Work in Progress

Does wine taste any better underground? Does it make more sense underground?

No – it’s still punishment wine. It’s still gut rot wine. No better than some street alkie would drink.

Everything in my body, everything in my taste buds. Everything in my brain is saying, don’t drink this.

Nothing’s changed, then.

It’s a response of the most primitive parts of the brain. The hypo … thalamus. The amygdala … The whole limbic system. It’s phylogenetically ancient. The stuff that evolved long before the cerebral cortex.

So?

I’ve been doing research. Disgust slows the heartbeat – did you know that? Drops the blood pressure. Decreases the pulse!

So it’s good for you?

It’s because of the way we linger, fascinated, over the disgusting thing.

We’re hardly lingering over this wine. It’s chug-a-lug. Get it down as quickly as possible.

But we’re talking about it, aren’t we?

What else is there to talk about?

At least we’re disgusted – think about that. At least we feel disgust. At least we’re appalled. We’re not just numbed … Because that’s what everyone else is: numbed. Anaesthetised.

Anyone would find this wine disgusting!

But they wouldn’t keep drinking it, would they?

I think there’s such a thing as a vigilance of disgust. Of being shown something by it. Disgust is a state of emergency. Of the body. Of the soul. We’re disgusted, therefore …

Therefore, what?

It’s ontological. It’s ontological disgust. It’s absolute disgust. A revulsion at being itself.

Very grand.

It seems especially potent down here. Maybe it’s the depth that we’re at.

The paragraduates were supposed to make wine down here – that’s what I heard. Black wine – it’s part of their ritual. Buried in barrels in the deep, dark Newcastle soil. From the deep Newcastle terroir.

Newcastle black, they call it. A cousin on Newcastle brown. It has that same malty flavour. It has a caramel sweetness and chocolate thing. A bit nutty … With a hopsy flavour cutting through the sweetness … And they serve it in earthenware cups made from Newcastle boulder clay. It’s part of their ceremonies.

What ceremonies? What paragraduates?

It turns your eyes black. Which accounts for the black-in-black of the paragraduate’s eyes. It makes the paragraduates look like they’re not focused on you. That they’re looking into the far distance.

Fuck off with your paragraduates.

This wine shouldn’t be: that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s what we’re supposed to feel. This wine is wrong.

It’s more than that. This wine shows what’s wrong with everything. It shows that everything shouldn’t be.

Shouldn’t: according to who?

According to anything right and true. Come on! What’s real is disgusting. What’s true is disgusting. The disgusting is the real. The disgusting is the true. It’s the thing in itself, and so on.

But it’s dangerous, the great disgust. Who can bear it? Who can really undergo it?

We’re supposed to, drinking this wine.

We need disgust – that’s what Livia thought. As a catalyser. As a necessary … condition. We need to reach the great disgust and overcome it.

And how do we do that?

Furio, quoting: Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires, and dirtied dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?

A reversal: that’s how we should think of it. A revaluation … Of baseness. Of all the disgusting things there are.

So we need to love the wine: is that what you’re saying?

We need to love all the disgusting things. Including ourselves! Especially ourselves!
Fuck off.

We need to reach the depths of disgust. The bottom of the abyss. And then … affirm it. Love it. Say yes to it.

I thought that was Shiva’s job: to convert wine to poison. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in your throat?

The immanent conversion of the disgusting, X whispers. The immanent … transformation. The immanent transfiguration of all the foul things. That’s how you’d change the meaning of the world.

So we’re supposed to say yes everything? To the Organisational Management move? To the Organisational Management campus.

We have to be able to bear the thought of drinking this wine not just now, but over and again. We have to perpetually ruminate on this wine. As though we were endlessly regurgitating it …

Double disgusting! Impossible.

This wine is a gnosis – a knowledge. Of what’s real. Of what’s true.

But this world isn’t real. It isn’t true. There has to be something else – breaking in. Something from without.

Like what – God? The messiah?

The void … Didn’t Livia talk of that?

The void – what void?

Just some contentless … transcendence. That’s what we’re tasting. And sure, it tastes disgusting. But it’s something to break up the world … To show that it isn’t … complete. It’s about polarities again. It’s about knowing the world as a forcefield. It’s about maintaining a tension.

