Work in Progress

Cicero wants to become a saint of the everyday. That’s what she said once. There are such people. The long term unemployed. The mentally ill. Who aren’t part of the world. Who lives in corners and nooks and crannies.

Like, with their mums.

Maybe.

On benefits?

Living how they can. Getting by. Who aren’t in gainful employment, or whatever. Who aren’t doing anything. Who aren’t, like occupied. Who are just kind of adrift. But willingly so. Like, happily so.

They sound kinda helpless. Good for nothing.

Sure – happily good for nothing. Just accepting that they’re good for nothing. Who are just immune to trying to get along. Make a meaningful contribution to society, or whatever. Like children. Or like mentally backward people.

You’re romanticising the, like, mentally ill. Like, suffering.

You don’t have to suffer, if you’re like that. Or it could be a sweet suffering. An endurable suffering. Where you just accept the things that happen to you. That befall you.

But you’d be totally dependent. Living off the state or off their parents or off someone. Off some handouts. God …

You wouldn’t feel yourself to be dependent – that’s the thing. You wouldn’t experience that. You’d just  do your own thing, and let the world do its own thing. You’d have your rituals and routines. You’d be in some weird state of grace. Like, immune or something. Above the world.

Is that what you’d like to be?

Is that what you’d like to be?

I wish I wasn’t so invested in all the bullshit. I wish I could just live separately. Like monks or nuns. Who have a pattern of life. Who hold the pattern. Who live alongside others who have likewise dissolved all ties to the world. Who’ve let them weaken. Until nothing holds you. Nothing earthly, anyway, There’s a beauty to that.

But wouldn’t you have to believe in stuff?

Maybe. But I think you could just live day to day, with all the big decisions taken for you. You’d have an instructor. An abbot or abbess, who’d look out for you. Tell you what to do. Warn you of temptations. Of, like, spiritual pitfalls – acadie, or whatever. Who could set you straight. Keep you on the path. And you’d be living within a greater Whole. You’d be part of order. Every day would be part of the ritual, part of the harmony …

Being a philosopher used to mean living a life like that. Living what you thought. Thinking from what you lived. Thought and life were one. The one grew out of another. There used to be all these philosophical schools, who’d just tell you how to live. Who’d give you rules for your betterment. Christianity was just one of those schools. There were Epicureans. Stoics. Cynics …

So start a school.

Maybe we have. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing out here at the coast.

A school of alcoholism.

Maybe that’s part of it.

 

Just to be part of the whole universe, doing it thing. Like, universing. Where your work’s part of that. Just the unfolding of some vast process. God’s will, or whatever. Reflecting a perfect congruity of laws. From heaven to earth. From up there to down here. Just living beautifully. Rightly. Living in the great Good. Being part of the realisation of the Good. Where your work is just part of the great unfolding. The great gift. Your work serving the Whole, part of the Whole. Sustained by the Whole. Unforced.

 

Most of all, I’d like to write. To have something to write and be able to write. Day after day. Where it’d come easily to you. Like keeping a journal. And you’d just live more and more deeply. You’d wear your groove into the ground. Follow your rounds. Do the allotted thing with care and tenderness and patience.

Just … instilling an order. Warding off all the distractions. Every day, just working – where it doesn’t even feel like work. Writing. And one day just melting into the next. A perfect rhythm of work. Beginning where you left off the previous day. Where you always know what to say, and how to say it. Where you’re never just scrabbling around in the dark.

And that’s your dream?

Writing as life. As a way of living. As a ritual. Where you always know what’s to be done. Where writing’s, like, a  total vocation. Something you live within. With perfect calm. Where it’s not work, but a way. A life. A good life, that isn’t wasted. Isn’t complicit …

Desire, opening out. As wide as the horizon. As wide as the coast … Your desire, horizon-wide. Horizon-annulling.

The infinite. The uttermost. Opening beyond this world and beyond every world. Beyond the sky. This sky, and all skies. Opening unto what. God? But what does God mean? Who is God anyway?

Desire, without limit. Untrammelled. Leading you where? Upwards. But up where?

