Nothing happens here except the clouds change. The clouds move. There are different kinds of clouds.
Not a cloud in the sky. The lids off. The day’s open.
The sky’s thinking about itself. It’s thinking its own thoughts.
Is it thinking about us?
It’s got other things to think about.
The sky’s changing. It’s purple. Rainclouds coming in. Or whatever. I didn’t think a sky could be purple like that.
God, the way you can see the whole sky.
Rain on the skylight. It’s very calming.
All the questions we ask.
No one’s going to answer, are they? No one’s interested.
God, maybe. The sky, maybe. The light, maybe.
Nothing up there, anyway. There’s nothing we can count on. There’s that light, that’s all. That quivering patch of light.
Why are we so fucking low?
We look upwards, but what is it we see? What is it, the sky?
How can this world be lifted from us? The weight’s too great … The pressure …
The world, crushing us. Our limbs, so heavy. How can we, like, get up at all? How do we stand upright? How can we get to our feet?
A patch of light. That’s all that’s left. But what does it mean? What does it do?
Lovers always talk about their love. It’s smugness. We’re pleased with ourselves. Pleased with what has been given us, by way of the other. In our little bubble of love.
We think we’ve escaped the world, but love is part of the world. It’s just a little … give in the world. It’s a little leeway. It’s what we’re given as freedom – as a taste of freedom. But it’s still part of the illusion – and perhaps the worst part. Because it entangles us more deeply.
We’re trapping ourselves. We’re being trapped – by nature. It’s nature’s honey trap. Nature’s seduction trap. Which is how it opens as apparent freedom what is really only a deeper form of servitude.
Nature’s thrown us a treat. We’re supposed to be grateful. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.
Love isn’t part of the machine: that’s what we think. That’s what we’re supposed to think. We fool ourselves. We want to be fooled.
Our disgrace. We should fall to our knees … and …
And what?
Pray to be released from the world. Its traps – its snares. Pray for an opening … Don’t we want out? Sure we want out. We want the exit. And that’s what we want in love. We want to be an exodus for one another. A way out of the trap. When really it’s another part of the trap …
It’s the honey trap. Nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty. Some hottie specifically sent out to target you. Nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from another, when in fact … the only salvation comes from outside.
Outside what?
This world. This life. This … universe of death.
The stupidity of lovers. We think this is an exception. That we’ve been given all this as a special gift to us. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … This very sane madness. This rational irrationality. This law-abiding prohibition. Which happens to virtually everyone. To which all of us succumb. That lifts us all up. And up to what?
Aren’t we lucky? we think. Why can’t everyone be as lucky as us? Until we become evangelists of love. Trying to pair all our friends up. Telling people the story of our romance. How we got together. Our ur-story. About when the world relented. When the remorseless logic of it all just pulled back for a few moments. When we were granted an apparent reprieve.
And now we think we know what the world is about. What things really are. As if everything had been revealed to us anew. As if for the first time. The world, all aglow. Colours, more vivid. The sky, a little wider … It’s a con …
Our story … how we escaped. How we weren’t subject to all the laws. How it wasn’t just the same old for us. We think we’ve been elected. Saved. Lifted above the fray. Because Nature wants us to make more of ourselves. Nature wants the multiplication of Nature.
Love … makes you feel exalted, doesn’t it? It makes you high. It makes you feel like some secret aristocrat. If only the world felt what we felt: that’s what you think. It makes you smug.
All the world loves lovers. And lovers are always in love with themselves. With their love. With their being in love. It’s a recipe for smugness.
Do you think we look like we’re in love? Do we charm people? Do we lovebirds remind them of the possibility of romance?
It’s like we’re elevated above everything. Like this is the most important thing in the world. Do you feel it, too? Are we in love, in love, in love?
There’s an absolute divide between us, and them. Because we’re in love. We’re, like, a loving elite. Who feel their love more intensely than anyone else. Who live more intensely. Or something.
Lovers staring at each other. Pleased with themselves. With their love. Pleased with themselves in love.
I want to thank nature personally. Thanks, nature. Thanks hormones. Thanks, desire. Thanks, lust.
Like we’re exalted. We’ve exalted ourselves. Lifted ourselves out of the common run.
