Work in Progress

See, I’m becoming you. Your personality is bleeding into mine. We’re becoming indistinguishable. Is my personality bleeding into yours? You’ll deny it. Are you becoming more organised? More managerial?

Laughter. It’s like that film I saw once … that film on the coast, the Swedish coast. Persona. Very arthouse. The nurse becomes the actress and the actress becomes the nurse … or something.

 

We’re fading into the air. Fading into the afternoon. We’re disappearing. Do you feel we’re disappearing? I feel less real than I did. I feel … porous. I feel like a cloud. The afternoon is pouring through me. Do you feel real? Do you ever feel real, philosopher?

 

Why can’t we just have straight experience? Why can’t we just experience things are they are? Why are things always doubled up? Why do we always go meta?

 

There’s this surfeit of consciousness, which means we can catch Nature out. That we know Nature’s tricks. See – I’m being philosophical. That we’re not entirely swept away by love or infatuation or whatever this is. We’re not just lost to it.

Nature plays this trick on us, philosopher. Well, we can play a trick on it. We’re hacking Nature. We’re hacking love, right? We’re using it as a booster. We’re making it do our biding. We’re detourning love – that’s what it’s called, isn’t it: detourning? We’re doing what we want with it. Isn’t that a gas?

Isn’t that a very organisational management thing to do? How do you know it’s not Nature wanting you to play supposed tricks on her? That it’s not nature playing like a metatrick – the trick that makes us thinks we can play tricks? That makes us think we can hack nature?

 

And do you love him, your husband?

I don’t know. I think we’re bored of each other. Well, I’m bored of him. Fifteen years. It’s too long, right? Don’t you think we’d bore each other after fifteen years?

Not if you have children.

Maybe children would make you even more bored of each other. All that work.

But you wouldn’t be bored of them, maybe.

Maybe.

Would you like children? Or are you too busy with your magnum opus? I mean, would you actually take the time off work? Off writing? Off siting up here, looking up through the skylight?

If I met the right person.

The right person…. Who’d be the right person for you?: that’s the question … Who could pull you away from your work? Not me, anyway.

 

I’m convenient, aren’t I? I’m easy. I look after myself. You don’t have to woo me with flowers, although I do like the occasional email. No, this is ease itself for you, isn’t it? I come to you. I visit you in your room. I park my car and press the buzzer and you let me up.

It all comes to your door, doesn’t it? It comes on a plate. Here I am … Maybe I should withhold myself. Maybe I should be more mysterious. A bit of distance … that’s what you’d like, I’ll bet. A bit of mystery. I should be elusive.

But I have my needs too. I need my needs fulfilled too. I come here for a reason, you know. I have my agenda. I want things too.

I want … this. I want you. I like … becoming philosophical. Talking like this, which I can never do usually. Just saying these things. These big things. Just speaking into the afternoon. Seeing where words lead me. Where they lead us.

Maybe you’re used to this, philosopher. Maybe you think like this, talk like this. Well, not me. Not usually. Not even when my husband and I go on long car drives. When we drive down to the South to see our friends. Our relatives.  

What do you talk about?

Our friends. Our relatives. Our plans. Work. People we know. All that kind of stuff. My dream business, that I want to set up one day. That’s what I should have done, instead of becoming an academic. That would have occupied me, like properly. And instead …

Anyway … I can’t speak like this, and I don’t. Here we are spinning talk out of nothing. Trying to say what? Trying to reach what? How lost we are? How lost all our words are? Everything we try to say?

I like myself when I’m with you. What you bring out of me. What all this brings out of me. I like what I’m becoming. What I’m reaching towards. Maybe I’m becoming spiritual. Would you mind that, philosopher? Or maybe I’m just becoming philosophical …

 

The soul of an organisational manager. The sentimental life of an organisational manager. The life and loves of an organisational manager. The afternoon tears of an organisational manager.

You’re supposed to do things for me. Make me laugh. Delight me. Amuse me. Make me think I’m the centre of the universe. You’re not taking your courtship duties seriously.

Tell me some funny anecdotes. Attend to me. 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.

