Work in Progress

I want to hear about angels. Tell us about the angels, Fiver. The angels of Newcastle! Like the angels of Berlin. Tell us about them again.

 

Are there angels here, do you think? Are they watching over us? Can you feel them now?

I wish they’d tell us what to do. Maybe we know already.

 

Do they approve of us, drinking? Do they drink, too? Drunken angels … imagine that.

Angels can’t be drunk. In fact, angels can’t even drink. They can’t feel these bodily things. They don’t have bodies.

 

We’re not supposed to believe in spirits, in philosophy. Being a philosopher means not believing.

 

Look at us, like children. Drunken children. We want to believe like children. But we’re not children. We’re old. And corrupted. And twisted. And bent in upon ourselves.

 

Can you see your angel, Fiver? Can you see your mine?

 

Does all that gospel stuff make you feel so weepy. Does it comfort you in your darkness? Do you want Jesus to come into your heart? Do you want his peace? Is that comfort for you? Is that what helps you? The lucidity of prayer? Do you want to see the radiance of his heavenly glory? Do you?

 

Do you want to renounce Satan and his ways? Are you overwhelmed by the darkness? Truly? Have you had enough of darkness? Does the light shine in the darkness? Has the darkness not overcome the light? Is there light in your fucking darkness?

 

The lucidity of prayer. Calm. Speaking for you. Do you want the Lord to be glorified through your life? Do you think you deserve that?

 

Do you want to break the power of Satan? Do you want to bind Satan? Share the good news? Do you to break from the snare of the devil? Do you want to be delivered from the mouth of death?

The resurrection – do you believe in that?

 

There’s only one story … only one story that’s worth telling. You know that, don t you? Only one story. Only one fucking story.

 

Are there angels in Hell?

This isn’t Hell, strictly speaking. Not if there are angels.

 

Angels of the humanities. Angels of Philosophy.

Are they real? Do they exist? Are there philosophical angels?

 

Fiver sees angels.

What, like in Wings of Desire? With those ponytails?

Arthouse angels. Sound great.

 

Angels are invisible to everyone.

Except children.

Sure, children see them.

And idiots, probably. Have you ever seen an angel, Driss?

No.

So maybe you’re not an idiot.

Why now? What is it about this time? Isn’t it amazing to be alive through all of this? To be living as it all comes down. Hard to believe it’s a complete coincidence …

 

As if we were just supposed to hang ourselves. One by one.

As if we should feel guilty for living, and just destroy ourselves. As quickly as possible!

 

We should be angrier, right? The fury of God: that’s what it should be about. We need to unleash that fury. There needs to be a judgement.

 

We’ve got to stop hating ourselves. We’ve got to stop being weirdly turned in on ourselves. Our hatred needs to be allowed to become love.

 

Who would we be if we weren’t contorted? And twisted? And turned in on ourselves?

We need to be opened out of ourselves. Out of our self-devouring. Out of our hatred. And all we are is hatred. And I don’t want to just hate.

I want to be opened. I don’t want to be hollow. To be possessed by something good, not something evil.

 

Love: do you believe in that? Do you believe in a love that could possess us? That could just beam out of us? That’s what it would mean to become an angel …

 

What we are is twistedness. We wouldn’t be anything else. Corruption …

 

Hollowness: it’s what we have in place of a soul.

 

We get more complicated. Turned in on ourselves. Sure.

But we’re not so evil. We’re not so special. We’re not so very very bad. Twistedness is what makes us interesting – that’s what Nietzsche would say. The sick animal is also the interesting animal.

It’s the same as original sin. It’s just a confirmation of that: original sin. The sin of existing. The sin of daring to be. Even though I didn’t ask for it … But who does?

It’s just a doubling. A … deepening. Of what was already there. Some primordial violation. Some horror of coming into being. Some vileness of existing at all. That’s what I felt that’s what I knew.

It’s like the teenagers say: I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask for this.

So you didn’t want to be born? You just want to be pure and unsullied and never doing anything or entering into anything or getting your hands dirty. Like an angel –

Sure, like an angel.

