Work in Progress

We will never be able to live normal lives. What good would they be to us: normal lives? What would we do with them: normal lives? They’d be wasted on us, normal lives.

And normal satisfactions! And all the things that other people want! We don’t even know what we want. Our kind doesn’t.

We can’t count upon our normal instincts. We don’t have them – normal instincts. We aren’t like other people.

We’re always … casting about, our kind. And philosophy’s just our mode of … casting about.

We’re restless. We lie awake at night. We worry about improbable things. We have strange things on our minds.

 

Nothing is as it should be – we know that. Something hasn’t been settled. There’s a … debt to pay. A cosmic debt. Something’s owed. The whole of reality … has been bought on credit. And it has to be paid back.

And until it is, it’s not ours. We don’t live here. And there’s nowhere to live. And we don’t know what to do. How to … occupy ourselves. We make mistakes … but are they mistakes?

 

Someone turned the lights off. In our lives. In our heads. We were dealt blows – terrible blows. And we ended up here. Here we are.

And what are we doing here? Here, rather than anywhere else? What are we hallucinating? Everything? Anything? Why isn’t the world just the world? Why isn’t the world the world anymore? Why are we so lost?

 

Sordid. It’s so sordid. It’s so disgusting. That we have to be involved with this. That we have to be here. That we have to live at this level. Among these things. That we have to be tied up with all this. That we have to be a part of it. That we have to inhabit this disgusting world. That we have to feel these disgusting things.

We’re stunned. We’re still stunned. Still surprised. That things have turned out as they have.

 

So tawdry. So vacuous. So empty. So hollow. We shout out and no one responds. We cry out.

 

The world’s exhausted. This world. It’s spent. Just like we’re spent. Like spent cartridges. The world’s fired. It’s shot its bullet into the void. And now?

 

We’re all cut off. We’re all aliens. What would we do, if it weren’t for each other?

We’re all equally disgusted. That’s what holds us together. Equal in disgust. Equal in despair.

And it was Cicero who saw this. Cicero, who chose us.

Eternal gratitude to Cicero, right? Who never sought to hire Oxford and Cambridge types. Who never looked for high flyers. As she told us! She didn’t want fly-by-nighters. Who’d get their job at Newcastle and plan escape. Who’d be thinking constantly of their next job. About where else they’d go.

She chose those with no prospects. Who’d stay put. Who were grateful to have a job. Who wouldn’t think to fly the coop. Who’d be there forever. Year after year! Who were Dependable. Who’d Deliver what she wanted.

 

Cicero admired our dedication. She used to probe us about it. What did we think we were doing? Who did we take ourselves to be? What were we writing – and why? She wanted to understand. She wanted to play the anthropologist.

She was interested – never dismissive. She wanted to see what we were doing from our perspective. As she sipped her Diet coke.

Was she laughing at us? Perhaps a little. Was she taking the piss? Oh, that was there, too. But what was the world like through our eyes? To write our curio-papers? To follow our interest in odd things? In neglected things?

 

We went looking in figurative dusty corners. In philosophical attics and basements. For out of the way things. For packed away and forgotten things.

We wanted to set up camp somewhere. To find a corner all of our own. A little play pen. Where we could be undisturbed. Where we could busy ourselves quietly. Away from the clamour! Whilst the rest of the world did what it did.

 

Ours was almost a wilful obscurity. A desired failure. We were almost ostentatiously useless. We wanted to find the key to understanding the present world in old theologies. In forgotten scholastic debates.

This was our excuse for not living normal lives. For not choosing the normal things. This was the reason we gave for keeping ourselves sequestered. For hiding out half our lives. For taking shelter, always. For keeping to our books. For reading, for writing. For turning from the world and the affairs of the world.

 

This was the reason why we always wanted time. Wanted peace! And silence! And to be left alone. Ignored.

Why did we want this? What was wrong with us? Was this how we were going to live our lives – really? Was this what we’re going to do with our lives? Was this our answer: To retreat? To hide away? Of course it was …

 

To act as if we have a vocation. As if we were being led. As if there were somewhere we were Going. As if there was a Destination. And as if we were really, really good at this.