Desire, raising its face, looking. Desire, the naked face, looking for … what? The face of another. The face of God? The eyes of God, to look into desire’s eyes.

God: that’s what we want to see. The face of God. That’s what our desire desires.

Desire itself. Yearning itself. Held in tension – absolute tension – with the world. Stretched – strained – as far as we can bear. Farther.

Ready for the reality-burst. Ready for the apocalypse. Ready for what is brighter than a thousand suns.

Your thirties – this is what they’re supposed to be like for the young intellectual, if you don’t cop out and have a family, or something. If you don’t get distracted. II you don’t become alcoholic.

These are your times! PhD behind you, a job, a steady income. A library. Into which you can order books. Optimum conditions. Evenings and weekends free! No caring responsibilities. No children. And somewhere decent enough to live. Somewhere bearable. And you can afford to feed yourself. You’re not on the breadline now. You’re not entirely skint.

See, this is the chance. This is what you’ve been given. Now it can all begin, your intellectual project. Where is it going to lead you? Where will you end up?

How good are you? How smart are you? What’s your true level? Now you’ll see. Now it’ll be revealed: your real intelligence. Your intellectual virtues.

Just you and your talent. Laughter. Just you and your brilliance. Has anyone ever called you brilliant? Has anyone ever looked at your work and exclaimed: brilliant? Or heard you speak and said, almost involuntarily, with in-taken breath: brilliant!

A thinker in potential! A brilliant young person. All we need do is step back to see what happens. To make way. And then … miracles! Did anyone ever say that?

We simply need to set brilliance loose. Give him a research fellowship – at once! Clear all the obstacles! Let him work! Were those words ever used?

Well, you won’t be able to hide now, will you? You can’t hide anymore in your mid-thirties. You’re out in the open in your mid-thirties. You’re going to be found out …

The coast.

Drunk on the infinite. On the afternoon. On the sky. We’re sky-drunk. We’re heavens-drunk. We’re expanse drunk. Vista drunk …

 

Drinking at the coast is different from drinking anywhere else. It’s a different drunkenness. More wistful. More yearning. More spiritual, even. It has a different flavour.

 

The unenclosable. The uncontainable. The unfinishable.

The infinite – is that what it is? The unfinite, at least. The no longer limited.

We see the Whole. The All. We have a sense of the Expanse. It’s the Universe – the one-all. We let it infuse our thoughts. Flavour them.

 

We are different people, out at the coast. We breathe more deeply here at the coast. We feel lighter somehow. We walk like astronauts on the moon.

See, our youthful charm’s virtually gone. We’re jaded now. Old! We used to amuse people … inadvertently, I think. We were involuntary jesters. People liked to watch us trip ourselves up. Our pratfalls – all the more charming because they were never staged.

Our foolishnesses, plural. Our gaucheness. Our enthusiasms. Our excitements. And the mistakes we made. The most obvious ones, the most charming ones. Mispronunciations. The stuff we didn’t know. Obvious Biblical allusions we failed to pick up. Classical references. And the way that would phase us.

Because we were rodeo clowns, before the main event. Palate cleansers. Light relief. It can’t be high seriousness all the time, can it? They laughed at us, good naturedly. And, we good naturedly laughed along. We joined in. They laughed and so did we, and we all parted as friends.

Wasn’t that the best of all worlds? We were amusing, they were amused. We had a role. We were valued. Ah, the best of times. But we’re too old for that now, aren’t we? Something’s expected of us now … Eyes are on us, now we’ve lucked our way into jobs. We’re supposed to deliver … The time for youthful folly has passed …

It’s about making a beginning. Setting things in motion. It’s not all about promise anymore. About potential. About what we’ll do in the future. Now’s the time to get going. To break open our own thought-paths. To pursue our special way of doing things. To deepen our modus operandi.  

It’s time for us to work! To guard against the danger of meandering to nothing. Of lack of focus. Of being idiot lecturers, doing this, doing that. Something to orientate the whole of our lives; to give our days direction: that’s what we need. Until everything in us points in the same direction. Until we’re oriented towards one thing. The thing.

