Work in Progress

Life – do you ever want to know what life is? I’ve always wanted to know. Well, this would be life. I’d find my way into life, with my girl on the sofa, watching over me.

And French doors open to the air.

You don’t even have French doors.

But if I did. And if I had a little garden. The doors open, and the air coming in, sweetened by the flowers.

Is that what flowers do?

She’d know, my lover. She could garden. That could be her project, in between performing or acting or whatever. She’d be happy gardening. And I’d be happy writing, and we could meet each other for tea breaks.

And sex breaks.

Sure – sex breaks. And she’d be Life, capital L. She’d make me want to bust out of the study. Be outside. Out we’d go. And it’d be bright. And we’d walk along the beach. The South Shields beach, maybe. Or maybe we’d get the ferry to North Shields, and walk up to Long Sands. Or we’d drive up the coast – in my dreams, we’d have a car – up to Alnwick. Somewhere like that. And I could drive. I’d actually have a driver’s license. An outdoor life, right? I’d be driving her along. And she’d be, next to me, in the passenger’s seat, tanned and long-limbed and beautiful. And she’d wear a big floppy sun hat. Wouldn’t that be something? Like a young Jane Birkin.

But what about you? Don’t you ever have enough of the essential solitude, or whatever? Dreaming your Blanchotian dreams. In your high room, with its skylight. Pretending to be profound. Pretending to be European … It’s no good, you know. You’ll never be European. You have to be something British instead. Something lower class, which you are, and I am.

In a time that doesn’t give a fuck about Blanchot and books of any kind. In which everyone’s watching boxsets. Or playing computer games. Or getting dopamine hits from social media …

Sure, I’m in the same situation, if not worse. Susan Taubes in South Shields. Susan Taubes anywhere in the English speaking world. Where no one – no one’s interested. Apart from maybe a few in New York, or something. Sucks, doesn’t it?

We’re martyrs of indifference. Of obscurity. Of pointlessness.

But somehow we make a living at this.

But not for long.

Not for long, maybe. We’re fucked, maybe. And this is an interlude. This is our brief time in the sun. This is time out from the world. This is a little opening, a vista.

For a few years.

And we’ll have to enjoy these few years, right? Before it all collapses. Which it will do, soon.

Will it? We always think it’s going to collapse. Because we can’t believe the idyll will last. When we actually have jobs. When we’re not scrabbling about. We can’t believe our luck, so therefore it has to end.

It is going end. Have you seen the levels of US debt?

So we have to have a bit of fun, right?

Fun: you only know how to have fun in your fantasy. With your dream girl. Your young Jane Birkin, or whatever …

 

Sure – she could garden. She’d be life. And when she was tired of gardening, and making lunch for us both, she’d make me want to take her out. And off we’d go. I’d be totally cured of agoraphobia. I wouldn’t be some scholar-recluse. And she’d be tanned. And long limbed. And beautiful.

I like your fantasy. Blanchot knew Bridget Bardot, you know. He met her in this village where he lived on the south coast of France. Bridget Bardot was making a film down there, and he met her.

Is that what you’re going to do: meet Bridget Bardot?

Won’t they just let us do our thing for a while? Are they going to interfere? I’ll bet they are. They won’t leave us alone, will they?

They’ll never leave us alone.

 

I want to make something out of my whole life. Every thing I ever was. And then I won’t have been nothing.

I’d actually quite like to be a nothing. A nothing-scholar. Someone totally forgotten, almost at once. And whose name might appear in a couple of footnotes. Who might have been cited once or twice … Actually, I think I should become a nun. A scholarly nun. I think it would be just the thing. Do they exist anymore?

Nuns can’t swear or talk about suicide all day.

What’s the word when you convert from nothing – from no religion? From just atheism? Because it’s not conversion, is it?

 

I’ll tell you when I’m happiest. When I’ve just made a pot of tea and I’m just sat there, ready to work. When I’ve cleared a whole day. It’s Saturday, or Sunday. And I have the curtains half closed, so there isn’t too much light. So I won’t see things that distract me.

