Work in Progress

What do you do in Mallorca?

I enjoy the sun. I read … thrillers. Or detective books. Sit by the pool – we actually have a pool. Imagine that! A house with a pool. I have a friend over there. A gay friend. My gay best Mallorca friend. I think he’d like you. My husband doesn’t really get him at all, though he’d like to. My husband’s not really metrosexual, like you. He’s more traditionally male. He’s a specimen of northern manhood.


You’re the kind of person who feels at home on holiday. Who knows what to do on holiday. Right?

You were made to luxuriate. You’re at ease with being at ease. You luxuriate in luxuriance. To have, like, romantic intrigues.

Everything’s so still. And calm. We’re in the calm eye of the hurricane. The campus’s hurricane. It’s all turning around us.

What is?

Everything. The whole city. Wheeling around us. Like we’re the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy’s arms are just turning around us.

We’re at the heart of all things. In the secret place at the heart of everything. Where God would be, if there was a God.


And God’s just this wave of calm, right? God’s this wave of calm saying, everything’s going to be alright. Is everything going to be alright, philosopher? For who? For us, maybe? For the, like, universe? For everything?


Do you believe in God, philosopher? I think I do, tonight. This night. I think you’re going to lead me to God. What does that mean? I think you’re the person I’m going to talk about God with. That’s what’s you’re about for me.

What ideas have you had, philosopher? What’s going in the dome?

Have you had a productive day? Did you get something important done? Were you able to take an essential step? Any significant advances?


Don’t think anymore. Turn off the dome. Give yourself a thought holiday.


Do you get tired of being yourself? Are you bored of being who you are? Don’t you want a holiday from philosophy? From filling your head with this kind of stuff? Wouldn’t you like to forget it all? To, like, loosen your grip?


Don’t you want to be NOTHING? In capital letters? And no one?


And not to have to do anything. Just, like, be lost in the afternoon. The whole afternoon …

It could be the last afternoon of our lives. Just giving way into the Afternoon of afternoons. Just dissipate into the greater Calm.


Just letting yourself float up there. Letting yourself be suspended.

And it’s not even your calm. It’s just some cloud drifting through you. God’s calm, or something.


Disappear. Let your atoms be … dispersed. Do you have atoms, philosopher? Are you like the rest of us?


Like, become totally porous. Let everything disperse into you. Let it pass through you.   


Don’t you feel it: a great calm that’s outside of us. A calmness that’s out there. That could come to us. Invade us. Envelop us. And gulp us up like Moby Dick.

‘You’re the love of my life’: say that. You don’t have to mean it.


Lovers play, philosopher. They aren’t serious all the time.


How long will our adventure last?

How long do you want it to last?

Until it stops being an adventure. Until it becomes more drudgery.


I didn’t know I had a philosopher-shaped hole in my life. Until you arrived.


Is there a philosophy of fucking? There are philosophies of love, I know that. But of fucking?

Where’s philosophy going to take you? Are you going to spend your whole life this? You are, aren’t you? You’re going to live your life up here, working, not working, and be grateful for it. You’ll read and write your whole life away. That’s not so bad, I suppose.


Do you want to settle down? Maybe you’ll have another affair, like this one. Or you’ll meet some admiring PhD student at some conference. And she’ll come up and summer with you, or whatever. That wouldn’t be bad, would it? A nice interlude, right? An episode …  

And she’d be someone who’d have half an idea of what you’re trying to do – philosophically, I mean. And what these books are all about. She’d be part of the philosophy scene … She’d look up to you. Admire you. Think you were the bee’s knees.

You could give her advice. Help her with her dissertation. Dictate parts of it to her. And she’d think you were quite the philosopher. That you Knew Stuff. That you were pretty cool, in general. You wouldn’t be just anyone. Some … senior lecturer with a job at a decent university. Not just anywhere. Russell Group, and all that …

And you could tell her things as you lay in bed. About Rilke and stuff. Which she’d appreciate, unlike me.

And she’d teach you something of life. You need to learn about life, philosopher. You’d teach her about philosophy, and she’d teach you about life. A fair trade. And then after the summer she’d – pouf – disappear. Go back to her life. Leaving you to your studies. Wouldn’t that be perfect?


You don’t want a relationship, philosopher. You want … longing. To intensify your longing. You want … to be alone, corresponding with someone you’ve never actually met, like Rilke.


Are you going to spend your entire life in a room like this? Is this going to be it, for you?


What are your fears? Your goals? What are your hopes and dreams, philosopher? Your non-philosophical hopes and dreams … do you have those? Or has philosophy sucked them all up?


If I was the jealous type, I’d be ever so jealous of philosophy. Philosophy has absorbed everything you are. What’s left for me?

I know what it is: intellectual stimulation. You need to read clever things and try to write clever things. Because you’re clever. And because the world doesn’t give you enough clever. Enough stimulus.

So you sit up here, in your high room, which you’ve turned into cleverland. And I’m allowed up here, because you have other needs, and not just intellectual ones. Which I’m sure you despise.

You read these things to feel clever and to exercise your cleverness. To take your cleverness for a walk.


The clever despise the not-so-clever, I know that, philosopher. Different levels of intelligence shouldn’t mix, should they? I shouldn’t even be up here, I know that. I don’t know my way through arthouse film. I don’t follow the latest developments in … literary fiction, or whatever. I don’t have an intellectual life. I don’t study at all, not like you study. I never get lost in books.

I’m glad we can talk like this. About nothing. About everything. I like talking when talk doesn’t go anywhere. When we don’t have any answers. When it’s all questions and questions … When we’re just asking. Asking God, maybe. Asking the sky, maybe.

You can’t count on it. Some days you can write and some days you can’t and it’s all a mystery.

So the Muse hasn’t visited you today.

It’s all so pathetic, isn’t it? Writing things no one’s interested in. For an audience of no one. That no one will even publish. By someone who can’t actually write.

At least you have ambition.

A stupid ambition.

At least there’s something that makes you get up on the morning – think about that.


I always wanted to write the perfect book, and then kill myself. The work, I called it. Everything was about the work.

And did you ever write it?

Maybe I’m trying to write it now.

And kill yourself? But that’ll never happen. Because I’ll never write anything perfect. Or even any good.

Where are you going to say you were, to your husband? How are you going to account for yourself?

I’ll say I was at the gym, as usual. At exercise class. Or was working late.

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

My body’s not elsewhere. I fuck him too.

Fuck. You’re so shameless.


How does he spend his time, anyway?

Consult. Put in funding bids. Zoom calls to Bulgaria and other half arsed nations. Tajikistan. Uzbekistan and the rest. Giving them advice. As if they haven’t got other problems.

What advice does he give them? What does he know about business?

He’s a professor of organisational management.

How could I forget?

He’s consulted with all kinds of people. He’s published a few things. He’s actually very productive.

Woo – productive!


What if I did leave my husband? What kind of life would I have? Who would we be together? What kind of couple would we make? How long before we’d just be like everyone else? How long would it be before we couldn’t bear one another?

And you don’t hate me, imagine. Why is that? You hate everyone but me. There must be something very special about me. To escape your hatred. Your scorn.


At least I know I’m dead. At least I don’t pretend. At least I know I’m a corpse. At least I know I’ve got nothing to say. At least I know my … redundancy. That everything’s just played out. That the whole world’s been placed in the hands of maniacs.