

I kinda want to get dressed and go, Priya says. I kinda want to drive off home. I kinda want to actually go to the gym instead of pretending at the gym … Anything except this. But then I like this …

And you’re not going to save me – I know that, Priya says. You’re not going to break my fall. You’re not going to do anything.

You don’t need saving, I say.

What do I need? Priya asks. What do I want? What am I doing here? What’s anything? Why anything? I don’t know what I used to know. And what I know now … isn’t good for anything. And I’m not good for anything. And nor are you, but you know that.

We’re falling into the question.

Is this what it is like? Is this what philosophy’s like?

Summer, the time of the river of work – the river of reading, the river of writing.

 

The work of summer, between the exam boards and Fresher’s Week.

 

Summer the time of true work, deep work. Summer, the time of Writing – deep writing. And Reading – the deepest reading. When we opened the Great Books. When we bent over them in study.

Summer, the time of wide reading. Of broad writing. Sunlight on our pages, as we read. Birdsong in our ears.

 

Summer’s time. The opening of summer. The unfolding of summer.

Summer’s broadening. Summer’s open doors.

The deep weeks. The hidden valleys of summer. Its secret places.

 

Summer work: it’s happiness. The happiness of having Time before us. Of throwing up our sails into the summer. Piloting our work like a sand-yacht. Catching great summer breaths. Across the open sands.

 

Tone-poem summer. Delius and Roedelius summer.

The work, ascending. The work, rising.

 

The opening of summer, when every academic can swoon back into the arms of Potential. Can believe that they, too, might be capable of Greatness.

The beginning of summer, when every academic can believe their work is World-Historical. When every academic believes they might be a Genius.

The start of summer, when every academic remembers again what they became an academic for. When every academic can put aside distraction. All that teaching! All that admin!

 

When every academic can dream of catching a summer wind. A summer breeze.

 

End of summer deadlines, far off. The annual conference, far off.

 

Summer work. Reaching eternal summer. Reaching the summer perpetuum. Propitious summer – that we knew for the first time. The full time academic’s summer, entirely different from the hourly pai academic’s summer.

Not the summer of panic. Not the summer of food banks. Not the summer of signing on. Not the summer of humiliation. The summer of going cap in hand to your parents, when you were too old to go cap in hand to your parents.

 

We remember it well: when summer used to be about poverty. Skint summers. Penniless summers. Signing-on summers. Compulsory jobsearch summers. Panic-attacks-thinking-about-our-future-life summers.

When summer used to be about building up to the big British Society  for Continental Philosophy conference. Writing our papers, in between everything else. In between panic attacks.

 

Is it a writing a paper for a conference summer? A chapter for an anthology summer? A working on your book summer? Or all three?

 

Summer’s abandoned itself to summer. Summer’s slipped into summer. And it’s lifted you in its splistream.

 

Lifting your academic’s eyes from the business of term. From teaching and marking and the pettiness of administration. Lifting your gaze into summer skies.

Summer, the time when we busied ourselves with our great projects, our dream projects.

 

Our notetaking. What we write on summer pages.

Weeks, reading. Every day, more deeply. Weeks, looking. Weeks, finding.

 

The fragrant breath of summer, over the work. The trance of summer, over the work.

 

Sounding summer’s depths.

 

A few weeks. Throwing up our sails into the summer. Piloting our work like a sand-yacht. Catching great summer breaths. Across the open sands.

 

Even they can’t destroy the summer. Even they can’t dim this sun.

 

Lying on a summer hammock. Looking upwards.

 

Your encompassing summer love. For all things. Viewing it all with Summer Equanimity.

 

The great Lifting. The great Lightening.

 

Academics afloat in the lidos of summer. Academics sunning themselves in inflatables. Academics poolside. Academics reading in the shade.

It’s the Water of Life ceremony. Outsiders aren’t usually invited to this.

Water of what?

It’s this … poison or potion harvested from … I don’t know what.

Ground-up bug chitin, I heard.

Postgraduate adrenochrome, that’s what I heard.

It’s lethal, potentially. Unless that lethality is neutralised. The drinker has to enter into a coma-like trance. Then covert the toxic elements on a molecular level. If you fail, you die. You’re poisoned. But if you succeed …

Then what?

You unlock the entirety of supervisorial memory. And along with it, all the secrets of philosophy.

I don’t understand.

It’s a kind of PhD regression, that takes you back through PhD past lives, kinda. Look, we all had PhD supervisors, right? And they had supervisors?

Sure.

This is a way of accessing their memories, their experiences. Going all the way back.

All the way back to where?

Look, postgraduates are always in the line of the philosophical equivalent of apostolic succession. Take Io. She was supervised by …?

Professor Ron Flowers, at Essex.

The guy forced into retirement?

Fucked too many students or something …

And who supervised him?

Someone quiet famous, actually: Eloise Springer.

And who supervised her?

