Work in Progress

The genius of Gnosticism is the idiot. The idiot is the Gnostic genius. It’s dialectical, or something. It’s about opposites and inversion …


We’re Livia’s idiots, right. Which is to say, Livia’s geniuses.

And you’re the figurehead, Shiva. You’re the one through which idiocy speaks. And never louder!


And true genius lies in drunken idiocy. That’s what the wine’s about. It’s supposed to help us reach genius in, like, anti-genius.

You should write a memoir, Helmut: our part in your downfall.


Maybe you were sent by Heideggerians from the future. To save us all.


Do you have your own Black Notebooks? I think you should. Your musings on why life is so unNazi. And those rootles cosmopolitans, eh?


Why did Livia hire you, that’s the question?

You have to have a bit of political dubiousness in a European philosophy department. Something political suspect and probably a bit racist.

Our lives, our lives – why does it never feel like we’re living? Why does it never feel like we’re alive? What is it we’ve been doing, instead of living?


We’ve lost, and don’t care that we’ve lost. We wanted to lose. And to lose this deeply. We wanted to be fucked over, and to be fucked over this profoundly.

The worst thing for you, philosopher, is that things would simply go on, with no apocalypse, no massive death event, or whatever. The worst thing is that day should simply follow day, as it undoubtedly will.

The worst thing is that we’re all all going to live into our nineties. Into our hundreds. Or maybe we’ll never die. Maybe they’ll reverse aging by then. And then what? We’ll live forever, philosopher. Which will put you out of a job.


What are we dying of? Are we even dying? Maybe we’ll live forever – and that’ll be our curse. That we’ll go on, whilst it all dies. That we’ll go on, even as we want to die. Like Valdemar. Like the Wandering Jew.


Don’t we all live too long these days? Don’t we go on too long, and in perfect sanity? Aren’t we entirely too sane, these days?


We’re Wrong. Our heads are Wrong. Our thinking is Wrong.

What about our philosophy – is it Wrong?

Our philosophy is right because it’s Wrong.

Our personality problems aren’t even real problems. We hold down jobs, don’t we? We function, sort of. We get by.

Because Livia employed us.


The danger is that we forget our origin story. That we forget our idiocy.

Livia never let us forget it.

But we need to continue to remember.

Our conversations are becoming more and more idle. You should despise that, philosopher. You should want me to say something profound. Our conversations have less and less actual content.

We’re wearing speech away. To nothing. Or something.

One day, we might just wander into truth. Just say things and they’ll be the truth. They’ll stand in the truth. They’ll bear the truth like light. One day, truth will happen to us, philosophy. Truth will befall us. Can that happen? Is that madness? One day, truth will be where we are. The question is: will we know it?

Who woke us up? Who woke us up in these lives? Why did we have to be born into these lives? Who chose these lives for us? What’s supposed to happen in these live – our lives? What are we supposed to do with them, our lives? What are they for – our lives?

Do you think you’re good at romance, philosopher? At making a woman feel special?


The philosopher does romance.

Fuck knows why I’m so intrigued by you. Fuck knows why I’m so interested.

You’re just an occasion to make me speak. You’re just what lets me speak into the void.

I can just say anything to you. I can just say these things. No one’s stopping me. And I don’t even know what I’m saying.


The world is gone – who wrote that? The world is gone. And we’re gone, philosopher. We’re G-O-N-E. We’ve fallen out of the world. The world doesn’t want us.


This doesn’t matter to you. It isn’t important. This is incidental stuff. Chat. Romance doesn’t matter to you. I don’t matter.

This is just time out. Time away from the Work, right? From the magnum opus. From what you were put on earth to do.

What, be a crap philosopher?

You don’t think you’re crap. You don’t believe that. Or you believe that if you work hard enough you won’t be crap forever.


Don’t you ever enough? Don’t you have enough of being you? Of being anything? Don’t you ever have enough?

It’s all worn out. it’s wearing out. no one believes in it. You don’t, and I don’t, and no one –


Who am I, anyway? Just some jumped up organisational manager …

I’ve done nothing with my life. I’m doing nothing with my life, and I’m not even depressed. I’m not even miserable – not really. I’m not going to change. Nothing’s going to happen to my life as a result of this. It’s all going to be the same It’s all going to be the usual thing.

And I want to laugh at it, philosopher. I’m laughing at it. But I’m not laughing – I’m not actually laughing.

It’s all show business. It’s all lies. We’re fed these lines. We’re supposed to say all – these – things. And I don’t want to say them, but I’m going to say them. And maybe … maybe no one wants to say them, but they’re going to say them.


We’re organising it all. We’re managing it.

We’re running the show. We’re writing the script. We’re managing it all. Behind the scenes, making sure it all goes smoothly, or whatever. We’re doing the programming. And I want to break out of the programming.

We’ve set the parameters for future humanity, or whatever. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. So controlled.


I want a holiday from being me. From being an organisational manager, anyway. An organisational manager wife, to organisational manager Alan.


Who the fuck am I supposed to be? I’m going to be an organisational manager forever. What’s my role? What am I supposed to be? Who am I, philosopher? Am I anything at all?

We’re just going to blow away. The wind at the coast is just going to blow us away. I don’t know how I am anymore. I don’t know what anything’s about anymore.