And each day giving unto the next day, in the great labour. In the work of a lifetime, that seizes our whole lives. That carries us up. That bears us up. Work! Great work! A life-work. That unifies our writing, our teaching.

Until we’re known for our focus on a problem. On an area. On a thinker, or group of thinkers. Until we are ones to turn to for a perspective on this issue or that period or that constellation of ideas. Until we each have a Thing to which our names are linked. Which means that we’re the ones they’ll turn to for a new encyclopaedia entry on X, on Y. For an essay in a collection on A or B. To join a conference panel on C or D.

It isn’t enough to flop around. To turn from this and this to this. We need Commitment. Direction. A Method. That is the slipway to our future work. To our magnum opuses. To the Substantial Books we’ll one day write …

 

Imagining our Substantial Books. Imagining the lengthy acknowledgements pages of our Substantial Books. Two pages long! Three pages! Mentioning all the prestigious places to which we’ve been invited. Princeton Theological Seminar (in our dreams!) Stanford Philosophical Disputes series (as if!) The Centre for Moral Sciences at Cambridge (not a chance!) Showing we’re Travellers! Expeditioners. International-Circuiters. Waymakers! Channel-Crossers! (please!)

Thanking all the funding bodies who were so generous with their support (laugher). To Leverhulme for their early career researcher grants (not in a million years!) To the Wellcome Trust development fund (not in a trillion!)  Mention an learned institution or two. Especially ones with Latin titles. The Collegium. Hermeneutica Scotia. I was very grateful to discuss ideas from this work at …

Thanking various eminences for looking at our work in draft. For sharing their comments. How amazing they’d even design to look at our work. Isn’t that something? We must have such friends! Associate in such circles! Must be held in such esteem! (We don’t have such friends. We don’t know anyone.)

Perhaps a line in Italian, or something to recall high times on the continent. Larks in Florence, or whatever. A Roman idyll. Strolling the canals with Vattimo. Isn’t that what we want? (Never) And a modest disclaimer. I am, of course, responsible for any errors here.

And thanks to our colleagues for providing such a supportive environment for academic discussion (snorts.) Thanks to our institutions for invaluable sabbatical leave (chortles.)

Imagining cute asides to thank partners. Children! To profess love. To thank them for their patience! For their forbearance! For keeping quiet while a Major Work was being composed. Imagining tender, personal dedications. An above all, thanks to … For showing me the meaning of love … Without whom none of this would have been possible … (As if we’d ever have partners! As if we’d ever reproduce!)

Our Substantial Books! Published by a prestigious publisher! Oxford University Press … Stanford University Press … MIT Press … To show that we’re proper Academics! Unignorables! (but we’re eminently ignorable) That we’ve thoroughly defeated the getting-published Boss. The getting-our-names-known Boss.(Pure delusion.)

 

Accumulating peer esteem indicators. Joining the editorial board of some journal. Launching some book series for some decent publisher or another. Being invited to keynote here or there.

Doing the edited collection thing, setting the agenda on this or that trendy topic (what is it this year?) Inviting lofty names to contribute. Getting your name known in turn. Having it associated with this thinker or another. With this trendy topic or another.

Editing a book, organising the contributors. Shaping their contributions. Getting them to submit on time. Combing through their work. Flattering egos, where required. Smoothing ruffled feathers. Writing an Introduction, summarised each of the essays in turn. Making a case for the relevance of the volume. Its importance. Why it had to be published now. An essential contribution to the debate … A decisive intervention …

And finishing your own book. Your PhD dissertation, reconceived, rewritten. There it is, in print. In forbiddingly expensive hardback, but quite real. You’ve got a couple of copies on your office shelf. And you’re real, too, by association. You’ve been made real by the book: what a marvel. You’ve been called into existence. You walk the corridors differently. You sit in meetings differently.

