Work in Progress

The only thing we’re good at is degradation. And we’re really good at it.

Are we, though? Doesn’t it just happen?


We’re amusing no one but each other.

But are we still amusing each other?


Imagine – we’re still alive, still going. It’s obscene, isn’t it? Who’s allowing this? How have we been overlooked? Surely we should just have been … swatted.


Let’s drink at least. Let’s get something down us. It might help us not to be so meta.

We’ll just get drunkenly meta. Exhilaratedly meta.


Can we still count on it, drunken exhilaration? Do we still wake up like we used to?

The hangover of life is just too overwhelming. The hangover of … expectations. And no hair of the dog is going to help with that.

Never get above yourself – that’s the lesson. But never get below yourself, either. Never think you can descend – that you’re worthy enough to descend.

What if we have no depths? What if we bring our superficiality with us, no matter how far we descend?


What’s waiting for us below?

The same thing that’s awaiting for us up there: a new revelation of our stupidity.

At least it’ll be new. At least there’ll be some novelty.


Our pettiness – so great. Our concerns – so trivial. Our souls – so shallow.


What’s the opposite of an astronaut? What’s an astronaut of the earth?


They descended because they couldn’t bear the surface. They went down because they couldn’t stand the light, not anymore. Because they knew the light was coming.


Darkness is the gnostic element. It’s where Gnosticism bubbles and froths, like Livia’s wine.


Gone to ground. Buried. Lost. And just sinking down. Heavier than anything.


The descent into farce is still a descent.

A farcical descent.

That’s good enough.

It has to be good enough.


The failed katabasis is still a katabasis.

It’s a katabasis in spirit.

A katabasis in degradation.

But it’s not an actual katabasis.

It’s a katabasis from the katabasis.

Too clever for me.

A descent from the descent.

Like we’re not worthy of real descent.

So it’s not a descent then, is it?

It’s the shallows. We’re still in the shallows.


We’re not going down. We’re not descending – that’s the point. You need humility for that.


Surely we can’t be surprised by it anymore – our degradation? How far we’ve sunk. But we haven’t actually sunk.


Maybe we’ll find a version of the dead sea scrolls down here.

The Tyneford scrolls. Hidden in Tyneford boulder clay. Written in some ancient Geordie language. Why-ay, man. The Geordie Gnostics …

Hope is eternal.

That’s the problem. If we didn’t hope then we might accept our level. Our fate, such as it is. Our essential status in life. Our place in the caste system. In the great of chain being. But we do hope, right?


Who taught us to hope? Why do we hope? Why do we raise our eyes anywhere? By what instinct? Who implanted this inside us?

It’s our divine spark.

Divine!? It can’t be divine!

We’re better than we are. Or we want to be better.

That’s the problem! We’ll never accept that we’re IQ80 types …

The only language now is theological, postgraduates. That’s the only way we can express the horror.


We’re the last theologians now. After the destruction. After the collapse. Theology has had to go incognito. Has to lose itself, down among the idiots. But we are those idiots …


Theology’s slumming it. Theology’s in the gutter. Pick through its ruins. Seeing what it can find.


We’ve been left alone with theology, like some unexploded bomb.

Nothing is ever over. Literature isn’t over. It’s just descending into the darkness. It’s going to erupt again.

No – it’s just going to descend Further and further from us. Just like European philosophy. It’s all descending. It’s all going underground. It’s being re-gathered by the gnostic depths.


After the revelation of literature – after its apocalypse in modernism – literature has to become Gnostic. Go underground. That’s its role now. To say no – a great no, against the hyperbole of positivity.

Literature must hide itself. Go unnoticed. Stay underground. With all its energies.

Until what?

So will antinomian women will save the universe?

They can’t even save themselves. That’s the point.

But in a sense they have saved it. They do redeem it. In their work. In the secret of their lives. In a way even they don’t understand.

But you do?

Maybe I do.

You sitting up in a high room, thinking you’re immune to it all. In your ark, floating above the flood. Do you think you can save your world?

I just want to save myself.

So you can live on in your ark … doing what?

Writing.

Is this that you’re going to do with your life?

Why – what should I do?

Are you going to add one more book to your great row of books? With your name on the spine?

I’d like to.

And what kind of book is it going to be?

An idiot book. The last book.

The last book … imagine …

Are we going to learn everything now? Is it Livia’s final revelation? Livia’s final NOTHING, more like.


