We were never witty, W. and I agree. We are not raconteurs; we do not have conversation, as we imagine others have conversation. Of course W. can do an impression of a wit, of a conversationalist, he can sit with others at the high table, but he is at home, much more at home with crudeness and simplicity.
Strange chance both of us were admitted. Strange that we found our way in; we wouldn’t have a chance now, we know that. They do not even hate us – who, after all, are we? Would they hate us? We wouldn’t be acknowledged. Us least of all (and our friends) – we were admitted by accident; it was a mistake; it will not happen again. Still, we have learned a great deal about stupidity, and about our own idiocy. We’ve studied as we’ve wandered this strange, stupid land.
A simple distinction: stupidity is replete, and content with itself. Stupidity, sated, has no need of anything else; it has already been fulfilled. And idiocy? Idiocy wanders; idiocy is outside itself and this is what draws us together, us idiots. Outside ourselves – we are inside this stupid land, but we are also outside. W. does a good impression of an insider (I do not), but it is still an impression; they’ll sniff him out. Is he one of them? His wit is sham, and his conversation dries up in his mouth.
Idiocy, then, which begins only when idiot is joined to idiot; when idiots meet and idiocy speaks, if only by burning up words. Idiocy speaks. Idiocy addresses W. in me; and it addresses me in W. To address, to be addressed: this is idiocy’s relief; it lightens speech (the heaviness of words), it lightens stupidity. I no longer suffer alone (but can you ever be an idiot on your own?) Friendship: that’s how idiocy discovers itself. That’s how it lets itself be discovered.
Two of us, and the table between. A bottle of gin, and ice from the freezer. Slices of Emmenthal in a plastic packet. Open jewel cases and dirty CDs. ‘Listen to this!’ – ‘You’ve got to hear this.’ Speak, and there is idiocy; it is our speech itself, and all its reality is borrowed from outside it. Speak of this, of that – but only to clothe idiocy, only to give it form, only so that idiocy will have something to sacrifice. For doesn’t idiocy shake stupidity away as a dog shakes water from its coat?
Idiocy laughs. Everything said is a decoy, it is all indirection. Idiocy laughs: it is the laughing path of words crossed between us. Then idiocy laughs too hard and the words fall. But what does it matter what was said? ‘What were we saying?’ – ‘Where were we?’
Gin and the ice, sliced cheese and dusty, thumb-marked CDs: this red-walled room is a wicker man built to be set aflame. Laughter: what stupidity, and all around us. Stupidity of politics, stupidity of work, stupidity of honours, titles, and professional competence (of what Levinas calls ‘ontological tumefaction’).
Idiocy: a block, a break. How can we speak in that land, so strange and stupid? By what right can we speak? No wit; no ‘conversation’. Then idiocy is interruption, just as our lives, inside, are interruptions. We are tolerated – for the moment. But then they haven’t noticed us, not really. Tolerated – so long as we remain out of sight, in peripheral vision. We’ll disappear soon, they know that. And meanwhile? The idiots are in the room with red walls. Idiocy is laughing across the table.
Ah but to think from idiocy – to think stupidity out of our idiocy, our gift of idiocy: will that be our revenge?
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