You’re supposed to be feeling infatuation. You’re supposed to be coasting along on a feeling of general lovey-doviness. You’re supposed to want to bathe in my general presence. To just sit and look at me, in general adoration.

Make some effort. Chat me up. Tell me I’m first born. That I’ve just arrived on planet Earth. 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, troubadour. I want to feel like the most important girl in the world. That it’s me and only me. That everything isn’t just … futile. That I will leave a trace on Earth. That I’ll be remembered. For my timeless, ethereal beauty, or whatever.

Come on, philosopher: Make me feel Significant. Make me feel Noticed. Complement me on my outfit. On what I’m wearing. On my earrings, for fuck’s sake. I’m wearing earrings …

Make some effort. Try. To win me. To keep me. That you find me irreplaceable. That it could be me and only me. Even if it isn’t true. Even if it’s just delusion. Interest me. Make it all about me.

 

Flatter me. Seduce me. Make me horny. Do you like that word, horny? I can see you flinch. Am I a bit too brazen for you? Would you prefer a little reserve? A little mystery? Would you prefer that I didn’t talk about it all so directly? Should some things not be talked about? Should they be left to their essential mystery? Maybe.

Am I offending you in my gauche organisation management way?

 

You’re supposed to want to look after me. That’s the biological programming. To be tender towards me. And I’m supposed to like that and feel special. I’m supposed to like feeling cared for. That’s how you show you’re a man, or it’s part of it.

You’re supposed to want to delight me. To be witty. To make me smile. Just to see me smile. Just to see me laughing. Just to see my pretty smile. Supposed to be charmed by me. Supposed to swoon at the sight of me. Supposed to feel manly as you protect me. As you give me your coat to keep me warm. Supposed to feed me. Make sure I’ve had enough.

Isn’t it nice, all this courtship stuff? Don’t you feel better for it? And I’m supposed to look after you. The way you dress. Your haircut. All these things. Your sense of style. Your interior décor, such as it is. This is how the programming works, philosophy. This is what nature wants of us. You’re supposed to feel manly and I’m supposed to feel womanly.

I’m supposed to respond to your desire for me. By desiring you. I’m supposed to like being found pretty. Being told I’m beautiful. Do you tell me I’m beautiful often enough, philosopher? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to feel? Supposed to be overwhelmed by? Your breath taken away when you see me. By my otherworldly beauty.

You know what impresses me most: that you don’t mind that all this writing’s futile. That no one’s going to read it, really. Do you imagine you’re intervening in some important debate.

What motivates you? How do you keep going? Must be some male thing. It’s headless, in a way. Some reflex. You’ll carrying on writing long after you’re dead. If we chopped your head off, you’d still be at it.

What drives you? What do you want to be? A famous author?

I just want to work.

What at? Why?

Why anything?

Is there a joy in seeing your thoughts expand? Increase? Broaden? Are you getting better at this? is it taking you somewhere? … All these pages. Quoting people. Paraphrasing them. This is what your life has amounted to.

I’m like a bad angel, whispering in your ear. A demotivating angel … I’ve half defeated you. But you’d like to be defeated … What would you do if you weren’t writing?

Giving you head.

But you couldn’t be doing that all the time, could you? Nice as the thought is.

I’d be delighting you. Making sure you were entertained. Making you smile, just to see you smile. That’s what Jane Birkin said about Serge Gainsburg. He never wanted to work when she was around. He just wanted to go out and do stuff and entertain her …

Really, philosopher. You think I’m a trap. A distraction. Some ghastly Temptation. Some mischievous spirit, conjured from … what? The spirit of perversity …

 

Don’t you ever take time off? What’s time off for you? I’m not real to you, am I? It’s all about your magnum opus … Well, I’m bored of this role. I’m bored of being a distraction. I’m bored of not being serious enough.

You want us to talk like we were in some Ingmar Bergman film. High fucking seriousness. As if we were in 1960s Sweden … I’m supposed to be suffering. Screaming. Crying out to the Lord, or whatever. I can’t work it up – the suffering. I don’t actually want to die. I don’t want to cut off my clitoris, or whatever …

I watch boxsets, philosopher. I watch TV. Isn’t that disgusting? That’s how I spend my free time. My husband and I sit and watch boxsets together. Imagine that! The secret of longevity as a couple is whether you can bear downtime together is the important thing. That’s my pro-tip.

