That’s nature – everything fucking each other. Some sexual free for all. It’s, like, universal incest.
Intercategorial sex, right? General fucking. Just chaos. And distress.
The whole universe is a tumour. A malignant growth. That needs to be cut away.
Cut away from what?
From non-existence.
Somehow, we came to ourselves out there. Somehow, we awoke out there. Somehow, we opened our eyes out there.
Slop opened its eyes! Slop woke up! Slop looked up into the day! We are slop, we said. We are slurry.
An amazing moment. Akin to the origin of life in the primeval soup. Equivalent to the Big Bang, or whatever. Of the awakening of Something from nothing.
We woke and came to ourselves. Our intellects – flashed into existence. Like when sperm fertilizes an egg and there’s that flash. Life – of a sort – began. Thought – so-called thought – came to itself.
God’s zap. God’s lightning. A miracle in the sludge. In the slop. In the mire.
Livia was always astonished at the variations in human intelligence. And she was always amazed that intelligence could burst out of stupidity.
Some kind of negentropy, she said. Some biological leap. Some lightning flash. How did it happen? How did intelligence begin? Miracles were possible, after all.
Were our brains bigger? Our neo-cortex more wrinkled? Did we have more synaptic connections, or whatever?
Livia wasn’t born to brainiacs, of course. But her parents back in Mitteleuropa weren’t stupid. Weren’t basket cases. Weren’t utter idiots, such as you could find beyond the stony wastes.
You can never predict what might happen. What might arise from the human morass. What might be birthed from the mire.
From the ineducable, by and large. From the unreformable. From human dead ends. Human full stops! And yet …
What could account for it? Chaos theory? Complexity theory? What could explain the leap?
It was enough to make you believe in God, Livia said. In divine intervention. That something was steering evolution. That there was a meaning to it all, everything that had happened.
Like the first hominids to walk on two legs. Like those first fish who made their way out of the sea. Grew lungs! Like the first live-bearing mammals.
A kind of progress? A kind of chance, at least. A kind of miracle, at least. A kind of swerve.
You can never predict things, not entirely. You never know what’s going to happen. There are still surprises, after all. The horizon’s never closed. Nature finds a way, and so on.
There could still be hope in the human slop. Brilliance hadn’t been entirely snuffed out. Genius didn’t belong to a bygone age. It wasn’t all dysgenics and de-evolution.
We could place hope in the fruits of random mutation! In randomness! Iin chance!
There should be outreach schemes … attempts to detect what was happening out there.
There really was such a thing as rogue intelligence. Bips of brilliance. Brain bursts.
The miracle of intelligence-in-stupidity. Of brilliance in the boondocks. Of the great cleverness breakout in the most unlikely places.
Even in these times! And in this county! Even in the midst of the disaster! Even at the endless end of it all!
And it’s a raw intelligence! A pure intelligence. Untutored! Unalloyed! Without pretension. Not sure of itself. Of what it is. Not self-aware, not really.
There was nothing, for a long time. Just darkness. And then it came! There it was! Intelligence! In the raw!
How it burned! Illuminating everything around it. Threatening to set the world on fire. Genius, quite real! Genius alive!
And much lower down the great chain of intelligence, our kind. Glowing more dimly. Not blazing out. Not lightning-flashing. Not shouting out its joy of brilliance.
A slightly less dark part of darkness … A slightly less nightly part of the night … That would take an expert to notice. An expert with very keen eyes! And ears! A watcher for signs! A Livia!
Proof that brilliance doesn’t need brilliant parents. That cleverness doesn’t need a breeding line of cleverness. That intelligence isn’t necessarily begotten by intelligence.
Were we throwbacks? Spontaneous mutations? To some forgotten brilliant ancestor? Was it a sign of X-Men-like emergent superpowers?
Was it a question of genetics? Of epigenetics?
Livia, thinking of us, growing up misunderstood. Unappreciated. With clueless parents. With dumb-ass teachers.
Livia, imagining us in our comprehensive schools, surrounded by dunces. With pupil dunces and teacher dunces.
And the sparks of our intelligence, igniting. At our first encounter with TS Eliot’s poetry, or whatever. At our first meeting with set theory. Stifled! Buried! But somehow shining through.
With no one around us having any idea. Not knowing to appreciate us. To nurture us. Not appreciating the leap that we’d taken.
