Work in Progress

We want to drink ourselves into the void. We want to think the void’s drunken thoughts. We want to think the thoughts the void would think.

Because drinking is the path to the fucking void. Because drinking’s what brings you closest to the void. When you stop struggling. Stop thrashing about. Stop resisting. When you can let the void carry you away …

 

The void: that’s what we’re drinking towards. That’s where we’re heading. At full fucking speed. We’re accelerating into NOWHERE. Which is okay because we like nowhere. We want to be nowhere.

 

See we can only hang out with people exactly like us. Which would be a problem if we didn’t have each other.

We bring it out in each other.

We recognise it in each other. We’re fellow nihilists. Fellow knowers of the void.

Anyway, we can’t drink ourselves to death yet. I mean, if we did now, there’d be no one to say,  They showed such promise. What they could have been, were it not for their fatal flaw. There’d be no one to say, What a loss. What a wasted talent. What they could have been. What potential.

No one’s trying to snatch the pint glass from our lips. No one’s decided to stage an intervention. No one’s saying, Don’t you think you’ve had too much? 

Destiny still regards us as randomers. As random fuckheads. Not as, like, philosophy-princes in waiting, or anything. We haven’t been abroad as serious players. As philosophical contenders. No one’s expecting anything of us.

 

There’s nothing tragic about mediocrity, that’s the thing. We’re not mad, or even half mad. We’re not alcoholics, or even half-alcoholics. The instinct of self-preservation’s too strong in us.

Mediocrity’s not at war with itself, like genius. Mediocrity doesn’t find life unbearable, like genius. Mediocrity’s happy to cruise on, self-satisfied. Mediocrity’s happy enough with itself as it is.

Which is why our professed despair is only ever mediocre despair. Why we’ve never been really on our knees. Never utterly desperate. Never praying to be anything other than we are.

 

We’re not actually mad, that’s the thing. We show no real signs of madness. Madness isn’t driving us to brilliance. We’re not fundamentally imbalanced. There’s not some basic chemical error in our makeup. We’re sane – terribly sane! Boringly sane! Mediocrely sane!

There’s no Friedrich Hölderlin amongst us. There’s no Antonin Artaud. There’s no Anne Sexton, no Sylvia Plath. And we’re not perturbed about that! We don’t mind about that!

We read the wild stuff, but we’re not wild. We comment on the mad stuff, but we’re not mad. There’s not a flame we don’t want to dampen. There’s not a fire we aren’t drawn to smother.

Sure, you’ll hear intense talk from us. You’ll bear burning the world down talk. You’ll hear revolutionary talk. Turning the world upside down talk. You’ll ever hear desperation talk. To think, we even specialise in that: desperation talk.

But we’re unlearning intensity, even as we speak. We’re forgetting desperation. We have jobs. We’re not poor. We’re have places to live. We’re not couch surfing. We don’t burn with resentment anymore. There’s nothing left of late adolescent zeal. Of excluded-from-the-world hatred.

God was drunk when he made us. He’s drunk as he loves us. And we’re drunk when we turn to him. When we pray. Drunken prayers are the most sincere prayers.

God loves us most when we bow our drunken heads. When we mutter drunken prayers. Slurred prayers. The prayers of staggerers. 

 

We want to hear a drunken sermon. Bothering Cicero for a drunken sermon. Read it out: that stuff from Paul! About the fucking principalities!

WE WANT PAUL! WE WANT PAUL!

Cicero, reading: … For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places … take unto you the whole armour of God …

Yeah, fucking A! Now hit us with a Psalm. Hit us with no. 23!

NUMBER 23! NUMBER 23!

 

Tell us about God, Cicero! Fucking testify! Tell us the most beautiful God-stories! We want to hear about angels! About Adam! About the Son of fucking Man!

Tell us the most beautiful things Jesus did. How he overturned the tables! How he chased the moneylenders from the temples! Tell us how he told those parables! How he was crucified – fucking crucified! How he was fucking born again! Tell us about the fucking Resurrection! How he rolled away the fucking stone!

 

Tonight, the whole world is drunk. Tonight, everyone and everything is drunk. Tonight, we’re drunk in the world-drunkenness. And drunken prayers are the only ones God hears.

