Work in Progress

We’re supposed to be disgusted. Livia wanted our disgust. The disgust was to instruct us. It was to show us something.

An … awakening. That’s what our disgust was supposed to be. It was the lesson of her Gnosticism.

World hatred should be … tastable, that’s what she said. Smellable.

Don’t prolong the agony. We don’t want anymore. We’ve had enough. We’ve lived too long.

Life is compromise, in every way. Life is corruption. Life is poison – more poison. Life is lies, and we’re tired of lies.

Where did the poison come from? When did the poisoning start?

Why couldn’t they leave the world alone? Why couldn’t they leave us alone? Why did they have to do things to us? What Devil do they serve?

In the air, the very air. Falling from the air: their poison. In the earth, the very earth. Sinking in the soil, their poison. Bubbling in the water: poison. In everything we eat, we drink: poison. In everything we breathe: poison.

And in everything we hear: lies.

The wine of truth. The true wine is disgusting wine. The true wine shows the truth about the world. That it’s a disgusting world.

We’re supposed to be appalled by the world. We’re supposed to hate it, the world. It’s supposed to complete our hatred, this wine. It’s supposed to take it to the very End. To lift us. To let us reach the Pinnacle.

And if we keep it down, this wine, what will it do to us? How will it change us? Is it like the magic potion in Asterix? Will it give us special disgust powers?

We’ll just feel disgust more intensely. It will just sharpen our disgust. Turn it into a weapon.

Disgust with everything: isn’t that the goal? Isn’t that what we should want?

World horror! World dread! At the height of the night. At the summit of our drunkenness. That’s where we want to be led. Deathwards! Endwards! Looking for apocalypse. Longing for apocalypse. For the end. For the blow to come. For the blade of the guillotine to flash down.

Longing for apocalypse. For the end. For the blow to come. The great, No more.

The great Hatred: that’s what we wanted to find. Some catastrophe great than we are. Greater than everything.

Some promise of Correction. Of Corrective. Some coming Deletion. Some liberating act of Erasure. Some Wipe Out. A wave of destruction. Greater than we are. The Truth – that will come like Truth.

Drunkenness must be steered. There needs to be a discipline to drunkenness. It has to lead somewhere. To take us somewhere.

The drunken path! The drunken ascent! Drunkenness must go hand in hand with disgust. Drinking must cultivate disgust. We have to look beyond the world – this world. The uttermost of world-disgust: that’s what we have to attain.

A disgust that will take you to the end of all things. A total … sickness with the world. That’s what we had to feel. That’s what we had to find.

The point of drinking was to push us beyond the world. To bring us before transcendence. To the empty summit. The highest point.

You know this is the thirteenth bottle, don’t you?

So what?

The thirteenth bottle is the last wine. It’s the culmination of a whole eschatology of wine. It’s the wine all the others have been leading up to. That will make all of them make sense.

We’ve been ascending a wine ladder, don’t you see?

Or descending it. We’ve been going down, down, down a spiral staircase.

There’s been a method – of sorts.

A method in our drinking?

Thirteen bottles is the end of the course of anti-poison.

Do you think?

It’s a cure. A cure in doses.

The thirteenth bottle turns lies into truth.

Is that right?

It’s the messianic wine.

We’re what Organisational Management is trying their strength on. We’re the chew toy: that’s what they think.

If they can solve us, they can solve anything. If the begin with us, with the most unmanageable, they can work their way out to the successively more manageable.

If they can break us. If they can get us in their manacles, then … the rest will follow. The more manageable subject areas. The more biddable.

We flatter ourselves.

It’s true.

Now if it was analytic philosophy, they’d be straight in the bridle. They’d want the muzzle. But this is European philosophy.

This is UK European philosophy … What’s that ever going to save? It’s the stupidity of the UK European philosophy that’s the thing. Don’t you see?

She threw the unmanageable into the heart of Organisational Management. Like a bomb. We were her bomb. We’re supposed to explode. To explode with stupidity. And unmanageability. And general … disorganisation.

We’re Livia’s hand grenade. We’re sugar in the petrol tank. We’re the mote in the Organisational Management eye. We’re the Flaw in the O.M. diamond. We’re the grit in the Organisational Management shell.

We’re the ground zero of the new reality. It’ll boom out from us, like some hydrogen bomb. Just … exploding. Ripping a hole in this fake universe.

Livia cast us in her theatre – her philosophical theatre. Livia gave us our roles. We had our place in Livia’s production. Following Livia’s dramaturgy.

We were on Livia’s stage. Directed by Livia. Set-designed by Livia. Before the whole university – and Livia.

Livia’s psychodrama. Livia’s philosophical production. Something to amuse her. In the twilight of her academic years.

She gave herself a treat. We were her treat. And then she left us. She found better things to do. But that was part of the dramaturgy, too.

I think she liked the idea of us being in Organisational Management – in the future. She liked visualising it: us in Organisational Management meetings. Us in our own meetings, talking about Organisational Management things.

In the end, she’d directed the Organisational Management move theatre, too. She’d set designed the Organisational Management stage. Placed us all in our Organisational Management roles.

Wherever she is now, she’s enjoying it, Livia. She’s thinking of it. Whatever she’s doing, she’s thinking of us in our new situation. In this meeting, right here. In Organisational Management towers. Livia’s laughing at us, wherever she is. She’s enjoying our predicament. She enjoys the fact that you’re head of subject, Shiva. She enjoys the fact that Fiver’s the administrator. She likes the idea of Gazelle as head of the Board of Studies. That Furio is doing his Furio thing and Driss his Driss thing, right here on the Organisational Management campus. And that Io’s still some ultra-Christian. And Sophia is … whoever Sophia is. Livia’s enjoying thinking oft his, wherever she is. It’s all her doing.