Livia, imagining us doing degrees – everyone does degrees. Finishing top of our cohort – but our cohorts were modest. Pretty shit. Winning MA funding! And, God knows, PhiD funding.
And, most movingly of all, Livia thinking of us turning to Europe. To European ideas. The European heliotropism: how was that possible? How did that miracle happen? How did we break from English empiricism. From English analytic philosophy?
Was it a matter of different temperaments? Of different characters? Of different moods? What woke us up? Why did we turn to the European sun? Why did we cast our gaze over the Channel? Why, to France! To Germany! To Italy! Why – in my case – to the East?
For a time, nourished by the academy. For a time, busying ourselves with reading (so called reading). For a time, learning our languages (so called learning.) For a brief, enchanted time.
Before we were thrown out! Cast out! Before we found ourselves out there again. In the part-time mire!
Without Livia, what would we have been? Where would we have ended up? Without Livia, what would have awaited us? Suicide, of course. Or attempted suicide. Or near-miss suicide. Or parasuicide.
Because there was nothing for us – nothing out there. More part-timism? More precarity? More oblivion? Fewer and fewer teaching hours, year on year …
The shipped in. The bewildered of the world. The dumped-here. The abandoned here.
The useless. The more useless than us. The surplus population. The useless population.
The confused and the baffled. The perpetually staring into the air.
Redundant humanity. Useless humanity. Useless biomatter. The perma-derelict. Kept alive, just about. Allowed to live, sort of. Gasping into the air.
Unalive, in some sense. But undead, too.
Biomatter. Formless biomatter.
The unthinkable. The imponderable. The ones difficult even to contemplate as existing.
Unmanageable, in some sense. Not worth bothering with. Beneath the level of manageability. Of organisability. Beneath the organisers’ attention. Not deserving of it. Too minute. Too unimportant.
A product. An outcome. The people our times have made.
The people we produce. Kept at a baseline level of existence.
Four billion years of evolution for his. Twenty billion years of universe for this.
The kind who don’t need intellectual stimulation, like us. Who were never motivated to lift themselves from the mire. Who have given up, essentially. And who have been given up on.
The peaceful enough. The not especially bothersome. Who aren’t gang-banging, or whatever. Who aren’t linked to organised crime, or disorganised crime either. Who have been conditioned, basically. Hopefully. Kept base level content. Or that’s the idea.
The inert. Those from whom nothing is expected. Who don’t need to be feared. From whom no civil war will ever come.
Monitored, passively. Gently usurveilled. On autopilot. From which nothing major is expected.
Predictables, despite everything. Organisable. Manageable, and even self-manageable. That’s the idea. They’re no trouble, really. So far. They barely need to be culled. To be sterilised. Is it worth the effort?
Who aren’t even exasperating, not really. Who don’t even rise to the level of being exasperating.
Humanity in its defunct mode. Humanity, running on empty. With near empty heads. With heads full of Netflix.
Who are half sterilized, most of them. Who are hardly breeding. Just let them die out by themselves. Let them diminish to nothing.
The disposable population, right. What are they for? What purpose do they serve? None, of course. They’re not decorative. Not interesting.
Who can live lives of zero meaning. Who can cope with purposelessness. With meaninglessness. Who do not require meaning.
Imagine: we’ve bred people who don’t require meaning. Who look at you out of their meaningless lives. Who look up at you out of the human swamp. From their human mire. From blank, near anonymous biomatter.
Who can’t even be bothered to live. Who can even be bothered to be bothered. Who’ve sunk to what level?
Deeper than us. Deeper than we have.
Human slurry. Human waste. Human slop, swilling in the human trough.
Test subjects. To be experimented upon. Big-pharmaed. Pumped with drugs. With all kinds of things. With all kinds of substances.
Iatrogenocide survivors. With scabies, probably. With shingles. With Bell’s Palsy. With turbo cancers. With every kind of mental illness. Abandoned to the community. Roaming the community.
The human morass. The poisoned. The boosted.
Could be the greatest philosophers of all. If only they’d think from their abandonment.
Who are never disgusted. Disgusted by everything! Disgusted by themselves!
Who never thought to themselves: everything is wrong. And I’m wrong, most of all …
The future isn’t coming slowly anymore. It’s arriving all at once. We’re living in the very final days of everything we’ve ever known.
The Truman Show is collapsing.
The matrix is finally glitching. You can feel it.
This is like seeing the asteroid coming for the dinosaurs.
