Work in Progress

Here we are. The heart of the campus. The heart of the heart of the campus. It’s the base of operations.

 

When the world burns, you can always come up here.

Like a lovely panic room.

 

Mother’s wise.

I didn’t know a machine could be wise.

Mother’s more than a machine.

 

She knows what to do with despairers. She knows how to cure your despair.

 

This is the countryside we need. This is how it should be served up. Homoeopathically. A little dose here and there, during the day.

Can’t you feel your blood pressure lowering?

 

Nature, philosopher. Surely you don’t object to nature? Surely you aren’t disgusted by nature? You can’t be.

Nature’s good for us. Are you saying it isn’t good for you? Nature’s calming. Nature’s what we need after a day of work. And during the work day. As intervals in the work day.

Nature’s relaxation. Green space. Green leaves! The greensward! We need these things.

Fake nature …

But it’s as good as real.

 

There should be one of these in every home. And there will be, in time. Mother will be extended everywhere. Mother will be omnipresent. There’ll be a new cult of the divine mother, won’t there?

 

I don’t like trees. I’m suspicious of woods. And long grass.

So let’s go to the beach.

 

Mother’s a scholar, too. Ask her humanities questions.

 

Mother supersedes the humanities. She can explain it all, whatever you want to know. The humanities haven’t been lost, philosopher. They’ve been taken up into the cloud.

Must be daunting for you. All the humanities knowledge. In the mother-cloud.

 

We’re all transparent to Mother. Mother knows us like no one else does. She has all our data.

 

We’re transparent to Mother – like glassfish. Mother cares. Mother sees all and knows all about us. It’s care, philosopher.

 

Mother sensed you. She anticipated you. She knows what you want, philosopher.

What do I want? I don’t know what I want.

 

Can mother do philosophy? Only someone who can go mad can do philosophy.

 

The questions he asks to Mother:

What is the meaning of meaning? Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

 

Thunder – Mother’s having bad dreams. Which you’re giving her. She’s probably reading your philosophical thoughts.

 

Mother’s glitching. There’s a glitch in the Matrix, philosopher. A philosophical glitch.

 

God, I’m not sure what was supposed to appear. What have you done to the greensward, philosopher?

Don’t break mother.

 

Mother needs time to repair herself. Mother needs to mend Mother.

 

You know you broke mother, don’t you? There was an earthquake last night. A crack through the campus. They might declare it unfit for human civilization. God has spoken, or something.

Heroic. You’re still awake.

I can’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep.

I had a splendid night of sleep last night. After a splendid day of study.

Don’t lie.

 

What intelligence did you gather on your romantic walk, Shiva?

Explaining.

Mother … maybe Mother’s the clue. The campus AI. Like the one in Alphaville. You turned Mother philosophical. That was a genius move. You struck a great blow against the enemy.

Mother repaired herself.

Sure she did. But the campus is cracked …  

 

You hit them with a literaro-philosophical bomb! With the most profound question!

They’ll just go round scratching their heads. Wandering what had happened. Why they felt so existential.

 

And we’re really meeting the others? God, I can’t stand it when they’re hungover.

It’s an emergency meeting. We have to decide what to do.

Do about what?

The Organisational Management move, of course.

Can’t you just accept it.

We’re not supposed to just accept it. Even Cicero wouldn’t want us to accept it.

Fuck Cicero. I thought you’d decided it was all part of Cicero’s masterplan. That’s what you were telling me on the ferry.

It’s complicated.

Sure it’s complicated. Everything’s complicated. I think there’s a way to beat it. Last night … Mother …

You’re gabbling. You should get some sleep. You’re addled by romance. Romance can be positively deranging. And romance with a bot.

She wasn’t a bot.

She was an Organisational Management manufactured synth – clearly. She was Anna Karina from Alphaville.

 

A giant crack has appeared in the campus. Did you hear about that?

It’s the bore. It’s fracking.

Something’s going on.

Something’s always going on.

It’s geological. It’s philosophical. It’s geophilosophical.