That’s going pretty far back. She was American. I think it was …

Hannah Arendt. It was Hannah Arendt.

Fuck off. Look it up.

Eloise Springer … supervised by Curt Broadstairs … supervised by HANNAH ARENDT. It’s fucking her!

See, a direct apostolic line to Hannah Arendt. To old Europe. Pretty fucking cool.

Well, the water of life is supposed to release the accumulated wisdom of the chain of supervisors. To let your supervisor through you. And then your supervisor’s supervisor and so on, all the way back.

And Hannah Ardent was supervised by Heidegger, right? And Heidegger was supervised by … Someone dead clever.

The water of life – if it actually exists – means that the postgraduate student becomes legion. Becomes multiple. The whole tradition speaks through them …

And has it happened? Has any postgraduate actually become legion?

I’m not sure. There are dangers, I know that. Things can go wrong. You can channel other forces.

Dark ones. There are all kinds of entities out there.

The Bug right?

It’s like taking ayahusca. The whole process needs careful supervision.

Yeah, but there’s more to it. Sure, they’re looking for a way to unlock the memory of all supervisees. And supervisors. As a way of bridging space and time. But there’s more.

There’s been a deliberate programme, that’s lasted hundreds, if not thousands of years. A careful matching up of certain supervisors with certain supervisees. The Golden Path, it’s called. A secret supervisorial pathway.

Steered by who?

I’m not sure … I don’t know who’s doing it. Anyway, the aim is to produce the postgraduate to come, who will not need supervision. Who will recall all the lessons of previous supervisions, all the cycles of PhD study, going all the way back. To wherever there was a teacher and pupil. Wherever there was instruction. A postgraduate who will be able to … see into the future. Escape the wheel of postgraduate supervisions. Experience time in a new way. And save the humanities …

The K'fitzat ha-Derekh.

The what?

They borrowed the name from the Zohar. The K'fitzat ha-Derekh will lead the all the humanities postgraduates to liberation.

So who’s going to drink the water of life tonight?

I’m not sure. Only the PhD student at the brink of submission can endure it. You need at least an MA and three years of full time PhD study. You’re at your strongest when you’re just about to submit your dissertation …

And if it goes wrong?

Shrugging.

Studying’s for retards. You can just take these thoughts.

Check it out: Difference and Repetition in pill form. So you don’t have to read it.

And there’s a Hegel suppository. Science of Logic. To be inserted anally.

Only place for it.

Who synthesised these?

Some former PhD student.

Enterprising.

They sell them under the counter at all the European philosophy conferences. And Theory conferences.

This is the Deleuze pill?

Sure – Line of Flight.

Let’s fllyyyy ….

Where to?

Let’s get very far out. Very far. No limits, motherfucker. No more finitude. No more lack. This is Desire, Deleuze style. We’re desiring machines, baby.

Is that what we are?

It fucks, it drinks, it … smokes … it looks up the sky. And we’re it.

Damn right.

I’ve got some old school stuff. The Levinas tab. Makes you all responsible. And tortured. And guilty.

Fuck that.

Take some Blanchot – that’s deep, man.

Stay away from Blanchot pills – fucking addictive. I’m a long term Blanchot addict.

And there’s some Heideggerian weed, man. Potent. Sends you down the forest paths. Puts you right in the fucking Lichtung.

That’s a Heidegger tab, too.

What, like Nazi Heidegger?

No – it’s later Heidegger. All Gelassenheit. Just fucking releasement.

Beautiful.

Only a God can save us now, right?

Beautiful but doomy.

And this is a Simondon bandana. The active ingredient is actually soaked into the bandana. So it enters the bloodstream via the forehead.

Handy.

The meeting room.

Our Board of Studies.

It’s just us. The lunatics really have taken over the asylum. The chimps have taken over.

Let’s have a chimp meeting. What would be on the chimp agenda?

Bananas. Inter chimp rivalry. Mating. Eating their own shit.

They only do that in zoos.

Colourful assholes.

That’s mandrills, not chimps.

Why are you lying down, Shiva?

I’m assuming my position on the floor of dread.

Get up off the fucking floor of dread!

Driss, lying on the floor of dread. Barbarossa, lying on the floor of dread. Fiver, lying on the floor of dread.

What is this, some kind of yoga?

Yeah, doom yoga.

Get up! You’re supposed to be chairing this meeting, Shiva. You’re supposed to be in charge. This is the Board of Studies, for fuck’s sake. What have you got to report to us from the Executive Committee? What’s coming down from on high.

I don’t know. I didn’t go to it. I said I was ill.

Ill?!

Mentally ill. Too full of dread.

You told them that?

No, I said I had flu.

You can’t keep giving excuses like that! Not to the Organisational Management Executive! Those guys are serious. They’re world conquerors. These guys are taking over the world. What do you think they’ll do to us if they think we can’t run our department?

Are you actually meditating, Driss?

I’m just closing my eyes.