Never actually existing – not in this world at least.

No, not in this world.

 

Some undoing. Some rewinding. Some backtracking. Some reversal. Time moving backwards, almost back to where it all began. And from where it might not begin. A kind of subtraction. A retrospective … abortion, of a kind.

 

I’d like to die as an angel. Emptied of all things. Cured, right? Just an aching soul. Crying upwards to be extinguished. And then … extinguished.

 

I could never do it myself. Could never suicide. Because that would complicate things still further. Things would become yet more twisted. Yet more corrupted. There must be no more deepening … of … this. I don’t to fall any further. I don’t want things to fall any further. I want to be lifted up in light – in pure light. I want to look up, not down. I don’t want to be a fallen person. I can’t let myself fall any further.

 

We’re all so solitary, aren’t we? Our voices ring out … our voices sound in the great nothing.

We don’t talk to anyone. We don’t reach anyone no one hears us. You don’t hear me, and I don’t hear you and God doesn’t hear anyone.

No one who can hear. Nothing, no one. Which makes it all become yet more … meaninglessness. It doesn’t matter, anything we say …

 

You don’t believe in God.

I believe in God because I don’t believe in God.

 

That’s the purest kind of hope – for the utterly impossible. For nothing that could exist.

 

I’m sick. Sick with living. Sick with having to go on. Sick with the great sickness of all things.

You’re so beautifully fucked up.  That’s why Cicero made you our leader. You’re leading from below. From the fucking abyss. And I love it. It’s like being in a Bergman film. How do you work up all this angst? What engine is, like, driving it?

There’s some philosophy you could spin out of this, I’m sure of it. That spins itself out of the horror. Angst with a full philosophical vocabulary – it’s beautiful. Cicero would approve of all this. Cicero would think that this was your finest hour. It’s true leadership. Directly into the abyss.

I’m so – disgusted. I’ve always been – disgusted. Chaos reigns … We stagger and we reel. This whole world’s some … no man’s land. Some place between worlds – real worlds. It’s not a world at all, but some – exception. Some impertinence of existence amidst non-existence. Some momentary starting from the great sleep.

 

Do we feel more things than other people?

More hatred, maybe. More darkness. We’re close to the hollowness of the world.

The world has never been as empty as it is now. As hollow. It’s never been as disgusting. And as disgusted with itself. So sullied. So dirty. So defeated. And it knows it. Wanting only to become something else. Wanting only to quake and to convulse, and shake us from itself. This campus …

 

The whole world aching and gnawing  And angels praying over us. The angel of the world, praying over the world.

Why should anyone pray over the world? Shouldn’t it just be left to degrade? To its abjection. Falling to lower and lower amorphy.

 

The slow death of the world. Agonising. And so slow.

The world’s never been as barren. As hollow. Everything we say just rings out, for no one to hear.

Our voices. Our pleading. Our desire to be saved, knowing that there is no salvation. Our desire to live, even though life is impossible in this world. In what they’ve done to this world.

And that’s the best of us: the best of what we are, that pleading. That prayer.

The act of destruction that is the world. The infinite falling that is the world. The plunging that is the world. The world-fall, the world-decay that is what we’ve done to the work. This planet turning in darkness – our darkness.

An avenging angel, that’s what I want. Are there avenging angels, Fiver? Who’ll rain fire and sulphur down on us?

 

The world’s so cold, right? The world’s so desperate.

Waiting foe the destruction. Waiting for the truth that will take it all away. That will undo what was done. And rewind it all. And restore what should be restored.

The work of time: that’s the problem. Because it is only the convulsion of time. Because it’s only the unworking of everything in time. Because it’s only the dissolution of all things. Because it’s only entropy in time.

The poison runs so deep. And the lies. Through us all. Through me! Above all, through me. There’s a … desperation. That isn’t even mine.

 

Have we worked out the truth now? The truth of the world? Which is to say, the lie of this world. Do we actually know what’s real, what’s true? Which is to say, nothing of this world?