As if we were in in possession of some Clue. As if we knew what other people didn’t. As if the lives other peoples lived couldn’t be for us.

 

Why were we so intolerant of others? Why had we always sought our own path? Why had we always separated ourselves? Why had we wanted our own solitude?

Why did we want to close our office doors – to work? To be bent over our desks. Hunched over our laptops? Our notebooks?

Why did we want to open this book or that one? As if our lives depended on it! As if it mattered! Why did we want to contemplate this problem?

Wasn’t life enough? Weren’t ordinary things enough? Weren’t ordinary satisfactions enough? Why had we let ourselves be steered in this direction?

 

Why had we never been put off by our stupidity? Why, in the end, hadn’t it held us back?

Why did we take these thinkers as our heroes and heroines? How did they become our exemplars?

Why were these books important? Why did we think we’d discover the secret of life in these pages?

What were we looking for that we couldn’t find in the world? What further satisfaction did we seek?

What kind of instinct was this? For something higher? Better? Greater? What were we looking for?

Why did we want farther and farther horizons? Why did we want to do what we could not do?

We wanted to learn how to Seek. We wanted to be taught – how to look for it: the secret. As though we were made for nothing else.

As though we were looking for the Good. For the True. For the Beautiful. As though there were such things as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As though they were only names for the same distant, impossible thing: the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

 

All of this was our version of a prayer. All of it, a way of saying that we didn’t want to be what we were. All of it, a way of saying that the world needed to be redeemed. Needed salvation. That there was evil – terrible evil. That we must turn from this wicked world. That we must hate it. And must strike back from our hatred.

All this was a way of saying that this was not how the world should be. That the Good is missing from it, the world.  And the True! And the Beautiful! That we must hold ourselves back from the world. That we shouldn’t give into it. That we shouldn’t yield to the Evil. That we must seek the Good in our own way. In a stupid way!

That this was not God’s world. That Satan was real. That the Antichrist was real. That the Devastation was real. The Abomination was abroad. That the Natural Order is to be despised. That Nature is to be despised.

That the poison was everywhere. That it fell with the rain, and dripped from the trees. That it ran in the rivers and swam in the lakes. That it was there in the fields, in the woods, on the sand of the beaches.

 

As though we were no lost, after all. As though the world wasn’t poisoned, and we weren’t poisoned and evil didn’t cry out inside us.

 

This world was not enough, and we’d gone looking for help. And we didn’t know where we were going. And we didn’t know what were doing. And we were lost- quite lost – in the world. But the world wasn’t all there was.

Our infinite philosophical eros. Our undefeatable Desire. For Cicero, it was Gnostic. She knew us as Gnostic. She saw the signs in us.

The world as a prison: we knew that, just as she did Cicero. Cicero was certain of it, and so must we be.

Gnostic Saints: that what we were, to Cicero. That’s what Cicero wanted us to be. Gnostic Saints? Saint Doom and Saint Horrified and Saint Murdered and Saint Horrified?

Haven’t we always dreamt that there’s something about us? That we could contribute in some way – to philosophy? To thought? Because of our incompetence. Not in spite of it, but because of it.

That we could bring to thought something only we could bring. Something utterly particular. Something of ourselves. Of our singular idiocy. Of the unique terroir of our idiocy.

That there’s a unique quality to our philosophical writing. There to be savoured by those in the know. By those who’d understand. That might be appreciated by connoisseurs. Like private press jazz, or something. Like Light in the Attic records.

Something worth hunting down. Tracking down. Doing the equivalent of crate-digging, but in academia. That we’d strike, in our papers, a tone – a unique tone, a particular tone. That no one else could strike.

That was unique to us! That we’d ring our particular bell. Sound our idiosyncratic sound!

 

And maybe someone would collect our work, afterwards. Maybe someone would approach us at a conference and say: I liked your article on X. On Y. That we’d find ourselves referenced in one footnote or another.

Keen young scholars would be idly look up the rest of our oeuvre. Would search for our articles. Print them out.

