Work in Progress

She wanted to call me Alan Suicide.

What?

It was the strange name of Alan Vega.

Who?

The guy who formed Suicide. Except it was his stage name before the band.

Alan Suicide sounds stupid, admittedly.

It does sound stupid, but I think that’s why she liked it. In the end, Cicero settled for Furio.

After Furio Jesi? I don't see the connection.

Maybe. She thought it made me sound cross. She liked cross.

 

I didn’t mind changing my name.

Sure, Driss is better than Nigel.

Nigel didn’t sound apocalyptic enough.

I don't know what Driss is supposed to mean.

I think we should call you Dungarees. After, you know, your dungarees. 

 

She wanted to call me Ulrike.

Why did she want you sounding German?

It was after that Baader-Meinhof woman. A mad Marxist-Leninist-Maoist type. Did all these bank robberies and bombings, then hung herself in her cell when she was caught. Actually, she might just have been murdered.

A real role model.

She wrote all these bitchin’ manifestoes, apparently. Cicero was a fan. She used to quote this Ulrike Meinhof poem. Something about her head exploding. About being controlled remotely. And pissing her soul of her body. And some raging aggression without outlet.

Sounds just like Cicero’s cup of tea.

So I insisted on keeping my own name. 

Which actually sounds like a nickname, which is the funny thing: Kitten. Who names their child, Kitten? And really, you're much more of an Ulrike than a Kitten.

 

Why did she call you Shiva?

Shiva’s one fuck of a cool god. He’s like the king of cool gods. He has a necklace of skulls. And his skin is purple. And he wears this tiger skin. And the river Ganges, like, flows from his locks. And he’s a great dancer. The number one dancer in heaven. No one dances like Shiva. All the gods are mesmerised when they see Shiva’s dancing. All the other gods worship him and think he’s the GOAT.

Isn’t he worshipped via a giant cock?

The divine phallus. Full of divine spunk. Which contains within it the essence of the entire cosmos. And the phallus rests upon a linga. Which is the giant cosmic cunt. It’s about the union of man and woman, Shiva and Shakti which makes existence possible.

So why did she name you after Shiva?

I don’t know. Irony, I guess.

 

Okay then, why did she call you, Fiver?

Some prophetic rabbit from Watership Down. A runt.

Prophetic?

Sure. Fiver has these visions. He can see into the future. He knows his warren is going to be destroyed – that the fields will run with rabbit blood.

Cicero was giving us a clue …

And he can possess other rabbits. Or at least he could in the TV series. His eyes glow silver when that happens.

Can you possess other people, Fiver?

No.

Have you tried?

Fiver looks more like banjo boy in Deliverance. What was his name?

He didn't have a name. Just banjo boy.

To think: it’s all happening here. Exactly where we are.

Were we chosen for this? Was it a coincidence that we were born into these times? That we find ourselves here?

What are we for? What’s our purpose? To think: we might even have a purpose! That our lives are not just totally random! That things don’t just happen and happen and happen.

To think: that we might have been led here, like the three wise men, or something. That it’s not by chance that we find ourselves here. That there’s something for us to do here. That there’s a purpose. It’s not just random.

Recycled Beckettianism. Rehashed Bernhardism. Ellipses-period Céline, as if he hadn’t been disgraced.

Endless fragment sentences. Infinite italics. Exclamation marks! Ceaseless hysteria.

Working up our head of steam. Getting our propellors turning. Shuddering up the runway. Taking unsteadily to the air.

 

No one’s interested. There’s no audience for this. We’re amusing no one.

Swarming, without meaning. Some … proliferation. A damp patch. An infestation. A cloud of flies. Some midges, midging. For no particular purpose. With no meaningful result.

Something to get rid of, that’s all. Some rat’s nest. Frantic, but disgusting life. To be poisoned away. To be sprayed away. If anyone could be bothered! If there really was nothing better to do!

 

With no general interest. No significance. No meaning. No merit. Evidence of no thriving local scene. Of some vibrant subculture. There’s nothing here for future intellectual historians. This is not some maverick new phase in the history of ideas.

 

And what does it matter? There’s no pattern in this. No general lesson. Nothing to be learnt.

It should simply be covered up. Discreetly. Without calling attention to itself.

There’s nothing to see here. Nothing to pause over. Nothing to consider. Nothing to be thought.

The world needn’t pause. Nothing has to happen. No action needs to be taken – not really. We’re bothering no one – fundamentally.

Dreaming of a messianic revenge. Of an impossible vindication. Of being rewarded for being beta men and women types.

Seeing if we can magic the defeat of the world from our own defeat. Claiming triumph in our meekness, as the meek.

Trying to conjure brilliance from stupidity, genius from mediocrity. Hating the world because we’re not strong enough to love it.

 

The world’s not stupid. The world’s not fooled.

We can’t stand the world because the world can’t stand us. Because it knows what to make of us. Because it’s wise to our true calibre. To what we really are.

 

Our madness is just tedious. Our pyrotechnics, spent. Our joke fireworks all burnt out.

Our posthumous torments. Our throwback existentialism. Our very-late-for-the-party philosophical Angst.

We’re Abendland tossers. The latest of all latecomers. The most untimely of all. But in a bad way.

No one wants to hear our message. To see us wave our posthumous flags.

