An ecststic drunkenness sometimes captures me – the exuberance of the first or the second pint, the first half bottle of wine. Never think drunkenness is a matter of the removal of inhibitions – the ‘I’ is dispersed, the unfifying centre no longer holds; little remains ‘of’ me – above all, no self-consciousness divides me from what is said and done. This is ecstasy – sheer standing out of oneself, modifying no only the threshold between myself and the world, but all thresholds.
Are there other less joyful ecstasies? Today, hungover, the ugly phrase, lugubrious ecstasy appeals to me; I am thinking of a state in which an attention without subject roams unbidden across the world. True, there is a centre to these affects, but it is one that is born and reborn, ever remaking its thresholds, ever breaking and generating new limits and structures. Sometimes a hangover can be like grace.
Lars Iyer's Blog 