Passing

Talking to W., who is the great scourge of careerism, makes me ask myself: am I a careerist? I say to myself: when you first began to study as a postgraduate it was only as a ruse to allow you to —–. But what word should I write there? But there is no word – it was a question of a future, a stretch of time in which to be no one in particular. What did I want? To pass across philosophy as a stone is skimmed across water (the word passing is a lovely one; it reminds me of some lines in Char …) I think of Belle and Sebastian’s ‘A Summer Wasting’: a song about time that goes nowhere, the time of river banks and wandering. W. tells me how hard he studied: I never drank, I never smoked, I spent all the time in the library.

Comes a time when you have to begin to write what are called primary texts. When does it come? When through some strange leap you gain the courage to begin. But what kind of courage is this? From where does it get its strength, its conviction? Zizek says if it were not for Lacan, he would have remained a dabbler, writing on Derrida one day and Deleuze the next. He committed himself; he leapt. I’ve always told W. that it’s a matter of writing, writing – write enough, I tell him, and ideas will come, and then the leap can be made. But then I think to myself, you do not have the strength for such a leap, you’re too weak and all this writing disperses you in too many directions …

Zizek remarks that film was his first love; philosophy came after. I’ve often wondered whether those for whom philosophy was their first love are paralysed by that love; they cannot begin to write. Yes, I write, and soon I would like to begin a primary text (laughter as I write this). But this is, as I always tell W., born from an empty desire to make a book. A desire to make something pretty, dense and writerly. And to sing/speak of those few themes which make my blood rush. You have to become a name, W. reminds me, to write such a book. He means the book would have to sell.

‘What if I wrote a book on Smog, or on Will Oldham?’ I ask him. ‘You’d need to prove you could make money to the publishers.’ – ‘How many copies would I have to sell?’ – ‘I don’t know.’ – ‘Five thousand copies?’ – ‘Something like that. Do some research.’

Passing. The book I dream of, as I have written before, is called Common Presence. It will include essay/dreams on Tarkovsky, Shostakovich, each only five or six pages long … and what else? I have little idea of what its pages will contain. And I dream of another book, too, a kind of phantom autobiography. A book about a life with the name: a life …

Always the dream of passing, of moving without disturbing anything in the world. And I remember Deleuze and Guattari on becoming-infinitesimal, and the last lines of The Incredible Shrinking Man. And I say to myself: pass between the molecules. Write a book on the blank pages of the sky and the earth …