Internal exile. That was my solution to the problem of Britain, wasn’t it?, W. says. Expect nothing from the world! Sit life out! Go on the dole! On the sick! Claim to be seeing things!, hearing things! Claim to be in the grip of imaginary mental illnesses! Get yourself committed!, confined in a secure unit! Pull Robert Walser’s stunt! Enter the asylum because of the safety of the asylum! Dream away your life in a serene captivity!
But then there was Kierkegaard, W. says. Then, for some reason, K saved me. Either/Or: that was the book I came across in an Old Hulme jumble sale, I’ve told him that. Either/Or: that was the book which awoke me from my bohemian slumbers.
Of course, my type usually lose themselves in conspiracy theories and books about UFOs, W. says. My type loses itself in the collected works of Colin Wilson, and in Dennis Wheatley’s Library of the Occult. What was it about Kierkegaard? What was it about Either/Or?
Was it the infinite variations on the expression of despair of A., the pseudonymous author of the first part of Kierkegaard’s book, which impressed me?, W. wonders. Was it his pages of laments? Or was it the call to arms of B., the pseudonymous author of the second part of Kierkegaard’s book, which spoke to me? Was it B.’s exhortations to look at oneself in the mirror?
‘There comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask’, Kierkegaard has B. write. ‘Do you believe that life will always be mocked? Do you believe that you can sneak away before midnight in order to avoid it?’ Had I reached my midnight?, W. wonders. Had I finally unmasked?
Either a life of shit, or a life of thought: isn't that what I said to myself?, W. says. Either a life of living unreflectively in the shit, or a life thinking about the shit: wasn't that it? And so shit began to think about itself, W. says. Shit looked at itself in the mirror. And I came to embody the spirit of shit …
Lars Iyer's Blog 