Faith – drunken faith.

Drinking, waiting for the revelation. Because it’s there, ahead of us, on the other side of our drunken nights. It’s there, apocalyptic, at the end of our nights. And that’s what we’re waiting for. That’s what we Want, capital W. We know it. We taste it. It’s in the air – the drunken air. It’s what we want to draw closer.

Certainty. Truth. The truth you reach by way of drinking. The truth that makes you drink, that draws you to it. Let it come: the drunken truth. Let it be close: our drunken certainty.

 

We drink – and reach by drinking. We drink and reach beyond this terrible world.

Until the absence of love becomes our loving itself. Until our loss becomes what we’ve found.

We know how wretched we are. And we know that God loves wretches – even us.

Which is why we become solemn in our drinking. Which is why we become Serious – grandly serious. Which is why we look upwards, silently, expectantly …

This is our journey to the end of night. This is our night voyage. This is our night ride to sunset.

Soon, it will come. Soon, the messiah will come – the messiah of drinking. Soon, each of us will become the messiah, saving the world in our own way.

We’re not lost, after all. Or our lostness was a way of seeking. Of finding.

We have to watch over our nights of drinking. Less they slip into complacency. Less they fall away into pubism.

Drinking mustn’t be consolation. Mustn’t allow our reconciliation to the way things are.

The pub is not a place for petty moanings. For gossip. For he said this or she said that. And I said. There’s to be no huddling together to share our problems. No crying into our beer. No whisky lamentation about the state of our lives.

This is not a retreat into the pub, but an escape through it. This is the pub as launchpad. As space capsule.

We don’t want to live low. We don’t want to sink. We’re looking to flare upwards. To burn up. If it’s oblivion we want, it’s oblivion in flames.

No pubism. No pub mediocrity. We’re mediocre in life, God knows. There’s mediocrity everywhere – God knows. But in the pub …

We’re exploring. This is a voyage, right here at our table. Right here, with our beer mats. With our pints.

We’re looking to bestir ourselves. To snatch a little transcendence from the day. We trying not to be buried with our defeats. We want to roll away our stones. We want to be resurrected. We want a last chance, in the last hours before closing time,  to redeem our day …

Jilly’s. After hours.

The last place like this in the city.

Where everybody knows your name – and hates it.

Look, Robot’s taking his trousers off.

I like being in a pub that let you do that.

And Sonny and Ganymede are singing a duet.

Roy Orbison’s Crying. Nice.

Bartleby, crying and crying on the sofa.

Jezebel, tucking Flint up to sleep on another sofa.

Everyone doing shots together. Even the barman.

Sven, lamenting his penile cancer. Svenessa, lamenting her vaginal cancer.

These are our people. Drunken people.

Inbred people, by the looks of it.

This is the best night of our lives, like every night here.

Drinking.

The world is disgusting, we know that. But today, it’s more than usually disgusting …

We’re here to bring ourselves back from the dead … Here to bring ourselves back from the brink or take ourselves to the brink, one of the two.

Drink is the answer, we agree. Or is it the question? Or is drink the question and the answer – both at once?

Don’t try and be clever.

Agreement: the disaster’s deepening. Let’s drink to forget that!

Agreement: there’s nothing in our lives. Let’s drink to forget that, too!

Drinking to forget. What we learnt today. Our defeats today. How we fucked up again today. How we screwed our lives up today.

Drinking for oblivion. To forget our mistakes! Our blunderings! Drinking to forget the whole Organisation Management thing! The whole teaching business ethics thing!

But we drink to discover, too. There’s an opening that we have to refind, drunkenly … gropingly. A sense of the possible. A sense of youth: that we can recover our youths. That we can return to youth again.

We want to be innocent again – drunkenly innocent. We want to be young again, for a night. We want to lift our heads, for a night. We want to look up into the sky, for the night. Upwards! At the sky, rushing. At the clouds rushing through the night.

Ours is a drinking search. A search through drinking. That needs drinking. Ours is a quest that begins with drinking, and perhaps ends with it, too. Whose means are drinking …

We’re looking for disorientation in thought. For confusion in thought. Error is necessary. Wanderings off the path – far from the path. Staggerings. Stumblings.

