Midnight. Now's the time for our last speech. Our last words, before the police come tomorrow to break up the occupation. They'll lead W. away in handcuffs. This time, he really will be sacked. This time, it really will be the end.
We must take no heed for the morrow, W. says. He feels the presence of God, very strongly, W. says. Don't I? He wants to weep, W. says. He wants us all to weep, all the occupiers. He wants to make a pact of tears.
But the postgraduates won’t weep with him, W. says. Not yet. Only when every postgraduate in the land weeps will the last thinker come, W. thinks sometimes. Only when every postgraduate is overcome by weeping …
'Since the destruction of the Temple, the divine inspiration has been withdrawn from the Prophets, and given to madmen and children', W. says to our audience, quoting from the Talmud. ‘And it's been given to idiots, too’, he tells our audience. And then, under his breath: 'Go, fat boy!'
It will be like Chernobyl, our future, I tell the audience. And they will be like Chernobyl children, our descendants, each with his own deformity, her own cancer.
That's how they'll know one another in future, I tell them: by their cancers. Everyone will have a different kind of cancer. One will have cancer of the spleen, the other cancer of the heart, a third cancer of the ears, and so on. And they'll die before they're teenagers, like Chernobyl children. They'll die with no one to care for them, gasping in the air. They'll die alone and screaming, thousands of them, millions of them, as the atmosphere boils away.
‘Go on’, W. says, sotto voce. ‘Tell them about your vision’.
I see them building great cities at the Poles, I tell our audience. The last cities, after the destruction of the other ones, where no one is allowed but the rich. They’ll build New Mumbai in northern Siberia, when the old one drowns, I tell them. They’ll build New London in northern Scandinavia, when the old one burns, I tell them. They’ll build New Mexico City in the Western Antarctic, when the old one is destroyed in the coming wars, I tell them.
We’ll die in our millions, I tell them. In our billions! Africa will have to be abandoned. India. China will become a dustbowl, America, a salt plain. We’ll die slowly, in great agony, as the skies burn red. We’ll sink down by the walls built to exclude us. We’ll die by the laser swords of robot soldiers. We’ll die of starvation and we’ll die of exhaustion. We’ll die of thirst, terrible thirst. We’ll die of new diseases for which there are no names …
And New Shanghai will tower into Arctic skies, I tell them. New Washington will gleam like Canary Wharf in northern Alaska …
And our bodies will swell and rot in the blazing heat. Do you know what corpses smell like?, I ask our audience. They smell sweet, I tell them. There’s a smell of rotting, yes, but there’s a smell of sweetness, too.
‘Pathos, more pathos!’, W. whispers.
I see the money-makers still profiteering on the cindered husk of the earth, I tell our audience. I see New Beetham Tower in the new Arctic Manchester. I see New New Hulme floating on the ice-free ocean …
I see celebrities on red carpets under hot, black skies. I see helicopters circling in the burning sky. I see military putsches and crazed dictators. I see Fascism 2.0. I see Fundamentalism Reloaded. I see wars without end.
I see investors leaving earth in a swarm of rockets. I see the mega-rich in orbit around a burning earth. I see them looking outward, out towards the stars, for new investment opportunities …
‘Are they weeping yet?’, W. says. They’re not weeping, I tell him. Okay, it’s his turn, W. says. He’ll make them weep!
‘In the dark times, will there still be singing?’, he says, quoting Brecht. ‘In the dark times, there will be singing about the dark times’, he says. It’s the same with speech, W. says. To speak of the end delays the end, pushing it away, W. says. Because to speak, and to heed speech, is to belong to another order of time.
‘The last covenant will be the covenant of speech’, W. tells our audience, obscurely. ‘Speech is our promise’, he says, but no one really understands. ‘Freedom of speech is the last freedom’, W. says, but it’s clear that our audience doesn’t understand what he means by that, either.
W. rallies. He speaks of small kindnesses and the goodness of everyday life. He speaks of the failure of goodness as a regime, as an organised system, a social institution. He quotes from his notebook:
Of what does the good consist? The good is not in nature, neither it is in the sermonising of prophets, the great social doctrines or the ethics of philosophers. Yet simply people carry in their hearts the love for all that is alive; they naturally love life, they protect life.
Then he tells the audience a story I once told him about my monk years. Every night, before dinner, we would bless the garden with incense, I’d said. Incense, wafting through the leaves. Incense wafting into the night, and towards the animals of the night, I’d said. Towards city foxes and barn owls. Towards the slugs and the snails and the rats, I’d said. Incense to the people of the night, the prostitutes on the corner, and to the burglars who used our garden as a run-through. To the junkies looking for their fix, I’d said.
To speak is to bless the world, W. says. To offer salvation to all things. It is goodness without forethought. A fragile goodness, that is spoken in spite of us. That is spoken by the stupid and the weak.
Speech: it gives us all we know of God, W. says, which is to say, nothing. It gives us all we know of the Kingdom, which is to say, nothing. It gives us all we know of salvation, which is to say, nothing.
God’s people are prophets, doesn’t Moses say that?, W. says. Amos went further: every person is a prophet, according to him. We are prophets in speech, W. says. We prophesy by speech.
And just as we do not pray for ourselves – just as prayer is wholly offering, wholly about the other, so we do not speak for ourselves, either, W. says. We speak for the others. For the junkies and the burglars. For the prostitutes on the corner. We speak for the outcast, for the widow and the orphan. We speak for them by speaking to them, by addressing them, and by addressing anyone. By addressing the other person as the unknown, W. says.
W. reads out a quotation from his notebook:
I don't believe in materialism, this consumer society, this capitalism, this monstrosity that goes on here…. I really do believe in something, and I call it 'a day will come'. And one day it will come. Well, it probably won't come, because they've already destroyed it for us, for so many thousands of years they've always destroyed it. It won't come and yet I believe in it. For if I can't believe in it, then I can't go on writing either.
That’s Ingeborg Bachmann, he tells our audience. A day will come – the day is coming. Tomorrow, the police will come and break up the occupation. But there is another tomorrow; another kind of tomorrow. Tomorrow it was May, W. says. And tomorrow it will be May again …
Lars Iyer's Blog 