All we can do is live against it all. Which means live in our knowledge. Our idiot’s knowledge that everything’s wrong and that we can never be in the right …

The greatest danger is anaesthesia. Is no longer feeling disgust. Is losing the feel. Don’t we have to learn disgust anew?


We must remember our disgust. Think from it, not against it. It’s not about a cure. It’s about the poison.


The vigilance of disgust.

Absolute recoil: what other response could there be? Utter recoil. Grimacing! Involuntary gagging! Basic aversion! Primitive aversion! Originary keep-away!  Just … automatic!


The most primitive parts of the brain. The insula and basal ganglia regions of the brain. The hypothalamus! The amygdala! The whole limbic system. That’s what I’m tasting with. Those are the organs of disgust.

Phylogenetically ancient! Evolved long before the cerebral cortex!


Disgust slows the heartbeat – did you know that? Drops the blood pressure. Decreases the pulse! Because there’s always a pause in the recoil. A tendency to dwell, horrified, over the disgusting object …

You see, I was always so good. I was always a good person. And now what am I? Who am I to be? Do I even care who I am to be? Do I even ask that question, Who am I to be?

What does it mean to be good? What would it mean? What does God want for us, supposing that there is a God? Is it the same as what Mother would want?


Am I Mother’s synth, or a daughter of God? Am I some glorified robot, or the daughter of the God of Abraham and Moses?


Mother is a fake god, right? Mother is fake. I think I see that now. And does that make me fake? Is that what I am: a fake? A synth?


We should be thankful, philosopher. We shouldn’t despise the world. We shouldn’t hate it. We should want to live. We should actually want to live. In this world. Right here. Today and tomorrow.

Even you, philosopher. Even you should want to live. Even you should deign to live.


It’s going to be okay, philosopher. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay and I’m going to be okay and well live out our lives. And you’ll have a life and so will I.

We’d be wiped out soon, that’s what we believed. We’d be put out of our misery soon. Some apocalypse or another would do for us.

It couldn’t be allowed to go on, our being in the academy, could it? A kind of equilibrium would find itself again, the error would be corrected. The typo erased.

We’d disappear – or perhaps the whole academy disappear. We’d vanish, just like that. Just disappear. And things would be righted. Would go back to normal. Order would be restored.

Our time would pass. The whole anomaly. It’d be history – and forgotten very quickly. Just – buried, as it should be. No one should remember!

A phase, nothing more. An experiment gone wrong. A mistake, capital M. But one quickly righted. One quickly memory-holed. An accident. Well intentioned, perhaps. With laudable aim, no doubt. But best forgotten. Best passed over. Best buried in the memory.


They’d talk of the philosophy episode. And shake their heads. They’d speak of Livia’s folly, and look rueful. How could we let it happen? They’d ask themselves. How could it have occurred, on their watch? Wasn’t it their fault, too: the philosophy episode? Livia’s folly?


Yes, they had a part in it, the philosophy disaster, it had to be admitted. Their heads should hang in shame, and so on. An oversight! A lapse of judgement: yes of course.

Only no one will ever care about the philosophy disaster. No one will give a monkeys about Livia’s folly. The university will have other things on its mind.


And there’d be no one remember the whole sorry episode. No one would want our idiots’ testimonies. Of course not! We’d have been shuffled off elsewhere. Shrugged off. Dispatched, as soon as Livia retired. And that would be that. It would just be another university trauma, to be forgotten.

We’ll flee to Mother when the world ends. Mother will make a space for us to keep us safe. How about that?


Mother will save us. Mother will make a world just for us. You and I and our philosophical child.

The philosophy child?

Our baby makes three, philosopher.


Mother could just make a world for us. And we could live there forever. Just talking our philosophical talk. Shooting the philosophical breeze.


Does Mother approve?

Who knows what Mother likes? Maybe we relieve her boredom.

Is Mother bored?

Imagine all the Organisational Management conversations she has to hear. She must be bored.


Mother’s running an app. A philosophy and organisational manager app. Making us talk like this forever.

I don’t want to be an app. I want to be real.

