How are you? Depressed as usual? Of course we're never really depressed, W. says. We know nothing about real depression. We're men of the surface, not of the depths. What do we know of those blocks and breaks in the lives of real thinkers? What can we, who are incapable of thought, understand of what the inability to think means for a thinker? And what of real writer's block – what understanding can we have of that terrible incapacity to write a line for those who have thoughts to set down?
We're melancholic, that W. grants. Who wouldn't be? Melancholic, vaguely rueful, knowing we should not be where we are, that we've been allowed to much, overindulged … And for what? With what result? We're completely irrelevant in the broader scheme of things. We can make no contribution to the issues of the day. Where are we heading but down?
All we have is our pathos, our melancholia and a sense that things are not right. But we are not right either. We're part of the problem; our own obstacle. But if you yourself are the obstacle, then what? What is to be done? Lie down and let it all pass over you. But we won't allow ourselves that. We want to do something, think something, and that's our trouble.
True thoughts pass infinitely far above us, as in the sky. They're too far to reach, but they're out there somewhere. Some place where we are not. Some great, wide place where thoughts are born like clouds over mountains.
To be able to think! To write in good conscience! But what idea could we have of that? We're men of the valleys, not men of the peaks. We know nothing of real highs and real lows, of mountain peaks or abysses.
What's it all for?: that's our vague question. Why have we been fitted with the desire to think but not the means to do so?: that's our vague resentment. We'll accomplish nothing: it was obvious, and from the first. We read and write in vain. And all the while, a vague melancholy and a vague sense that things should be otherwise.
Lars Iyer's Blog 