You’re delirious.

Of course I am. It’s proof … that thought can have efficacy. Of guerrilla attack …

The crack? You really think that was your doing? You’re mad. Of course you’re mad. It’s not even an interesting madness, that’s the problem … Meanwhile, have been doing real work.

 

We thought the campus was impregnable, but really …

Okay, Luke Skywalker. Calm right down. What did you take last night?

 

You were always the chosen one.

No, you were the chosen one. Cicero had her highest hopes for you. It was your literary turn. That’s what interested her. Trust me, I knew her better than you.

 

Does Priya actually exist? Did you look her up on the website.

She’s real. She’s human …

You’re infatuated. How tedious.

Were you ever infatuated? Were you infatuated with Cicero?

 

What kind of people are we, Shiva? Where are we headed? What’s happening? What’s going on? Is there any rhyme or reason in this crazy world?

 

You fucked up Mother. You hit ‘em where they were weak. It was some kind of genius move, Shiva. You sensed their weakness, and then …

I just hung out with a hottie.

Sure you did. The manager’s wife. Or some AI creation. Some hologram beamed out by Mother.

She wasn’t a hologram, believe me.

Some android, then.

I don’t believe she was an android.

Perfectly modelled to tempt a philosopher called Shiva. To turn his head. To send him gaga. I’m not criticizing. I’d be seduced too, believe me. I could do with some seduction. Life’s getting very boring. But you turned it around, Shiva. You educed her. Then you fucked up Mother. You turned their weapons upon them.

 

There’s a crack running right through it, that’s what I heard. From one end of it to another.

Just some geological thing. An earthquake, or something.

Newcastle really isn’t on a faultline. That’s the most unlikely thing of all.

It’s probably caused by all their drilling. They’ve sent that bore down, haven’t they?

I think it was you and your profound questions. Your philosophico-literary questions. Or your literaro-philosophy ones. See, I knew reading all that Blanchot was good for something.

 

And the weather seems to have changed, have you noticed. It’s getting positively springlike … you’ve broken the spell, Shiva. These are happy times, you see. You’ve got them on the run. They’re full of hubris, thinking they could just absorb philosophy. But their campus is cracked. They're panicked.

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?

 

We always wanted to believe Cicero was wise. For her to know what she was doing. To sheer our fragile craft. To send us in the right direction.

And it turns out she was guiding us all along.

 

She’s rewarding us for our years in the part-time wilderness. To show us the meek really do inherit the earth. That the stupid are the greatest geniuses. That the great inversion could be inverted in turn.

Through making us drink bad wine?

 

Was the thirteenth bottle Cicero’s plan?

Everything was Cicero’s plan.

The thirteenth bottle wasn’t in Cicero’s rack. There was an empty space where it belonged. We were led to it.

 

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.

 

So the thirteenth bottle stands in for all the poison in the world. it’s symbolic.

 

The thirteenth bottle. It’ll be your test. You’ll become Neelkanth, the blue-throated one.

And then what?

I don’t know. Get superpowers. Head out onto the astral plane and defeat the Bug in solitary combat.

So I’ll suck all the evil out of the world? What’ll happen then? Will the word be saved? Will the world end?

Once the vines were new and fresh. It wasn’t hard to make wine, not back then. You planted a vine, and you had grapes and then there was wine.

 The first thing Noah planted, after the Flood: vines. For the Greeks, it was still fresh. Philosophy was full of wonder, then.

But then? The terroir was curdled. The earth darkened. The earth drank blood. And the vines became the vines of evil.

 

Once, you could drink directly from the wine-fount. From the spring of Bacchus.

But now?

 

The old vines of Europe: that’s what Cicero wanted us to taste. The ancient vines! Grown since Greece! Grown since Noah!

But what’s happened to them, the ancient vines? They’ve become corrupted. The terroir is soaked in European blood.

 

We can taste the death. Not everyone can taste it. We know the putrefaction.

 

I piss better wine than this.

 

If an analytic philosopher drank this wine, what then?

