Defeat

Defeat: the sky is too wide, too great. Sink down, lie down. Finality – you have given yourself to the horizon. Everything is finished. I think my favourite works of art are those which begin at the horizon, where others end. That begin with death, with the wearing away of everything. You are here, already at the end. It’s all finished where the horizon is a straight line, diving the earth and land. Over, and before it began.

In what voice will you speak of it? How can it be narrated? The blankest voice, the most neutral. The final book of The Sea of Fertility. Or the violent cops of Takeshi’s films. Or the off-stage voice of Tarkovsky’s Mirror: each time it is the horizon that speaks, the straight line sketched in one stroke as by a Zen master. You’ve outlived your time; it’s finished. Over now, and before it began.

There are books that end with wandering and death, but what of those that begin with them? Basho’s last haiku, written as he lay dying in the last of his journeys: ‘asleep, but thoughts wander on.’ What of the book that begins with death, that has already begun there, and without drama? It’s all happened, everything’s happened, death has been seen, and there’s no need for anything else. Speak with the final voice, the neutral one. Speak in the still voice in which everything has been said.