Work in Progress

Through the drunken looking glass. Through the drunken mirror. Into the drunken inverted world.

 

Drunkenly bewildered. But bewilderment is understanding, on another plane. Drunkenly lost. But loss is also finding, on another plane. Drunken rambling. But rambling is always precision, on another plane. Drunken obscenities. But obscenities are the sweetest poetry on another plane. Drunken lamentation. But our laments are celebrations, on another plane. Drunken despair. But despair is joy, on another plane. Drunken hopelessness. But hopelessness is hope itself, on another plane. Drunken hatred. But hatred is also love on a higher plane.

 

What looks like our self-destruction is really self-preservation. What looks like sinking is really elevation. What looks like collapse is really rising. What looks like self-mutilation is a way of putting ourselves back together. What looks like degeneracy is a regeneration …

 

In another dimension, we’re sober. We’re upstanding. We ‘re the most lucid people you’ve ever met. In another dimension, it all makes sense, just as nothing makes sense here.

 

Stop seeing alcoholism as a disease. It’s a blessing. It’s an exit route. It’s the only way out. It’s an escape route. It’s a higher Sobriety – much higher.

 

Hamlet is my drunken name.

Macbeth is mine.

Diogenes is mine, Just call me the Dog.

My name is Bacchae.

That’s a plural.

 

We’re the sons and daughters of alcoholics. Generations of them. Of died-young drunkards. Of drinking-themselves-to-death drunkards.

Somehow they reproduced. Somehow they gave birth to children. Who could of course, only become alcoholics in turn.

 

Foetal alcohol syndrome: we can blame everything on that. We were ruined by drink. Born ruined! And now we’ll complete the ruination. We’ll see it through to the end. To the end of the night!

 

Drunkard … a lovely word. What’s the etymology of drunkard?

 

Really our drunkenness is an attunement. To how things are. Really, it’s a receptivity. Really, our drunkenness is a satellite dish, turned to receive signals from the sky.

 

We’re serious drinkers. Our seriousness lies in our drinking. In the way we drink. In the seriousness of our drinking. In the concentratedness of our drinking. In its focus.

There is only drinking. There’s nothing but drinking. People – all people – are only more or less drunk. Too drunk, or not drunk enough.

 

Our drunken lives. Our more or less drunken lives.

Our defeat – is cosmic. Our rout …

 

Our enemy: the cosmos.

The perpetual victor: the cosmos.

 

The self-consciousness of drunkenness. Drunkenness learns to speak. Drunkenness sings. And of itself.

Drunken hymns to drunkenness. Drunkenness, singing of drunkenness. There’s nothing better.

Great drunken hymns to be sung. Drunken threnodies. Drunken paens.

 

Drunken celebrations. That there can still be drunkenness. That drunkenness is allowed. That drunkenness Is permissible – even now.

 

What has drunkenness taught us? What are its lessons? Surely there’s something we’ve learned from all these years of drunkenness?

But it’s not about results. Drunkenness is study. Study without result …

 

We’ve been drinking for days now.

This is our drunken residency. This is our drunken art practice. We’ll be drunk permanently! From now on! From here to eternity!

 

Drunken hope is more ardent than sober hope. Drunken laughter is deeper than sober laughter. Drunken hatred is more intense than sober hatred.

 

We’re recovering. From a long period of sobriety. From a too-long period of not-drinking. They’re always too long: periods of not drinking.

 

There are things we understand when we’re drunk. Things that come to us when we’re drunk. We’re inspired when we’re drunk.  

What if we’re supposed to think this is the apocalypse? What if that’s the true apocalypse: that we’re supposed to think it’s the apocalypse? What if we’re actually going to be okay?

 

We thought the apocalypse frees us from the world, this world. We thought the apocalypse would shatter open the world. Destroy the world. But really, the apocalypse is a technique of this world, a ruse of this world. It’s how they keep their world going.

 

I’ve spent my whole life waiting for the world to collapse. And it doesn’t collapse.

Yes, but it’s going to collapse.

I don’t make any long term plans, nothing. I don’t think about the future, because I don’t believe there’s going to be a future.

So there’s no future?

There’s a future of no future. Just loads of crises. Just World War Three and so on.

The collapse, in other words.

*We have to free ourselves from addiction to the end. From apocalyptic fantasies.