Though it’d be even better if some hottie were curled up on the sofa sharing the tea. Some fellow scholar, maybe. Working at either end of a table. Taking regular sex breaks. Actually, I’d prefer it if she wasn’t a scholar. I’d prefer a civilian – a non-academic.

 

Oh I know it wouldn’t suit you. I know you’re far too pure and solitary to actually shack up with someone. You want to be all on your own for the spiritual desolation, don’t you? To be a bachelor scholar. You want to experience some pitch of loneliness that might let you write heartfelt things. Anguished things! Like some romantic poet. A Holderlin of North Shields.

Except I write prose.

II can see you now: up in your flat. How many flights up?

Top floor.

Your top floor flat. With your views … Did you ever think you could afford a flat?

Never.

Do you feel very, very lucky?

Sure I do.

Do you feel it shouldn’t have happened to you?

Definitely.

You and me the same. It’s turned out well, hasn’t it?

For the moment.

Do you think we’re going to be allowed to dream our lives away? Just doing what we do? Is this who we are now? Are we going to be this forever?

 

Do you know anyone who actually reads books? Civilians, I mean, not academics.

No.

It’s a philistine world, right?

And we’re the philistines. We’re worse than anyone. What we call reading …

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.

 

No one reads anymore but us – you do realise that, don’t you? No one reads books.

 

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

Don’t even ask me those kinds of questions. Fuck. I’m writing like never before, Celan once said to a friend. It was 1969, or something. A year or so before he killed himself. And he was writing like never before. Those late poems, so compacted. So dense and hermetic. After he died, they brought out five new collections of his poetry. 71, 72, 73 and so on. Anyway, I’m not writing like never before. It sucks.

 

Didn’t Cicero want to call you Susan Taubes?

God, I’d just love to be Susan Taubes.

Cicero knew you’ve love her.

I was stubborn. I wouldn’t actually  read Susan Taubes until Cicero was sucked into some cosmic wormhole, or whatever.

 

I’ve got the Susan Taubes blues.

What are they like?

Did you ever hear that Jandek song, ‘Blues Turned Black’? Like that.

 

Are we meeting the others? Are the others going to be bearable? Drunk, they’re bad enough. But hungover …

 

Let’s go back to our comfort zone. Let’s talk about suicide. I never feel so alive as when I’m talking about suicide. So reassuring to feel that I have death at my fingertip. That I could just end it all at any time. Call time on the whole farce. Bring the blessed curtain down. Isn’t that a relief?

 

Who ever has these conversations but us? Who else talks like this? What’s wrong with us? Because something’s wrong.

Because everything’s wrong. Because existence is wrong. And we know it.

Is that why we’re Gnostics?

Neo-Gnostics.

I like being something.

We’re not nihilists, that’s the important thing.

Remind me why again?

Because we believe in the nothing of God.

Which makes us sound fucking cool.

 

You’re going to get a career. I have big hopes for you. You’re going to succeed. For all of us. One day we’ll all be waving our hankies goodbye as you sail off for better shores. Bye-bye, Kitten! Bye-bye!

Don’t take the piss.

You’ll sail the good ship Kitten right out of here. Leave us behind. There’ll be a plaque to you, one day. These will be known as your South Shields years.

Just fuck off.

You’ve got what it takes. The philosophical right stuff. You’ll leave us in the dust.

Double fuck off.

 

You’re the philosophical version of indie music. All twee and infantile and shambolic and non careerist and wilfully underachieving and despising ambition. All barely publishing. Or if you do, burying your work in obscure journals. 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.

True.

Just pulling each other own. Drugging each other through the mud and mire. Despising your audience. Starting stupid philosophical movements. Reading your papers to each at conferences, because no one else would come to your panels.

Being, like, total British society for European Philosophy sourpusses. Only speaking to your own kind. With your in-jokes and pisstaking and bad attitude. Cultivating the whole personal non grata thing. Competitions in in who can be the most doomy. The most, like, ostentatiously depressed.

You have us there.

And here you are with decent jobs at a decent uni. How do you square that circle?

At least you have a bit of life to you, before you fall into complete alcoholism. A bit of youthful charm.