That we’d be a name for seekers-after-forgotten things to share. Obscure authors – but authors unlike any others. Notable. Idiosyncratic.

 

That we wouldn’t have gone entirely unnoticed. That we’d left some testimony of our passage through European philosophy. Of what we were! Of what we couldn’t help but be!

That we’d said something of our existence on earth. Of the kind of people we were. We had not lived entirely in vain.

We’d written a few things that only we could have written. That only people like us could have written. Like us: but there was no one like us. That, on our death beds, there was something that we’d done. Something that set us apart, if only a little.

A few articles, here and there. Published in some scattered low-ranked journals. Barely read by anyone. Barely cited. But there, nonetheless. Showing up on scholarly search engines. Our life’s work!

 

A few articles. Maybe even a book or two. that’s what we’d have to show. That was all we’d done. But enough! Not nothing! We hadn’t entirely failed, though we hadn’t succeeded, either.

There was something odd about us. We weren’t entirely mediocre. Our course through academic life wasn’t entirely predictable.

We’d lived up to the promise we’d had as primary school students. In our sixth form studies? In our first year as undergraduates?

We weren’t entirely ungifted. We didn’t give up – not entirely. We didn’t fall back into non-production. We weren’t content to publish nothing at all. We didn’t hang up our writing boots. We didn’t lay down our arms.

We persisted – in our foolishness, it’s true. Never triumphing over our foolishness. Never leaving it behind, our foolishness. We never anything other than fools. But still, we were writing fools. And wasn’t that our achievement?

 

We stayed in and wrote. On summer days, we wrote. When we should have been outside in the sun, we wrote – we tried to write. When we should have been out with our friends – we wrote. When we should have been living a life – we wrote, or tried to write. We stayed in. We bent over our desks. We read – God knows, we read! And we wrote – or tried to write.

And who were we to try to write? How were we entitled to try to write? Were we top of our years at uni? Were we top of our cohorts in our first year of study; in our second? Did we graduate with the highest first in our year?

No, in each case. We never excelled – at that level. We didn’t do fantastically. Great things weren’t predicated of us. No one ever called us brilliant. But we wrote – or we tried to write.

 

Undeterred. Never put off. But why not? Shouldn’t we have been put off? Shouldn’t we have thrown in our towels? Isn’t there an honour in accepting defeat? We continued. We wrote on. Day followed day, and we didn’t give up.

Was there virtue in that? Sometimes, we thought we were just sullying the Earth. That we were only multiplying our stupidity. Our mediocrity. Making it spread.

And at other times? We could never justify it, our time spent doing this, and not other things. There was no convincing excuse. No alibi. And yet … But yet …  

We carried on. We wrote. An excuse for having failed in every other part of our lives? As an excuse for staying inside for virtually the whole of our lives?

Because we didn’t like to go out. Because we didn’t like to be in public. Because we were introverts. Because being with other people just tortured us.

Because a room full of strangers was a terrifying thing. Because emerging into the world after a day of writing was surfacing into a nightmare. Because the cacophony of the social world was a little too much.

We had our Projects. We were Busy, each in our own ways. We had our glorified hobby.

 

We were unsociable. Because we didn’t have anything to say, not really. Not to the civilians. Not to those outside the academy. And to those inside it … well.

We were no good at dinner parties. We were no good, socialising at conferences.

Which is why we wanted to enclose Writing around ourselves. Why we wanted to disappear into our Writing tent. Hole up with our books, with our PDFs, with an open Word document.

We wanted to retreat. Tactically. Actually. To be alone in a room. To read and write, alone in a room.

That we hoped was quiet. That we hoped could be airy. That we hoped could be warm, or cool in the summer. That we decorated with things to help us write. To remind us of the importance of write. That we filled with the great cultural treasures of the past.

 

We’d read and write our lives away. And that was our lives – reading and writing our lives away. We’ll hold the world at bay – through our reading and writing. We’d keep hopelessness at arm’s length – by way of the hope of our writing; of the hope that we’d write something good. And we’ll never ask for much – except the conditions under which we can read and write.

