Work in Progress

We went past peak humanities student several years ago. They’re going to be closing them all down.

 

Look, no one’s doing humanities A levels anymore. Their numbers are falling across the board.

 

Business Studies student numbers are soaring. The humanities thing was a blip. The whole mass HE humanities thing.

 

The humanities aren’t special. They were already, like, totally corrupted. They don’t deserve to survive – not as they are.

Yeah, but for what they might be. For what they could be.

 

Organisational Management took over philosophy long ago. Organisational Management took over the whole of the humanities. But from the inside. I mean, what’s analytic philosophy but Organisational Management?

Are these our thoughts? Thoughts this sick?

We were always sick.

Were we?

We were always twisted.

 

We’re sick. We’ve been sickened. We’ve been poisoned. It’s not our fault. We’ve been warped.

 

This is our time. This is the great freak show. Our type are coming into their own. This is when we’ll make sense. Our lives will make sense now.

If the Organisational Management knew its shame, it would do away with itself. It would destroy itself. And perhaps it will. Perhaps that’s what it will learn: that it must destroy itself. And that God won’t need to act.

 

Our hated is God’s hatred. Of this place. Of this abomination. We hate it for him. Our instincts are right. We’re right.

 

Satan fell to earth here. This is where Satan lives.

 

I’d have thought Satan would be, like, the original punk.

You know what’s punk now: believing in God. Does John Lydon believe in God now?

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or with … everything. Is it the poison? Is it the poison seeping into me? Am I mad? I think I might be. I think it drives you mad, the poison. I think I’m going mad.

Help me – someone help me. I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this. With these thoughts. Every day. I can’t think this way. Who’s let me think this way? What’s wrong? What’s so wrong?

It isn’t just me. It’s everything. It’s the whole universe. Everything’s bad. It’s gone bad. It runs with poison. And evil. Everything. Every cell, every atom. Every tiniest thing. The tiniest part of ever tiny things.

 

And I’m destroyed. I’m a demolished … person. I can’t find my way out of the lies. I can’t make my way out. I can’t speak – in my own name. Because my own name is a lie, too. Because I can’t use it: my own name.

And if I weep, they aren’t my tears. You don’t realise – none of you – how demonic this is. You don’t understand what’s invaded us. That there is no escape. Even escape is its escape.

 

Am I going mad? Am I? Is this what’s madness is like?

 

And I can’t talk of this. I can’t say a word – not a word. And I can’t kneel – because it’s kneeling inside me. For me. It kneels in my place. And I can’t pray, because it would pray in my place. And use my words. And use my life.

 

I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what’s in my hands. I don’t know what to say. What words to use. What signs to make. I don’t know … I don’t know anything.

 

When I wake up, it’s from the bottom of the world. The lowest possible place. I wake up from the abyss. I wake up in the grave of everything. I wake up from death.

I begin with death and end up with death. I wake dead and sleep dead. And I can’t escape it. And it’s heavy – so heavy. And it’s crushing. And I’m heavy with death.

I like how we have instinct for what isn’t disgusting. It’s like flowers automatically growing towards the sun.

Heliotropism. Yeah, that.

Non-disgusting-o-tropism. Not-making-us-want-to-kill-ourselves tropism.

 

We started low. And we’re reaching high.

That’s probably the advantage of starting low. It sharpens your instincts.

 

Above our station: that’s what we wanted to be. Because our station was so low. So base.

Which is why we chose philosophy. Which is about as far from our natural stations as anything could be.

Philosophy! Of all subjects! But we sensed the light. We felt it. We knew it was higher than we were. We knew it was better.

 

What are we going to amount to? This is it – this is already our peak. You realise that, don’t you? This is as good as it’s going to get. It’s downhill from here. Of course it is. This is it, the highest we’ll ever get. Enjoy the view.

These are our last untroubled days. Our last hours as free philosophers. Our last months!

These are the balmy days before the storm. Our last spring! To be followed by our last summer! And then the most poignant end of summer. It’ll be an Indian summer, probably … When things really begin …

 

The screws aren’t being turned yet. They’re not actually torturing us. They’re not actually doing anything. They’re trusting us to do it for them. Which is kinda worse. Because they know we will. They know the kind of cowards we are.

 

They want plans. Proposals. Concrete things. New modules. Which we’re going to provide them with.

Speak for yourself. I can’t be fucking bothered.

