Evil’s vast. And evil’s sublime. And evil’s even dazzling, right? It’s like the Northern Lights. It’s like this sky. False things can be beautiful, right? Satan’s supposed to be beautiful, right?
It’s poison. It’s false. You can taste the falseness.
What does falseness taste like?
You know. This.
We’ve got used to it: the falseness. The lies. Coming out of our own mouths.
We have to descend. Stay low. That’s the only way we’ll get anywhere. We have to speak from these depths. Sing out from this … abjection.
There’s further to go. Further down the spiral. We haven’t reached bottom yet.
But even now, things are becoming clear. The lineaments. The battlelines. It’s only now that we get a sense of their Design. Of their Plans.
This is what it’s like to live in the wrong timeline.
How do we get to the right one?
We don’t. We’re stuck here … This is a separate universe, don’t you see? A gone-wrong universe. A fucked up one. This is the one in which Organisational Management’s, like, taken over. This is the one where this campus exists.
Doesn’t it exist in other timelines?
It’s still the Newcastle Brown brewery, in other timelines. They still make Newcastle Brown in the city, in other timelines. They’re not boring to the centre of the earth in search of energy, in the other timelines. They’ve not laid fancy paving stones over the earth …
This whole universe is suffering. It’s howling out. It knows that it should exist and that we shouldn’t exist – not like this.
This whole universe knows it should not be. The sky. The stars – they know it. The earth underneath all this knows it too.
It’s groaning. I can hear it.
This is a branched-off universe. A split-off universe.
The universe says, help me. As we say, help me. What it wants is to be put out of its misery. And so do we: put out of this misery. So that this universe can just shut down and the real one continue.
What’s it like in the real universe?
There’s no Organisational Management Campus. Just think of that.
This is the universe in which Gnosticism is actually true.
I thought Gnosticism was all about the demi urge and alien gods and beings strangers in a strange land, not about Organisational Management campuses.
Show what you know, fuck-o.
This universe is like a planet spinning off into darkness. Unchained from the sun. Lost from all orbits. Off it goes. Further into the darkness.
This is where we’re made to lie. Where there are nothing but lies, and all you can do is lie. As soon as you open your mouth.
Don’t you want to say of yourself: I did a good thing? Don’t you want to do something good. Something salvific? Don’t you want to save someone?
Save who?
Don’t you want to be able to say, I did a good thing?
What good thing? What’s good anyway?
Something you couldn’t be confused about. Something filled with light. That was what it was and nothing else. Something simple – vast and simple. That could not be confused for anything else.
Do you believe in that: goodness? Do you believe that there’s actually something you could Do, capital D? To, like, correct things. To put things right. Because things aren’t what they’re supposed to be.
What if there’s no putting right? What if it’s not going to get any better?
Are we melancholics?
Fuck that. Melancholy only for people in literary history swanning around Europe. I mean, we’re not Rainer Maria Rilke, are we? We’re not all fin de fucking siècle.
This bit of the coast is better. It’s a working place. A real place. It does real trade. It’s authentic. And it doesn’t actually have that end of the world feel. It’s actually bustling. Things happen here – real things. It isn’t unbearably middle class.
Whelks are overrated. They’re too chewy. And the mussels are too vinegary.
Do whelks cure hangovers?
Don’t keep talking about your hangover. I’m tired of your hangover.
Look at the sea, the disgusting sea.
Do you really think it’s disgusting?
The main point is that we shouldn’t be hypnotised by it, nature. We shouldn’t fall in love with its natural rhythms. We shouldn’t be seduced.
Is that what Susan Taubes says?
That’s what I say. It’s the basic Jewish Modernist position.
We could sail off somewhere. Get a ferry from Tyne Dock. And where would we go?
To Amsterdam.
Have you ever been to Amsterdam?
I can’t believe in Amsterdam. There is no Amsterdam.
Where do the ferries go then?
They fall off the edge of the world.
What, one after another? You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you? So two ferries fall off the edge of the world every day?
I have no interest in anyone or anything.
In this universe?
In any universe.
Wow, that’s categorical.
By the new flats.
Disgusting buildings.
Of course they’re disgusting. Of course they’re appalling. Of course we’d rather kill ourselves than live there. Of course they have to ruin everything. Of course that’s all they do – ruin things and destroy things. Of course it’d be better for it all to be destroyed.
I feel disgust too, you know.
I feel more disgusted by the world than you. I can guarantee it.
Is it a competition?
I’m more appalled. More affronted. I feel more horror. I feel more general irritation. I feel more plain annoyance. I’m better at it than you, Shiva.
Okay, Miss Apocalypse.
Work in Progress 