I don’t believe it. I think you secretly despise boxsets and TV …

 

You’re my excitement. You’ve given me a taste for affairs. Maybe I should have another one. Multiple affairs, all stacked up. Well, life’s so boring, isn’t it? Polyamory is where it’s at. We spend every evening lying on his-‘n’-hers sofas. After a day working from home in his-‘n’-hers offices. That’s life … fuck … something’s missing, isn’t it? He, like, falls asleep in front of our box sets. Imagine that. Like he’s ninety, or something. I want more than that, I said to myself. I want a lover. Or lovers. Several of them. I want to be fucked.

The mystical marriage of philosophy and organisational management. The marriage of heaven and hell, right?

Opposites attract, maybe.

Opposites repel.

It might destroy the universe, you know. Like matter and anti-matter. Because philosophy is anti- organisational management, just as organisational management is anti-philosophy. At opposite poles. Bring them together and you risk tearing the universe apart.

Fuck that.

Come on – academic philosophy’s petty much as compromised as organisational management. You’re thinking of wild philosophy. Philosophy turned loose, running riot. Just wandering into chaos. Well, that’s got nothing to do with academic philosophy.

 

The organisational management defeat. The organisational management studies rout.

We will not let ourselves be destroyed. We’re keeping the place of the useless humanities in their uselessness. In their frivolousness. As they were once intended for the useless aristocracy. In their pointlessness. In their lack of applicability to anything mercantile. Let alone anything organisational. Let alone anything managerial.

And you’re fucking her. The temerity. Is it love, or just some desire for revenge?

Is it lust? I think it’s lust.

Of course it is. Lust … she’s a looker. She has an allure. And she’s married to the head of Organisational Management … very alluring.

We’re such animals, aren’t we? Maybe we should all find an organisational management lover. That’s real interdisciplinarity. That’s what they mean by dynamic juxtaposition.

How did you get together? Did your eyes meet across the meeting room? Did  you bump into one another in a corridor? What did you, like, talk about? What did you have in common? Because you really wouldn’t have thought you’d have much in common.

Fuck you.

The allure of opposites. The yin and yang. The one and the other. How can you bear it? Sleeping with the fucking enemy.

 

Do you do it around her house?

In my flat.

Have you been round her house? What’s it like? Soulless, I’ll bet.

It’s very … tasteful.

Does her husband know? Does the Head of Organisational Management suspect?

Uh uh.

Wow. You’ll destroy him. And then he’ll destroy you.

 

You always did have a certain allure. It’s because you’re so quiet. And dark. She likes you because you’re the total opposite of everything she’s known.

 

You’re up close with an organisational manager. What’s her soul like? Does she have a soul? God, she’s on the front lines, really. She’s one of them.

Maybe you can save her. Turn her. Convert her. Is that your aim?

We’re always talking about it – our … relationship … such as it is … such as it isn’t. It’s … parasitical. Lovers always talk about their love. It’s smugness. We’re pleased with ourselves. Pleased with what has been given us, by way of the other. In our little bubble of love.

 

We think we’ve escaped the world, but love is part of the world. It’s just a little … give in the world. It’s a little leeway. It’s what we’re given as freedom – as a taste of freedom. But it’s still part of the illusion – and perhaps the worst part. Because it entangles us more deeply.  

We’re trapping ourselves. We’re being trapped – by nature. It’s nature’s honey trap. Nature’s seduction trap. Which is how it opens as apparent freedom what is really only a deeper form of servitude.

 

Nature’s thrown us a treat. We’re supposed to be grateful. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

 

Love isn’t part of the machine: that’s what we think. That’s what we’re supposed to think. We fool ourselves. We want to be fooled.

 

Our disgrace. We should fall to our knees … and …

And what?