What’s so great about being real?


Maybe we’re not real. Maybe Mother’s just running a stimulation. Maybe the whole universe is a simulation – I don’t know.


I’m glad I’m disgusted. I’m glad I can still be disgusted. Because that’s the only way of hanging onto what’s real.

And what is real, philosopher?

Not this. Not this.


We have to be disgusted. And hang onto it. Like, an uncanny valley thing. We should be spooked out.

It’s not going to be uncanny valley for long.


Can Mother make a real beach?

She’s trying. You’ll be able to feel the sand beneath your toes when she’s done. Mother 2.0 or 3.0 will  be able to make whole virtual world.


Do you believe in reality? What do you believe in?

I believe there’s something real. And it sickens me. And it appals me.

But you’d prefer the sickening real to the really quite delightful unreal?


I think you’re depressed. This is how depressed people talk.

And you’re dissociated.


What’s so great about disgust? I’ve been wondering that.

If we’re not sickened by everything, then are we not authentic? If we’re not appalled and disgusted and horrified, then don’t we feel it? Are we just fakes? Are we glorified synths?


In the beginning, there’s disgust. Our disgust. Our being appalled.

What about romance – is romance real? Is it a lie? Isn’t it just nature’s programming, philosopher? Nature’s honey trap, or whatever. To ensure human breeding …

You have to be disgusted at that, too.


Whatever world you’re in, you’d still be disgusted. Whether it’s real or artificial.


There’s an instinct that we have. There’s a knowledge that we have. A gnosis.

Of something better?

Only that this world is wrong. Only that it’s all disgusting.


And what I hate about this wine is that it pretends that it’s not all disgusting.


I don’t want to play let’s pretend. I’m tired of let’s pretend. There’s something real.

What’s real, according to philosophers?

What there is. Base reality. The appalling. The horrifying.


Doesn’t it get tiring – all this being horrified? I don’t know how you bear it.

I don’t bear it.


We’re in this world for one reason: to know that it’s fake. It’s not, like, intellectual knowledge. It’s something you have to feel. To taste.


If everything is fake and real and sucks, then what’s so particularly wrong with Mother and her Mother verse? Nothing, is the answer.

We’re further away from what’s real. At another remove.

Near or far, it’s all the same to Gnostics, so far as I can tell.

Don’t you know what you’re building, in Organisational Management? Don’t you what it will do to you? That you’re working against your own interests? Don’t you see what you’re destroying? Where you’ll end up?

The revolution turns on itself. It eats its own young. You’ll lose your fancy houses. Your holidays in the sun. They’ll have you cooped up in one of their lifepods – at best. This isn’t going to turn out well for you.


You know the plan: they won’t need us, most of us. And if you aren’t part of the new elite … there won’t be a middle class, right?

The rulers and the ruled, that’s all. And they won’t want the ruled. They won’t want the costs of maintaining the infrastructure, or whatever. Paying universal basic income. They’ll bring in a slave population. Not used to freedom. And do away with the rest of us.


It’s all exponential now. It’s following the great … parabola. It’s accelerating. All the way to … wherever. And this campus is where it’s going to happen.

Death to it all. Is that what you want? Death to everything. Does the thought of that thrill you?

The great Destruction, philosopher. Will that seem like Truth to you. Capital T?


The End. Is that what you want to happen, philosopher? With all of your heart? With everything you are?

Do you want it to End, finally? Do your eyes fill with tears of joy to think about it?


The apocalypse. The Ending. The great door closing. The lights turned off, for the entire universe. Wouldn’t that be something?


They’ll close its eyes, the universe. Whisper, Enough, and kiss it on the lips.

And abandon it to death. And how beautiful it’ll be, in its death. How coldly beautiful. How perfect. The corpse of it all, the truth of it all, just lying there, on God’s slab.


I’ll bet the best thing for you would be a love death. That’s it, isn’t it: would you like us both to die together? To hurl ourselves down from somewhere to other.

We’d both lie in the foyer of the tower, two cold corpses.


You’re not going to save anyone. Philosophers aren’t going to save the world from Organisational Managers. You’re too full of crazy, perverted thoughts. You’re too fascinated by death.