That’s going to be difficult. I’m largely apocalyptic fantasies.

It’s a swizz – don’t you see? We’re supposed to think like this, believe like this. It’s what replaces religion. It just becomes faith in some contentless end. Faith in some explosion.

 

We have apocalyptic temperaments. Or at least I do. It’s what we’ve been trained for. From birth. We’ve been brought up to basically panic – permanently To live in a perpetual state of emergency.

 

They want us panicked. They want us trembling in fear.

Who’s they?

The powers that shouldn’t be, right? We have to find a way to live. It’s not just about thought. It’s about – just trying to survive. About trying to find our way out of depression.

I don’t think I’m depressed.

Sure you’re depressed. You’re depressed and I’m depressed. It’s a lively depression, but it’s a depression. We talk about apocalypse all the time.

That’s a sign of life!

That’s a sign of death!

The university’s laughing at itself by employing us. The humanities. It’s a deliberate parody. Deliberate self-sabotage.

We’re a joke the university is playing on itself. In its dying days. At the end of everything.

It’s a last gasp. A last laughing gasp. Of the entire university. A last laugh of the humanities at the humanities, in scorn for the humanities, which is to say, for itself, for themselves.

At the end! At the very end! In parody of a proper end!

 

We’re not even philosophers. We’re not even anything. We don’t have an idea in our heads. Except other people’s ideas. Except the thoughts of others, which we only parrot and mimic.

Our thought: borrowed. Our so-called intellectual lives: borrowed. And not even borrowed well.

 

We don’t deserve this.  But then we don’t deserve anything. And yet here we are, teaching! Yet here we are …

Why us? It’s a torment. It’s a torture … Of the university! Of the humanities! Of philosophy! And a self-torture of the university. A masochism of the humanities. Philosophy has come to hate itself.

Surely someone must enjoying it. The demiurge, maybe. The Antichrist, perhaps.

 

A deliberate parody. Not just nihilism, but nihilism doubled up. Nihilism laughing at itself. Laughing at itself for being nihilism.

We can only guess at how stupid we are. Because we don’t know it in our depths, our stupidity. We don’t feel its complete saturation. The way that it’s left no part of us alone. The way that we’re through-and-through stupid. That we’re soaking with stupidity. We don’t know that – and we couldn’t. We couldn’t bear it. No one could.

We believe that there’s a little part of us that’s not stupid. We have to believe it. Some little salvific part. Some scrap of us that isn’t lost, isn’t damned, isn’t cursed. Some small part of us in which our stupidity knows itself. In which stupidity is self-aware. And ashamed.

We think that’s what redeems us. We think that it’s what makes us redeemable. When, in truth, we’re irredeemable. When, in actual fact, we can have no notion of the depths of our stupidity. Of its profundities. Because to know it, truly know, would mean we were intelligent enough not to be stupid.

That’s some paradox. So how do you know that we’re not intelligent enough to grasp our stupidity.

I’m inferring it, that’s all. It’s like negative theology. It’s apophantic. We can only know our stupidity by what it is not.

By what stupidity is not? It’s not intelligent, is it? So do we know our stupidity through our intelligence?

Through an intelligence we cannot reach. That isn’t ours.  Look, we can’t know the depths of our stupidity. The sublime depths.

Are they sublime?

They would be if we knew them. Sublimely stupid – only we can’t appreciate it. We don’t know it.

We’re just left with our stupidity. It’s the echoing vault of our stupidity. Where stupidity says stupid things. Where stupidity tries to take the measure of itself, stupidly. But only fails to do exactly that: take the measure of itself.

 

God, you guys and your stupidity talk. You revel in it.

Of course we revel in it! What else have we got? We’re trying to … plumb its depths. Discover what it is. And, who knows, draw something up from its depths. The equivalent of some sea-monster.

A stupidity monster: imagine.

 

Stupidity, trying to sound its depths. Failing to sound its depths. Stupidity, pondering its own abyss. Failing to ponder its own abyss.

 

Our failure – our real failure: that’s what we need to remember. It’s almost worse that we’ve succeeded – so-called succeeded. That we pass as successes. That we are allowed to think of ourselves as successful.

Phew, we say to ourselves, wiping off the dirt. Phew: we made it. We crossed over. We got to the other side. Phew!

