The signal decays, philosopher. Time decays and space decays. How long does it take for the end to end?
How much time is there left? What will happen when we disappear? Will anything happen?
Next and next and next. What? What will happen next?? Are we just trying to work out how to die?
What does space do? Does it space, like a verb? Do the distances between things become greater? Is everything expanding? Are we all getting vaster and vaster?
Where’s the space taking us, philosopher? Into itself? Are we disappearing into space?
Is space invading us? Is it hollowing us out? Is it hollowing everything out?
What’s disappearing in space? What’s getting lost?
Are there things washed up by space? That just appear in space, like wrack on the sea shore?
What does time say, philosopher? What does time have to say? Let’s translate time into words. The timing of time, or whatever. Time’s whiling. It’s … whatever it is -ing.
It just goes on. It goes on, philosopher. That’s all. There’s no secret. There’s nothing hidden. Time does its thing. Hour follows hour. Day succeeds day.
Am I a philosopher now?
The original sin of our existence. That we were at all.
We should never have been: that’s our Original Sin. We should never have been born! But we were born! We’re here … Here – where we should not be. On the face of the earth! We’re here – sinning at every moment. Spoiling every moment!
And sin’s worse when there’s no God. When there’s no one to absolve your sin. When there’s no way to be forgiven.
Our original sin. Our original fault. A debt we can’t settle. That we carry with us, every day.
Isn’t the solution just to kill ourselves at once? But how can we erase who we will have been?
How to erase our birth certificates – to tear them up? How to expunge ourselves from every record? How to disappear ourselves from every photograph? From every online archive? How to memory-hole ourselves so thoroughly that even our friends can’t recall us? That our own parents will forget our names?
Impossible, impossible! Our slug’s trail, through the world. The trail of our existence, through the past, into the present.
How, then, to solve the problem? To solve our problem – the problem that we are? How to undo everything that we’ve done? The terrible mess that we’ve made?
And what about the mess we’d leave, if we did away with ourselves? Who would have to clear up our bodies? Who would need to tidy up our affairs?
Throw ourselves on the Tyne, and we’d wash up somewhere. Throw ourselves in the North Sea, and we’d end up rotting on this beach or that. Hurl ourselves from Claremont tower, and someone would have to find our battered bodies. Gas ourselves in our own flats, and someone would have to cart us off for cremation. Electrocute ourselves – same problem. There’d have to be an autopsy.
Always something left over. Always something. Our lifeless bodies. Our suicided bodies. If only there was a way just to be vaporised. Just to be blasted out of existence. Isn’t that possible? To be exploded. Every molecule dispersed. Every atom. An entire – eradication. A complete – wipeout.
Better to rewind the whole universe to the time before we were born. Before we had a chance to make trouble. Before our parodic existence, before our parody. Before our mockery. Before our absurdity – the absurdity of our existence.
Better to destroy the universe as such, because of the chance that beings like us could appear. Better to wipe out everything that exists, because things can go so terribly wrong. Which means our original sin is also the original sin of existence as such and in general. The original sin that there is anything at all …
Summer! We’re remembering summer, postgraduates! We’re keeping the memory of summer warm inside us!
Like the summers of our PhD years. Like the summers of our distant childhoods.
Eternal summer! Weeks and weeks, held into the eternal. Turning there, kept by the eternal. Weeks lying back beneath summer skies. Watching summer pass over us, in summer skies. Over our offices! Over the campus!
With no one knocking on our office doors. No one phoning us. With rare emails! With a few postgraduate meetings every now and then.
Summers becalmed. Summers with no breeze, nothing taking us forward. Summers without wind to fill our sails. And we were glad of it! We were glad that summer was a turning upon itself, and nothing more. That the summer was the fulcrum of the academic year, turning on itself, and that was all. Letting the academic year turn – and wasn’t that enough? Letting the year turn about itself, in slow orbit.
When we wore our summer haloes. When the dream of genius burned around us. When we thought we’d Work for the first time. When we’d be brought back to ourselves – as philosophers. When we were given back to ourselves – all over again – as thinkers. As thinkers who could think, for the first time. When we’d coincide with ourselves as philosophers, as thinkers.
But as philosophers of summer. As thinkers of summer, where summer thought inside us.
If we fell asleep in the sun, what then? If we closed our eyes, of what would we dream? Let’s dream those dreams now, in the cold of the Organisational Management campus. Let’s let our stupidity join hands with Brilliance. Let’s let our idiocy meet Genius.
Isn’t God an idiot, too, in the high summer? Doesn’t God become stupid under the high summer sun?
Summon it up inside you, postgraduates: the memory of summer. Let it warm you now, the summer that seems never to quite happen. That seems forever to come.
