Category: W.

'No one wants to talk to us, have you noticed that?', W. says. We're like lepers in the middle ages. Someone might as well be walking in front of us, ringing a bell.

We love reading about friendship because we know nothing whatsoever about friendship. We love reading about love because we know nothing whatsoever about love. We love reading about comradeship we know nothing whatsoever about comradeship. We love reading about politics because we know nothing whatsoever about politics.

We love reading about thought because we know nothing whatsoever about thought. We love reading about philosophy because we know nothing whatsoever about philosophy. We love reading about faith because we know nothing whatsoever about faith. We love reading about God because we know nothing whatsoever about God.

We love reading about literature because we know nothing whatsoever about literature. We love reading about despair because we know nothing whatsoever about despair. We love reading about hope because we know nothing whatsoever about hope. We love reading about life because we know nothing whatsoever about life.

I am his sin, W. says. My sins are his sins. If he's ever to come to terms with his sin, he must first come to terms with mine. If he's ever to be able to confess, he must first hear my confession. And if he's ever going to think, mustn't he hear my thoughts first – my non-thoughts?

What will people look like, at the end of time? They'll look like us, W. says. But with browner teeth. What will people talk about, at the end of time? They'll talk like us, but with more cock jokes. What will people wear, at the end of time? They'll dress like us, but in blousier shirts.

Is he, in the end a tortured man?, W. wonders. Is he a man of anxiety? No, not really. He's amused, despite everything, by my antics. He amuses himself by his antics when he's with me.

Then am I the obstacle to his seriousness, to his true anguish? But W. wonders whether I am  not the source of his desire to be seriousness, of his desire to be anguished. Perhaps, in the end, he can reach a conception of his seriousness, his anguish, only through a negation of my unseriousnessness, and my lack of anxiety, and, by the same token, by the negation of his unseriousnessness, and his lack of anxiety when he's with me?

In that way, I am both his obstacle and his doorway.

All the problems of the world begin, says Pascal, with you not being able to sit alone in a room. All our problems began because we had a sense of life beyond our rooms.

Our rooms, our cages, W. says. My office (at work), W.'s study (at home): cages, although W.'s larger than mine; he has more room to pace up and down than I do (that's what thinkers do, he says, pace up and down); he has more room to step back from his shelves to pick out a book (that's what thinkers do, he says, carefully pick out what they're going to read); he has more room for his desk, which is larger than mine, and to pull up his chair to his desk, to begin to write (that's what thinkers do, he says, pull up to their desk and begin to write).

Our cages, our bars, against which in desperate hours, we want to brain ourselves (W. is more desperate than I am). If only we could forget what lay outside. If only our dreams of old Europe, and the thinkers of old Europe, would fall away from us (W. dreams more ardently, more intensely, than I do); if only we could forget our political dreams, our dreams of a great politics, of a politics of the Party (W. wishes for it with more longing than I do); and our religious dreams, our dreams of God, our dreams of the infinite – if only they, too, would leave us (W. dreams more vehemently than I do).

And in the meantime, our cages. In the meantime, my office (at work), W.'s study (at home). In the meantime, our cages: our lives, which we know to be the involution of something wider, something greater. We are made of stars, scientists say. We are made of thought, too – great thoughts. We are made of great politics. Of great religion.

'Your oeuvre, your suicide note', W. says. Not that I'll kill myself. It's my version of suicide by cop, suicide by proxy.

Surely someone's already set out to murder me. Surely someone has me in their crosshairs.

'Expecting the worst, getting the worst, that's your life', W. says.

It's the kind of day you might come across a corpse, we agree, as we walk out on Dartmoor. It's the kind of day someone might come across our corpses.  

God's watching us, W. says, can you see? But I can see nothing but the overcast sky.

Dartmoor. The open sky. – 'It's come to this', W. says. 'The final reckoning'. And then, 'You can't hide on Dartmoor. You can't keep secrets'. It's just us and our God … 'The God of twats', says W.

They'll find us lying prone, with our eyes pecked out. They'll find our bodies half eaten by the Beast of Dartmoor.

'Your readings of Weil! Your account of Rosenzweig!'

He needs a tranquiliser gun, W. says, with a dart strong enough to bring down an elephant. How else is he going to stop me rampaging through philosophy, tearing up everything with my tusks?