Livia’s trail of breadcrumbs. Leading where? Leading us nowhere. Leading us down the garden path, as usual. And Livia, just standing there, mocking us for even believing in revelations.


The thirteenth what? The thirteenth lie. The thirteenth fake. The thirteenth unpath.


So what’s the truth of the thirteenth bottle? What is it about?

The complete death of hope.

Haven’t we already felt that? Hasn’t that been our entire lives?

Apparently not. Apparently there’s further to fall.


Was the thirteenth bottle Livia’s plan?

Everything was Livia’s plan.


The thirteenth bottle, like the thirteen imam.

The humanities have withdrawn, on principle. They’ve left the field of battle, by choice. They’ve tucked themselves into their tortoise shells. Achieved emergency extraction. They’ve abdicated their former role.

The humanities Rapture has already taken place. They’ve exited Hell. They’ve pressed eject. They’ve fund their escape route and just … vanished. They’ve seceded – voluntarily. They’re in internal exile. They’re living under an assumed identity, in witness protection, a long way from here.

The true humanities have no place in this world of ours. They know that. They’ve gone into hibernation. Turned out their lights. They’re biding their time, until things get better.

The afternoon’s what’s left over. Just time. Just banality. Just the great slackening when even you, philosopher, might become like anyone else.


You won’t have the strength to resist it, the afternoon. Philosophy won’t help you. You’ll have forgotten all philosophy, in the afternoon. You won’t be able to string your thoughts together. Nothing will add up, or make sense.

You’ll be lost in forgetting – afternoon forgetting. It’ll erode you. Erase you. You’ll just fall through the afternoon, like the rest of us. You won’t have your great project – your idiotbuch. You won’t be able to read. The afternoon will just flood over your defences.


You’ll be full of afternoon amnesia, philosopher. Like being some stunned animal, ready for slaughter. A blow over the head. Staggering. And waiting for the blow, only the blow will not come. Waiting and waiting, without knowing what you’re waiting for.


It’s the time of day when you’re most like anyone else. When you’re the most typical, philosopher.

Your DVDs and blu-rays won’t save you. Your books. Your learning.


That’s what I am, to you: the afternoon. The invasion.


We’ve only even lived half lives and quarter lives.


Are there times of day when you can’t write? Of course. When the sky’s too wide, too vast. When you yawn. When you want to lie down – and perhaps that’s what you do: lie down. Beneath your skylight. And look up to the white, white day.


Are we supposed to be alive? Is that what we’re pretending to be? is this supposed to be real? Are we supposed to be real? The afternoon, in which even philosophers become average. Become just like anyone else. And perhaps more like anyone else than anyone else.


These are the hours you cannot own. This isn’t your time. It isn’t for you. You couldn’t even concentrate on one of your arthouse films. You put down your book. You close your laptop. You can’t think of anything to write in your journal. Nothing’s happening. You’re planless.


Nothing’s going to happen, philosopher. Nothing, ever again.

That’s the afternoon. That’s afternoon entropy. When the gap between atoms gets wider and wider. Raw time.


It frightens me, too, philosopher. It threatens to invade me, too. I’m going to go mad with it, too. We can both go mad.

Anyway, I drive out in the afternoon. To find things to do. To distract myself. Because I’m afraid of it, the afternoon.


Everything’s on pause. Everything’s paused. And so are we. We’re on the threshold. The whole afternoon’s a threshold. It’s a way being lifted as in a giant’s palm to – what? The scrutiny of the sky. The sky’s blind eye. The white sky’s eye, that sees nothing.


Do you like my mad thoughts? Could I be locked up for this? Perhaps I’m being profound. But profound means deep, and I don’t feel deep, philosopher. I feel shallow – terribly so. I feel stretched out under heaven.


I’m lying here, under heaven. Under the wide sky. And I want to laugh. But if I began to laugh, I’d never stop.


And I don’t know how these sentences link up to one another. I don’t know how they follow, one from the other. I don’t know why I’m speaking like this. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Or whether I’m trying at all.

I don’t know, philosopher – I don’t know anything. I don’t know the words for the simplest things. I don’t know how to speak, but I’m speaking.

I don’t get the logic. I can’t follow my own words. I’ve given up trying to follow them. And you license this. By sitting so quietly. By looking at me in that way. Expectant, in some sense. Like some kind of therapist. What do you want me to say? What are you waiting for? Are wasting time? Am I wasting your time, and are you wasting mine? What are we experiencing? Who’s here to experience it? Who does it befall? Who does it happen to – and who doesn’t it happen to? And what happens anyway?