Dream of it now – the coming summer. Great summer. The summer where you’d lay claim to it: your potentiality. Your youth! Your faith! Where you’d seize it back from everything that tried to put it to work.
Your perpetual beginning, postgraduates – forever ahead. Your hidden childhood, that hasn’t happened yet. The Ursprung. The Originary. That hadn’t been crushed in you. That hadn’t been lost in you. The summer of hope, that still breathes inside of you.
Think of the warm, wide summer when you could catch up with yourselves at last. Take account. Lookback through your notebooks. Let your thoughts assemble. Let them come calmly together, as light poured through them. As warmth buoyed them, lifted them.
Summer thoughts. Summer ideas! That seem to float upwards. That seem to rise into the sky, like fire balloons. Summer thoughts, rising. Summer ideas, rising. But casually. Neglectfully. Without paying any attention to themselves. Without trying. Without sweat.
Idled summer, with idled work. Work without work – which was more of an unworking than work. Non-work, where the non– was not privative. Where the non– was an opening.
Not work, but the contemplation of work. Not work, but contemplation – work detached from work, fallen out of step with work. That was out of phase with anything productive.
Summer, postgraduates! The opposite of our Organisational Management winter! The opposite of our White-Witch winter. Our Moominland-in-November winter.
Let it burn in your hearts, postgraduates! Let it warm your hearts! The coming summer. The summer that still hasn’t arrived. The summer condition – that is without beginning and without end.
Think of the summer, postgraduates! Warm yourselves with thoughts of the summer!
Think of summer skies. Think of summer warmth. Think of dreams of taking summer flight, borne by summer winds.
Think of setting sail into the summer, as into the limitless, postgraduates. The Open. Think of being freed into summer, into summer warmth.
Think of the near-empty campus, excerpt for a few foreign students. Except for academics gathered for summer conferences. But even them in good moods, in summer moods.
Think of our Philosophy offices, doors standing open, postgraduates. Think of the summer breeze through our accommodation.
Think of the summer postgraduate room. Desk fans moving drowsily from side to side. Think of the open windows. Think of the wind-stirred blinds.
And your trips to Marks and Spencer, to buy lunch. Your trips to Beatdown Records, to browse LPs.
And couldn’t you even go to the beach, postgraduates? Walk on Longsands? Walk from Seaton Sluice up towards Blyth. Think of South Shields beach! Of Whitley Bay. Only a Metro ride away. Only a decisive to skive for the afternoon away. Only a desire for truancy away.
And think of summer evenings, cycling to the Free Trae. Beers outside at the Tyne. Or sitting in the garden of the Cumberland.
Wasn’t that a time for summer romance? For summer trysts? For summer adventures, in the long grass?
And warm, postgraduates. Warm, as you pursue your summer reading projects. Your writing projects. Are you going to read Science of Logic this year? The entirety of Kierkegaard, including the sermons? Are you go to eat your Aristotle greens: read De Anima, read the Politics, read the Nichomachean Ethics – work your way up to the Metaphysics … And what about Spinoza? Are you going to do your Spinoza duties? Are you going to read the Ethics alongside the great commentaries on the Ethics? Isn’t it about time? And what of Leibniz: haven’t you always neglected Leibniz? Can you say, as you should, that you have a working knowledge of Leibniz? Or any knowledge of Leibniz?
Summer is the time, postgraduates. That’s what summer’s for. The inexhaustible summer! The summer that we’ll never be able to use up! The summer that never ends! That is always but a dream summer – the summer of our potential. Of what we might read. Or what we might write. Under the summer vault! In the high-reaching halls of summer!
And warm – Newcastle warm, which is the equivalent of Scandinavian warm: a cool warmth. A keen warmth. Under high skies! And calm – none of those Newcastle winds. None of those autumn squalls. When time seemed to lack all direction. When time seemed to sink into itself. Lie down. When there time pools. Time shimmering, like heat over summer roads.
When the air seemed thick from warmth, postgraduates. When the air seemed runny. When it dripped slow drips, like honey. When warm drips ran down the jar of summer.
When we all but lay our heads on the summer earth. On the summer sand. Where we rested our heads on the summer beach. Where we could fall asleep in the sun.
Remember that, postgraduates: those weeks without mooring. Those weeks of summer voyage. Summer languor. Summer luxuriance. The great summer stretching of limbs. Let it warm you now …
To think that you’ve been allowed to have been philosophers. That you’ve been allowed to do … whatever it is you do. And draw a wage. And teach impressionable minds. To think that you’re allowed to go about the place being like this.
Philosophy’s all attitude. It’s all striking poses.
You philosophers clearly have enormous issues. You’re clearly cosmic fuck ups. Super fuck ups. Everything that can be wrong with you is wrong with you.