Listen to you, Miss Bravado! So daring!

 

We’ve got to get serious. Get business-y. We’ve got to frame it all in a way they get. That makes sense to them. Take dictation!

You take dictation.

 

I have an action point. Minutes are for pussies. It’s all about action points now.

Where did you learn that from – your pal, Alan? Who you’re cuckolding.

 

Fiver – forget taking minutes! Do you have any visions, by the way? We could do with a vision. Something positive this time. Something summery.

Fiver, shaking his head.

 

Helmut, what’s your contribution? No contribution. Nada. You can’t still be following your vow of silence.

 

We’ve got to have a Plan – a larger Plan, I mean. About how we survive. About how we strike back. The Resistance! Come on, people!

 

The Postgraduates. They’ll know what to do. Not our postgraduates, idiot. The ones who went underground.

Hölderlin – that’s the name of the campus AI, by coincidence.

Hardly a coincidence. A deliberate desecration. Seriously – you called your AI after the greatest philosopher-poet who ever lived? Who thought of that? Who around here had even heard of Hölderlin?

 

It’s deliberate – that’s what gets me. It’s like deliberately mocking everything precious and noble and good. Everything that isn’t, like, totally disgusting.

 

Fucking Hölderlin. It’s called Hölderlin. I’ll never get over that. They have to take everything. They have to appropriate everything. They won’t let us have anything of our own.

 

Hölderlin … Quote some Hölderlin in German, Helmut. Oh you can’t. Your vow of silence.

And the fact that he doesn’t speak German. For which his vow of science is a very convenient cover.

 

Hölder-who?

Stop pretending. He’s the philosopher’s poet. The philosopher’s philosophical poet. Like Herr literaro-philosophical. The original literaro-philosophical gangsta.

 

Are you going to be the British Hölderlin? Do we need a British Hölderlin? Are you going to be quotable? Are you going to inspire idiots like us two hundred years after you die? Are you going to go mad and live in a tower?

Not a bad option.

Actually, Fiver’s the one who’s going to go mad. Do you write poetry, Fiver? You should. You’ve got the authentic mad thing going on.

 

Are you going to change your name to Hölderlin? Why didn’t Cicero nickname you Hölderlin?

How long is it since we were postgraduates? Years … several years … But very important years. The part-time ditch years. The whoring-pit years. The abyss of part-time desperation years. When we lost all our delicate postgraduate hope.

 

We matured. We hardened. We became what we are. We passed through the wringer. We were destroyed and reborn …

 

We were thrown to the mercy of the four winds.

Outside the university. Lacking an institutional home. Freewheelers! Buccaneers! On the high seas of precarity!

 

We lost our youths. We gave up our youths. Our youths were destroyed.

We were sensitive souls. Too sensitive. It’s amazing we survived. And really, did we survive? Can we be said to have survived?

 

Do you know what a postgraduate is to us? A reminder of promise. Of … potentiality. When we hadn’t become … what we are now.

What we could have been … How we didn’t have to be anything …

 

The postgraduate dreamworld. The only thing they have to do is finish their dissertation. Pass their viva voce. Other than that – nothing, if they’re on a scholarship. Nothing …

The British Asian experience. Reflect on that. The fruits of the Indian diaspora. Studying European philosophy. Why don’t you do Indian philosophy?

You have to have Sanskrit.

Like you have … European languages?

I know the important philosophical vocabulary, yes.

Have you even been to Europe?

I am a desperate provincial.

And proud of it! Well, I actually speak German, philosophy. And I’ve actually been to Germany. I spent a year in Germany. And I speak a little Hindi.

I speak a little bit of Tamil.

How much is a little bit? Could you get by in the motherland?

I’ve hardly been, actually. I’m a provincial, as you know.

So you’re more a European.

I’m just a Brit. And Indo-Brit.

 

I’ll bet you’re a tennis lover. Do you and your husband play tennis?

We do, actually.

Do you take tennis lessons?

What could you possibly have against tennis? Is it a working-class thing?

A working class Southall thing.

Cicero thought she could produce the perfect nihilist.

What’s that, anyway?

 

The perfect nihilist is the one who says a perfect prayer. But to no one. The perfect nihilism is the perfect philosophical psalmist. Saying psalms to nothing.

 

The psalms of a perfect nihilist: is that what you’d like to write?