You’re like a made man among the mafiosi. Your position has shifted. Your place in the hierarchy. You’ve emerged from the magma. People look at you differently. Things are expected of you …

 

We’ve essentially turned out back on career progression. Of promotions. Of being able to move from this university to another. We’re not going to be invited to apply for jobs. We’re not going to be approached to be part of some funding bid. We’re not going to keynote at some conference. We’re not Players. We’re not types from whom anything is Expected.

We’re lost highways. Cul-de-sacs. We’re backgrounders. Also-rans. We’re nobodies. Inconsequentials. Whom no one wants to court. Whom no one wants the ear of. Who wield no academic power. Whom no one wants to sleep with, really.

We’re junior academics, that’s all. Not PhD students, gauche and eager. Not in limbo types, looking for work, all haggard and desperate. People know our names. Chat to us. After all, we’ll be at the same conferences year after year. We’re part of the melee, part of the ambience. Worth shaking hands with in greeting, exchanging a few words with. After all, you might be sitting at conference dinner with us. We might have facing rooms across a conference corridor. Might end up in some foreign city with time to while away and there we’d be, with time to while away.  

They might need a favour from us. Might need to recruit us as external examiners. Or as journal referees. Or to revalidate degrees … We could be useful to them one day. And besides, aren’t we fun? Don’t we have larks? Can’t we be counted on to have a bottle of spirits in our rooms after the conference bar closes?

We’re known. We’re on the map of continental philosophy UK. The guys from Six Bridges. There must be something about us. We can’t be complete idiots. (Oh but we are …)

We’re in bad taste. We’re a bad joke. It’s been allowed to go on too long. It’s time to put an end to us. Quietly, discreetly. Not to make too big a fuss about it. Not to draw attention to it.

Some things really should not be allowed. It’s not good for anyone. For us. For humanity. For the rest of the world. For the universe, probably. It’s probably upset some cosmic balance. Some cosmic weighing scales.

We should be put out of our misery. Because we are in misery – we must be. We can only be in misery, in our twistedness. In our perversion. In our perverted joys.

There are some things which really are intolerable. It’s nothing personal. It shouldn’t have been overlooked. It shouldn’t have been allowed to go on for as long as it did. There are limits.

There’s a wrong way of living, and a right one. It’s a question of … public decency. Things can only go on in this way for a while. Some things really are intolerable. And we shouldn’t be made to tolerate ourselves, not really. To permit ourselves.

 

Our twistedness. Our disgustingness. We’re more disgusting than anyone – we see it. We know it. We shouldn’t be allowed.  We should be expunged. Shut down. Forgotten. As an embarrassment! As an aberration! As where things were allowed to go too far. Where things went utterly wrong!

We should be scrubbed away. The stain of us removed. Unremembered. Shoved into the memory-hole. Lost in oblivion. Where we can do no further damage! Where we’re in no danger of spreading, like some disease …

We’re … unhealthy in some way. Dirty. Yes, yes. It’s a matter of public health. Yes, we understand. We know the measures required. We get that it’s not personal. Our kind … well, there shouldn’t be our kind, should there?

We were a symptom of the times, that’s all. The time’s hysteria. The time’s madness. All kinds of mistakes were made. And now it’s time for the clean-up.

We accept our sentencing. We agree with the verdict. We’re all for it. Wipe us out! Lead us in chains to the dungeons! Don’t let it go on another day!

The world will be brighter, after we’ve gone – we know that. Balance will be restored. Rationality. The philosophical method. Our kind must not last. Cannot be tolerated – not in the long term.

Complicity in evil – ultra-evil. There’s no stepping back. No pause. No way of holding ourselves back from the ceaseless screaming horror.

We are made part of the evil. They’ve signed us up for the evil. They’ve conscripted us for evil. It’s not enough that they’re evil – we must be evil too.

 

We desecrate ourselves. We’ve been made to desecrate ourselves. We destroy ourselves. We’ve been made to destroy ourselves. They’ve make us satanic.

 

We live in the world of lies, and we are made liars. We live in the world of death, and we are made dead.

 

Hatred is our truest feeling. Truth – in the form of hatred. Hatred as a way of loving what is true, what is right.

