The Lag

Hearing oneself sing, reading oneself write: a simple task – to listen, to read, but for those moments when you are carried away, inspired. And at that time, the listening, the reading, may seem to follow what you say, or write; that singing and writing have run far ahead, that they do not need you, or that they will lead you there only later like a scout.

You are the shell of what was said, and written. You fell behind yourself. Fell into that suspension of time upon which you cannot make good, that cannot double itself into a work. Somewhere, ahead of you, there is song, there is writing. Somewhere you were capable of what is greater than you are. Somewhere and somehow – but by what assistance? By that of speaking, of writing, gifts that seem to give themselves through you and despite you. That leave you beached as they ride ahead, far out to sea.

Who are you, left behind by yourself? Who – beached by what has escaped and left you, but that is still, in some way, you? As though to speak, to write, was not to do so by oneself. Or that singing and writing took from you what gave them substance, what let them speak and write of something. So that they were born from your own life, from your flesh. So that they made themselves from your experience and went ahead of you like avatars. As if you died, as Basho says, and your dreams wandered on without you.

But these dreams are more real than you; this avatar concentrates your strengths; you lag behind what you could be. You’ve fallen behind what you could make, or by what is made – song, writing – by way of you. Once, I sang, I wrote – say that. Once – but also now – I could sing, I could write. Or: I am singing, but somewhere else. Or: I am writing, but someplace else. Or: writing and song have lifted themselves from me. Have gone away, playing elsewhere, the children I had but of whom I let go.

Didn’t it seem I was born with them? That their birth allowed me to be born again? But they are ahead of me, away from me; my children are also not my own. The deeds outstrip me, and who am I who lag behind? A miserable shell of a man. Who cannot speak, or write. Who laps back to himself as this non-speaker, as this non-writer. Who knows himself by what he is not.

Once, you sang, you wrote. Or somewhere far ahead, where you are not who you are, there is singing, there is writing. But not for you, in the present. Not for you or such as you in the lag of the present.

This, as I imagine it, the experience of the writer, the singer in lieu of writing, of singing. This the day-to-day of a writer left behind by that wave of writing that passes through him, or the everyday of the singer, left behind by the song.

Obscure pain: I am not who I am. Pain: I am not a writer; I am no singer. Pain because to be is to do and to be incapable of doing is to be no one at all. A non-writer; a non-singer; incapacity; the inability to be able: this is the pain of the one left behind by his works, which are not his. Pain: not to be the one you are. Not to be able to become with becoming.

Then what can you do? What is open to you? To reclaim your works as your own, to say: I am the author, the singer of these; I am born of my own achievement; I gave birth to myself, a result, an outcome. And with each new work, I consolidate my presence; I am more of a writer, or more of a singer; I am surer, my contours firmer, and when I look in the mirror, a writer is all I am; a singer. And you seek to close up, thereby, what sets you in lieu of yourself. You make real the ghosts that ran ahead of you; you claim your children are only yourself. That speaking, writing, are personalised, yours; that the infinitive is tied to the particularities of your life.

This is a becoming-perceptible, a flight from the anonymous. You would be sure, and certain, and close up that terrible lag that is the afternoon of a writer, a singer. That lag in which Handke’s novelist wanders in his cold town. That no-time, the lag which Sterling R. Smith of Jandek fills with his day job.

The writer faces eternity or the lack of it each day, says Hemingway. Eternity – writing, the to write, ranging ahead. Or the eternal lack of writing – that non-writing which sends writers to drink, and it is the reason they drink. The alcohol-soaked writer seeks to avoid writing’s lack, to close up that lag that makes the present – the afternoon of a writer – the infinite falling short of a full existence.

And the drinking singer sings because he is not yet a singer; because he’s fallen short, and the day is too long, and the afternoon is all of time. Drink, then. Drink yourself to forget that moment’s lag that divides you from yourself. Drink – but there’s another possibility – work. Work your way through the day; chart the uncertain time of the afternoon by working. This is the relief of administration, the need to be absorbed by what can distract you from the horror of the void of time, of the time without eternity that is your experience of writing, of singing.

For writing, singing, you are not yet yourself. Or rather, you experience, by your vocation, what you are not, and in a way different from those who work in the work. For a job is not yet a vocation; it is a measly substitute for what it might be to write, to sing. Your relation to your job is innocent; it is not you; it does not capture who you are.