Pray to be released from the world. Its traps – its snares. Pray for an opening … Don’t we want out? Sure we want out. We want the exit. And that’s what we want in love. We want to be an exodus for one another. A way out of the trap. When really it’s another part of the trap …

 

It’s the honey trap. Nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty. Some hottie specifically sent out to target you. Nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from another, when in fact … the only salvation comes from outside.

Outside what?

This world. This life. This … universe of death.

 

The stupidity of lovers. We think this is an exception. That we’ve been given all this as a special gift to us. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … This very sane madness. This rational irrationality. This law-abiding prohibition. Which happens to virtually everyone. To which all of us succumb. That lifts us all up. And up to what?

God. aren’t we lucky? we think. Why can’t everyone be as lucky as us? Until we become evangelists of love. Trying to pair all our friends up. Telling people the story of our romance. How we got together. Our ur-story. About when the world relented. When the remorseless logic of it all just pulled back for a few moments. When we were granted an apparent reprieve.

And now we think we know what the world is about. What things really are. As if everything had been revealed to us anew. As if for the first time. The world, all aglow. Colours, more vivid. The sky, a little wider … It’s a con …

 

Our story … how we escaped. How we weren’t subject to all the laws. How it wasn’t just the same old for us.  We think we’ve been elected. Saved. Lifted above the fray. Because Nature wants us to make more of ourselves. Nature wants the multiplication of Nature.

I don’t want to be subjected to this body.

But you like to fuck.

I don’t like to like to fuck. I don’t like to like to eat. I don’t like to like to be subject to anything.

You hate your body.

I like your body. But I don’t like to like your body. Why do we have to be like this?

You mean why aren’t we pure spirits, floating free. Angels, or whatever.

Sure – fucking angels. I’d like to be an angel.

 

We’re so meta. We’re meta lovers. I blame it on philosophy. All your philosophy. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

I’m not an animal, you mean.

God, the romantic lobotomy. Infatuation has, like, stolen your mind. Fucking brain chemistry bullshit. What’s it doing to you? What’s it doing to your thought? It’s like you’re on holiday from life. It’s like you can allow yourself to be on holiday. You’ve given yourself permission.

This isn’t life. Away with the fucking romance fairies. When we need you here at the philosophy frontline. Fighting philosophy battles. What do you think this is? This is no time for a honeymoon. Can’t just swoon away. We need some cold rationalism – don’t you see? Need some hard thinking. Some philosophical toughness. Philosophical muscle. We have to take a hardline! And we have to have a united front! All together! All for one, one for all!

We need to stand with folded arms! Uncompromising! Unflinching! In the face of Organisational Management. Not eating their lunch at meetings. Not drinking their tea. Not giving an inch.

 

Not altering our modules to make them accessible to organisational management students. No rewriting our module docs to make them intelligible to organisation management students.

Because philosophy will never be accessible to organisational management students.

 

We have to make philosophy intolerable. Indigestible. Just as we have to make ourselves intolerable and indigestible. Unmanageable, even by Organisational Management. Unorganisable, even by Organisational Management.

 

They don’t know what to make of us. How to frame us. How to contain us. How to speak to us. How to approach us. They don’t know what we’re for – what philosophy’s for. They don’t know what philosophy does.

We’re the Incomprehensible. The Unthinkable. The Unassimilable.

We send our students out – out into the world. To explore the world. To look at things in the world. Their projects. There are no set-piece essays for them. Nothing they could purchase from an essay mill. Nothing that could be bespoke written for them.

Out students are wanderers of the afternoon. Psychogeographers. Urban drifters. Followers of invisible currents. Our students work with … intuition.

 

We’re equipping our students to understand the new wars – the invisible wars. The soul-programming wars. We’re teaching them how to read the skies, and the crisscross of chemtrails in the skies. We’re teaching them about the poisoning of the earth. Of the soil. Of food and water. About the new kinds of tyranny. We’re teaching them about the use of climate change as a cover. For, like, maniacal technocratic takeover.

 

Our students. Philosophy isn’t a dead subject for them. It doesn’t sit idly on the page. It’s not about ancestor worship. It’s not about getting Spinoza right. It’s about putting Spinoza to work.

