Is that it, have you got anything else? Is that it, is that all, haven’t you got anything else? Is this how it’ll end? Because there’s nothing here, nothing of interest. You’ve bored everyone to death, they’ve all left, they’ve got some sense, they got out a long time ago, they despaired of you a long time ago, but you kept going, didn’t you? You tried to keep going, didn’t you, long after it’d finished? What’s the point? Why bother? Writing nothing for no one. Amusing no one and interesting no one and boring everyone.
Not so long ago, you thought it was going rather well, didn’t you? It wasn’t so long ago that you thought it’d continue forever, day after day, from now until eternity, didn’t you? But that’s not going to happen now is it? Nothing’s happening, is it – it’s coming to an end, the blog’s beached itself at the end, the blog is like some vast and disgusting whale that’s beached itself at the end. There it is, no one’s interested, but some vast and disgusting body is rotting in the sun. A vast and disgusting body, a vast and disgusting body of prose no one’s interested in and no one’s excited about. Vast, disgusting and without point.
Who’s interested? I can’t see anyone, can you? But still you go on. Still, every day, a little effort, one more effort, but nothing is said, it’s already posthumous, it’s all finished, you’ve outlived your welcome. In truth, no one was especially welcoming. In truth, you were met only with indifference, everyone’s back was turned to you, but you’ve worn even indifference away, haven’t you?
What rubbish you write! What contentless rubbish, day after day with no purpose, no point! What are you trying to reach? What are you trying to achieve? You’re wasting your time and if anyone were reading you’d be wasting their time, too. Luckily no one is reading, no one reads, they’ve got better things to do. And haven’t you got better things to do? Haven’t you got pubs to go to and books to read and a job to do? Haven’t you something better to do than this?
It’s like some great, vile protest, a protest against nothing in particular, a rebellion against nothing at all that is ignored by everyone. Like a dirty protest, shit smeared all over the walls of your room, shit on the bars, shit on the floor, shit on the ceiling, shit everywhere, but a protest without point, a protest without purpose, just stupidity, stupidity and waste incarnate, a kind of dull and stupid tenacity going on and on, day after day, one day after another, writing about this and then about that, and finally reducing yourself to writing about writing or not-writing, writing about the writing you cannot write, and the writing you write in lieu of writing, in lieu of any content other than whining about not being able to write, and who’s interested, anyway, who’s interested, do you suppose? No one, that’s the answer. Not one person, no one’s interested in your dirty protest, no one’s interested in the filth in your cell.
I know who you are, I know your face, I know your heavy body and your heavy, apish hand. I know who you are, ape – Kafka’s ape, the ape captured, the ape who watches others and plans to imitate them, the ape who resolves to become one of them, one of them outside, one of those who walk to and fro in the world, men in suits. That’s who you are, isn’t it? The ape! The ape not yet escaped! The ape who, unlike the ape of the story, stays in his cell. The ape who fails to imitate anyone succesful, the ape through whom everyone can see, the obvious ape, the ape who can do nothing but ape and is obvious in his aping.
For a time, it entertained them, your readers. For a time it was amusing to see an ape hop about and imitate others and pretend to write, crouched over a pad, mouthing the letters as he formed them. For a time – laughter at the ape who thought who could be anyone but an ape, but who in fact remained an ape, as was obvious to anyone: an ape, and that first of all, but not an ape in the jungle, not the cousin of other wild apes content to scamper about the jungle, but a half-tame ape, an ape who’d like to pass himself off as human, an ape lost in the dream of becoming human but all the while only an ape, merely an ape, not an ape among apes, but an ape in a cage.
What happened? Is it that you failed in your apish imitations – and not only once, but twice – failed in terms of what you wanted to become, and failed even in your efforts to become what you are not? Doubly failing, failing once and then again, failing for a first time and then another time, first as an ape trying to be human, then an ape trying to be an ape – but you failed a third time, didn’t you? If you’d failed only twice, you’d be an ape like the others, an ape content once again to be an ape, to run with apes and to scamper about with apes. You could have been released back into the wild, couldn’t you?
But that’s not what happened, is it? You can’t be released, can you? You don’t have that, do you – the charm of a wild beast, the charm of a beast who should be lost in the jungle? Because being an ape is not enough for you, is it? Being an ape is not enough and being human is impossible, is it? Merely being an ape is not enough for you, not now. You’re after something else, aren’t you? Now it’s not enough for you to write pretending you’re human, just as it’s not enough to keep quiet, is it? Neither ape nor human. Neither writing nor silence, but this instead – this beached and rotting writing. Neither nor, neither one nor the other, ne uter, that’s what you cry isn’t it? Ne uter, ne uter, that’s what you whimper in the corner of your cell, isn’t it?
Lars Iyer's Blog 