I don’t know how to live. I’m puzzled by it. I’m confounded by it. I don’t know how to organise my feelings. Or manage them. Very clever.

This … mood. This atmosphere, that hangs over everything. That’s just everywhere. That’s thick. That’s heavy. That you’re probably made of, philosopher.

What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong wth me, now? What’s wrong with everything?

We simply shouldn’t exist. That’s what they discovered in physics, isn’t it? The Big Bang should have produced equal parts matter and antimatter. And they should have just cancelled each other out, leaving just this void of energy. But instead there’s all this matter …


Existence is in such bad taste. The universe is full of stuff. Full of crap. There’s too much universe.

There’s too much of everything. There are too many hours in the day, and days in the week, and weeks in the month, and months in the year. There’s too much time. Too much things-going-on. There are too many seconds in the minute, and minutes in the hour. There’s too much too much.


They offend me, the stars.

Who could be offended by stars?

Look at them, all their brightness. Thinking they have the right to flash out. Someone should just snuff them out. Leave us in peace.

Why? They’re not doing anything.

They’re broadcasting their existence. Through the medium of light. It’s like boasting.

You’re not serious.

Fucking stars. And galaxies are even worse. The whole spangled sky. At least we can see the sky. You think we should be grateful to see the sky. The sky is mockery. It’s existence on parade. All that brazen existence. All that existence, like, proud of itself. Can’t it just do its existence thing quietly, darkly. Why does it have to boast?


The stars are destroying themselves – you can say that for them. At least they’re burning themselves out. But it takes them billions of years to burn themselves out … But at least they’re trying. That’s how they live, by dying. Just like us.

We’re dying too.

But we’re not burning. Maybe we should be. Just burn up life. Live like maniacs, or whatever.


It’s entropy, isn’t it? Thermodynamics. The universe is basically hostile to life.  And I’m hostile to it.
To the universe?

Sure. it’s war.

You versus the universe – who would win?


Don’t think the universe likes us.

I don’t like us.

Maybe you’re of the universe – the true son of the universe. Maybe the universe approves of you.

Do you think it approves of me?

You think the universe is evil.

Sure – it’s evil.  

Isn’t it just… outside of moral categories.

It actually means harm to us.

Which means you approve.

Sure, I approve. In principle.


Is this philosophy? Are you doing philosophy? Is this what philosophy’s like? God, it’s depressing.

Are you supposed to be doing this with philosophy?


Such a bad boy. Must be very attractive to philosophy groupies, being a bad boy.


You’re just outdoing each other with nihilism. Like, you’d win in a nihilism contest. And a cynicism contest. And a uselessness contest. You’d win all the prizes.


I don’t think Alan knows anything about philosophy. Or at least, his philosophy isn’t anything like this. The philosophy he reads. I think he thinks it’s good for you. Or good for Organisational Management.

Real philosophy is definitely not good for Organisational Management.

It’s too late to derail us. Organisational Management is taking over the universe.

I know. There’s Organisational Management, and then there’s philosophy. And Organisational Management’s the death star, and philosophy’s Luke Skywalker.

We haven’t descended far enough. We’re getting in our own way. We haven’t relinquished enough. We’re still laughing, for God’s sake. Still taking the piss. There’s still humour. Is there supposed to be laughter in the katabasis?

High fucking seriousness. That’s what it’s about. A seriousness we can’t imagine. That we’re not capable of. A spiritual seriousness. Like you’d find in Dostoevsky or Tarkovsky. A sense that it all hangs in the balance. Everything! Which it does.


We haven’t suffered enough. If we’d suffered, we wouldn’t be so irreverent. So piss-takey.

Always laughing at ourselves. Always poking fun. Never simply serious. It’s always a sham seriousness. A distanced from itself seriousness.

Seriousness, doubled up. Never undergone. Never suffered. We haven’t reached the bottom. Nor will we. It’s our temperaments. We’ll never get what we should out of a Grundstimmung. Something stops us.

Our Britishness. This country. The UK … UK humour. We’re never as serious as we should be. We can’t take ourselves seriously enough. We can’t reach it, inner seriousness.

We can never pray, for example. We lack the sincerity. The openness. The vulnerability. We can’t open ourselves. What does God think of us? Do you thinkGgod’s laughing? With us? At us? Will God forgive us for being ourselves? For getting in our own way?


Katabasis. We haven’t descended far enough. We haven’t reached the bottom.

Seriousness. We haven’t claimed it for ourselves. Deep seriousness. That we might reach in prayer. In meditation. In silence. In waiting that is nothing other than waiting.


But we stand in our way. Our characters. Our temperament. Our humour. Why can we never take ourselves seriously enough? Why can we never attain it: the seriousness that would result from a true katabasis?


Our journey to centre of the earth. Our journey to our own centre. To our inner citadels.


Can’t we get it together to be seriousness?. Just lie there like Stalker. Pondering in infinite seriousness the infinite seriousness of all things.


Katabasis. Into the profounds. The depths. The fundaments.

When stupidity descends to discover the origins of its stupidity. The grounds of its stupidity. To discover what its stupidity is.


Katabasis is a journey inward, not a journey downward. A journey into death! Into the unconscious! Into suffering, or whatever. Katabasis is supposed to be a prelude to insight or rebirth or transformation. A downgoing.