Unable to write, or to write anything that would convince me. Which is to say that would have its own kind of life, apart from mine. December 10th – is that the date? Don't I have a deadline for something or another? Two cranes on the skyline. A bright, clear day. I can see all the way to the clouds along the coast.
The office is too big. Too big today, when nothing happens here, when it's all for nothing. Too big – as though it were held up and exposed to something, judged – by the whole sky. I have a manuscript to work on. But it's not really a manuscript, not quite. I want to push it to that stage, when it has its own life, when it is something, apart from me. Only it's not there yet, not close. A few pages with crossings out and annotations. A few dog-eared pages, with scrawlings in pencil and pen.
But there's nothing I can say here that I haven't said better before. Nearly five years since I began – haven't I said it all? Didn't I say it better another time, a year ago, or two years ago? In truth, it's only limping along. In truth, there's nothing new to write, nothing that I haven't done before and better, which is not to say well.
Five years ago … what was happening then? A different office, three floors down. I was more solitary. No one could have lived that way for long. And now, my new life? A lack of belief in writing. An inability to join word to word. I begin and then stop. Nothing new to be said. Or nothing that does not echo in the direction of something already said, already done.
Why waste time? Why bother? And that 'why bother' disjoins word from word and sentence from sentence. It's too late, it's gone, it's finished. That Bergman Archive book open on the table in my mausoleum-office. I have the money now to buy what I would have visited a bookshop a hundred times to look through. But now I can buy it and open it there on my desk to read, to be read.
The open sky is reading. The space of the office reads. It was a Christmas present, very early. Why did I ask for it? Why did I want it? To want again what I wanted once. To let it flame up in me again, some kind of ardency, some desire. That was one with my desire to make something – a book, perhaps. A 'something' to hold out before me like a torch. Only there's no torch now. The darkness of the manuscript instead. Darkness of printed words in 12 point and crossings out and annotations.
Why bother? Why join sentence to sentence? Nothing to be done. Nothing to be said. Sometimes I read books that sweep me before them. That push me ahead of themselves like terminal moraine. And I feel I can write, that it's possible for me. That sentence might link to sentence and lead somewhere. A torch burns.
And now? Today? I'm not reading any such book. The sky reads Bergman. The near-empty office reads him. I can't read a page. 'Lost Verses' by Sun Kil Moon playing. Didn't I want to write about that, about that song, that album? Laughter: but you won't write about anything. You don't believe in writing. You can't lend it your substance.
Once you were a ghost to writing, and now? No desire to write. Only a desire to desire, to begin again. Only the dream of a reading that would carry you forward, that would give you the strength. To what? To write? You: to write? Laughter. Five years … although it's fallen away lately. In truth, it's been falling away for a while. You do not deserve an anniversary.
You fell before the line. You crashed down. You didn't last. Your only chance: to read a book that is stronger than you. A succession of books. To give you the strength. To bind sentence to sentence. Faith, belief – that's what you lack, isn't it? The substance of writing? Its content?
When's 2666 going to arrive? When's it going to appear? Because you need it, don't you? A book to believe for you. A book to believe in writing. But when's it going to come? Tomorrow? The day after? And meanwhile, the sky reads you. Meanwhile you are open, empty pages, for the day to turn through.
Lars Iyer's Blog 