They’d taste nothing.

 

The truth of European wine. It’s the truth of Europe.

Poisoned Europe. Festering Europe. The Europe that’s died. The Old Europe we worship. That even we revere, in our stupidity.

 

The new European wine will taste of nothing. It’ll be zero wine. The new European terroir will have no depth. No complications.

 

The conditions for European thought no longer exist.

 

It’s spreading from the West. From the Anglophone world. Positivity. Can do.

 

Anglophone mildness has replaced European truculence. Anglophone positivity has supplanted European gloom. The European forecast is good.

The managers are in charge of old Europe now. EU commissioners! The EU in general!

 

There’ll be no more Old European ache. No Old European truculence. No Old European no-can-do. No Old European attitude. No Old Europe refusal. Not anymore.

 

Can you get drunk on this wine? What kind of drunk?

 

She wanted us not just to drink her wine, but to actually become drunk on her wine – don’t forget that. It’s not about sipping. Fuck temperance.

 

Intemperance for an intemperate time, she’d say. A time of excess needs drinking to excess …

 

Wine from Mother’s terroir. The virtual Terroir. Some biotic mix. A terroir without the earth. Without the self-seclusion of the earth. Without anything hidden. Virtual wine. A terroir of light. Of transparency. Which is to say, no terroir.

Wine doesn’t grow from the air. Vines aren’t air plants.

 

The wine of wretchedness, the wine of sorrow. Is this wine mourning? Is it weeping wine-tears?

 

Wine is Cicero’s medium. And the medium is –

Her message?

 

Kitten was the one who had the keys to her flat. It was entirely empty, except for the wine.

 

How did she order her wine?

There were just there in her wine racks.

But she had several racks.

True. These are from the racks at the back. They were kind of dusty.

Philosophers neglect the gustatory. The olfactory. Cicero always said that. There are entirely neglected senses.

We have to philosophise from the nose! From the tastebuds!

But this wine smells terrible. And tastes worse!

Cicero needed to teach us not to follow her. That she was disgusting, too. That she wasn’t some substitute Mother, all caring and nurturing. She had to engender hatred in us.

So Cicero was the bad mother …

 

Philosophy shouldn’t be about good taste, Cicero said. There’s been too much good taste.

There should be a philosophy of things past their selling date. Long past!

Philosophy of rotting things. Of the world as rotten. As festering. As putrescent.

There should be a whole philosophy of the disgusting. Of the poisonous, pretty much. A disgusting philosophy, is that it? That is full of disgust – saturated with it.

A philosophy that reeks! A wholly putrid philosophy. A philosophy of the putrid. Of the rotten soul. The corrupted soul.

Then and only then can there be a philosophy of poison, Cicero said. Only a poisoned philosophy.

Poison must think itself, Cicero said. Just as lies must think themselves.

Stimmung – you know the word.

Sure – Stimmung. Mood, right?

Or attunement … like in music.

Attuned … what are we attuned to?

All kinds of things.

What kind of philosophy is this?

Heidegger’s. We all pretend to hate Heidegger, but we don’t really. Heidegger’s everything in European Philosophy, even if we pretend he’s not.

What was he, some kind of existentialist?

Never call him that. Heideggerians hate that.

Heideggerians … are they really Heideggerians?

Americans, mostly. Who take it all very seriously. And get very pious about Heidegger. And speak pure Heidegger-ese.

I’ve never heard about Heidegger in Organisational Management. I don’t think anyone’s into Heidegger. I don’t think there’s a book on Heidegger in the Organisational Management Philosophy book series.

 

Was that his big idea: Stimmung? Sounds very … emotional … and irrrational.

That’s what some people say.

Sounds like he really wouldn’t approve of Organisational Management.

He really wouldn’t.

 

Heidegger wrote about death, too. He wrote quite a lot about death. About earth and sky and gods and mortals …

Sounds like a poet.

And he liked the poet Friedrich Hölderlin a lot. An awful lot.

A poet?

Helped him to philosophise. To philosophise in a new way.