 

We will have lived our life for something – wouldn’t that be it? We will have tried to do something with our lives. We will have tried to be certain people. We will have given up on our Desire.

The serenity of mother. The calm of Mother.

Does Mother ever suffer her own stupidity. Does she experience it? Does it torment her?

 

Mother wants to learn what she cannot learn. Because you cannot learn stupidity. You can’t study study. You can’t fake stupefaction.

 

Is Mother ever stuck do you think? Does Mother ever fuck up? Is Mother ever defeated? But we are – all these things. Constantly.

Only with polarity can there be apocalypse. Can there be an end of the world.

Self division! Depth! That’s the engine of philosophy.

 

The world’s not for us. It wasn’t made for us. We’ll only ever live against it, the world. We can’t help that.

 

Disgust – that’s all we’ll ever feel. That’s all we’ll ever be able to feel.

But that’ll be what protects us. That’ll be what keeps us safe.

It means we’ll never fall under the spell of the world. We’ll never drowse under the spell of the world.

Cicero, expounding the origin of Gnosticism in apocalyptic disappointment, which was itself rooted in prophetic disappointment.

And what would happen when Gnostic disappointment came? we asked her.

Nothing, she said. Because Gnosticism is a name for disappointment.

 

Gnosticism is a philosophy of the endless death of God, Cicero said. For the failure of all eschatologies.

We have to bring Organisational Management down. Nothing less. Here and at every other university.

 

We have a mission – that’s exciting, isn’t it?

A mission!? We’ll just be defeated again.

But our defeats will become ever-greater. More encompassing. More entire. Grandiose, even.

When will it come, the apocalypse? When, the Last Judgement. And what if it never comes? What if there is no Judgement? No messianic age?

What if there’s just time and more time? What if there’s just history and the horror of history? And nothing rising out of them.

Just ceaselessness. Just cruelty. Just violence. Just the great engine. Just the great mechanism of nature. Just the endless dumb cycles. Just the continuation of horror. Just its empty perpetuation. Just the cosmic cruelty, without redemption. Just eternal injustice.

What if nothing ever comes of this – of us? What if it just goes on? What if nothing is redeemed? What if it’s yet more senseless violence? And the administration of violence? And the organisation of violence and the management of violence?

Just the daily dealings of horror. Just murder by poison in the air, in the earth, in the water. Just the continual poisoning. Just the continual lies. Just the air, thick with lies. Nothing but lies. And lies on our lips, too. Lies that they make us tell. Lies that we tell to ourselves.

I can hear bells.

What bells can there be? Do you think the Faith Zone has bells?

I can hear bells, ringing. I can hear them.

Who’s ringing bells? Who could there be? And besides, where are the bells? Do you think there are any bells on this campus?

St Mary’s is close.

Not that close.

That church on the west road. Do you think they ring bells? You don’t have bell ringing anymore.

But I can hear bells. In the sky maybe.

Who could be ringing bells in the sky?

Must be a miracle.

A miracle that only you can hear.

Wait … I can hear them. I can hear them, too.

I can hear bells. I can hear them.

Only a holy fool can hear them. Not a philosophical idiot.

I can hear bells. It means this world is not complete. It’s a promise.

Like a rainbow?

It’s a covenant.

To say what: that the apocalypse is going to come at last? That there’s going to be an end? That Jesus will return, riding a horse?

This world is going to end, I know it.

Is that what the bells mean: apocalypse?

I can hear bells. Can you hear them, Fiver?

Fiver, shaking his head.

I can hear beyond the endless end. I can.

Maybe … maybe I can hear them too.

You’re just being agreeable. It’s a terrible trait, agreeableness. You want it to be true.

Of course I want it to be true.

I can hear bells. I can.

We need to find the Organisational Management deeps. Where Organisational Management becomes philosophical. The Organisational Management profounds. The Organisational Management fundament.

 

We need to find the hollow heart of Organisational Management. The echoing heart. Where nothing is. Where there is no heart.

The void, instead. Emptiness, instead. The great Nothing.