Free fall’s necessary. To fall, fall through the night. Falling, but dreaming of an end to our falling. For something we could be smashed against. For our destruction to coincide with our salvation: one and the same.

If only we could coincide with ourselves – in death. Be present to ourselves – in death. Now – we’d say to ourselves, and be dead. Here – we’d say to ourselves, at the moment of our deaths.

But for now: falling. Through all the time there is. And isn’t that why we drink: to accelerate the fall? To feel time whistling by our ears …

Whitley Sands.

Aren’t you worried you’ll be seen? I ask.

Maybe I’d like to be seen, Priya says. With my … young … lover.

Walking.

It’s like there’s some absolute divide between us and everyone else, Priya says. Because we’re … infatuated or whatever it is. Because we’re living more intensely. Romance makes you feel exalted, doesn’t it? It makes you high. You feel like some secret aristocrat who knows the secret of everything …

Lovers are smug, I say.  They’re always kinda in love with themselves. With their love.

You always have to put a downer on everything, Priya says.

It’s like nature’s thrown us a treat and we’re supposed to be grateful, I say. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

What machine? Priya asks.

The natural machine, I say. The machine of nature. Romance is 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? … See, nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from romantic love …

So where should we seek it? Priya asks.

In being against nature, I say. Against everything. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … It’s all it’s supposed to be. That’s the very sane madness of lovers. Our rational irrationality. Our law-abiding prohibition. To which we totally succumb …

But it is an exception, Priya says. It’s like a reprieve. It’s like we’ve been let off from ordinary life. The usual rules don’t apply, right?

Sure, it’s like a reprieve, I say. It’s like we’re exempt.

God, you’re so meta, Priya says. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

Can you? I ask.

This is our … secret kingdom, Priya says. How we are together. How we hang out.

The way we fuck, even … Something … new has come into the world. Don’t you feel that?

It doesn’t matter what we feel, I say.

Look around you, Priya says. The sky’s doing its sky thing, the sea’s doing its sea thing. And we’re supposed to be doing our lovers on the beach thing. Just being happy, or whatever. And instead, we have to be meta. Have to talk about life instead of living it. We have to ask our questions.

It just means we’re conscious, I say. We’re awake.

It means we’re detached and in denial, Priya says.

Maybe it’s natural for think we can be against nature, Priya says. Maybe that’s human hubris.

What we are is a capacity to negate nature, I say. To say no – a great no to it all.

So what are we doing, walking on the beach hand in hand? Priya says.

Being smug, I say.

My flat.

You have an optimistic and trusting nose, Priya says.

How can you tell? I ask. What have noses got to do with anything?

You can see everything in the nose, Priya says. And the chin. And in the shape of the eyes. And you have such kind fingers, though your thumb looks rather stubborn.

Is this how lovers talk? I ask.

I really wouldn’t recall, Priya says.

What about with your husband? I ask.

Oh that was years ago, Priya says. I’m not sure I want to remember.

Was there a honeymoon period? I ask.

There’s always a honeymoon period, Priya says. Then there was a humdrum period. Then there was a blue period – a fifteen-years-together-and-what-for? period.

And what period are you in now? I ask.

The illicit period, Priya says.

Silence.

I’m the sort of person you ought to loathe, philosopher, Priya says. So why don’t you? You’ve invited the enemy in. You’re betraying yourself. And your people. And philosophy. And everything.

Maybe it’s my revenge, I say.

On what? On organisational management? Priya asks. Because I’m the head of department’s wife … I see it … This is your way of lobbing a grenade into the enemy camp … Well, maybe.

He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, your husband, I say. I like way he dresses – his three piece suit. It gives him some distinction. Is that why you went for him?

The question is why I went for you, Priya says.

I suppose you’ve had a series of lovers, I say. I suppose he likes it.

No, actually, Priya says. Nothing like that.

And his northern accent, I say. And his easy going manner. He seems very affable.

He is affable, Priya says. He’s really very nice.