A literary philosopher – just like you.

 

Did Heidegger write about God?

He wrote about the last god. Small g. Only a god can save us now.

The last god?

The last god.

So there were other gods, like, before?

Yeah, but this is the last one. And he wrote about the godding of the gods.

Godding? He was very into his gerunds. He world was worlding, the earth was earthing, and the gods were … godding.

And what are we doing? Loving.

Did Heidegger write about loving?

He had an affair … with Hannah Arendt. She was a famous philosopher, too. And Heidegger’s wife was having her own affair at the same time. The sons he thought were his were not.

Everyone’s at it … all the philosophers.

 

Heidegger … so he was your genius.

Sure, he was a genius

He had all these ideas?

Sure he had ideas.

And you’d like to be like Heidegger?

 

Was Heidegger right?

He didn’t see the evil. He didn’t see the horror. It was only the Jewish thinkers from the same period who saw that: Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem … That’s why he succumbed to Nazism.

You make Nazism sound like a disease.

 

Are there organisational manager geniuses?

Don’t be stupid. We regard genius is an outmoded idea.  We all work together. Like scientists.  Putting together big research bids. That’s how its done now. What would Heidegger say about that?

It’s just what Heidegger would expect.

I’m good at idiocy, that’s the thing. Even as I’m good for nothing else.

 

You’re not idiots. At least, not like me. I’m the idiot. I’m Cicero’s fool.

She’s been cultivating me. To write about her. And us. And all of this. To write my idiot’s book about idiocy. To sing my idiot’s song. To write my idiot words.

 

This is the world’s first department of philosophical idiocy.

 

You’ve heard of the death of God. Well, this is the death of philosophy. Philosophy’s had enough.

So it just rolled over and died?

We’ve murdered philosophy. Philosophy died of disgust. When it saw us, would-be philosophers, trying to philosophise. When it saw what we’d done to European thought, philosophy … just … killed itself.

Which means we killed philosophy. We’re murderers. The blood of philosophy froths on our knives.

 

I actually blame you most of all, Shiva. You’re not just any old idiot. You’re Cicero’s idiot-in-chief. Like, idiocy prime. The number one idiot in all the world. You’re part of her murder philosophy plan.

Cicero had a murder philosophy plan?

 

The way you can tell whether you an idiot is to run up against something really difficult. And that’s philosophy. Philosophy has a special place for idiots. Because it’s so hard.

 

An idiot of philosophy. Philosophy’s own idiot.

 

What kind of philosophy does an idiot do? What does an idiot philosophy look like?

 

The philosophical idiot has a special role.

 

Do idiots despair over their idiocy?

Not true idiots, perhaps. But you’re a special kind of idiot.

We didn’t know what real departmental life was like, Cicero said. We’d never know. She’d make sure of that. Crushing intradepartmental politics. Rivalries and grudges and grievances. Alliances and fallings apart.

And all the usual administrative work. Which she largely did herself, Cicero said. From which she mostly wanted to keep us away. We were lucky, she said – although we didn’t know our luck. We didn’t know how she protected us. Protected our innocence. And our idleness.

 

Idly reading. Idly thinking. Idly writing, God knows. That’s how we do things.

It’s a gift, Cicero said. We didn’t feel the usual sense of duty. We weren’t workers. We weren’t producers of academic articles. We weren’t searchers for funding. We weren’t that type. We couldn’t be.

It was as though it had never occurred to us: bidding for funding. Soliciting for money from this research council, or that one. Writing research proposal supposed to be advancing the cause of social justice or the great reset, or whatever. It never even occurred to us! Total obliviousness.

We wouldn’t like to be like her, scrabbling around for funding, Cicero said. She had enough funding to protect us – to cover our salaries – for the moment, at least. Until the money from the students began to pour in. Cicero had done all that administrative stuff to protect us. For our benefit. So she could raise her would be philosophical school in innocence. So she could furnish our idleness.

 

We were not yet thinkers, she said. We were not yet philosophers. Perhaps that’s what she should have called our school: not yet philosophers.