 

The party’s over. The end, come and gone. We were too late to be late.

 

No one objects to us, not really. We’re no threat. No one’s actually trying to shut us down. We surprise no one. There’s even less interest in us than before.

 

We’re exactly where they want us. We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to. We’re fulfilling our role – our non-role. We’re deepening our irrelevancy.

We haven’t even been arrested. Haven’t even been DEW’d.

We raise no red flags. There’s no warrant out for our arrest. We appear on no wanted posters. There’s no bounty on our heads.

We’re a type, and they know our type. They know what to do with us. What box we fit in.

They’ve got us where they want us. They’ve parked us here. We’re nothing to fear.

No need for any special attention to be paid to us. We’re not worth the effort to assassinate.

They know our inputs and our outputs. We’re predictable. Mappable. Even obvious.

 

The tedium of our invectives. The boredom of the same old same old. Virtuosos of mediocrity, nothing more. Our freaks’ chorus. Our collective groan. Our – hyperbole. Haven’t we said it all? And too many times?

Someone should stop us! Snuff us out! We shouldn’t be allowed to say these things. To go on like this. To be like this.

Someone calm and good needs to have a word with us. Tell us off. Put a stop to us. Our continued existence.

We shouldn’t be allowed. No one should be encouraging us. It’s really proof that God doesn’t exist: that we’re allowed to go on. God would simply be the one who stops us going on.

 

We’re tired of us. Tired of ourselves. Tired of our blather. Weary of who we make each other be.

We know we’re tedious. We know we’re trying. We know we have nothing whatsoever to say.

Can’t someone put a stop to it? Can’t someone intervene? Someone calm and good?

What if it’s all in our imagination – and we have very lively imaginations? What if none of this adds up to anything? And it’s just a winter’s night. It’s just a welcome party with some dull but benign business studies types.

What if there’s no such thing as synths, let alone plans to turn us into them. What if the Organisational Management campus is just some rather dull brownfield development, and not the new Tower of Babel?

 

What if we’re all mad with paranoia, and we always were? It’s all a version of impostor syndrome. All we ever wanted was to shake some meaning out of the world. Some reason for things, even if it was negative meaning.

What if someone simply wanted to move Philosophy to Organisational Management, and it wasn’t part of some great Plan?

Positive behaviour change: that’s what they’re after. They want to work on us psychologically.

Right now, we’re enemies of progress. We’re not part of the new consensus. We haven’t accepted the new normal.

We’re internal enemies. The wrong kind of diverse. We’re obstacles to progress! Impediments! We’re in the way!

 

They want to be kind, God help them. But they cannot be kind to us. And they’d like to be! Of course they’d like to be! They’d like to be kind to everyone! We all deserve kindness. Except us. Except we wrong-thinkers. We holders-back-of-the world.

We won’t let them pass off the new normal as the new normal, that’s the thing. We won’t let the transition appear seamless. We’re stuck. Stupid. Focused on all things. We actually have memories.

We object, in some fundamental way, to their enlightened managerialism. And how could we? Why do we have to be in the way? Haven’t they tried to re-educate us, not once but a thousand times? Haven’t they tried to show us how it’s done? What not to object to?

They’ve made the new world for us. For our benefit. It’s an act of kindness for us. And how do we repay their kindness? With the opposite of kindness.

 

We’re domestic terrorists, spiritually. We need to be debanked. Cancelled. For our own good! Sent into the naughty corner to ponder what we’ve done.

Across the stony wastes.

There are non-graduates out there. On crutches. Riding mobility scooters. In track suits and trainers. Buying scratchcards, and that sort of thing.

 

They don’t know about the Latest Thing, across the stony wastes. They’re resisting the programming. They’re not thinking what they’re supposed to think. They’re not steered by the government-steered talking points. They’re not don’t know what they should be talking about. What their views should be. The behavioural psychology doesn’t quite work on them.

Jesus, are the only books you read about heavy metal?

Philosophy has to be about something. It can’t just be abut philosophy.

But why should it have to be  about Mötley Crüe?

Because Mötley Crüe are Gnostics. All heavy metal is Gnostic.

We’re the weak kind – neurotic, depressive, left handed, probably mutated. In any other time, we would never have survived birth.

 

If we were anywhere but in academia, we’d be dead – we’d have killed ourselves. Academia let us survive.

We’ve been raised by the uni. We’re runts of the uni. Of the uni litter.

We should never have survived. Never should have come of age. We should have been snuffed out, much earlier. Never should have been encouraged. Never brought on.

What was it – diversity quotas? Stupidity quotas? Unbalanced people quotas?

 

We’ve grown through the poison. Grown from the poison – out of it. We’re blooming from the poison. We’re poison’s bloom. We’re nothing but poison.

 

We’re runts of the litter. Malformed. Kinda short. With asymmetrical faces – that says a lot. Not, like, radiating life. Not happy. Disgruntled, in some fundamental way. We have bad attitudes. We’re full of needs. Fuck ups, in short.

 

Can you be philosophers, when you’re fucked up?

You can develop a fucked up philosophy. A philosophy of fuck-ups.

So that other fuck-ups can read it?

Maybe.

 

We’re bad-willed. And bad-souled. And fucked up. Someone should put us out of our misery.

Someone should.

 

We're paranoid. Inclined to conspiracy theories.