Is this what the world is? Have we worked it out, caught it out? have we seen the secret that the world was hiding from us all along? The truth … the errancy. The great error. The great erring. Away from the true timeline. Away from what’s true and real.

And the campus revealed. We should be grateful that it was revealed. That we’ve seen it now for what it is. …

 

I think if I lose this mood, I’ll lose … my relation to the truth. This desperation … shows me things. It’s not just about the campus. It’s about what things are … And I want to see them. I want to see things as they are …

 

I wish the world would just go away. For a little bit.

 

It’s the very completeness of this campus that makes it incomplete. It’s the fact that it’s whole that makes it a fragment. I can see beyond it because I cannot see beyond it. I know there’s more because I know nothing but this campus.

What kind of logic is that?

There is the campus. The campus is what there is. It’s formless, all this form. It’s moving, all this solidity. It’s deliquescing, this stone, this steel, this glass …

It’s a dream, that’s what I think.

Whose dream?

Someone wicked. Some evil under the earth.

Because it’s won, I know we’ll win. Because it’s triumph, I know we’ll triumph.

 

What does it want, this campus? It wants something. To express its horror. At what it is.

Do you think?

It doesn’t want to be like this. It doesn’t want to be at all.

So how can we grant its wish?

It knows it’s hollow. It knows that is has no soul. That it’s just waiting to be possessed. If it isn’t possessed already.

God, why has tech always got to be bad? Haven’t you read Donna Haraway?

Peace. Rest. That’s what all things are crying out for. They know this timeline is coming to an end. That it’s too twisted now, too complicated. That things can’t be straightened out. That we are creatures of the end, here to endure the end, and seek out the end.

But we’re part of the end, that’s the thing. We’re the fruit of the end. The most twisted and the most gnarled. Who long for death like a balm.

 

We were made for today. The end made us. We’ve gone off, in some sense. We have the foul stench of gone off things.

 

There’s a pressure in the air. A weight in the air. It knows. The very air knows. Just like the weather knows. Just like the stars know, looking down. Just like the darkness knows. Just like the earth knows. Just like everything knows. Just like we know.

Our time is coming. Which means our time is ending. Or rather, that it will cease ending.

 

The disgrace of our lives. The disgrace of our times. That’s what will be known.

Everything will be smoothed out. There will be no more wrinkles.

Is that what we are: wrinkles?

 

God is death.

Is that it? What’s so fucked up about us that we think that? What’s so very, very wrong with us?

God is death: that’s what I want to shout up to the heavens.

Gillian Rose writes somewhere about this really cool nun. In her previous life, she’d been a London fashion model, or something. Totally beautiful. But she wanted to study. She wanted to get to the bottom of the Song of Songs! Wanted to learn Hebrew read it in the original, to work out what it was about. And to think about love – agape and eros. And the relationship between agape and eros. What is the relationship between agape and eros, do you think?

So she converted. And she became a scholar-nun. She studied the ancient languages, including Hebrew. And there she was reading the Song of Songs, in the original. And pondering it, the Song of Songs. Doing all her nun things, praying and so on, and contemplating the Song of Songs. And actually living the Song of Songs.

That’s who I want to be like. A scholar nun. With my sister scholar nuns. And no distractions.

And no tropical lovers?

Of course, you’d need faith to come a nun. .

Maybe I can find some faith. I could work up some faith, if I got to study all day. It’s kinda cool now, isn’t it, having faith? Everyone’s converting. From, like, atheism to full-on Christianity. Is that still called conversion when you begin from nothing – from no faith?  I actually bought an Orthodox icons calendar for my flat. That’s a start, isn’t it? It has all these cool icons on it.

Converting is such a great fuck you, isn’t it? It’d be one in the eye for all these left liberal academics .. I’d quite like to have a spiritual life.

Did Susan Taubes have a spiritual life?

She believed in God as nothing, I think. The nothingness of God: she believed in that. But you have to read the genitive in the other direction. Like, God actually is nothingness. Though ‘is’ is the wrong word.