Well, open them again! My God. And Fiver, leave off the visions for a few minutes. We need our departmental administrator alert! Focused! Writing minutes! Taking down our words of wisdom. The relevant action points.

There are decisions to be made! Things to be done. We have an agenda to work through. Points to address. Action points to tick off.

We’re in Organisational Management now, remember that. They’ll be scrutinising our minutes. Make sure our minutes are immaculate, Fiver. Don’t record anything we say about suicide. Or our drunkenness. Or about throwing ourselves out of the window. None of that! We need clean minutes. Don’t record the swearing. Or the panic. Or the threats of mutiny. We need to appear as a functioning department. And that’s half the battle, isn’t it?

But we’re not a functioning department. We’re not a functioning anything. Of course not! Everything’s wrong with us. My God, look our leader!

Get up off the floor, Shiva. Lead us. Show us the way! Lead by example. You have to be decisive, Shiva. That’s what you’re for. So decide! Cut through the red tape!

I think we should kill ourselves immediately, I say.

Let’s put this to the vote: should we kill ourselves immediately? Just fall on our swords?

We don’t have swords.

We need to be issued with swords! That’s an action point! So we can fall on them! Contact the department of metallurgy. Ask them to make some swords. Tell them our philosophical honour is at stake. The honour of philosophy falls to us.

Furio, plonking a bottle on the table and a pile of plastic cups.

Here’s my contribution.

What’s that?

Lindesfarne mead.

Who drinks Lindesfarne mead?

We do, now.

Pouring cups.

In wine is truth, not Lindesfarne mead. There’s a reason why everyone gave up drinking this in the Middle Ages.

Mead! What was going through your head? Like, ye olde bollocks. It’s rancid. No one actually drinks mead, you know.

I think monks do.

Monks sell it to tourists. Tourists who’ve never actually tasted mead. And never drink it again.

Next we’ll be singing madrigals. Fuck off with your mead.

It won Mead of the year in What Mead? magazine, apparently.

There is no What Mead? magazine. You made it up.

Sure I thought it would make a change. Broadening our alcoholic horizons.

They don’t need broadening.

I bought it at Bedeworld. The mead gift pack. Two bottles.

Did Bede even drink mead? I’ll bet he didn’t. Fuck off and buy some wine. We have to go classy for the Philosophy Board of Studies.

Uh … do we have to kill ourselves or not?

We’ll wait for the swords to be delivered.

Why do we need to wait for swords? We could just throw ourselves out of the window.

But the window doesn’t open wide enough. Have you noticed that?

It’s a deliberate anti suicide measure. Those bastards. It’s prejudice. Against the suicidal! It’s against the Equalities Act! We have rights!

We need an emergency meeting.

We’re already in a meeting.

We need a meeting inside the meeting.

Wow, a meta-meeting.

Press the panic button!

Is there a panic button? Why not?

Phone the police. There’s a crime in progress. An ontological crime. It’s all a crime. The university’s a crime. The university itself!

Calm down! Don’t get hysterical! Driss, slap him!

There’s a planetary crisis. There’s an emergency. Of being!

Is Antarctica on the agenda?

Why should Antarctica be on the agenda?

I want to know what’s been happening there. I have a lot of questions about Antarctica.

You’re no allowed to fly over it, you know. Or go there.

Dave Lee Roth went there. Slept out on the ice, next to the penguins. Said they kept him awake. He’s a great traveller. Motley Crue wanted to play a gig there. I don’t think they did, though.

Did you see that Werner Herzog film about Antarctica. With the penguin? I liked that bit: the penguin just wandering off on its own, in the opposite direction to the sea. Off into the heart of the frozen continent.

Shut up about Antarctica. We need to get back to the agenda. There are things to discuss!

How about pyramids – are they on the agenda? There are pyramids in Antarctica, you know. And on Mars. What does it all mean?

And I think we should have the Sphinx on the agenda. How old is it, really? Does it really show signs of rain erosion?

As Chair of Board of Studies, I forbid any discussion about the Sphinx at this meetings.

Or pyramids?

Fuck pyramids.

And Gopekle Tepe?

I forbid the discussion of Gopekle Tepe.

So what are we going to discuss?

What’s the most anti Board of Studies thing we can think of?

God. Let’s talk about God.

You start.

I think we should use the occasion to have group.

Group what?

Therapy. I think we have deep, deep issues. Especially you.

Philosophical issues? Personal issues?

Personal issues are philosophical issues. The personal is philosophical.

You mean political.

I mean philosophical, fucko.

What does it really say, in the real agenda?

We’re supposed to be rewriting our module descriptors to make their contents accessible to organisational management students.

Fuck off!

We’re not supposed to use the words, epistemology and ontology and metaphysics. We’re not supposed to use the words axiology and deontology and virtue ethics.

And so it begins: the Organisational Management taming of philosophy. The Organisational Management disciplining of philosophy. Making it biddable. Making it understandable to the university authorities.

The fall of philosophy!

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?