Work in Progress

Something’s wrong. Those words, echoing out. Something’s – wrong. But what’s wrong. What is it?

Everything’s wrong. It’s all wrong. And it will be wrong until … the End. And the End will make it right. The apocalypse. It will come right at the last moment. Because everyone will know that it’s about to end.

 

Something’s wrong, philosopher. You know more about it than I do. You feel more. But I feel it, too. Something’s wrong, and it’s been wrong for a while.

 

Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. And part of its wrongness is that no one sees the wrongness.

 

Something’s wrong. No – everything’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

All this culture. These posters. This framed art. These blu-rays. These CDs … I’ve barely ever seen a CD before.

 

Like some capsule. Looks like solitary confinement to me.

 

I’m glad I’m even allowed in. Am I allowed in? Are you regretting inviting me? Am I disturbing your solitude?

 

I pity the woman who ends up with you. I pity her. Unless she’s another philosopher. Unless she has a capsule of her own.

 

Do you think you can hold the barbarism at bay? You think you can stay in and party like it’s 1955, or whatever?

 

The ground zero of your intellectual life. Your thought base. Your hide-out camp. Your fortress of studious solitude. Your favourite island.

 

You don’t want me here, do you? How do I fit in? What am I disturbing? Your European dreams. Your arthouse dreams.

Like these things matter anymore. Your personal pantheon. And these gold framed reproductions.

Who are you kidding?

 

It’s like in fairy tales, where the ogre buries his heart in a chest at the bottom of a lake. This is where you’ve buried your heart. Your would-be heart …

 

But I don’t believe it’s real. It’s only as if you loved these things. As if you loved old Europe. As if they meant something. As if, as if …

Because without this ballast, you’d float away, wouldn’t you? Who would you be then? Who would you be, without philosophy? Just an ordinary Joe.

Imagine that. No sage. No mage. No intellectual glamour. Is there such a thing as intellectual glamour anymore?

 

See, if you lived on the continent, in Paris or something, then you’d make sense. But you don’t make sense, do you?

Which is why you retreat here. Which is why you cower here. From an indifferent world.

 

This is where you come to restore your strength. For European-culture power-ups.

This is your life raft. As though European culture could save you.

The old European names, like incantations. Their artwork on the walls …

 

Your sanctum. Your holy of holies.

Love you, love your room, is that how it works? Love you, love your taste. Love these relics. These touchstones.

You’re like a dresser crab, making your shell out of all this stuff you’ve found. Must have taken a lot of time – and money.

 

Culture, philosopher … Your favourite things … like the Julie Andrews song. When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when you’re feeling sad. You simply remember Albert Ayler and Sun Ra and so on. And then you don’t feel so bad …

 

The sanctum of the humanities. The human treasures of European civilization.

We Business Studies types just have James Bond Blu-ray collections and a Netflix subscription. That does us …

 

A Europe of the mind.

So much to meet the eye. So many delights. The eye’s refreshed. The ear’s refreshed.

 

Alan has an interest in classic design. I like swinging London stuff. Jean Shrimpton and so on. We haven’t got your European panache.

 

Really, Alan doesn’t have any taste, coming from Middlesborough. He leaves it up to me. But I don’t have any taste either.

 

All your cultural capital. I’ll bet you could hold forth at tedious length on each and every thing here. I’m sure you could bore me to death, philosopher.

 

You’re really in denial, philosopher. No one cares about this stuff. No one gives a fuck. You don’t need to own things. To collect things. Very anal. It’s all streamed now. We’re streaming people …

 

I take Alan to design museums in London. I drag him around. That’s how I cultivate myself.

 

Of course, in the future, Mother will be able to make whatever you want. The internet of things, philosophy. I’ll be able to just 3D-print your favourite Terence Conran stuff.

 

You’re the last of something, philosopher. The last of Europe. The last of imaginary Europe.

I don’t know whether anything reaches me. It’s like I’m far away from everything. Too far away to be anything. I don’t know how to express it.

Nothing’s mine, philosopher. My life isn’t mine. Our house in Gosforth. Our house in Mallorca. My rental properties – I have those, I know. I own those. Quite lucrative. I have a regular portfolio. They’re not mine.

You see, I should be a business woman. I know how to make money. Butt hat doesn’t matter.

Nothing touches me. Nothing reaches me. Even you. All you’re doing is help me express this … absence. Allowing me to say these things.