Lovers are so pleased with their love. They think it makes them so exceptional. But really …
We’re, like, flattered by our feelings. They make us feel exalted. Like something important is happening.
This is like a holiday romance. It’s like we’re on holiday, and it won’t last once the spell is broken. Once we have to go back to reality.
This is our sentimental education. Do you realise that?
What are we supposed to be learning? What’s the curriculum?
Your flat’s adrift in the sky. Like in The Wizard of Oz. We’re just floating through the sky. There’s nothing but whiteness.
Something’s taking place through us. Despite us, almost. Against us. Something that’s not ours. 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. 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’re out of service. We’re not needed. We’re surplus to requirements. We were ordered by mistake, or whatever … And now what? What are we supposed to do? Just be, I think. Just float.
I can’t even finish a sentence. It’s being drunk without being drunk. It’s getting lost when you’re trying to finish a … sentence … You don’t know where it’s going to end. Fuck, I can’t think a single clear thing …
I want to shout. I want to be heard
Who by? I hear you.
Not by you. I want to be heard by … God, maybe
I want to shout something, just to show I can. Just to be able to. Just to be able to do anything. I don’t want to just give everything up. I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to yield to this.
You’re not going to save me. You’re not going to break my fall. You’re not going to do anything.
You don’t need saving.
What do I need? What do I want? What am I doing here? What’s anything? Why anything?
I’m not good for anything. And nor are you, but you know that.
If I feel asleep now, what would happen? If I feel asleep and woke up and fell asleep and just … lived here, what then?
Would you like to live here?
Right now, I would. Right now …
We’re afternoon-drunk. Drunk on the afternoon. On the white, white sky. On all those clouds, where a blue sky’s supposed to be. Where God’s supposed to be.
Pallid daylight without depth … Where nothing’s revealed. Where everything is as it was. Where banality’s banality and nothing else.
I feel so fucked. God, how will I ever get up? How will I ever do anything again?
I want to get dressed and go. I want to drive off. I want to go to the gym … Anything except this. But I like this …
I don’t know what I used to know. And what I know now … isn’t good for anything.
Are we meditating, or something? Are we praying or something? And to who? Who’s listening? Who’s watching?
The day will never end. It’ll never be over. It’ll just go on forever. This moment is, like, a forever moment.
I feel like I’m falling. When I close my eyes, I get vertigo …
I’m tired of being lost. I want to be found. I want to see God looking down at me through the skylight. God’s great eye. Wouldn’t that be something?
What do we add up to, we two? What do we add to the universe?
Our atoms are growing farther apart. We’re less dense. We’re less ourselves. We’re porous … We’re merging into the afternoon. It’s entering into us. Saturating us.
We’re, like, wise with the afternoon. Vast with the afternoon. We’re dispersing. We’ll blow away …
Falling through the afternoon. Is that what we’re doing? Falling, just falling.
Afternoon amnesia. Afternoon oblivion. Is it possible just to forget … everything? Except you, maybe.
Are we going to live long lives, do you think? I know the answer: I think we’ll live forever. That’s what I think this afternoon.
This bedroom … where it happens. Where it doesn’t happen. Where everything is lost. And found again. And lost again.
Just falling through the afternoon. Falling to where, I don’t know.
We’re approaching the heart of the afternoon. We’re going to catch the afternoon out. Doing whatever it does. Afternooning, or whatever.
The day’s going on without us. The day’s doing its day thing. And we’re doing our you and I thing. Whatever that is.
What’s the rest of the world doing, while we’re doing this?
The rest of the world’s busy.
I’m sick of being busy.
What does all this add up to? Our affair. What does it mean?
What do you do in Mallorca?
I enjoy the sun. I read … thrillers. Or detective books. Sit by the pool – we actually have a pool. Imagine that! A house with a pool. I have a friend over there. A gay friend. My gay best Mallorca friend. I think he’d like you. My husband doesn’t really get him at all, though he’d like to. My husband’s not really metrosexual, like you. He’s more traditionally male. He’s a specimen of northern manhood.
You’re the kind of person who feels at home on holiday. Who knows what to do on holiday. Right?