And you?

Well, I’m no better. I’m actually worse, because I know all this.

 

We should found the Centre for Academic Nonachievement. For General Lay-about-ery – is that word? For Uncreative Destruction. For the Arts of Dossing. For Chronic Underachievement. For Halfarsery. For Contemplating our Mediocrity studies.

 

Damaged philosophy, that’s what we do. Self-sabotaging philosophy …

Not even philosophy, that’s what we do.

Is that where you don’t write anything and just criticize everyone who does?

You know us too well.

What’s made us like this?

Nihilism, right?

Nihilism plus some extra craziness. Some wild desire for hope and transcendence and whatever.

Sure, we’re Gnostics. Or neo-Gnostics. Just like Cicero.

She called herself a Jewish Gnostic.

We’re Gnostic messianists. We’re waiting for … messianic time. Some twist in the world’s darkness. When hopelessness becomes hope. When the darkness lighten. Lifts.

What makes that Jewish?

Because we think it will come in time.

As, like, the end of time.

No: as the coming of a different order of time. The messianic era.

Tell us about this other time. What happens then? The lion lies down with the lamb, or whatever? Do we go finish in the morning and read all the afternoon? Do the meek inherit the earth? What?

 

Look, nihil means nothing, but nihilism’s not really about the nothing. It’s about being. It’s about the fact that things just go on and on. as they are. Forever. The endless end, right? Which is why we want the world to end. What we really want is the end of nihilism. Nihilism’s forever, and we don’t want to be trapped forever.

 

What we are is yearning. That’s all. And what we yearn for is the end of all this. Which isn’t just a desire for death.

For all out suicidal ideation, we don’t actually want to die.

 

The rumbling that shakes the world. That will topple the pillars. That will make the institutions tremble.

 

A disturbance in the earth. A protest. In the earth. A groaning, in the earth. The earth isn’t content. The earth’s turning in its sleep. It’s having nightmares. We’re the nightmare. All this is the nightmare. The campus is the nightmare.

*Emptier and colder, right? This universe is getting hollower. As we all are.  All the better for evil to inhabit …

Why are they doing these things to us?

Don’t be pathetic. Don’t be so forlorn. They’re doing what elites have always done.

No – this is different.

This is planned.

It’s always planned.

The elites were always about money and power, Not, like, systematic depopulation. I mean, they were always a bit indifferent, so long as they got theirs.

So what’s changed? Why do they want to control us? To depopulate us?

Because they’re satanic, which they always were.

What would actually make you evil? Why would you actually bother? What’s your motivation? To fuck things up just a bit more? To drive things down?

Evil doers are just misguided. It’s a way of doing good, for them. In their heads.

There are real satanists, though.

A handful.

More than a handful.

 

Why do we speak in this crazy way? Why do we dream up all these things? Because we’re empty, right? Because we’ve been emptied out. Because we’re full of the void and have to fill it with something. Because no open can bear the NOTHING that, like, blows through us. The void of our souls. That’s why we see psychopaths everywhere.

It doesn’t save us. It doesn’t redeem the world. It doesn’t change anything, probably. But it’s there.

What’s there?

Just anarchy. Just the burning essence of non-organisation and non-management.

 

Anarchy – that’s the lightning bolt. Zapping down. Lighting up the night.

 

The lightning that strikes through everything. Through each of us, even.

Freedom – that’s another word for it. Freedom that comes from outside. Just … striking down.

And it doesn’t do anything, doesn’t change anything. It’s just … there. But it isn’t there. It strikes through what’s there.

 

Holy anarchy. A freedom that isn’t even yours. That comes from – where? From without. Utterly so. From God, maybe. The lighting is God. The breach in the world.

 

The lightning could just set fire to the world. Like, a celestial correction. Or extinction.

And it will just destroy what should be destroyed. What deserves to be destroyed.

 

Anarchy that knows that things are Wrong, capital w. Anarchy Indistinguishable from destruction. But that’s really creation. Sky-zapping creation …

 

Lightning warns us. It’s a sign. A sign of what? That all of this must be brought to a close.

But I don’t believe that.