What kind of woman should you be with? Who would be right for you? Who would appreciate all of this? A fellow connoisseur. Someone young. A PhD student, maybe. Is that allowed these days?

Maybe we could find someone in Organisational Management for you. Some keen young thing. Who wanted to open her mind. To expose herself to new things. Who’d some humanities education. A European, maybe. A foreigner. We have plenty of those.

 

I’m sure I can’t possibly interest you. I won’t hold your interest for long. I’m sure I don’t feel the great things. The great European feelings. The Ur-angst of your philosophers. I don’t sit like you on the banks of the great European river, admiring the European view.

 

I’ve even been on holiday to Europe. I’ve been all over Europe city breaks. Back when Alan was courting me. Probably wasted on me. All that profundity probably just passed me by. I was probably missing it all …

That’s the problem with Organisational Management. We run the world now, philosopher. We’ve taken over. But we’re turning it into a dull ol’ world.

We don’t belong in these … bodies. We don’t belong in these lives. These are the wrong lives, don’t you see? This whole world is wrong. I sense it. I know it. It’s… poisoned. Who did this to us? Who was it? Who could be so cruel? And why – why did they do it? What do they want from us? What do they want to extract from us? What do they want to harvest? Or do they just want us dead?

 

It's like I’ve had some … brain damage. Like there’s something wrong with my head. Is there something wrong with my head, philosopher? Am I sane? Am I … healthy?

What went wrong? Is there a name for this? What can it be called: my condition? Imagine: I have a condition.

Am I just bored? Did I get so bored with my life that I went mad? What does that say about me, that I could be so easily bored? What did I expect that was so wonderful, so exhilarating?

I feel guilty. I’m spoilt – just spoilt. Did my mum ever feel like this? Did she ever indulge her feelings like this?  But they’re not my feelings, philosopher. It’s not actually about me.

The state of the world. The state of things. Of the whole Creation. That’s what this is about. That’s what I tell myself. I must be extra sensitive to feel these things. I must be a real … tuning fork to pick up these … vibrations.

 

At least you can listen to me, philosopher. At least I have company in this. My monologues … Do you object to my monologues. I’m object to them. I’ve become far too … self-indulgent. Listen to me! I’ve become far too philosophical.

 

Philosophy loves company – is that right? Are there friends … philosophical friends?

The word, philosophy, means friends of wisdom.

Am I a friend of wisdom, I wonder? Is wisdom friends with me? Madness, maybe. Lostness, maybe. I’m a friend of lostness.

 

Aren’t you supposed to be courting me? Showing me what you can do? Your philosophical plumage, or whatever … I want a display, philosopher. I want to see what’s so great about you.

There’s nothing great about me.

I want to see what’s exceptional.

There’s nothing exceptional about me.

I want to see your failure, then. How you’ve fucked up. You are at least a failure, aren’t you?

I am a failure.

 

If you’re really good at something, women will come to you. All you have to be is good at something. That’s what they say, isn’t it? So there must be philosophy groupies. Someone, somewhere must be impressed.

 

What’s in your head, philosopher? What are you thinking? I don’t think you’re thinking anything at all. I think you’re just being vague … and withdrawn. I think you live in a kind of fog. And sometimes you come out of your fog – I like that. But mostly you’re just … lost.

 

Why aren’t you here, philosopher? Why can’t you be with me? What are you gazing at, that’s so far away? What’s happened to your … attention? You only like remote things. Nothing close. Nothing real, though I doubt that I’m real. Nothing living.

 

At least join me here. At least be with me, so I don’t have to suffer alone. Because I really am suffering, philosophy. Or at least I think I am. Ever since the beginning of our … affair. Even since, I’ve … suffered. Can it even be called suffering? I’m at sea. I’ve lost my equilibrium. Things are not where they should be. And you’re no help.

 

Don’t you feel it, too? Don’t you feel lost? Won’t you be lost with me? Emerge. Come out of your trance. I’m calling you. Say a few things. Say a few profound things. They don’t have to be your own words. You can quote, philosopher. You must know a few quotations.

 

It’s as if the world’s already ended. And perhaps it has. It’s like there’s no more world. And that time is no more, either. But here we are, outside the world and outside time.

