The Humiliation Artist

The circle of your obsessions has become narrower, says W. That's the change in me. That's the essential change he's seen over the years. 

Once they passed through the whole world, my obsessions. You confused them for ambition, genuine ambition. You wanted to learn things, master whole areas of knowledge. My God, you could confuse yourself with someone with ability! You studied, didn't you? You read. You even wrote. You – wrote! It's amazing. You wrote and published.

What temerity! What lack of understanding! Yes, you'd deluded yourself completely, it was quite magnificent. You confused yourself for a scholar, a man of letters. You wrote learned articles. You spoke with learned people on learned topics …

You thought you were part of something, didn't you? You walked in cloisters, in Oxford colleges. Ambition – that's what you had, wasn't it? The horizon couldn't limit you. Ah, what aspirations you had! You would write one book, and then another. And you did it: you wrote one book and then another.

Everyone laughed. We were all laughing up our sleeves, but you didn't notice, did you? The circle of your obsessions had not closed tight around you. You weren't yet being strangled. It wasn't yet a garrotte.

Your obsessions reigned as far as the horizon – further! You thought, you really thought you were entitled to write … And then what? What happened? Doubt crept in. Doubt snuck in the door. Were you really permitted to write? Were you elected to read? To publish? To share your thoughts with the world?

What a disgrace!: that's what you said to yourself in your loneliest hour, wasn't it? I'm a disgrace: that's what your heart whispered. For the most part, you could choose not to hear it. The world was too loud. You were too loud. But then, in the quiet of the night … Then, just after you turned off the light … A new obsession began to form: your disgrace. What was its origin? Where had it gone wrong? At what stage did it all go wrong, as it so clearly had?

Doubt crept in. Obsession. Your ambition was eaten out from within. It rotted from inside. It had dawned on you, hadn't it? What had you done? For what had you been responsible? Guilt: that was the word, wasn't it? Humiliation. Because you'd humiliated yourself, hadn't you? You were a dunce turned to the wall in your corner … 

What had you done? What hadn't you done? What hadn't you spared the world? Your thoughts. Your books. My God, your books!

One day you understood that there were no excuses. That you were inexcusable. That you couldn't apologise enough for yourself. That your life was already that: an apology, an excuse. A scorpion stinging itself to death. A tarantula seething in its own poison.

Your obsessions didn't range as freely. Your horizon shrank. Once the sea – the far blue distance, and now? A room. Less than a room. A cone of light. A modem and a computer. Type, fat boy. So you typed. You typed, and what did you type? Your confession, your autocritique …

Tighter still it drew, the circle of your obsessions. Tighter until it was taut around your own neck, and strangling. Tighter until your face turned blue. And that's what it is now, isn't it: blue. You're gasping for breath, aren't you? But you can't allow yourself to breathe. Your obsessions are strangling you.

My God, how do you spend your time? What do you actually do? Write endlessly of your own failure. Write your autoconfession, your apology. You're sick of yourself, aren't you? But you can't be rid of yourself. And that's it, your life – the whole drama of your life. The circle of your obsessions. The circle become garrotte, become noose. The circle pulling tighter …

Type, fat boy, make us laugh! Because we're all laughing at you. We're watching you humiliate yourself. We're watching how far you can take it, your humiliation. You're not a hunger artist – you're an humiliation artist. And we're here to watch your disgrace. We're here to watch your ongoing disgrace.