You are more than your job, put it that way; you may have hobbies, or a family to look after, or a partner to return to after work; you can let it go, your job. But to write, to sing? It is solitude. It can only be endured in solitude, out over 70,000 fathoms and alone.

And another temptation: to think God is with you. That it is God who is close, and with you in your solitude. That God accompanies you, and makes your solitude less lonely. But there is still your solitude. Still that, for God is never close enough, never with you. Unless God is another name for solitude. Alone then, and in the lag of time.

Drink; take a job; pray. But still that lag. Still the experience of what you are not – your lack. Still the break with who you are as you write, you sing. But who are you then? Not you. The one ahead of you. The child, eternally reborn in the work. And the child who dies in the work, and whose living is only dying, light motes on water.

Duras is drinking. Because she is not Duras, or because she falls short of herself in that name, Duras, on the covers of her books. She drinks, then, because she is not quite herself, because her vocation has opened her too wide, because she is exposed to the whole sky, to interplanetary space and it is too much. Too much, the lag which opens wider than everything. Too great then the void at Neauphle.

Drink the days away, and the nights. Drink because the horizon is too wide. Because your vocation is too great. Because what you want is the whole, everything, and to coincide with everything. Just write, that would be enough. Oh you write, you scratch words on a pad. But to WRITE: what would that mean? Terrible question. Drink, then. Drink away the days and nights.

Handke wanders, and lets his protagonist wander in his place. He will send his narrator in The Afternoon of a Writer wandering into the suburban cold. How banal the suburbs! And how banal the white light of the day, falling everywhere, democratic! The everyday without incident. That is outside, the light outside, in which you can wander, you can drink, and episodes happen, but without meaning.

The same everyday in which Blanchot is photographed with his shopping. Blanchot, photographed for the first time, and in a supermarket carpark. Orpheus in the carpark – isn’t that the headline? Isn’t that what is printed?

And the same everyday in which Katy Vine, the journalist, knocks at the door of Sterling R. Smith, and meets a spiffily dressed man who resembles the one on the album covers. Can you tell me about Corwood Industries?, she asks. An innocent question. A question of the everyday, in which the everyday attempts to render account. In which it reckons with artists and writers and singers. He sweats. His jaw shifts. He looks amused, but also uncomfortable. A pause. And then he asks her, ‘Do you drink beer?’

Eternity, or the lack of it: which one? Hemingway shot himself. Kafka took up carpentry and dreamt of emigrating to Palestine. Handek, by writing The Afternoon of a Writer, sought to redeem the afternoon. Duras drank, and wrote about drinking (Practicalities is a book about the everyday). But then, too, she acceeded to the cult of personality that formed around her. She became la Duras. (She becomes perceptible; but of course you cannot become perceptible. It is to turn your back upon becoming.)

And I think this is the greatest temptation: to pretend the lag doesn’t exist. That you coincide with yourself, and by way of what you’ve done. That you substantialise and render yourself present in your relation to your works. To say: I am these, I am a writer, I am a singer. Forgetting that the words writer, singer are honorifics. That to write or to sing is nothing of which you are capable.

And hence the saints among writers and singers are those who know they belong to obscurity. Who gives no interviews, or from whom interviews have to be forced. Who control the means by which their photographs appear (Jandek), or do not consent to be photographed at all (Blanchot). And who exist, in relation to their works, as though already dead.

Treat my work as though I were already dead, Blanchot writes to a filmmaker who wants to direct a version of Thomas the Obscure. Use whatever of the music and lyrics you want, say Corwood Industries, of the recordings that appear on their label; Jandek does not charge for playing live, or claim expenses. Music, lyrics and performance belong to everyone, already. And to everyone as much as to Jandek.

And I think this is the final sign: the writer, the singer relinquishes all claim over what has been made. Lets it go. And affirms very simply, as Sterling R. Smith says to Katy Vine, that ‘there’s nothing to get.’ Nothing: and no insights that knowing the writer, the singer would bring.

Is that Blanchot over there in the carpark? And Handke’s double locking his front door behind him as he steps out on a walk? And is that Duras and Yann Andrea with a half a bottle of whiskey, wandering down by the sea? And Sterling R. Smith opening his garage door and standing, sweating in the sun? Ask them nothing; leave them alone. Because the afternoon is stretching, and they’re all afraid.