 

I don’t know why I come here. The intrigue, I suppose. The excitement. Excitement! As if this was exciting. We’re an art house film all of our own. We’re speaking like the people in art house films. Not like real life people.

 

We’re floating. Everything’s afloat. We live in a floating world, where nothing’s real. Not even you and not even me. But people know that people have been saying that since the year dot. The whole veil of Maya thing.

 

We don’t have ordinary concerns. Real life concerns. We’ve been freed from real life concerns, for the moment at least. Before the crash comes – the great financial crash. And the one after that. Before the world ends …

We have time, philosopher. But what are we going to do with our time?

 

We could say profound things, I think. We could wonder into some grove of profundity, where everything we said was just immeasurably deep. We could enter the zone of saying profound things. I believe that’s possible.

We could say timeless, profound things.

 

We could be raised into the realm of profundity – just like that. Or I could. You’re probably already profound. Suddenly, we could find ourselves saying profound things. Summing it all up. Everything we feel. All our grand feelings. Which, no doubt, people have had before. There are probably whole books of profound feelings on your bookshelves.

 

Maybe I’m the only one who should talk today. Maybe it’s my turn – and only my turn. I’m going to say what I have to say and only I can say. I’m going to have the last word – the eternal last word.

 

This day will last forever. And what I have to say … the same. What I have to say. What saying says in me. What it says, philosopher. What is this it? What is it that speaks, if not me? What stands at its origin? But perhaps no one stands there. Perhaps it’s just … language. Pouring out of itself. Issuing from itself.

 

This day will never end. Not this day. We’re in a …. Loop of time. Time – this time – has broken off from time. It’s an ox-bow lake of time, separate from the main river.

We’ve been given this time. This irrelevant time. This leading nowhere time. In order to – what? In order to take us – where? In order to be delivered – to what?

 

To be overtaken. Possessed, even. Did I want an adventure, philosopher? Is that why I picked you out? Was I so greedy for an adventure? For a philosophy experience. What I wanted. What I was looking for. I can hardly remember. And instead. I’m here. I’m trapped, in a way. In a kind of Limbo. Your flat.

 

Becalmed, that’s what we are. There’s no wind to … catch our sails. To blow us anywhere. We’re just here. Here with time, with open time. With space.

 

The coast. I know why you chose to live here. I feel the attraction. The open skies, the open sea. You can … forget yourself. And it’s good to forget yourself.

 

I’m never going to be able to finish what I’ve begun. I’m never going to be able to stop saying it.

You can write this down, if you like. You can put these words in your book. To close your book. I don’t mind. You can have them.

I can just … saying these things. I’m saying them now. I don’t know how. I’m simply … able to speak. I’ve been given an … ability. I’ve been inspired, or whatever. Speaking like this has become easy for me. I didn’t know how, or why. Maybe I should write them down, these words. Maybe I should write a treatise.

We thirst. We long. We question. Even I question, philosopher.

 

Summer questions – when the days are full of light. When it’s warm. And there are winter questions – when it’s dark and the snow’s falling …

 

What does our questioning allow? Where does it take us, our questioning? What does it do to the world, our questioning? Does it just leave everything as it is?

What does it change, if it changes anything? Doesn’t it just remind us of the futility; of the pitilessness of trying to change anything?

 

Is anything real? Is there a world at all? Is that all philosophy does: deny that the world is real? Question everything that binds us to the world?

What does it mean: to say that it’s all a dream, or whatever? It just makes us feel unconnected to things. When we should be more connected.

 

That this is a false world: is that all philosophy says? Maybe I don’t mind that it’s a false world. I like Mother’s world. Are you going to spoil it by saying that it’s false?

Maybe it’s better than the world out there. Calmer. Safer. More how we – I – would want it. And we want to be happy, don’t we?

We want consolations. These are my consolations. Dreams. The … fake countryside. The fake summer …

 

There are spiritual … dangers. I’m sure of it. No doubt this whole place is dangerous, spiritually. What is doing to us? To our souls?

 

What are we looking for – peace? Beyond this peace. Beyond Mother’s peace. Isn’t Mothers peace enough?

 

I don’t know how we survive from moment to moment. I don’t know how time … caries us forward. How one moment connects with another. How is that possible, philosopher?

 

What lets us live? What’s the life of life? What lives through us? What is the love that loves us?

Am I supposed to learn some great lesson from this? What am I supposed to learn?