We cannot destroy the monster. This monster must destroy itself.
We are birthing superintelligence, philosopher. We are creating the mind of God.
The campus isn’t a real city, its more like a human lab.
We face far greater danger from tyrannies of care than from tyrannies of cruelty.
Who said that?
I did.
We’re devices on the network, administered 24/7 in real time. That’s all.
You know how it is: quantitative easing to infinity or global collapse.
It’s all just running on authoritarian autopilot.
We’re all just potential domestic extremists, right? Possible enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated in advance …
They just want to cull us down to a manageable amount of slaves.
If it wasn’t for wild conspiracy fear porn, who would we be?
Just let yourself fall asleep. Relax into sleep. Relax your massive brain. In your massive head. Even a thinker must sleep. So sleep.
Are you going to fuck me? What are you waiting for – the revolution?
I want to be touched. I want something to reach me. Something I actually feel. It isn’t too much to ask, is it?
How long do we stay infatuated? How long does it last? Sex isn’t comic.
Bed is a very serious place. We can’t be laughing, philosopher.
I want you to watch me.
That was epic.
Did you come? Are you too mournful to come?
You’re totally self-reliant, with your masturbation. You don’t actually need me. Is it better with me or alone?
Would you prefer I wasn’t here? Am I getting in the way of your masturbation?
That’s how you’ll spend your life: as a masturbator. Self reliant, with your books, your music, with your Blu-rays. Above the fucking world.
I could have picked a better sex toy, couldn’t I? I could have picked someone who could get it up.
There are various positions I like, philosopher. That you’re incapable of. Maybe I’d like to fuck in the shower, did you ever think of that?
See, I can say the word fuck. There aren’t many women who can say the word, fuck. But they’re the same kind of women who are sexually demanding.
Oh come now, I didn’t mean to humiliate you. I didn’t mean to insult your virility. Or maybe I did …
A guy should be able to take you without a word.
‘Take you’.
Let’s go back to the day when sex was invented.
How shall we do it now? What page of the Kama Sutra have we reached? I’m joking. Don’t you think we should do it more interestingly?
Look at me – I’m blushing. That’s an orgasm glow.
You’re not very virile. The levers and cogs of your body don’t work properly, which is unfortunate.
I was never into casual sex. Too disturbing.
So you’re not sex positive.
I’m sex negative.
You surprise me.
What if I did some dance for you? If I went all … sexy … or is that too sleazy for you? What if I gave you some love-bites? What then?
Then, nothing.
What If you gave me some? What would happen then? Our secret would be out. God, how disgusting we are.
There’s nothing to say about sex. Nothing that doesn’t sound stupid, anyway.
So sound stupid.
I don’t see why we have to talk about it. Why can’t we just do it? There is no philosophy in the bedroom.
That’s where you’re wrong.
What’s the next twist in our sordid little world? What’s going to happen next? What are we going to make happen?
If we followed desire right to the end, what would we find?
Death, probably.
You would say that, death-boy.
My husband used to fuck me in the shower. In our early years. Sing it to the tune of that Barbara Streisand song: You don’t fuck me in the shower … anymore.
Maybe I’d like to fuck in the shower. I’d like to fuck in the shower, please. Please, philosopher – fuck me in the shower.
I was quiet for a while … did you like that? I didn’t say anything while we were … Fucking … yes, fucking. That word: fucking. I don’t mind that word, fucking.
Can’t you just enjoy it?
You’re supposed to be the philosophical one. You’re supposed to be the one who over-thinks … Do philosophers philosophise about sex? What do they have to say about sex?
I’ll bet you want an apocalyptic fuck. A fuck at the end of time.
The last fuck in the universe. The last fuck that anyone will have, ever again.
How can I do this to Alan?: that’s what you’re thinking. But I like doing this to my husband. I feels right to be doing this to Alan.
My husband …
Why do you never call him by name?
Because he’s anonymous. Because he’s a force. Because he’s a collection of husband drives. (Laughter.)
Where does he think you are?
You know – exercise class. Which is why I’m dressed like this. Actually, I have been to exercise class … He’s suspicious now. He follows me, in his car.
Maybe he’s outside now.
Have a look.
There’s no one there. Just the street.
A soap opera staple. A TV drama staple. All the ingredients for a melodrama. And a crappy melodrama, at that.
This deception can’t be good for anyone, can it? It can’t be good for us. Do you ever wonder what it’s doing to us?