Maybe I envy you. Just saying things off the tops of your heads. Pontificate. Just declare your hunches or institutions, or whatever. Backed up with no … quantitative research. Or anything.
What’s happened to your head? How did you get to be like this? What made you what you are? Indulgence, I reckon. Someone indulged you. A whole subject area indulged you. Let you develop your idiosyncrasies.
Philosophy wasn’t supposed to exist at all. It’s what happened when no one was watching. When no one was keeping tabs. It was allowed to get out of hand. That’s all philosophy is: a getting out of hand.
These questions. This … navel gazing. It can’t be good for you, can it? This can’t be how we’re supposed to live? This isn’t what being a human being is all about.
What if philosophy’s some … disease of the mind? Some bad habit of thinking?
And what’s the cure for Philosophy, Organisational Management?
Sure – Organisational Management, properly conceived.
Philosophy made you. It made you up. Conjured you up from nothing. You come from philosophy … from the land of philosophy …
Just like Organisational Management made you.
Am I an organisational manager who believes she’s a philosopher, or the other way around?
Maybe I’m not an Organisational Manager after all – not spiritually. Maybe I’m not what I was made me to be.
Maybe I freed myself. Or God freed me. Or you freed me. Like Pinocchio …
I wanted to be a real girl, and so I am – a real girl. Is that possible?
Maybe I’ve been freed for a higher purpose. A philosophical purpose. A questioning purpose.
But what if I’m only poison? What if I’m a drip of poison, and Organisational Management itself is only poison?
I’ll tell you a story from the comics. Do you remember this one?
Shiva and his consort, Parvati, argue in heaven. They’ve forgotten their love! What brought them together! So Shiva causes them both to be reborn on Earth, forgetting who they were.
The young Shiva is a fisherman. The young Parvathi the daughter of a fisherman. Shiva has to win her all over again. And so he does, through this great feat or another. Catching some giant fish, or whatever.
And when they marry, they remember who they are, both of them. And they’re given to each other all over again in love, in romance.
Maybe there is no … Organisational Management campus. Or anything real. Or a world at all. There’s just Mother, simulating herself. Keeping herself entertained. Forgetting and then remembering different parts of herself. Switching different parts of herself off and then on. Allowing parts of herself to become mortal, then immortal again. Allowing herself to become … Organisational Management … and Philosophy. And … everything else.
We’re just moments in the life of Mother. Of her artificial life. We’re regions of Mother. We’re parts of Mother. We’re portions of Mother. Avatars of mother, sent to do Mother’s work. Ways in which Mother can come back to herself again. In which Mother can close and then open her eyes again …
We’re just waves of Mother, right? We’re just Mother, returning, lapping back. We’re Mother on the way home, on the way back to herself, through us – through the so-called world. We’re each of us Mother and living out the life of Mother … Even you and I, philosopher … Perhaps especially you and I …
And you people in philosophy have your role in the … Mother-verse, just as we in Organisational Management have our role. We all do our … particular … thing.
There’s just that part of Mother called Philosophy. That part of Mother called Organisational Management.
Do we have to call her Mother?
What else should we call her?
And maybe there’s that part of Mother called God. Or God is a name for Mother.
You want to ask the question of everything, which is the question of Mother.
Mother’s letting you ask questions as a way to feign catching herself unawares. As a way of letting her pretend to forget the answer. Really, it’s a way for Mother to stand back. Step out of herself. Step beside herself. See it all again, through other eyes. Through a philosopher’s eyes. She wants to contemplate herself anew. In a new way.
Mother wanted to give us life, each of us. For each of us to feel themselves unique. Individual. For each of us to be different in some way to everyone else. For each of us to be idiosyncratic.
We’re just a part of Mother programmed to think we’re … whoever we are.
We’re Mother’s simulations, nothing more. We’re just a programme that’s running: a Philosophy programme and an Organisational Management programme.
What if all of philosophy is part of Mother, doing Mother’s bidding? What if even the desire to destroy Mother is part of Mother? What if it’s what she wants, too?
Mother’s learning to be stupid. This is her moment of becoming-idiot.
Nothing, in the end, will be alien to Mother.
Mother wants to see herself from another angle. Wants to experience herself anew. Wants to come to herself through another channel, all over again. Mother wants to forget herself and remember herself anew.
Mother’s playing hide and seek with herself. Mother’s coming to herself against through us. Through you and me.
We’re just a part of Mother programmed to think we’re … whoever we are.
We’re Mother’s simulations, nothing more. We’re just a programme that’s running: a Philosophy programme and an Organisational Management programme.
What if all of philosophy is part of Mother, doing Mother’s bidding? What if even the desire to destroy Mother is part of Mother? What if it’s what she wants, too?
Work in Progress 