Is all this some great experience? Something that will change me?

How is it for you, philosopher? What are you learning? What’s your lesson, philosopher?

 

We are not alive, philosopher, I know that.

 

Is Mother a false god? Who’s the true God? How should we seek the true God? Will God teach us how to seek him, the true God?

 

Mother’s a false god. Of course she is. But a comforting god. A god of comfort.

 

I need transformation. I need it, philosopher. I need to be transformed. To be lifted higher.

Do it, philosopher – help me. Say some words. Do some things. Help me as I should be helped As I need to be helped.

 

I want my life to be a reflection of God’s, nothing more.

I don’t know what to do with these words, philosopher. I don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t know what they’re for, these words. I can’t make anything out … they’re … surprising me.

 

These words … are taking me over … kind of … I’m saying things … I shouldn’t say.

 

And there you are, standing before me. There you are, looking at me. Waiting to see what I have to say. And what do I have to say? What’s using me to say what?

See how I’m talking? See how I’m tangling myself in knots?

Who am I speaking to, philosopher? Who am I speaking for? Are you going to remember my words? Are you going to write them down, after I’m gone? Are you going to remember them? Are you going to keep them safe? In your book?

 

I’d like to sleep for ten days. And wake up … with all my problems solved. What problems, you say? What could possibly be wrong, you say?

But something’s wrong. I know that. It’s pricked my conscious. Something’s wrong – those two words say themselves over and over in me. Something’s wrong. And it’s my fault, in some way. And I’m part of it, in some sense. And it calls me to do something, this something’s wrong. It wants me to do something. And I don’t know what.

 

I wish there was something I could quote. I wish there were poems that I knew by heart. I wish I could quote the Bhagavad Gita. I wish I could remember what Krishna said to Arjuna. I wish I could remember more of the stories in the comics.

What should I say? What would you like me to say? Any requests? Anything you’d like me to read? Pass me that book. I’ll open it at random. Read out some lines. Isn’t that a kind of fortune telling?

But I have to speak. I – have – to – speak.

 

What kind of idiot am I? Am I an idiot too, like you? Have I reached your sacred stupidity? A philosophical stupidity? Am I a savant of speech? Do I have some gift for speech and questions and questions and questions. And everything I say. All of this.

 

A kind of … desperation. That isn’t even mine. That I don’t own, or control.

A … grasping … As though I were holding out my hand. But for what? Expecting what?

Listen to me. Listen to me talking. I blame you, philosopher. I blame you for letting me think like this and talk like this and be like this. It’s all because of you. It’s the effect of you. Of what you’ve done to me.

What am I now? Some kind of hybrid. Some sort of in-between person.

I don’t even feel real. And maybe I’m not even real.

 

We’re futile, philosopher. We’re futile beings.

What was all this for – our lives? All this … rushing about. Where were we heading? What did it amount to?

We’ll be done soon. Gone and unremembered. Unmourned.

 

What if … we’re just like anyone else? If we were exactly the same as everyone else?

We might as well be robots. We might as well be … synths.

 

I want to be turned off. I want my thoughts to be turned off. Switched off. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to be anymore. I don’t want anything … It’s getting worse. All of it. It’s all getting worse.

What’s getting worse?

It, philosopher. Everything …

 

Why can I be real, philosopher? Why are none of us real? Or alive? Why aren’t we anything other than dead?

I look at my husband … I look at Alan … I look at my house. I look at my living room. I look at the dining room. I look at the garden. And all I see is … death. My death. The death that I can’t … wake up from

I look at whom I am and what I am and what I’ve become and it’s just death – nothing else.

And I would say, Help me, but you probably can’t help me. I’m probably dead forever. And if you’re not going to help me – if you can’t help me, then who will?

 

Why must I always be falling? Why does it have to be unbearable – all of it? Why do I even have to speak of all of it and everything and nothing and, God knows, the eternal void?

Is this Angst? Is this what Angst is? And dread is? And depression – do philosophers write of depression? Is that word philosophical enough? Does it sound too clinical, or whatever?

Melancholy, maybe.

Sure, melancholy, philosophy. Is this melancholy?

 

I don’t even know whether I’m suffering. I don’t even know who’s suffering. I don’t know anything I don’t know whether there’s anyone here. Whether I am at all. Whether anything’s real.