You were made to luxuriate. You’re at ease with being at ease. You luxuriate in luxuriance. To have, like, romantic intrigues.
Everything’s so still. And calm. We’re in the calm eye of the hurricane. The campus’s hurricane. It’s all turning around us.
What is?
Everything. The whole city. Wheeling around us. Like we’re the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy’s arms are just turning around us.
We’re at the heart of all things. In the secret place at the heart of everything. Where God would be, if there was a God.
And God’s just this wave of calm, right? God’s this wave of calm saying, everything’s going to be alright. Is everything going to be alright, philosopher? For who? For us, maybe? For the, like, universe? For everything?
Do you believe in God, philosopher? I think I do, tonight. This night. I think you’re going to lead me to God. What does that mean? I think you’re the person I’m going to talk about God with. That’s what’s you’re about for me.
What ideas have you had, philosopher? What’s going in the dome?
Have you had a productive day? Did you get something important done? Were you able to take an essential step? Any significant advances?
Don’t think anymore. Turn off the dome. Give yourself a thought holiday.
Do you get tired of being yourself? Are you bored of being who you are? Don’t you want a holiday from philosophy? From filling your head with this kind of stuff? Wouldn’t you like to forget it all? To, like, loosen your grip?
Don’t you want to be NOTHING? In capital letters? And no one?
And not to have to do anything. Just, like, be lost in the afternoon. The whole afternoon …
It could be the last afternoon of our lives. Just giving way into the Afternoon of afternoons. Just dissipate into the greater Calm.
Just letting yourself float up there. Letting yourself be suspended.
And it’s not even your calm. It’s just some cloud drifting through you. God’s calm, or something.
Disappear. Let your atoms be … dispersed. Do you have atoms, philosopher? Are you like the rest of us?
Like, become totally porous. Let everything disperse into you. Let it pass through you.
Don’t you feel it: a great calm that’s outside of us. A calmness that’s out there. That could come to us. Invade us. Envelop us. And gulp us up like Moby Dick.
‘You’re the love of my life’: say that. You don’t have to mean it.
Lovers play, philosopher. They aren’t serious all the time.
How long will our adventure last?
How long do you want it to last?
Until it stops being an adventure. Until it becomes more drudgery.
I didn’t know I had a philosopher-shaped hole in my life. Until you arrived.
Is there a philosophy of fucking? There are philosophies of love, I know that. But of fucking?
Where’s philosophy going to take you? Are you going to spend your whole life this? You are, aren’t you? You’re going to live your life up here, working, not working, and be grateful for it. You’ll read and write your whole life away. That’s not so bad, I suppose.
Do you want to settle down? Maybe you’ll have another affair, like this one. Or you’ll meet some admiring PhD student at some conference. And she’ll come up and summer with you, or whatever. That wouldn’t be bad, would it? A nice interlude, right? An episode …
And she’d be someone who’d have half an idea of what you’re trying to do – philosophically, I mean. And what these books are all about. She’d be part of the philosophy scene … She’d look up to you. Admire you. Think you were the bee’s knees.
You could give her advice. Help her with her dissertation. Dictate parts of it to her. And she’d think you were quite the philosopher. That you Knew Stuff. That you were pretty cool, in general. You wouldn’t be just anyone. Some … senior lecturer with a job at a decent university. Not just anywhere. Russell Group, and all that …
And you could tell her things as you lay in bed. About Rilke and stuff. Which she’d appreciate, unlike me.
And she’d teach you something of life. You need to learn about life, philosopher. You’d teach her about philosophy, and she’d teach you about life. A fair trade. And then after the summer she’d – pouf – disappear. Go back to her life. Leaving you to your studies. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
You don’t want a relationship, philosopher. You want … longing. To intensify your longing. You want … to be alone, corresponding with someone you’ve never actually met, like Rilke.
Are you going to spend your entire life in a room like this? Is this going to be it, for you?
What are your fears? Your goals? What are your hopes and dreams, philosopher? Your non-philosophical hopes and dreams … do you have those? Or has philosophy sucked them all up?
If I was the jealous type, I’d be ever so jealous of philosophy. Philosophy has absorbed everything you are. What’s left for me?
Work in Progress 