We hate because of what is good in us. We hate because of what is true in us.

 

Our horror: the inverted image of the light. It’s how we know the light.

 

The abyss of the world. The world-abyss. The world that hates us, and that we must hate. The evil that hates us, and that we must hate.

The world is turned against us. Their world – because they own the world. They’ve seized the world and laid hold of the world.

 

Why must we negotiate with evil? Why are we forced into the middle ground – their middle ground. Their so-called middle ground.

 

And this is why we must be fanatics. To resist their hideous strength. Their power of ruination. Their work of death. Their constant operation.

 

We live in the truth. Which is the meaning of our torment. Which is the meaning of our drunkenness. Which is why we are who we are.

Which is why we’ve come to the coast. Like Christians who look to the east for the risen Christ. Or who ascend pillars to await him. At least we’re waiting. At least we know the world is incomplete.

 

The coast is the place. Where the lie is exposed – and continually. By the extent of the sky. By the vastness of the sea.

The coast is for the undeceived. The coast is for the unfooled. The coast is for the not entirely destroyed.

We come here for the truth – to live in the truth.

The fogs of the coast: illumination. The clouds of the coast: brightness.

 

A last redoubt. A last holdout.

Will we be able to resist, at the coast? Will it be able to reach us, at the coast? Will their stormtroopers knock at our door at the coast?

Our hangovers. What could we have accomplished without them? Who could we have been? What could we have written? If we didn’t drink, what then? If we hadn’t destroyed ourselves last night, what might have we done today?

But we did it on purpose. We did it because we wanted to.

 

The world that is busyness, compromise. The world that only deepens your entanglement. The world that only destroys your independence. Your integrity. The world that is only a death-plunge, over and again. That only destroys you, over and again.

A crash – each day. A destruction – every day. And ceaselessly. The continual deepening of the crisis.

Which is why we meet the day hungover. Which is why we must make a pre-emptive strike against the ludicrousness of hope.

We’ve numbed ourselves in advance. We’ve made ourselves stupid in advance. Hangover-stupid. Hangover-blank.

Hangover-stupor: our perpetual state. Which means we never really come into focus. Which means we never really catch up with our emails. Which means we never really come to ourselves. That we’re never entirely alive in their world.

This is your banal phase. This is your banal affair. It’s a normie affair. A normcore affair. Before you meet some European. Some Italian, or whatever. Some fellow philosopher. Some continentalist.

And in the meantime: this. In the meantime … It’s always the meantime. It doesn’t get beyond the meantime. Here we are, in the middle of the meantime. In the middle of the day. And all the days are the same. And we’re just the same.

And we’re wearing through time. We’ve worn thought time. We can see right through it.

To what? What’s on the other side?

I don’t know. More of the same, probably.

 

Our atoms are growing farther apart. We’re less dense. We’re less ourselves. We’re porous … We’re merging into the afternoon. It’s entering into us. Saturating us.

We’re, like, wise with the afternoon. Vast with the afternoon. We’re dispersing. We’ll blow away …

 

Afternoon amnesia. Afternoon oblivion. Is it possible just to forget … everything? Except you, maybe.

 

We’re afternoon-drunk. Drunk on the afternoon. On the white, white sky. On all those clouds, where a blue sky’s supposed to be. Where God’s supposed to be.

Pallid daylight without depth … Where nothing’s revealed. Where everything is as it was. Where banality’s banality and nothing else.

 

Falling through the afternoon. Is that what we’re doing? Falling, just falling. Unanchored. No … responsibilities. Nothing to do, except … this. And what is this?

 

What’s love, anyway? We’re just contemplating love. We’re holding it at a distance, and looking at it. We’re far from love, just like we’re far from everything …

 

Something’s taking place through us. Despite us, almost. Against us. Something that’s not ours. Some kind of event – or non-event. Something that’s not happening. That’s subtracting happening from happening. What the fuck am I saying? What is this room doing to me?