 

What makes us think that we’re especially stupid? Isn’t that a kind of hubris? I mean, why should we suppose that here’s something special about our stupidity? Something that sets it apart.

 

Are we approaching the midnight of our stupidity, do you think?

Perhaps.

After midnight, it grows brighter.

But you have to go through the hours of the dog and wolf first, remember.

 

The theology of stupidity. Because it’s vaster than philosophy. You have to talk about God when you talk about stupidity. Stupidity has everything to do with God.

 

We luxuriate in our stupidity, that’s the thing. We wallow in our stupidity, like hippos.

Stupidity’s our milieu, our mud, our stuff, what we’re made of.

 

Before the beginning, there was stupidity. And after the end, there will be stupidity again. The period of non-stupidity is but brief. The arc will rise and fall again.

 

We get up in stupidity and go to sleep in stupidity. The rest – our non-stupidity – is fleeting.

 

Our stupidity display, like the courtship display of birds of paradise. Our stupidity dance. But who are we trying to seduce? Spreading stupidity’s peacock feathers … But there’s no one there to see.

If only we had an audience. If only there were someone to laugh at us. That might justify it. But we’re amusing no one, not even ourselves.

 

Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.

How clever.

Stupidity can’t be clever

But there’s a cunning of stupidity. There are ruses of stupidity. Trying to pass itself off as … as what? Non-stupidity.

 

At least we’re amused by our stupidity. At least it diverts us.

From what?

From stupidity of course.

Enough! Basta! I can’t stand this stupidity talk! Don’t you ever have enough of it?

 

Outdoing ourselves in stupidity. In our variations on stupidity. In our strange joy at stupidity.

Stupidity amuses itself. Stupidity, laughing at itself. Quite comfortable with its stupidity. And isn’t that the problem: that we’ve become comfortable with our own stupidity?

Drunkenly contemplating it, our stupidity. Drunkenly pleased with it and pleased with ourselves for noticing it.

This is how we entertain ourselves. This is how stupidity entertains itself, passes the hours.

Amazing that we can just entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour. We must be really stupid …

 

All our education. The cost of our education. The money we’ve wasted on our education … The money that was wasted on our scholarships … Just so that we could sit around and talk about our stupidity.

 

The ache of our stupidity. The fact that it wants to be something else.

I don’t believe that. What would we talk about, if we weren’t stupid?

We wouldn’t need to talk, that’s the thing.

Stupidity is what we do. Stupidity is what holds us together. The twists and turns of our stupidity keep us alive.

 

Stupidity explosions, deep underground. Like earthquakes. Their epicentre, buried.

Stupidity bombs, dropping from the sky. Storms of stupidity, the sky darkening.

A greater stupidity. God’s stupidity, if there can be such a thing.

A roaring stupidity. An angry stupidity. Stupidity isn’t always meek. It isn’t always servile. Stupidity can roar. Can shout. Stupidity has a tempers.

And there can be peaceful stupidity, too. Sweet stupidity, lying on its back, looking up at the sky. Quiet stupidity, lying there in the water, keeping itself afloat.

There was a time when all the philosophers were absurdly, epochally despairing. When they wrote of the uttermost of world disgust and the era of perfect culpability and that the world was only worthy of being destroyed.

We’ve lost the sense of the vastness of the horror. Of the infinite spaces that terrify. Of the fact that the stars have fallen. That we live in destitute times.

Where’s good old philosophical despair? They don’t do it like they used to.

We’re where we shouldn’t be. Out beyond. Farther. We crossed some invisible line. Some border.

And where are we?

Lost forever in the darkness.

 

This isn’t real. These aren’t our stars. These aren’t real stars. I don’t believe in the sky.

How can you not believe in the sky?

I don’t believe in the night. I don’t believe in the earth. I don’t believe that this is the real world. It doesn’t feel real to me. And I don’t feel real. And you don’t feel real.

Are these our words?

These aren’t our words. This isn’t our time. None of this is real at all.

Public lecture.

Retired worthies, looking for some intellectual stimulation. Looking to keep well informed. Looking to sate their curiosity. Looking to broaden their horizons. Looking to keep their minds active. Looking to learn, to find our new things. From the various branches of knowledge. From the sciences! From the humanities! From the arts!