 

It’ll be the tenderest thing when we’re finally destroyed. The kindest thing. The greatest favour.

You are such a masochist.

Something wants to destroy us. And that’s what I want, too. The eyes of the universe should shut. And our eyes should shut, too.

What’s actually wrong with you? Because something’s very wrong.

Not as wrong as, like, the entire universe. See, I’m only wrong because the universe is wrong.

So you’re blaming the universe for making me such a nutter.

Only when the universe is destroyed will things be fixed.

And when we’re destroyed.

Exactly.

 

A universe should know when to end, shouldn’t it? It’s a question of taste. Timelines should really be finite. A universe should know when to lay down its head and close its eyes. A universe should want peace, right? It should sleep and we should sleep and that should be it.

 

Need some new kind of bomb. We need some act of cosmic terrorism. We need to destroy reality as such.

Some ontologically explosion. That’s what’s needed. To blow a hole in this reality and just step on through.

Is that how it works?

 

And how are they doing on the real timeline? Does it suck a lot less?

It’s not going full authoritarian, that’s what I reckon. It’s not full tilt totalitarian.

 

Is it thunder, then the lightning, or lighting, then thunder?

The lightning comes first, dummy.

This time, I reckon thunder comes first. So listen out for it. There are supposed to be seven claps. Seven peals. And then there’ll be lightning. It’ll strike through this whole universe.

And then what? 

I don’t know. It’ll light up all the darkness. And show what it is …

Is that all?

It’ll strike through every cell, through every atom. We’ll all be lit up from within. There’ll be an explosion of light.

 

So we’re waiting for the thunder. Can you hear it?

I can hear rumbling. Like, some earthquake, deep underground.

That’s the thermal energy bore. They’re sending it down into the mantle, in search of energy.

False thunder, right? Just like the holograms are false light.

 

All the institutions are to be struck by lightning. And we’re the lightning.

Are we?

Or we’re the channel for the lightning. We’re the lightning rod. We’ve got to transform the lighting into a life worth living.

Is that our mission?

I don’t know what it means.

 

We were the lightning rod, that’s what Cicero told us. And we were supposed to receive it. And channel it. And turn it into something that can be lived.

But why us? What was it about us?

We were naturally antinomian, she said. Naturally amorphous and anarchistic and that kind of thing. By dint of what we were. Cicero saw it in us. Because we were always so drunk and unruly. Always so wonderfully working class, she said. Working class in the academy! And that’s why she gave us apocalyptic names.

 

A flash of lightning in the world’s night. That would show up this world as what it was. That would light up the night, for a moment. Show the world’s night for what it was. A prison house. A hollow cell.

 

The flame of love – that’s what Cicero called it. Sometimes she spoke as if it were a matter of destroying the world. Everything! Sometimes as if it was a matter of mending, fixing and repair. Lifting the world from its depths.

 

The madness of anarchy. Of antinomianism. The flame between us.  That’s what she saw. The apocalyptic fire of revelation. The lightning rod using and taming divine energy.

How do you actually escape a timeline? Can we go back in time and change the future? To where it all went wrong?

It’s like in Terminator 2, when they have to kill that guy who invented some microchip. That enabled Skynet to … whatever.

Do we need Arnie to come and save us? Come with me if you want to live and so on.

We need a time-travelling Delorian?

Oh yeah, like in Back to the Future.

In Back the Future II: that’s where they change the timeline.

The one with cowboys?

The one before that. Where they go back in time to stop Biff taking over.

It’s like The Man in the High Castle. There’s the real timeline, like Philip K Dick said, and fake ones. This is one of the fake ones.

This is a timeline that split off from the real one. The good one.

So we’re on the fake timeline. What can we do about it?

What do they do about it in the novel?

I can’t remember. Just suffer it, I guess. But they know why they’re suffering.

A timeline correction – that’s what we need. Like in that Thomas Bernhard book.

You mean Extinction.

A correction! An extinction! Whatever. Just general annihilation.

I don’t actually want to be annihilated. Do we have to be annihilated?

So when did it all go wrong? With technology? The splitting of the atom? The industrial revolution? The invention of the fucking Spinning Jenny?