 

The world’s still, isn’t it? Nothing’s moving. The clouds aren’t moving. Just unbroken white. There’s no wind. Nothing I can see, anyway. There aren’t even any birds. Where have the birds gone? Where has everything gone? Where have we gone?

 

Your flat’s adrift in the sky. Like in Wizard of Oz. We’re just floating through the sky. There’s nothing but whiteness.

 

I feel so vague. Do you feel vague? Are we supposed to feel like this? Like, we can’t think anything. Anything clear, anyway. Anything precise … We’ve been disarmed. We’re out of service. We’re not needed. We’re surplus to requirements. We were ordered by mistake, or whatever … And now what? What are we supposed to do? Just be, I think. Just float.

 

If I feel asleep now, what would happen? If I feel asleep and woke up and fell asleep and just … lived here, what then?

Would you like to live here?

Right now, I would. Right now …

 

I can’t even finish a sentence. It’s being drunk without being drunk. It’s getting lost when you’re trying to finish a … sentence … You don’t know where it’s going to end. Fuck, I can’t think a single clear thing …

 

I’m tired of being lost. I want to be found. I want to see God looking down at me through the skylight. God’s great eye. Wouldn’t that be something?

 

I feel like I’m falling. When I close my eyes, I get vertigo … Why do I come out here? Why do I feel these things? Does this flat do this to everyone? It’s like you’ve cast some spell over me. No – it’s like a spell’s been cast over both of us. Here at the coast.

 

I want to shout. I want to be heard.

Who by? I hear you.

Not by you. But by … God.

 

I want to shout something, just to show I can. Just to be able to. Just to be able to do anything. I don’t want to just give everything up. I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to yield to this.

 

I feel so fucked. God, how will I ever get up? How will I ever do anything again?

I want to get dressed and go. I want to drive off. I want to go to the gym … Anything except this. But I like this …

 

You’re not going to save me. You’re not going to break my fall. You’re not going to do anything.

You don’t need saving.

What do I need? What do I want? What am I doing here? What’s anything? Why anything?

I don’t know what I used to know. And what I know now … isn’t good for anything. And I’m not good for anything. And nor are you, but you know that.

 

Are we meditating, or something? Are we praying or something? And to who? Who’s listening? Who’s watching?

 

The day will never end. It’ll never be over. It’ll just go on forever. This moment is, like, a forever moment. Now what? What next? It's not like it’s going anywhere. It’s not like it has a direction.

Do you ever feel everything you say is in quotes, like it’s been said before? By someone else, maybe. Or by us in another life … Do you ever feel that all this happened before, and we’re just living it again? That all this is part of the whole of life flashing before your eyes as you die?

 

Do you ever think it’s all been said before – that everything’s been said before? That we can’t say a single new thing? … It’s like all the words have already been prepared. All the scripts for lovers’ talk. All the things lovers have said. And we only get to quote …

 

Do you ever think that I might say something profound, just by chance? That would surprise you, wouldn’t it, philosopher? That I might be the clue to the truth of all things. Out of the mouth of the organisational manager, eh, philosopher? That I might be the key to it all … It might speak through me, whatever it is …

 

Where does all this talk lead? Where does it take us? Nowhere. The same place as we were before.

But everything’s a little bit different.

No, everything’s even more the same …

 

We’re so meta. Talking about his stuff. Instead of just … romancing. Fucking, or whatever.

Talking’s part of it.

I don't belive it.

 

Do you worry that we’ll never get to the point? That we’ll never talk about what really concerns us – what’s really important? Do you ever think that everything we say just gets in the way?

 

Listen to me. I used to be an organisational manager. What am I now: a philosopher?

 

All this talking, and we never get to the point.

What point?

There’s something important to be said, I’m sure of it. Something that wants to be said.

 

That’s enough shit-talking for one day. Have we talked enough? Have we decided things? Who’s listening, anyway?

God, maybe.

Does he tired of our wittering? He’s supposed to love us, but who could love us. I don’t love us.

 

All the stuff we’re saying echoes with something. What’s important is the echoing. What echoes through what we say.

What is it?

Some great rumbling. A roaring – but very far away.