White haired retirees. In couples. They’ve actually stayed married. They actually kept together. Pair-bonded for life. Probably got married when they were twenty-two, or something. Bought a house. Brought up children on a single income. Ran a car or two. Took foreign holidays. Paid off their mortgage by middle age.

They’re probably comfortably off. They’re probably supporting their adult children. Buying them flats after their divorces. Paying for home improvement. Private school fees for their grandchildren. Injections of cash! Keeping the economy going!

All the while improving themselves. All the while attending University of the Third Age events. All the while learning new languages. Taking up new hobbies. Rambling. Canoeing. God knows! Taking city breaks. Far-flung holidays. Staving off dementia.

 

They weren’t squeezed, like we are. They were never up against it. What did they have to fear?

Nuclear war.

True.

But at least the prospect of nuclear war was out in the open. At least it was discussed, feared. At least there was CND. At least there was a mass movements against nuclear weapons.  

It wasn’t all movement in darkness, as it is now. It wasn’t all secret plants for NGOs to take over the world. It wasn’t all hidden machinations of stakeholder capitalism. It wasn’t all cloak and dagger stuff. Conspiracy stuff, hidden by paid-for media, by corrupt politicians, by complicit institutions.

 

Should we tell them what’s really going on? Could they take it? Would they believe it? It might explode their heads.

You need to be of a certain temperament to withstand the truth. You have to be attuned in a certain way. You can’t be too settled in the world. Can’t be too content. Can’t have too much to lose.

The psychic adjustment it takes … The shift in view … You have to be ruined, partly. You have to be broken. Rebuilt. And you have to stand to be rebuilt.

Only people who know despair. Who are saturated in despair. Pickled in it and perhaps curdled in it. Only those whose veins run with despair. Who are nothing other than despair. Who are certain that they will die in prison. Only people like us can face what’s going on.

 

All these intellectually curious people. All these open-minded generalists. Interested in everything. Curious about things to be found out. Look at them!

They’re intelligent, sure. They went to the good universities, at a time when they were actually good. They’re well trained.

They think of themselves as reasonable. As receptive. As intelligent. As willing to consider all sides of an argument. To consider the evident.

But they trust the system, fundamentally. They’re obedient, fundamentally. They think the path to knowledge is about being informed and having a good attitude and listening to the right authorities.

When we know that there are no right authorities. When we know that there’s only corruption. Only the machinations of power. Only politics, at every level.  

 

How could they find out? How could they bear it?

It would need a great awakening. A change of heart. A turn. A conversion. Their souls would have to be changed in its entirety.

Is that what happened to us? No, because we were already there. We were already disgusted. We’d been turned – at birth. Before birth. We were born converted. Born destroyed. We didn’t expect anything else.

No faith in the great institutions. No faith in the university. No faith in the media. No faith in politics – God knows! In any politics. In left or right.  

We had no hopes to be dashed. We remained undisappointed because we didn’t expected anything else. We sensed the Programme, before we knew it. We’d intuited the Plan in advance. We’d felt it – the coming human cull. The work of the Global New Order.

And everything we’ve learnt, everything we’ve studied, has only confirmed it. Has only anticipated what’s happening around us now. The great fakery. The great silencing. The Lies, larger than anything. We saw through it all.

 

They have faith in the world, as we don’t.

They’re sampling culture. They’re all for intelligent debate. Radio 4 listeners. They go to watch string quartets. Lunchtime concerts. Talks on all kinds of subject. They’re retired. Intellectually curious. University of the Third Age types. Not conspiracists. Not desperate.

They’re for the right causes. Against the wrong ones.

 

They’ve never been despised, as we’ve been. Never hated. Never reviled. Never condemned. They’re not unwholesome, like us. Dubious, like us. Twisted, like we are. But thank God for our twists, for our turns! Thank goodness for what allows us to think! The power of suspicion. Of distrust. The certainty of disaster.

They haven’t had to live against the world. Their worldview’s confirmed in their newspapers (they still read newspapers.) By the radio (they still listen to Radio 4.) By their favourite politicians (left or right, it doesn’t matter.) They still vote, for God’s sake.

They’re reasonable – and view the world as reasonable. They still think the world’s going in the Right Direction. That things are going as they Should Do, more or less. That there’s a Solution to everything. That If we just manage to Work Together. In Good Faith!

They think it’s Going to be Alright. That Humpty, in the end, can be put back together again. They don’t even question it, their sense that it’s going to be Alright. They don’t even pose it to themselves, their sense that It’s Going to be Alright.