 

We’re teaching them about the unorganisable. About chaos theory. About the tohu vavohu. About the varieties of evil. We’re showing them Goya’s Disasters of War. Mandelbrot’s fractals. We’re making connections across different subject areas. Leaps through history. From one tradition to another. From one language to another.

We’re constructing spurious etymologies. Making illegitimate criss crossings. Linkages. Bring this into contact with that. We’re bewildering ourselves. With our brilliance? With our stupidity? We’re venturing into numerology. Into superstition …

We’re liberating our students from years of so-called learning. Setting them free. Countering years of indoctrination. We’re counter-processing. Within the uni system. It’s heroic, in its way.

We’re turning them into anarchists. Subversives. Free thinkers. We teach whole modules on counterlogic. On guerrilla ontology. On practical surrealism. On the systematic derangement of the senses. On microdosing. On the uses of hardcore pornography. On UFOlogy as a science.

They’re to become Investigators. Researchers. Taking nothing for granted. Seeing through the lies. Through the New World Order agenda.

 

Our teaching.

We’re making it up as we go along. Of course we are. This is all entirely illegitimate. We’re talking outside our expertise. We’ve left all expertise behind.

This is speculative … highly speculative. In a bad sense … doubtless …

How long before we’re closed down? Because we really should be closed down. There’s no place for us here. For these kinds of studies. For general spuriousness. For thought gone rogue.

 

Our teaching.

None of this going anywhere. We’re just … tinkering. Fooling about. There’s nothing productive here. Nothing leads anywhere. It’s not about outcomes.

We’ve set things in motion, that’s all. Where will it lead? Nowhere, probably. Nowhere, of course.

Jesus had to become one of us. Jesus had to lose himself in this world. In this mire. God … had to mix himself up with the shit. To, like, save us.

And what did they do? Crucify him in shit. And then he raised himself from the shit … He’d had enough of the shit …

He wanted to free us from our sin, apparently. The sin of shit. To take upon himself all the shit – the shit of shit.

What is this, shit theology?

And did he redeem the shit?

He redeemed us, not the shit. He paid our debts.

And left us in the shit.

But we don’t carry around all the sin, not now. We’re not as compromised.

What about original sin? Is that original shit? The shit of life. The shit of existence?

Are we shit, too? Am I shit?

Oh you’re shit – definitely. You’re nothing other than shit.

So Jesus was part shit. Because he was part us. And we’re part him.

Are we? Are we part not-shit? Well, that’s something.

We’re stuck with time. Stuck with forever. No revolution’s going to happen. No messiah’s going to come. This is it. There’s just more and more of … this.

And we’re just waiting. For what? For not-this. Not the … ceaseless apocalypse. Not the endless anti-revolution.

So what then? How do we live without them? In the mode of without. In the mode of not having them. Stuck with the absence of the only things that could give sense to the world.

 

Nothing remains of God but the void, right?

The void’s what’s leftover. It’s not even God. It’s what God might be. It’s where God might come from. But it’s nothing – just nothing.

 

This reality’s only worthy of being destroyed, right?

Things are sinking to their lowest level. This is the deepest nihilistic fall of the world.

 

We’ll find salvation where it’s least sought. There, where you don’t expect it. In the void. Yes – why not, in the void! In the night of the world!

We’ll find salvation in our lack of salvation. If we experience our hopelessness in the right way, then it becomes hope! If we experience our damnation in the right way, then …

That’s some conjuring trick. What a conversion. At the last minute! In the final second! There is no final second, idiot. It goes on forever.

 

We can approach the question of meaning only through meaninglessness. Just as we can only know god through his absence. And the same for truth and everything worthwhile …

 

Only when you despise the world are you free of it. It’s a question of … messianic nihilism. It’s our exodus from the Natural House of Bondage. Of living in the world against its immanent logic. Inverting all earthly things.

 

The divine nothingness … an inverse of lost transcendence …

 

Messianism is very close to nihilism – very close! Don’t doubt it!

 

Meaning is not part of this world. Meaning depends upon liberation from this world. An … exodus from the natural cycle. The great merry-go-round …