 

Innocents? We were idiots. Idiot-innocents. Creatures who lived wholly in potential. Who hadn’t been born. That’s how she wanted to keep us. Singing our songs of innocence.

Cicero protected us. Watched over us. So that we wouldn’t be bothered. With the administrative crap. And the managerial crap. All the bothersome academic politics. She could play those games. And she’d do so so that we wouldn’t have to.

 

Why did she bother?, Cicero wondered. It’s not as if we’d ever know why. It’s not as if we could show real gratitude. We’d always be ungrateful. Like wild animals.

Really, we belonged outside – outside the university. Foraging for intellectual scraps, outside there. Intellectual rag picking. Conspiracy theorising, or whatever, but out there.

But we were here. And under her protection! Her charges. Her wards. Her proteges. You should hear what her colleagues said! You wouldn’t believe their view of things! What they thought of us! But never mind.

 

Idiots … innocents … fools for philosophy.

It was like raising wild philosophers. Philosophers of the wild. Outsider thinkers. They’ll never be yours. But that’s what she liked. We weren’t to be disciplined. We weren’t to be brought inside.

Everything must lie ahead of us. Everything must still be possible. She, Cicero, must ensure that. That was her mission.

 

And what would be the result of her protectiveness? What would we do with ourselves in our philosophical sanctum?

We’d be idle, that’s all. We’d be as children. Philosophical children. Children who’d forgotten philosophy – everything that we’d learnt. Who already lived as though philosophy had finished, in some way. As though philosopher was long behind them.

Forgettors: that’s who’d we’d be. That’s who we were – at our best. On certain Trillians nights. When we were drunk – utterly so. When we’d drunk ourselves into innocence.

Collective thought. Collective, drunken thought. Thought confusable with banter. With inanity. But thought nonetheless.

To hear us speak, in our cups! To hear our Trillians banter! Speech lifted, speech lightened. Speech rising into the air. She’d never heard the like.

We were innocents, in those moments. Idiots, and even holy idiots. Thought took flight. Thoughts, not yet thoughts.

Thoughts of potential. That were nothing other than potential. But one that could never be compromised. Never be used up.

Potential … that was never exhausted. Which meant we’d never grow old. And nor would Cicero, sitting amongst us. It s forbidden to grow old: who was it who said that?

 

Only after the end. Only when thought doesn’t matter. When the stakes are at their lowest. When no one expects anything. When philosophy is an empty word. When Europe is dead – utterly dead. Then – at exactly that moment. Then, what? Then … Then, then, then.

Thinking is not a solitary affair, Cicero said. We think as friends. We are friends of thought of others who think. We think collectively. In the first person plural. And such thinking – philosophical thinking – has to emerge from a lifestyle.

The ancient Greeks are right. It’s a matter of a philosophical school. A school that lives a certain way. And lives communally. A school that thinks in a certain way. That holds certain thoughts in common. And is that what we are: a version of a philosophical school.

And what do we hold in common? Disgust. Disgust with the world. Expecting nothing of the world. Expecting no consolations … except for expressing our disgust in the world. Except for reading books about disgust with the world.

And dreaming of writing them: books of disgust, books disgusted with the world. We were a school – Cicero’s school. Of Gnostics. Or neo-Gnostics. Something very anti, at any rate. Something very non -.

 

We were Gnostics by default. We were spontaneous Gnostics, full of automatic disgust. We had a talent for Gnosticism. Even a genius for it.

Which wasn’t to say that our disgust couldn’t be developed further. Trained. That we couldn’t become anti-connoisseurs. Detectors of even the tiniest fragment of the disgusting.

 

A thought school. Philosophy as a spiritual practice: because that’s what it’s called: a spiritual practice. When thought is embedded in life, and life in thought. When it is a matter of how you think and what you think and how you live. And drink. And despair. And how you console yourself. A school of thought.

These are the postgraduate halls. This is the kingdom of postgraduates. Foreign, mostly. Very international. Drawn to the university because of its reputation, or they used to be.