And what if they understood that it’s not going to be alright? What if they broached it to themselves that it’s definitely not going to be alright? That we’ve invisible passed some boundary, some limit. That we’ve crossed some borderline. That this isn’t the old world, with its old faith, its old certainties.

Don't hey see that we've left history behind? That these are Biblical times? That only the language of the Book of Revelations is appropriate now. Apocalyptic language. The language of the eschaton, of the End? What if they came to see that our only hope can be Messianic hope? Can only be apocalyptic hope.

A hope in what arrives through the catastrophe and by means of the catastrophe. A hope in the darkness, that is only darkness. A hope that the world as we know it is brought to an end. A hope for the end of this world.

 

The intellectual types of Newcastle. Professional types. Doctors and the like. Lawyers and the like. Here they are. The intellectually able. The intellectually curious.

People of faith. Not in God. But in Expertise. In Knowledge. In Science. In Reason.

The good conscience of the world: that’s how they see themselves. Good global citizens. Doing the right thing. Fair minded. With a sense of fair play. Right thinkers. Left leaning. Comers of age in the ‘60s. Progressives, broadly. The Old Left, some of them. Who did well out of life. Who’ve lived worthwhile lives. Who have children! Grandchildren!

They know nothing of Disgust. They’re not on first name terms with Horror. With Derangement. They can’t see it. They can’t feel it. They don’t tremble with dread.

Why has it fallen to us to understand evil? Why is it only our kind who can understand evil? Why is it only people like us who can sense evil? who can see evil? What’s wrong with us? What’s right with us? Who chose us? And what are we to do, now that we’re chosen? What’s our role?

A hub for innovation … An entirely new model for sustainable living … For a new future … Changing how the world does business … Easing the way for entrepreneurial innovation … Remaking the way we look after nature and our planet … A prototype for a better future, a future for all.

Is this what it’s going to be like: the future? Like this?

 

These places. So neutral. So anywhere. All the buildings. so gargantuan. All these buildings. I hate them. I hate all this. Because it isn’t too offensive. Because it isn’t too obviously dreadful.

*Sheets of water over concrete. Slow rivulets down concrete runs.

These aren’t real rivers. These are engineered rivers.

Flowing water’s supposed to be calming.

Sure – it’s supposed to calm us, the populace. It’s supposed to drive revolutionary thoughts from our head. We’re supposed to feel soothed …

Fucking water. I thought I could depend on water. I thought it’d do its own thing, like in Tarkovsky films. Raining inside, and the like. I thought water was anarchic. Turns out water’s a traitor. Water’s a tart. Water just does whatever it’s told. I’m never going to drink again. Or bathe again. Or anything. Is there a god of water?

Poseidon.

Yeah, well, fuck Poseidon. Fuck you, Poseidon.

 

Dutch courage. Drinking from the bottle. Throwing the bottle at a building. Smashing it.

They’re watching you, idiot. They’ll know you did that. It’s surveillance 247. You’ll lose points from your social credit score. You’ve done yourself reputational damage.

You’re paranoid.

They’re watching us now. Not them, but the algorithms. They’re listening for keywords and patterns in our speech.

Come on, they don’t care about us. We’re already contained. They already have us figured out. We’re a type, a kind to them. It’s just a question of what kind of corral they want to drive us into. Which is what the Organisational Management move is all about.

We’re cowed. Docile. Obedient. They gave us these jobs and we’re grateful. We’re grateful for everything. To have a chance to teach! To have got a job at all. To make our pathetic way. To not be totally destitute. Not to be completely broke, like everyone else. To actually be able to make our debt repayments.

 

We won’t rebel. We’re just happy to have our jobs. We’re just absurdly grateful for our jobs. Grateful to teach indifferent students. Grateful to hole up in our offices, doing our so-called work. Grateful to have a few years … Grateful to pay off our debts … grateful to pretend we’re philosophers, or whatever. God knows! Grateful to be left alone. To be let alone!

 

So we’re just going to acquiesce. We’re just going to give up.

Of course we’re giving up! What have we ever done but give up! We rebel spiritually, not actually. Because we know the futility of rebellion. We resist … mentally. Internally. We resist by being together. By being what we are together. That’s our resistance. By being this.