Work in Progress

Listen to us talking. We’re not talking about essential things, are we? This isn’t important – not to you. All this is a diversion. It’s keeping you from your work – your true work. What you were put on earth to do – isn’t that right? Your true purpose …

Which is why this isn’t going to last. Why this isn’t going anywhere. It’s not like you’re paying attention. You’re listening with one ear.  


Would you even miss me if we never saw one another again? Would I miss you? I don’t even know.

I went travelling once. On a world trip with my best friend – not my husband. I’d never had a gap year, see. And I got together with my husband so early. And I went straight from studying to work … Anyway, I had a real adventure on that trip. Fucked some guy.

Did you tell your husband?

Yes. When I got back. We talked it over.  

Did he mind?

Of course he minded. It was a crisis. But all was forgiven in the end. In fact, I think it was good for us.

Ah, the married lives of the bourgeoisie.


I’ll bet you despise us. It’s easy to despise us, I think. I half despise us. We’ve got it all: that’s what you think. We have money and lifestyle, and we’re supposed to feel guilty about it. My husband flies all over the world, earning all this consultancy money and we’re supposed to loathe ourselves. What a joke! Anyway, we aren’t that rich. We’re comfortable, that’s all.

So your husband provides?

And I provide.

Not as much. You’re a junior lecturer, right? And he’s a professor. Is that a turn on: success? A second home in Mallorca? City breaks and so on?

I’m the sort of person they warn you about. Woo – a dangerous organisational manager! An organisational manager gone rogue!

Does that happen? Is there a point you get to when you’re so organised and so managed that you just … flip over to the opposite? Is that an occupational hazard?


The disciplines are crossing over. Changing places. Are you finding yourself becoming more organisational? More managerial?

I bet you think of me as a hindrance. As a pest. As a necessary evil to assuage certain of your needs.

I’ll bet you hate your needs, don’t you? I’ll bet you wish you had the courage to castrate yourself, just like that. And remove all temptation. And just become a slave of work. That’s right, isn’t it?

You could write all day and all night without any disturbance.

We’ve outlived ourselves. We’re already dead. We’ve been dead for the longest time. We’re just waiting for death to catch up with us.

Death has other things to do. Death’s fucking busy …


Let’s die – tonight. Let’s round it all off – tonight. Let’s draw a fucking line under our lives. Under what our lives are supposed to have been.

People like us oughtn’t be allowed.

God, what did I fall into? What am I doing with my life? Aren’t I doing the most stupid thing possible with my life?


Sometimes I have utter, complete contempt for … everyone alive. Including me. Most of all me.


Do you know why we’re here on Earth? To learn how to despise what we are, so we can be someone else.



I don’t even loathe myself very interestingly, not like you philosophers. You’re very good at that. You’re virtuosos.

The way we’re speaking. Who’s speaking in our places? Who’s saying things for us? Who’s speaking for me? Who’s taking our places?


Just words, streaming through us. Talking about talking. Talking about … Nothing, philosopher. NOTHING, in capital letters.


There’s something I have to say. And I’m searching for it, philosopher. I’m trying to find the words. And let the words surprise me.

Because you have a more advanced soul than anyone else. Because you’re deeper. More profound. Because you feel things more profoundly. Is that it?


You’re not bothered by all the trivial things. You soul soars higher – is that it? You’re altogether better. You’re plain superior to the rest of us.

You’d like to be some terrible threat, but you’re not. Face it. Do you think the Mother would have let you in, if you weren’t?

How would it know?

Based on, like, all your past behaviour. On all the data she’s gathered about you.

I could surprise you. I could just … flip out.

Go on then: flip away.

Philosophy: fucking up the world, one student at a time.

Sure, we’ve been corrupting the young since ancient Athens. That’s what Socrates was killed for.

You teach them how to despise the world. How to cultivate their fucked-up-ness.

Legitimising all their adolescent bullshit. Making them think that being fucked up is part of the nature of being, or whatever.

Making them dwell in some perpetual bad mood.