Work in Progress

You sitting up in a high room, thinking you’re immune to it all. In your ark, floating above the flood. Do you think you can save your world?

I just want to save myself.

So you can live on in your ark … doing what?

Writing.

Is this that you’re going to do with your life?

Why – what should I do?

Are you going to add one more book to your great row of books? With your name on the spine?

I’d like to.

And what kind of book is it going to be?

An idiot book. The last book.

The last book … imagine …

Are we going to learn everything now? Is it Livia’s final revelation? Livia’s final NOTHING, more like.


Livia’s trail of breadcrumbs. Leading where? Leading us nowhere. Leading us down the garden path, as usual. And Livia, just standing there, mocking us for even believing in revelations.


The thirteenth what? The thirteenth lie. The thirteenth fake. The thirteenth unpath.


So what’s the truth of the thirteenth bottle? What is it about?

The complete death of hope.

Haven’t we already felt that? Hasn’t that been our entire lives?

Apparently not. Apparently there’s further to fall.


Was the thirteenth bottle Livia’s plan?

Everything was Livia’s plan.


The thirteenth bottle, like the thirteen imam.

The humanities have withdrawn, on principle. They’ve left the field of battle, by choice. They’ve tucked themselves into their tortoise shells. Achieved emergency extraction. They’ve abdicated their former role.

The humanities Rapture has already taken place. They’ve exited Hell. They’ve pressed eject. They’ve fund their escape route and just … vanished. They’ve seceded – voluntarily. They’re in internal exile. They’re living under an assumed identity, in witness protection, a long way from here.

The true humanities have no place in this world of ours. They know that. They’ve gone into hibernation. Turned out their lights. They’re biding their time, until things get better.

The afternoon’s what’s left over. Just time. Just banality. Just the great slackening when even you, philosopher, might become like anyone else.


You won’t have the strength to resist it, the afternoon. Philosophy won’t help you. You’ll have forgotten all philosophy, in the afternoon. You won’t be able to string your thoughts together. Nothing will add up, or make sense.

You’ll be lost in forgetting – afternoon forgetting. It’ll erode you. Erase you. You’ll just fall through the afternoon, like the rest of us. You won’t have your great project – your idiotbuch. You won’t be able to read. The afternoon will just flood over your defences.


You’ll be full of afternoon amnesia, philosopher. Like being some stunned animal, ready for slaughter. A blow over the head. Staggering. And waiting for the blow, only the blow will not come. Waiting and waiting, without knowing what you’re waiting for.


It’s the time of day when you’re most like anyone else. When you’re the most typical, philosopher.

Your DVDs and blu-rays won’t save you. Your books. Your learning.


That’s what I am, to you: the afternoon. The invasion.


We’ve only even lived half lives and quarter lives.


Are there times of day when you can’t write? Of course. When the sky’s too wide, too vast. When you yawn. When you want to lie down – and perhaps that’s what you do: lie down. Beneath your skylight. And look up to the white, white day.


Are we supposed to be alive? Is that what we’re pretending to be? is this supposed to be real? Are we supposed to be real? The afternoon, in which even philosophers become average. Become just like anyone else. And perhaps more like anyone else than anyone else.


These are the hours you cannot own. This isn’t your time. It isn’t for you. You couldn’t even concentrate on one of your arthouse films. You put down your book. You close your laptop. You can’t think of anything to write in your journal. Nothing’s happening. You’re planless.


Nothing’s going to happen, philosopher. Nothing, ever again.

That’s the afternoon. That’s afternoon entropy. When the gap between atoms gets wider and wider. Raw time.


It frightens me, too, philosopher. It threatens to invade me, too. I’m going to go mad with it, too. We can both go mad.

Anyway, I drive out in the afternoon. To find things to do. To distract myself. Because I’m afraid of it, the afternoon.


Everything’s on pause. Everything’s paused. And so are we. We’re on the threshold. The whole afternoon’s a threshold. It’s a way being lifted as in a giant’s palm to – what? The scrutiny of the sky. The sky’s blind eye. The white sky’s eye, that sees nothing.


Do you like my mad thoughts? Could I be locked up for this? Perhaps I’m being profound. But profound means deep, and I don’t feel deep, philosopher. I feel shallow – terribly so. I feel stretched out under heaven.


I’m lying here, under heaven. Under the wide sky. And I want to laugh. But if I began to laugh, I’d never stop.


And I don’t know how these sentences link up to one another. I don’t know how they follow, one from the other. I don’t know why I’m speaking like this. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Or whether I’m trying at all.

I don’t know, philosopher – I don’t know anything. I don’t know the words for the simplest things. I don’t know how to speak, but I’m speaking.

I don’t get the logic. I can’t follow my own words. I’ve given up trying to follow them. And you license this. By sitting so quietly. By looking at me in that way. Expectant, in some sense. Like some kind of therapist. What do you want me to say? What are you waiting for? Are wasting time? Am I wasting your time, and are you wasting mine? What are we experiencing? Who’s here to experience it? Who does it befall? Who does it happen to – and who doesn’t it happen to? And what happens anyway?

When did it happen, this ruin? When did it begin? Has it ended? Where are we in time? What day is it, and who are we?

It hasn’t ended yet. Nothing’s finished, just as nothing has begun. The ruination can’t be located in time. It’s a mode of experience. A mood. An atmosphere. We’re not in time anymore. We’re not anywhere.


Nothing becomes clear. Nothing’s happened – nothing’s finished happening. It’s not this then that. Where do we locate this? Where does it happen? Who are we?