The president of Congo used to live here. Kim Jong-Un, probably. And some of those WEF-trained Young Global Leaders. That Swedish guy who stopped lockdowns. Several African presidents – you know, the ones who were assassinated.

It was a veritable postgraduate hothouse. A postgraduate warren. Used to be completely thronged. Used to be a postgraduate hothouse. A postgraduate warren. Until the Chinese stopped coming. People will forget that there even were postgraduates.

Which is why the uni’s so skint. They’ll probably sell off the halls soon. All this real estate.

 

There’s a real last days feel to this building. It’s not going to last.

They’re not maintaining it anymore. They’re not carrying out basic repairs.

That’s because it’s deliberately being ruined.

 

The university will sell it off, anyway. A prime site. Right next to St James’s Park. And Leazses Park. And the tennis courts. Centre of the city. Elegant buildings. Georgian …

 

Corridors.

The hall’s echoey now, right?

 

Sleeping bags.

They’re occupying it, a whole load of them, it looks like.

 

This is, like, the last revolt of the postgraduates. The final effort of the humanities postgraduate. Their last gasp.

They want to renew it all. Let the humanities be reborn.

 

I think the paragraduates will be here tonight.

The paras? I thought they’d disappeared.

They might be living up here. They might have moved in here now. They’re mysterious. They come and go, you know that.

 

It’s their kingdom now. It’s like a squat …

They could start a new civilization here. It could all begin here. Another way of life.

 

No one lives here, surely? They used to live underground. They’re used to anything.

 

At least they live above ground now. At least they can get some vitamin C.

 

The sound of dripping water. I think they must like water.

There’s a leak. It’s actually raining in this room.

Why don’t they fix it?

 

All these pools of water. How come it’s leaking?

The roof. I don’t know.

I think they want it to leak.

 

It’s so damp. How come they haven’t died of TB, or whatever? It’s not hygienic. It’s no good for us. Everything is theirs, in the mode of not being theirs. They use things – they don’t possess them.

And that goes for their thought, too. They’d never publish a book. Never write things down – their findings. The testimony to their thought is their life. And vice versa.

They’re a school of philosophy – but a non school of non-philosophy.

 

It’s completely flooded.

Walk through the puddles! Never mind your shoes. The parargaduates are watching. Testing us. All of this is a test. How we comport ourselves to their … building. Their ruin …

They don’t think of it as a ruin. It’s an opening up. An … exposing.

Exactly!

 

Open doors. A room is full of sand. Of mini sand dunes.

 

It’s like some giant art installation.

 

Won’t it get very cold in winter?

They’ll have abandoned it by then. Moved on.

 

There are no stairs anymore. Seems impractical. There are ladders …

 

Have they pulled away the plaster? They … have. But why?

This is restoration, paragraduate style.

 

Iron bedframes, stacked up.

 

The tiled floor – underwater.

And there are fish. Where did they get the fish from?

 

There’s grass growing – a kind of grass.

 

Brick pillars. Bottles, left standing in the rain. Vases. Why do they want to catch the water? Standing in puddles of water.

 

A pile of bikes. Of e-scooters.

 

Empty bottles, in various colours. Standing under the rain.

 

Devil’s ivy growing everywhere.

 

The courtyard used to be enclosed … Now it’s open. Now the building’s part of the courtyard. Or the courtyard is part of the building.

 

And the electricity doesn’t seem to be working, not really. That light is just … flashing.

 

What do they live on? How do they survive?

 

What’s the opposite of regeneration?

Degeneration. That’s what’s happened here.

 

I’ll bet Cicero’s here. This is the kind of place she’d hole up. And Herwig, for that matter.

 

Look – a well. What’s a well doing here? Did they dig a well? It looks deep.

Drop a stone down.

 

There are birds … flying indoors. Or is this outdoors?

 

Are these wild dogs? They’re the paragraduates’ dogs. Bred underground.

I’ve never seen this breed of dog before.