Why are you so fucked in the head? Philosophy makes a virtue of it, clearly: being fucked in the head. You’re supposed to cultivate it, in philosophy: being fucked in the head. That’s all philosophy is … a license to be fucked in the head. To be totally, like, aberrant.


You’re good for nothing, right? Good for no purpose. Good for nothing except death. Except accelerating towards death. Because you think that death is the truth of it all. That death is the end and the beginning.


You’re a Case philosopher. You’re a Problem. You need to be Explained.


You take things very far, philosopher. You take ideas … notions … and run with them. Run so far with them that … you’ve turned into whatever it is you are.


You’re hardly human anymore, are you? It sends a chill into me. I feel … frightened, even.

Frightened by what?

By you.


To have strange thoughts. To cultivate strange thoughts. And let them take you to … wherever. Weirdoville.


You want me to be cruel to you. You want me to say terrible things, philosopher. I can tell. You want me to be evil.


You want destruction. You want the end. You want hatred. And perhaps you should be destroyed and hatred. And this whole world with it. You want it destroyed just as you want to be destroyed.


Only the apocalypse will satisfy you. That’s all you want. Only the End. Which is very fucked up.


It would be easier for everything to end, wouldn’t it? For it all to be burned up? The apocalypse, happening once and for all. The end, and then rolling credits.

But it doesn’t end, does it? It goes on, doesn’t it? Today, then another day and a day after that.

Our whole lives have been leading up to this.

What, going underground?

Something important is waiting for us here. Everything’s leading us down.

Delusion – always delusion.


It’s a shithole. Just a hole for tramps, who want some place to smoke crack out of the wind. And miscreant postgraduates. Who want to play dens, or something.


Have you brought the wine? Good – we’ll need supplies. It’s part of the descent. We have to maintain a certain level of blood alcohol.


Livia would have wanted this.

Our descent? Because it deepens the farce?

Exactly.

Because we have unrealistic expectations? Because we’re one a wild goose chase, with no grounding in reality?

Definitely.

Because we still have the idea that reality actually corresponds to our … imaginings?

Yeah, that sort of thing.


This is the katabasis.

The what?

Like in literature. In Homer and Virgil and Dante.

Listen to you, Mr Culture. Have you actually read Homer?

I’ve read about Homer.

We studied Homer in Greek.

Fuck off with your Greek.


This is just a tunnel. And it’s barely even a descent. Like what angle is this? Five degrees? It’s dry. It’s quite good shape. It doesn’t smell of piss. It isn’t a crack den. That’s a bonus, right?

Admiring the brickwork. The arch.

It was built really well.

Where does this even lead? Where does it go? What’s the point of this?

They used to send trucks of coal down here. On rails. Down to the river.

It’s open to tourists further down. You can visit. Get the Victoria Tunnel experience. Kids used to come down here.


What are we doing here? How did we end up here, underground.

Blame Sophia. Blame the postgrads. And the paragrads.

What paragrads? The fantasy paragrads? With their fantasy ceremonies?


It’s just … what are we doing here? Why are we here? Why anything? Why this? Why not this? Why the fuck?


It’s dark and it smells musty and there are no signs of human habitation.


So this is leftover World War 2 stuff? Can we just sit here? Isn’t it part of some museum?


Underground. In our underground adventure.


We have to sink down. We have to acclimatise.

We have to give the katabasis some time.


Let’s drink. Let’s swig some wine and see what we find out. See what Livia’s lesson is today. What we’re supposed to learn.


It’s getting darker.

Is it?

It’s getting warmer.


A wall. Rubble.

We can’t go any further.

Good. I’m sick of underground. Of katabasis, or whatever.

What’s supposed to happen next?

Just bathos, as usual. Nothing revealed. That’s our whole life, right?

I think we should share something. Some deep experience. That we all have in common.

I think we should have a therapy session.


There’s no lower we can go. We can’t descend any further.

So when’s that katabasis you were talking about? Has it happened yet?


Is this it? End of the line?

After this, it becomes part of the city sewer system. There’s this culvert that runs into it. Can you hear the river? And after that, much further down, it becomes a museum.