When do you work?’, W. says. ‘When do you have ideas?’ But he knows the answer. I am too busy to work, I tell him. I am troubled to have ideas.
I’ve been institutionalised, W. says. Bureaucratised! It was when I became the perfect administrator that I stopped doing any real philosophical work.
What do I do in my office?, W. wonders. Answer emails. Fill out spreadsheets. Take home management communiqués, and read them with bloodshot eyes. And what do I do in the evenings? He sees me, in his mind’s eye, W. says, opening a bottle of wine in the squalor of my flat after a day at work. He sees me, booting up my laptop, getting ready to write.
But that’s my problem!, W. says. I think that writing is the same as having ideas, when in reality, they are entirely different. You have to stop writing to have an idea, W. says. You have to pause and wait. Thought has to come to you, W. says, not you to it. You can't force thought by writing.
My writing is really the enemy of philosophy, W. says. Its waters close over the head of thought. Its dark matter occludes the sprawl of stars and planets. Its mantras drown out the holy scriptures.
In the beginning was the non-Word, W. says; in the beginning, there was no beginning. A kind of eternal seething instead. The licking of black flames… Nothingness turning in nothingness… The void, thickening, and thinning out… That's what he hears in my writing, W. says. That's what rumbles in his head when he reads me online.
Of course, it’s worse for me when I actually stop writing, W. says. It’s worse when I collapse into my bed and try to sleep. He pictures me, staggering around my flat in the early hours, amidst the squalor, amidst the mould spores and the flies, preparing for bed. He sees me, drunk, or half drunk on Tesco’s cheapest wine, ranging around my flat like the abominable snowman, with my dressing gown flapping around me …
‘You can never sleep, can you? You’ve never been able to sleep’, W says. He sees me, lying sleepless in bed, full of great paranoid imaginings about the way I think they’ll sack me. He sees me, lying there, quite panicked, fearing that I’ll be sent back to the dole queue. And he sees me, falling asleep at last, collapsing into unconsciousness at last, just as dawn breaks, and the birds start singing, just as, at the opposite end of the country, W. is waking up, ready to begin his studies. He sees me, dreaming fitfully about working out my notice and exit interviews. He sees me, mouthing the words, No!, No!, in my half-sleep … And he sees my eyes open again, the Leviathan awake, rolling out of my bed like a Spital Tongues Gargantua …
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