Really? That’s confusing.

A spiritual life with the nothing at its heart.

Does all that nothing stuff mean you’re really not religious – or very very religious? It’s confusing.

I think you oscillate between the two. Her husband Jacob Taubes was dressed up like an orthodox rabbi one day and was the most outrageous libertine the next.

He was a Sabbatian Frankist, though. Those guys were nuts.

Susan Taubes was kinda lesbian. Susan Sontag was lesbian.

Did they have an affair?

They were friends. Susan Sontag identified her body. That’s your job. You’ll have to identify my body when the time comes. When they find me floating in the Tyne. Or in the North Sea. I’m not sure quite where I’m going to drown myself.

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, they’d 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 de 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.

 

I’m really going to have to update my wardrobe. 50s elegance: that should be my new look. A forbidding lesbian dame of the 50s. Who takes no shit.

Shame I’m not, like, effortlessly beautiful. Shame I’m not, like effortlessly beautiful. Setting a room on fire just by walking into it. Wowing the world with total elegance and Europeanness.

Maybe I should cultivate an accent and tell everyone I’m from Hungary. I wish I was a proper exotic. Not from, like, South Shields.

 

You'll have to ride the Susan Taubes train out of here. Publish something cool with SUNY or whatever. Be, like, the Susan Taubes person. Unless someone beats you to it. Found the Susan Taubes Circle, or whatever. Go digging for some lost manuscripts. Make some Susan Taubes documentary.

Pretty smart move, your Susan Taubes move.

 

You’ll be the Susan Taubes person.

In the UK, maybe. I’ll bet there are Susan Taubes people in the states.

You’ll make your name. Curate some Susan Taubes exhibition. You’ll get some of her star power.

 

She’s just like some credibility trophy. You get to have her credibility by proxy. You glow in her light. Some glamorous philosophical suicide. Who actually gave up philosophy for fiction – pretty fucking cool. And then gave up her life.

I don’t think I’d want to be with a scholar. Maybe a singer. Or an actor. Someone creative. Instinctual … Like Serge Gainsbourg went out with Jane Birkin. And I look a bit like Serge Gainsbourg, don’t I?

Jane Birkin said 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 love would make me want to be out – with her. Our in the sun. Out in the day. I wouldn’t be 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.

 

Did you ever read 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? She was in her seventies then, and he was twenty-six.

I like knowing those details. How she lived. How they lived. I’d like to live like that.

Would you?

So long as there’d be time to write.

 

I can see her sitting back, 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 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. Too depressing, for her. Nothing to do with the garden. With the outdoors. With the lily pond – we’d have a lily pond, in my fantasy. With drives out to the countryside – we’d have a car, in my fantasy …

 

She’d 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 really 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, I’d do.

 

She liked to be adored. Loved. Admired. 

She'd like to be taught things. Shown things. 

I'd introduce her to Blossom Dearie. Or Nancy Wilson. Or whoever else. Play things that would delight her. Make her a playlist.

 

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 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’d move.

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 was intellectual, too. Or she admired intellectual things. She loved the intellectual world. The literary world. Which is why she could just sit there, lost in Proust. Sighing this is so beautiful every now and again.

 

She’d be full of the spirit of adventure. And maybe she’d be exotic. Maybe she’d come from overseas. Where, though? Somewhere sunny. A tropical island. Faraway. In the Caribbean, or somewhere. She’d talk about that, too. And maybe I’d go over there, for Christmas, or something. And get my taste of the tropics.

We’d drive around her tropical island. Seeing the sights. Visiting the beaches. See tropical fish in the green sea. And it’d be so warm, even in winter, when we were visiting. An island paradise. The most beautiful place in the world. With big blue skies. Summer, basically, every day.

 

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.

 

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.

We can’t believe we could be so lucky. We can’t believe that we’re allowed to do this – teach and write. We’re so absurdly grateful. We can’t see it as our due. As something we should deserve.

It’s not something we deserve.