It can’t be localised. Something decisive has happened. But where is it? When did it happen? Has it finished happening? Is it only about to happen?

Everything’s just … hesitating. There’s delay – that’s all.


It’s like we’re waiting for something. But waiting hasn’t got an object. It’s a state. Waiting is the medium. A mood. An atmosphere.


We talk, but we don’t understand things any better. All the questions remained unanswered.

Livia was raising our apocalyptic hopes.

Why – why was she doing that?

She was making us feel that we could be part of it. Agents of apocalyptic end – and renewal, even.

Why did she flatter us? Why did she want to give a sense of being world-historical? Why did she want to raise our hopes so high?

Because she wanted to see them dashed. She wanted us to know the failure of all eschatologies. The plunge. The decay. Only then … only in true disappointment. Only when confronted with the bland continuation of the world …

Only then, what? Would we understand. She wanted our hopes dashed. But from the highest heights. She wanted us to experience cosmic bathos.

You’ve never really accepted the bathos of life, Shiva – that’s your problem. The prose of the world. Which is why you can’t actually write it, real prose, the sort that people actually want to read. Which is why you’re all hyperbole and exclamation marks. You can’t bear life that is less than apocalyptic.


You’ll never finish the idiotbuch. There’ll never be a final page.

Because the book of life will be idiotic. It’ll be just more of this. The book of life is full of the prose of life, which runs on forever. And it’s not even a farce. It’s Sensible. It’s Orderly.

Is this Mother’s simulation or yours? Have you enclosed me in the pages of a book? Me without me, without my body. Me sans me. You can deal with this me, can’t you? Wistful. Woozy. Mad, even. A little mad. Organisational Management gone mad. You like that, don’t you? O.M. gone philosophical.

The me you can handle. That you don’t have to fuck. That doesn’t profane.

The me without a body. The me who can’t fuck you or be fucked or bear your child. A spirit, right? Just as you’re a spirit. And we’re talking like two spirits in the dark.

You want to hear me speak. To just run on. To give you something for your idiotbuch. That’s what you’re writing. That’s what this is.


It’s my turn to talk – from now until forever. But really, I’m not saying anything. I’m suspending speech. I’m just being vague and woozy and a bit mad. Which, as it turns out, is just as you like it.


And I won’t bear your child. I won’t be pregnant with your child. Imagine that could have been your legacy on earth: a child, and not a book – not an idiotbuch. But you’ve opted for the idiotbuch …


You want me to say the things you’d like to say. You’ve given it to me: the speech you’d like to hear. You want to hear your anguish said by someone else – by an organisational manager. You want to hear philosophical anguish translated into the language of Organisational Management.


You want me to unleashed by madness, to be nothing but madness, talking. Does madness talk? What does madness say? What does wooziness say? This, maybe.


You want to simulate me. Me talking. You want to make me live forever. In place of you, maybe. Instead of you, maybe.

This is what Livia knew was going to happen – or not happen.

Livia wanted to complete our Gnosticism, by making us pass through the failure of our apocalyptic hopes.

Because we do hope, despite everything. It’s a perverse hope – a twisted hope – but it’s still hope. The hope that’s someone’s going to stop us. Someone’s going to put an end to it – and us. That someone – God, maybe – will call time on the whole disaster.


We were never hopeless enough. Never despairing enough. We didn’t accept the endlessness.

But now – with the thirteen bottle of wine? And with what follows the thirteen bottle of wine, i.e., nothing? NOTHING – in capital letters?

Nothing is going to change. Nothing’s going to happen. The empire lasts forever. It’ll only ever be Rome AKA Babylon AKA the whole shitstem, and isn’t that the point?


We don’t want to be reconciled to this world – not this world. Still the hope that our idiocy will turn itself out and reveal itself as anything but idiocy. That disgust won’t really be disgust, but a way of savouring sweetness, and goodness. That the most disgusting wine will be the most perfect wine, from the perfect terroir. The New Jerusalem terroir, or whatever …

The great lesson is that banality wins. Is that the mundane wins. The world will last forever.

Will it?


You can cry for the end all you want. You can think that cry is the purest cry of all. But the end won’t come. Nothing will actually happen. Death isn’t going to come because you want it to. Isn’t that the great lesson?


The disgusting will always be disgusting and it won’t mean anything. Isn’t that painful?


Bathos is what you’re frightened of. The everyday – that’s the most frightening thing of all to you. Ordinary life and ordinary people. The world just going on. Imagine that: the world just going on. Look at you shudder.


Because you think it’s all in terribly bad taste, this going on. This endless survival. You think you’re in some kind of bad taste – so bad, that it should offend Someone. God maybe. Who would just strike you out.

The fact is that there is no Good Taste. That the adults aren’t in the room. That God’s not in his heaven …

Anything goes in these times. It’s just contortion in these times. It’s just twistedness, in these times. It’s grotesquerie, that’s all.

And that’s what life is, in these times – continuing beyond the point when it would have to make sense.

Day follows day. Day succeeds day, and what does it amount to? Can’t someone just put us down? Put us humanely to sleep? Wouldn’t that be the thing?


We’ve finished drinking. We can throw the empty bottle down and … what? We can drain it to the dregs and … nothing. Nothing happens. Livia doesn’t return at the moment of our deepest need. Death doesn’t come with his scythe, to cut off our heads. The candle snuffer doesn’t snuff us out. The apocalypse disappoints us.


And we’re still alive, still going. How awful! How awful for everything, how awful for us! Aren’t we all tired of our lamentations? Have we ever done anything other than lament?