And there’s the management style of your husband, I say. The organisational management style …

My husband thought it was a good idea, bringing philosophy into organisation management …, Priya says. Exploring synergies.

And you can say that with a straight face? I say. You can repeat those things? Anyway, they made him do it.

They did make him do it, Priya says. But he has a good attitude, unlike you. I know you’re sneering.

Where are you going to tell him you were this afternoon? I ask. How are you going to account for yourself?

I’ll say I was at the gym, as usual, Priya says. At exercise class.

Does he suspect? I ask. Surely he must suspect. He must have some sense that your mind’s elsewhere. And your body …

My body’s not elsewhere, Priya says. I fuck him too.

You’re so shameless, I say.

I am, aren’t I? Priya says. How can she do this to her husband?: that’s what you’re thinking. But I like doing this to my husband. It feels right to be doing this to my husband.

Why do you never call him by name? I ask.

Because he’s essentially anonymous, Priya says. Because he’s a force. Because he’s a collection of husband drives. Anyway, I don’t want to think about him …

Silence.

But there’s a reason we’re here, isn’t there? Priya says. Are you waiting to get down to it? For the real business to start? You’ll have to court me first. Compliment me on what I’m wearing. Tell me I have … sparkling eyes. Notice my new hairstyle. I haven’t actually got a new hairstyle, but you get the idea. I want to hear some sweet nothings. Some sweet philosophical nothings, if necessary. I want to be re-seduced. I want to be seduced all over again.

Win me. Win my heart, philosopher, Priya says. I want to feel like the most important girl in the world. Make it all about me. That no one matters to you but me. Come on, complement me on my outfit. On what I’m wearing. On my earrings, for fuck’s sake. I’m wearing pearl earrings …

I do think you’re beautiful, I say.

Beautiful, philosopher? Priya says. What do you mean by beauty?

You today. Your face touched with light, I say. The fascination of your eyes. Of my being looked at, by those eyes. Of those eyes, turning towards me.

That’s more like it, Priya says. Continue.

You can make things happen – just by your presence, I say. People are shaken out of themselves. Reminded …

Of what? Priya says.

Of the fact that beauty is alive, I say. Of the fact that beauty can pass through the earth. The fact that beauty can arrive here, in this town, on these streets. The fact that miracles are possible and the world really can be overturned.

Oh, you’re good at this, Priya says.

Beauty: is proof that God exists, after all, I say. That we’re not all doomed, after all. That we’re not all destroyable, replaceable, murderable, strangleable, chokeable, shootable, stabbable.

Don’t be so dark, Priya says.

Longsands.

Walking with Cicero.

The sea, very far out. Is it an extra low tide? Will it be followed by an extra high tide? Is the tsunami coming in?

Cicero, quoting: Everything is empty, everything is past. All our wells are dried up, even the sea has receded. Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown?

Exactly! Exactly!

The evil is massing, like clouds, Cicero says. The evil’s thickening. Covering the sky. We look up, and we don’t know what we’re looking at. We see the darkness, and we don’t know what it is.

Black waves will break, Cicero says. A black tide is coming in. Black skies are coming. But everything will look exactly the same. 

What's that got to do with the Organisational Management move? Ava asks.

Shh – listen, I say.

You ask me about your role in all this, Cicero says. About what to do. You tell me you despair. But I say, hold on to your despair, because it's a way of becoming free of the world. I say understand your despair as a gift. Because it's an incitement, an awakening; a calling, and even the highest calling. Because it means you're not part of the demonic realm. 

This world is refusable, Cicero says. It doesn’t have to be your world. We don’t have to succumb. You must live as not. Be Organisational Management philosophers as not Organisational Management philosophers. Be applied ethics philosophers as not applied ethics philosophers. Be tame academics as not tame academics. You have to live against the grain of the world.

Against the grain of Organisational Management? Hans asks. But what good will that do?

It will intensify your resistance, Cicero says. Your thought.

But we’ll be too busy teaching business ethics, or whatever! Ava says.

Your philosophy will have to go underground, Cicero says. Your philosophy will become an active principle of subversion, revolt and antinomianism. It will be an inward revolution. Pure refusal. Pure retreat. Pure withdrawal. Negativity will become an active principle. A way of living against the world. 