As something that might be ours … But we’re not that entitled. We’re not allowed to have such dreams, are we? It’s not permitted.

 

What you want to say is, Help me Jesus. You want to be able to convert. You want to be able to believe in beautiful things. In true things. In good things. So what’s stopping you?

Why don’t you head off on a faith adventure? A journey of faith, or whatever. Wouldn’t that keep you occupied?

Because all my favourite thinkers moved in the other direction. From faith to unfaith. Atheism was the liberation …

But if you’re born to atheism. Bland ol’, dull ol’ atheism, then you know there has to be something better, right? There has to be more than this. Atheism and God is dead and this world is bland and flat and levelled down and no one gives a fuck about the fury of God or about apocalypse or any of those big, big things. Where churches are filled exclusively with people over seventy. Or nutty evangelical types. It would be a new way of feeling embattled, and you like feeling embattled.

It would be a chance to alienate all your friends. To puzzle and confuse them, which is the sort of thing you’d like. So convert. So get religion. Why not? A spiritual life. Muriel Spark did it. And look at her. And Flannery O’Connor. Cool, cool women. My kind of women. It’d make you more interesting, and it’s good to be interesting. It’d give you more dimensions.

And these are benighted times. You need some help.

You make it sound so good. Why don’t you convert?

Because I’m not as temperamentally religious as you. You’re all about religion.

What are you about?

My girl. And the sweet air from my garden. Through my French doors.

You don’t have a girl. Or French doors. Or a garden.

Faith in a swerve in my life. That’s what I’m about. I’ll round some corner one day and there’ll she’ll be.

Do you think it’ll ever happen?

We could go on holiday to Italy, or something, my girl and I. imagine that. 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 … Anyway, we couldn’t afford it, my girl and I. Or only if the university paid for it. Only if there was a conference there, for which I could claim expenses. Wouldn’t that be something?

She and I could fly out. And she’d get even more suntanned. And wear her big floppy sunhat. And be even more gorgeous. Effortlessly. Chicly. And I would have to delight her. That would be my job: to delight her. I’d become a delighting-my-lover machine. In the Mediterranean!

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. We need to be educated in the arts of life. In fine food and fine wine. Fine dining. Fine life.

So I have to have a lover as well?

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 …

I don’t think I’m particularly good at reading, let alone writing.

No one reads anymore. It doesn’t matter.

 

My girl would teach me the art of a good posture. I’m getting a widows hump, from looking down at my laptop screen, I’m that bent over. My posture’s terrible. My girl would show me how to look up at the sky. Crane my neck upwards …

 

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.

 

The coast is the great clue to life, that’s what I think. Actually, I’ve thought that for a long time. I think that’s what I moved out here, to the coast. I was in search of life. I liked the idea that life might be possible. And why wouldn’t it be? Even for me! Maybe that’s all I need: the idea that life might be possible. That there might be a girl. Some sweet girl. My girl. Who would she sit on the sofa as I worked.

Or garden.

Or garden. Such a beautiful idea.

Beautiful things are, philosopher. She’d be in love with me, 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 …

And sometimes 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.

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. No one else, pretty much. On our figurative island. Me with my work and she with … whatever it is she was doing. Learning parts for the theatre. Practising her guitar. Or just – gardening. She’d be happy, gardening.

We could take tea in the garden – in our imaginary garden. Imagine it, taking tea. Sipping tea. From China cups. Pouring tea from my teapot. In the  garden, in the sun.

It’s always sunny, in my fantasy. Because it’s never sunny here. That’s the problem with the coast ..

 

The days in the sun. The days of the sun. In the northeast England sun. We’d have  car. Imagine that: being able to afford a car. To run a car, We’d drive around the Northumberland countryside. We’d get to know it: the Northumbrian countryside.

We’d have a convertible. We’d drive along, playing great music. Summer music. Motorik stuff. Harmonia stuff. Michael Rother solo stuff. Neu! Stuff. I’d choose the music. She’d be delighted. That would be my job. To entertain her. To find the right music for her. And I’d like that. That would be what I was for: to delight 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. They’re so beautiful, the country roads. Summer with my beloved. My beloved making sense of summer. My beloved and I making use of the summer. Doing together what summer was for …

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?