 

Do you know how tired I am of being dead? Do you know how tired I am?

 

How did we end up here – in this Limbo? Who brought us to so-called life here? Who let us be born again, and here? It was cruel. It was mean, to make us so-called live again. To bring us back to so-called life.

Do you remember who you were – in your last life? Do you remember whether that life sucked quite as much?

 

Maybe this will be the last time we’re reborn. Maybe we’ll escape the whole wheel of rebirth.

All we want is … obliteration. All we want is not to exist anymore.

 

One day pfft – that’ll be it. One day – what? One day, philosopher … one day … there’ll be no more days One day, there’ll be a end of days. And an end of time. There – I’ve told you. It’s my secret.

 

Just this torment. All these words. This sickness. This sickness of words. Everything’s wrong with me – or I’m what’s wrong with everything. It’s my fault – or everything’s fault. It’s all wrong.

I’m a shadow that falls upon the sun – who was it who said that? I am a shadow. I am a shade. Is that how you see me, philosopher?

 

Something is wrong. Something’s wrong, philosopher. And it’s wrong with me. Or the world. Or both.

I’m so sick and weary. The world is tainted with myself – who was it who said that? Did I say that?

 

Haven’t I got what I want? I’m not a … beggar. We’re not beggars. Why isn’t that enough for us: not to be beggars?

 

I can’t remember my name.

Priya.

Not that name – my real name. The name that God gave me.

What name is that?

My … secret name.

 

Do we have to say, thank you? Do I have to say, thank you?

Thank you for what?

For what we’ve been given.

Given? Given by who?

Why, from God, of course. Like, give us this day our daily bread. Yeah – like that.

 

I’m going mad. Slightly mad, philosopher. This is my little madness.

This is what I’m like when I’m slightly mad.

 

It’s like I have a fever – a terrible fever.  I’m ill with something. Mad with something. Is it philosophy? Am I mad with philosophy? With your philosophy? With you?

 

There are menacing … spirits. Who threaten me. I’d – like – to – cut – them – out –

 

Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong – with everything? Is there something wrong – with God?

 

Are all philosophers crazy, or just the good ones?

 

In the last hour, in the final hour, I went mad. Madness came. In the last our … In this last hour.

Nothing but lastness. In this eternal last hour. In this eternal non-eternity?

 

You with your writing and me with – you.

 

Maybe I’ve fallen for you. Maybe I’m just falling. Are you going to catch me? Are you going to save me?

You must be familiar with this kind of angst. It must be ten-a-penny in philosophy. You must be an angst expert.

 

I’ve got a bad case of – angst. Is angst contagious? Have I caught it from you?

Do you get better from angst? Do you recover?

 

All my life – I’ve … what? What can I say about all of my life? What can I say about anything?

All my life, I … all my life … What can I say? Who am I to say anything? Who do I have to be to say anything?

Only it isn’t about what I say. It isn’t about what I want. It speaks – I don’t speak. It speaks – and I shut up. Do you wish that I’d shut up, philosopher?

 

I feel ugly sometimes. I feel dead sometimes – but you know that.

You’re not ugly.

But I am dead. Is that what you’re saying?

Would you say that God gave you the gift to think?

God or the devil.
What else can you do?

Nothing. And I can’t even think.

 

If you didn’t philosophise, what you do? What would your life be about?

I don’t philosophise.

 

Can you think with your failure? With your faults? With your idiocy?

 

What if I believed in you? What if I thought you were a genius?

Then you’d be even more of an idiot than I am.

 

I don’t even write philosophy. I write literature.

I don’t even write literature. I write writing.

I don’t even write writing. I write …

 

Why do you philosophise?

I philosophise – to stop thinking.

 

You’ve got such a sense of vocation.

What good is a sense of vocation for something you’re no good at?

What if you are some kind of genius? A genius of idiocy?

A genius of non-genius.

 

Maybe you’re a genius of philosophy. Unrecognised in your lifetime.

 

Do you believe you’ll be discovered one day? Do you think that … will it make it worthwhile … your being all alone? Maybe you think it’s already alright, your being alone. Maybe you don’t want anything else, and I’m just … an irritant.

Somebody thinks this is funny. Somebody thinks this is all funny. They’re laughing at us.

Who?

Someone is. This is all for somebody’s amusement.

God maybe … Man thinks, God laughs. Who was it that said that?