Yeah, but what about the conditions of the invention of the Jenny? We have to go much farther back.

 

Oh all to fucking end. For the stars to just wink out, one by one.

 

Too much poison. Too many lies. Too much horror.

 

Who designed this timeline, anyway?

They ordered it from some brochure. It’s the equivalent of Ikea, but for buildings. What catalogue is it? The World Economic Forum catalogue of globalist oppression. The new Reich, basically.

Our only response can be hatred. Our only response: a hate reflex. They only allow us to hate, right?

Hatred’s what love’s become here. It’s the twisting of love.

 

Hatred as energy. We need it. it’s what love’s become. In this world. In this horror.

The nightly holograms. These weird sky ceremonies. What are they about? What are they trying to conjure? To summon from the other side?

Something pagan. Aerial demons.

Myth-making for the coming technocracy. Samples of the imagery of the new syncretic world religion.

The perversion of the sky, right?

 

Their rituals. Their sky-prayers. What are they doing up there? What are their purposes? Hell on earth, sure, but in the sky?

How are they allowed to light up the sky like this? It’s their sky. It’s the Organisational Management sky. This great black canvas on which they can work their black magic.

 

We’re supposed to be awed. And charmed. And seduced. And impressed. At their infinite power.

Because this is a show of their power. It’s of a piece with their power.

 

Their sky-displays. Their new sky-gods.

What’s behind all this? Why do they have to flaunt their satanism?

Where do they get these designs, or whatever? Where do they order them from? Satanic HQ.

 

How can we fight something that takes over the sky?

That’s how we’re supposed to think. Shock and awe, baby.

 

When’s the sky going to open? The real sky? When will they tear open this false sky?

 

Lord Jesus, reveal yourself from heaven in blazing fire with your burning angels …

Are we accepting it? Are we coming to terms with it? Are we adapting? Let’s never adapt.

 

Stone and steel and glass – so unalterable. So absolute. They don’t respond. So inert. Nothing changing. Just continually reminding us that this is what there is. And all there is. And all there will be.

And that it’ll never be spring. And there’ll never be sun.

 

And everything sucks. And the system’s being locked in all around us. You could bang your head against it, and it wouldn’t change. You could throw yourself from one of these towers, and it wouldn’t be broken.

 

And it’s passing itself off as normal. This is supposed to be normal.

 

What’s so different about his campus? It’s more absolute. It’s more seamless. It’s more designed.

It didn’t grow up willy-nilly. It wasn’t just plonked here.

Like one of those Chinese cities that just sprang up, out of the dust. All at once, the whole campus.

 

What it is, this campus? What it will be?

Defiant, in its blandness. Declaring itself as what it is. No kneeling. Not humble. Reaching into the air.

 

And filling the air with its holograms. Like its dreams.

 

And shameless. There’s nothing human here. No human scale. Built by giants. Built by robots. Built by Nephilim.

 

The new order, right? The new order of the world.

 

And it stares at us, but with blind eyes. And the facades have no faces. Monolith after monolith. Blankness after blankness.

 

A descent, walking through here. Like it gets worse, by remaining the same. By being itself.

 

And it’s not even horrifying. It’s not even hideous.

There’s not even a fascist aesthetic. It doesn’t warrant being filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. No rallies here. No Nazi stormtroopers. No, like, fascist insignia. Nothing spectacular. These buildings aren’t even that high.

 

The stone, the steel. The glass. Its modesty is its offensiveness. They’re flaunting it without flaunting it.

 

It looks away from us. It’s perfectly indifferent to us. It doesn’t scorn us. It doesn’t hate us. Except by not hating us. It doesn’t mock us. Except by not mocking us.

 

And shameless, It does not lament. It does not mourn what it is. It does not pray.

It has no tears. Nothing to wipe away. It doesn’t repent. It doesn’t ache for what it is. It doesn’t cry upwards. It doesn’t say, I despise what I am.

 

Horror without horror. It’s so clean. And calm. There’s no screaming here. It’s not too ugly. It’s not monstrous. It’s kinda okay.