Sounds like an active nihilism, I say.

Nihilism will flip and become something else, Cicero says. You’ll discover how to live in the opposite direction.

In the opposite direction of what? Ava asks.

Organisational Management, Cicero says. The endless administration of the world. Its ceaseless management. The coordinates we’re given. The social coordinates. The governmental coordinates. The biopolitical coordinates. The philosophical coordinates. You’ll become cryptophilosophers, working in secret. Working against everything.

Pondering.

So the Organisational Management move will be the making of us? Hans asks. How could that be? I mean, look at us … Look at Ava! Look at Carl – he's hardly the future of anything, is he!

Thanks, Ava says.

He's right, I say. We just make things worse. We're just a bad joke … 

You’re full of disgust, Cicero says. You feel horror – at yourselves; that's your gift. There's a dynamics to your self-hatred. To your thrashings. To your convulsions. There's a life. You'll find salvation where it’s least sought. Where it's least expected. You'll find salvation in the lack of salvation. You'll find hope in the lack of hope. Which is why your role will be unique. You'll be the doom speakers. You'll voice disgust’s disgust. You'll be the philosophers of horror’s horror.

But why us and not you? I ask. Aren’t you the person to do this? You have the smarts. The background. You’ve done the reading. You see things as they are.

I have my role, Cicero says. You have yours.

So we have to write things? I ask. Magnum opuses? Start a new school of philosophy? Or is it about a practice of philosophy? A way of living philosophy?

Cultivate a true desire for the end of the world, and everything will come from that, Cicero says.

But we already want the end of the world, I say. We know the hideousness of it all. And we know our hideousness … 

Not yet, Cicero says. You haven’t reached the depths.

You mean it's going to get worse? Hans asks. We're going to feel worse?

I thought you said we were the doom speakers, Ava says. That we were to voice horror’s horror, or whatever.

You will be, Cicero says. The hatred of air for air. The sky’s hatred of the sky. The earth’s self-hatred. That's what you'll know. That's what you'll speak – as prayer. 

With the move to Organisational Management? Hans asks.

Exactly, Cicero says.

It’s like you welcome it – like you wanted it to happen …, I say.

There's a logic to what's happening, Hans says. Once you see it, you almost want it to accelerate. It's like they're intensifying the pressure. Like they're forcing their agenda ever harder. They’ll stop at nothing. We should just slit our throats now. We should hang ourselves now. It would make sense. It makes more sense than anything.

That's what they want, Ava says. For us to destroy ourselves. 

I want the wave to break, Hans says. I want the flood. I want to go under.

And I want to think there’s an ark somewhere, I say. That will save all the good things – not us, maybe. Not the likes of us. But there’s an ark that carries all the beautiful things, all the good things. That saves the goodness.

All of creation longs for destruction, Cicero says. To be put out of its misery. But that cannot happen until the deepest nihilistic fall of the world. 

What if we’re the madness? Hans asks. What if we’re the ones who should be eliminated? What if our destruction is the solution? Mad people like us. Mad so-called philosophers like us. Mad so-called thinkers, who've taken thought too far. Until it's merged with madness …

Maybe we've driven ourselves mad, Hans says. Spent too  much time in mad company. Too much time reading mad books. Studying mad philosophy. Following you, Cicero. 

There’s a way of living in disgust – pure disgust, Cicero says. There's a way of living in purifying hatred. You have to live in absolute tension with the world. 

Is that what we're doing? Ava asks. What about you?

I'm not like you, Cicero says. I’m not a misfit … I’m not maladjusted. I’m too much of the world. Moses died before reaching the Promised Land: you know that. It was for the young to inherit the future. 

But Organisational Management is hardly the Promised Land! I say.

It’s the opposite of the Promised Land: that’s the point, Cicero says.

Dialectics …, Hans says. So that's why you retired, or whatever … To  abandon us to the end … 

That's why you brought us here, I say. This was the plan all along. You knew what was coming … 

That's why you trained us …, Ava says.

The ultimate source of hope in this world is its end, Cicero says. Don't forget that.