Does the failure know he’s a failure? I know it, everyone knows it. I am watchful on the street, lest he see me before I can avoid him – watchful, but also fearful, for I do not want to see him, I want to avoid even that. In truth, I do not even want to see him. The failure: how can I bear to look at him, I who am a success? Why should one successful be even confronted by them, by any of them, the unsuccessful?
By any measure, I’ve succeeded, that’s clear enough. I’ve worked my way clear of non-success; I made my way, though it was difficult, and took much concentration; though it is difficult still, and I am always concentrated on one task or another, even when I descend to the street. Even when I pass among others on the street, and perhaps especially then. For a successful man never relaxes. Concentration is the price of his success; he must keep his eye on the ball, must be watchful and careful, and keep himself in good condition.
Oily fish every day, a visit to the gym every other day, five portions of fruit and vegetables a week: such is what is required to maintain success and the trappings of success. Health! You can’t take it for granted! As a successful man, I must keep up my health; I exercise. And you, who are not successful? You who drink too much and smoke too much and have red eyes and yellow teeth? You whose body is neglected and walk hunched over? Why should I consort with you?
How is it you still presume to recognise me? How is it I still recognise you? What is it in me that knows you, I ask myself that. What is that betrays me? Some measure of non-success, no doubt. Something in me that is not yet successful – or, worse, that I will never be able to transform into success. Then it is a mirror I confront when I see you. There for the grace of God go I, they say, the pious, when they give a quid to the alcoholic. But I say nothing; I cross the street to avoid them; I avoid underpasses where there are beggars. I am of them, which is why I avoid them.
And you, the failure – why is it I would avoid you who are shiftless? Why do I avoid you, workshy one, non-worker, for whom the afternoon is his kingdom? I am at work – and you? I am working as I walk, as I do my errands, and you, wanderer, how can you tell one day apart from another? I was up early this morning, and you? I forewent my lunch hour – and you?
They’re hunting you down, every one of you. They’ll hunt you down, unemployment claimant, disability claimant. One by one , you’ll be caught. Punished – by degrees. £10 if you miss you first interview, £20 if you miss your second: that’s what will be docked from your wage. £10, £20, for not joining our brave new world. But it’s for your own good, failure. For your good, I know it, you know it. For I know you fear me, too – I know it.
Wouldn’t you like to have what I have? Isn’t it what you want, what I have? There is desire in you to work, I know that. You’ll only have to be straightened out, I know it. Straightened – then all your desire will work in the same direction. No dissipation, no vagueness: concentration, concentratedness – life lived in a single direction. And you like me will serve the whole and the good – the greater good. We’ll work alongside one another, at different firms, perhaps, at different agencies, but you will be a worker like me and I will not fear to meet your gaze in the street.
But until then – there’s a long way to go. Until you get there, still a long way. Still must you be straightened out and enskilled, still you will need lessons with flipcharts and teamwork, still there’s a long way to go before you even begin to be employable. And until then? Stay away from me, unemployed one. But you are already with me, I know that, which is why I hate to see you. Below my office, in the broad streets of the everyday, there are dozens of you – anyone on the street could be the non-worker that I dream I am.
Anyone – the unsuccessful are everyone, anyone, and this is the horror. For isn’t my body the body of anyone? One day it will come, the crossover. One day, I will find myself on the other side of the mirror. Who am I, I will ask, who drinks all night? Who am I without a thought in my head? Who am I that my desires run out towards the far horizon? Yes, that is what I dream. Or is it the other way round? Is it that I am one who dreamt he was successful? Is it that I failed and had failed from the first? Then I must ask myself, Who am I, the failure? Who am I, king of the afternoon?
Afternoon, no one’s kingdom. Afternoon, kingdom of no one in particular. The successful have not yet come – and who are we, who have not succeeded? Substanceless, our light borrowed, we are dull moons in the obscurest orbits. Occasionally, one of them will pass us by. Now and then, one of them will come, one of the successful, on one errand or another. They pass us by – how can they do otherwise, we who would only slow them down! They pass us by; our time is rotten – every day, for us, is a wearing away of the same, but theirs? Theirs is linear; it is unidirectional, thrust towards the future’s edge. What it must be to plunge into that future like an eagle plunging to its prey! What keen eyes they must have! What sharp talons!
We see it in the ones who descend to the streets – these are men and women of the future! Theirs are the sleek bodies of the future! How pale and flabby we are! How ill-disciplined! They are all concentration, and we are all – dissipation. How is it that it as though they have stolen our substance? How is it their strength seems drawn from ours, we who are so weak? Some among us talk of revolution, or at least of dragging one of the errand-runners into an alley and showing him or thing or two. But the rest of us, who have heard it before, who have heard everything before, know it’s too late and it was always too late.
It’s part of the order of things, the way things are that there are the successful and there are the unsuccessful. What good is there complaining? What good raising our fists? For they’re hunting us down, one by done. Hunting us down – we are to be trained, enskilled. We are to attend interviews; they’ll summon us up from the street – £10 if we miss the first one, £20 the second, we who only earn £50 a week. They are training us, our pudgy bodies, one by one. One by one – but don’t they understand that we are without number?
I am not one, not a unity, not even that. Not one, and not zero either. Not nothing and yet not a unity – how can I be expected to hold myself together. I can’t count – to one. Who can count, among us, the people of the street? None of us is one, each of us is everyone. I cannot count – who is there to count? But when one of you passes us – when you descend from your offices on one errand or another, it it as though I am awakened from a long sleep.
How quickly you move! How straight your back, as though a cord pulled you upright through your body! How purposeful you are! How concentrated! We wake in the wind of your passing – we come to ourselves then. It is as though each of us were a little eddy of your energy. And do we change you, too? Do we change you, we whose bodies are so heavy and thoughts are so vague?
Sometimes I have dreamt I was one of you. Sometimes, when I am strong, a dream comes that I am one of you, who has come down from the office to the streets. I am the errand runner, that’s who I am, with a lean body and focused mind. The errand runner! To think that I could be trusted to run errands! To think I could blaze with my own light! But already I am moving out of reach of my dream. Soon, again, I will be unable to write, I who only possess borrowed strength. Who am I? soon I will not know that either.
Lars Iyer's Blog 