 

I’d pour our tea. And she’d been out and bought us friands, or something. Some treat. A friand each. On a China plate. And the plate and the tea cups on a very pleasing tray. That we’d found in some antique shop.

Because we’d go shop for things. For our ground floor flat. For our garden. We could go to garden centres, or something. Have you ever been to a garden centre? Or to an antiques shop? It’d be the garden centre and antiques shop phase of my life. Everyone has to have one. The domestic phase.

It’d be just a phase, though. It wouldn’t last forever. These thing don’t. And it would be agony breaking up. It would. So painful. But in the end, it’d be for the good. In the end, it’d be what was best. It would have been a phase, that’s all. An island rising out of the sea of my life. A blessed period. Necessarily finite. It couldn’t last. It would have to have a beginning – and an end.

She’d realise I was too in love with my work, or something. That I was too busy with whatever it is I do. With my writing. With my burgeoning academic career …

Laughter.

Composing my oeuvre.

Laughter.

More likely I’d be sacked. The department would be closed down. I’d be out on my ear, and no way to make a living. No way to afford out lifestyle.

Or maybe she’d tire of the northeast. Maybe there wouldn’t be enough adventures for us. We’d done everything that there was to be done in the  area. Taken every daytrip. Had enough lovely days out. What more would there be to do?

She’d move on. Find another lover, in some other part of the world. London, or somewhere like that. Somewhere more glamorous. And with someone with a bit more money than me. Someone who could take her out and show her things and do things with her. Maybe they’d take city breaks. Fly here and fly there, if we’re still allowed to fly.

And she’d send me an email every now and again. She’d remember my birthday. She’d send me birthday wishes. A tender email here and there. A tender text. An old photo of us in our car – in our convertible. Imagine that, owning a convertible! Wearing head scarves!

That would bring it all back to me, our time together. But I’d have our summers together to draw on, in my winters of the soul. I could treasure the memory. Turn it over in my head. It could warm me, when things get cold, and dark. I’d remember her, her beauty, her youth.

Because youth is part of it. She wouldn’t be all old and crabbed, like me. Young and a little naïve and beautiful. I’d have been her Educator. I’d show her stuff. Teach her stuff. Not the depressing stuff, I’d keep that from her. Not the world-doom stuff. Not the plans-of-the-maniacs stuff.

No: the good stuff. The cultural stuff. That she’d like to know about. I’d be an expert in an art gallery. I’d know my way around a bookshop. She’d like that, for a  while. She’d be impressed, for a while. But the life of an academic wouldn’t really be for her. The intellectual life wouldn’t be her life. So the relationship would have to end, in the end. It would be a phase for me, just as it was a phase for her.

So would you end up with an academic?

Maybe. Possibly. Later on. Much later on. I’d shack up with some fellow academic. It’d be a relationship of convenience. Pure expediency. Someone with whom I had something in common. Someone with whom I wanted to present a united front. It wouldn’t necessarily be sexual. I like the young, not the old. I wouldn’t be attracted to someone like me. That wouldn’t be what I was looking for.

But in the end, out of loneliness. Maybe. Someone to keep cats with. Two cats. Someone to share a bed with, maybe. But would I really want to share a bed? All dried up. And dull. But I’d have my memories of my youthful love affair.

You have all planned out.

I do, don’t I. So planned out that it doesn’t actually have to happen. She doesn’t have to exist, and I don’t have to get a car, and we won’t have our Duke Of Burgundy life, our island. We won’t take in the garden – there won’t even be a garden. Nor French doors. And not even a sofa for her to sit on.

And I’ll be just fine. And I’ll just grow older and older, and die someday. And that’s it. That’ll be a life. And it’s all I need. Because I have this job, right? We have our jobs. We were given this chance, which is all we ever wanted.

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.