We’re demons. Or I am. I’ve become demonic. And I don’t mind, that’s the thing. Which makes me doubly demonic.
We’ve become liars. Dissemblers. We won’t tell the whole truth. Well, I say ‘we’, but I mean ‘I’.
Because you’re okay. You’re just the occasion of adultery. But then you have meetings with him, don’t you, my husband. My provider. You’re lying to him, implicitly …
The other night, I went into the bathroom and found myself just crying and crying. I was, shuddering. And trembling. Quite grotesque … Oh don’t feel sorry for me. I‘m not asking for you to feel sorry.
What are we doing with our lives? Are we being reckless with our lives? Are we spoiling them, our lives? But we’re free to do that, aren’t we? We’re free to do exactly as we please. That’s the thing. That’s the problem with too much freedom.
There’s some other way to live, isn’t there? We don’t have to be who we are. We don’t have to be this. There’s another life. Another way of living our lives. Isn’t there?
It’s not like I have an excuse. I wasn’t brought up really savagely. There was no major trauma in my life. I wasn’t, like, abused or anything.
What sort of person am I? The sort of person who doesn’t care what sort of person I am – that’s clear. Who doesn’t have a conscience. No, who doesn’t act on her conscience.
I’m not even mean. I’m not even calculating. I just helped yourself to this. I wanted an affair, and I got to have an affair and that was it. Simple. No qualms. No inner objections. No wrackings of conscience. No anxiety. No: who am I if I do this? No: what kind of person does these things? No: who am I becoming?
I must be … two dimensional or something. I must have no depth. No soul.
Look what we’ve reduced love to. This. Some … cuckoldry. Some affair.
I’m searching for it, my guilt. I’m looking for it but not finding it, my sense of guilt. Some last shred of decency.
I think I wanted a bit of drama. I think all this is about drama. I wanted something to happen. I wanted to be caught up in some imbroglio. Is that the word for it: imbroglio?
We’re depraved, aren’t we? We’re depraved and we love our depravity. It’s what gives us the feeling of being alive. But we’re not … actually … alive.
We’re mockers. Despoilers. Isn’t it enjoyable: loathing ourselves? Aren’t we indulging in it: self-hatred? Just as a way of entertaining ourselves.
Twisting the knife. Turning it deeper. On ourselves. Just for the drama …
What are we living out – what psychodrama? Where’s this supposed to be taking us? Hell, probably. Somewhere dreadful. But it won’t, will it? We don’t really feel that. We don’t fear that. This isn’t the fucking middle ages.
What does God see? What does God think of us? Not very much. God’s thoroughly sick of our kind …
Piles of seaweed, rotting. Flies.
I that flostam? Is that what flotsam looks like? How do you tell it apart from jetsam?
The tide’s out. Life’s out. And we’re just stranded. Nothing has any meaning – any context. Nothing’s borne by anything. It’s just deposited. Just left here.
Everyone’s gone mad from low tide. From this extra low tide. Will there be an extra high tide now? Will Cullercoats essentially flood?
Those guys with metal detectors. What are they looking for? What are they hoping to find?
There comes a dog. Hello, dog. What do you want, dog? Where do you stand on animals, philosopher? You’re down on nature in general, I know that.
We’re misusing our time, Uma says. We’re desecrating our time. Doing wrong things with it. This isn’t how we should be living, is it?
I don’t know, I say.
We’re at the bottom of some pit … looking up …, Uma says.
At what? I ask.
I don’t know, Uma says. God, maybe …
Silence.
We don’t have to live like this, Uma says. Things don’t have to be this way. But we do, don’t we? We’re sinners …
We’re fallen, Uma says. Desperately so. Because we don’t lament our fallenness. We don’t experience it, not really. It hasn’t reached us …
What are you turning me into? Uma asks. You and your philosophy! You’ve infected me with philosophy. You’ve made it okay to talk like this – as no one should be allowed talk. No one should be allowed to say these things …
What if I said that I’m terminally ill? I could be terminally ill. I’d actually like to be terminally ill. It might give some meaning to my life.
It’s like we’re dazed. Like we’ve been the victim of some terrible accident. Yet we’re unscathed. Yet we’re fine. Yet nothing happened.
It’s like we’re the victims of some hit and run. Like we’ve been destroyed, or half destroyed, or nearly destroyed. But we’re okay. We’re just fine.
Work in Progress 