We should have enemies, of course, W. says. We deserve them. There should be satellites in low orbit, tracking our movements. There should be snipers in the bushes, looking to finish us off. There should be mercenaries ready to kidnap us and execute us in the woods.

That we haven't been finished off yet is a puzzling sign. Why have we been permitted to live? But perhaps that is our punishment: continuing to live.

My enemy hasn't written lately, I tell W. W.'s surprised. He thought I'd have made even more enemies, now I'm splashing my name about on the net.

He sometimes wonders whether his enemy, who sits in the House of Lords, has forgotten him. Hasn't she got other things to think about? But no doubt, she's planning his demise even now. Can't she see he's gone as low as you can go? Can't she see he's been punished enough?

'This is what it must be like being you', W. says, getting beneath my bed covers and moaning. 'Oh my troubles, oh my life! They're out to get me! I'm going to be next!'

Are the trucks going to crush us?, that's what I ask myself as I'm channelled through the campus, I tell W. Are the diggers and cement mixers going to grind us into the earth?

Sometimes I want to pre-empt the destruction, I tell W. I want to lie my head beneath a caterpillar track. Want it to burst like a melon. Because my head aches, I tell W. My head throbs … And that's what the machines want, I sometimes think: revenge on my head.

I have nightmares of regeneration, I tell W. Nightmares of being called in, of my benefits being docked. But I work, I tell W., I'm not on benefits. I have nightmares of summonses being posted through my letterbox, of schemes to get the long term sick back to work. But I'm not one of the long term sick, I tell W.

I have nightmares of being made to wait in an open plan office, ticket in my hand, waiting for my appointment with a Case Worker. I have nightmares of having my needs reassessed. But I don't have any needs, I tell W. I'm fine; I don't need reassesment.

I have nightmares of signing Agreements, of presenting myself to be retrained. Reskilled! I have nightmares about flipcharts and group work. But I don't have to sign any Agreements; I have a job; I don't need to be retrained.

I have a job: but for how much longer?, I say to W. How long will be before they come to me? Because they are coming for me, I tell him, in their great trucks and machines. And so I might as well my head down them, before the trucks and machines, and let my head burst like a melon.

I hate it, I tell W., the terrible channelling around the building works. He'd hate it, the rat-runs for pedestrians. You have to rush, head down, among the crowd. To rush and have to watch your footing, because the crowd moves quickly.

Oh sometimes some foreign students will slow it right down, they'll promenade, as they do back in Spain or Malaysia; they reclaim the path (the non-path, the channel) talking and laughing with friends, and paying no heed to the pent-up walkers behind them.

Everyone wants to be somewhere else, except the Spanish and Malaysians. Everyone's pressing on headlong into the future, which is only a future of absolute control. Headlong and with heads down, in lock-step, staring at the pavement, staring at their feet and the backs of the feet of others… 

Where are we going? They're driving us on like dogs. Like rats. This is how they'll destroy us, because they will destroy us. This is how they'll wear us out, channelling us through the campus till we drop.

The continual sound of drills. High pitched, then lower pitched as they cut through concrete. I daren't look out of the window. What's happening out there?

The fizz of a lorry's brakes. The clattering of metal poles being thrown onto metal poles. A chugging in the distance (the worksite stretches all around the building). The distant throbbing of engines …

It's driving me mad, I tell W. on the phone. I can't hear a thing. I can't work. I can't read (W.: 'that's a good excuse'). I can't write (W.: 'You could never write'). Wasn't I suppose to be taking my Polyani notes? Wasn't I supposed to be sending them to him?

Stand well clear, vehicle reversing: a warning from a tannoyed male voice. And now warnings overlapping warnings as many vehicles reverse: Stand well clear… Stand well clear… Stand well clear… And now a a high pitched throb, very loud, like a helicopter landing. Surely a helicopter isn't landing? A helicopter couldn't be landing …

A thick smell – is it tar? They must be pouring tar. They must be making some kind of route for the lorries. A hiss as of gas escaping. The high beeping of a reversing vehicle. Everything's reversing, I tell W. The whole world's reversing.

They're remaking the world behind the high glossy fences with photographs of begoggled scientists of every nationality. They're rebuilding the campus! And does it need to be rebuilt? Do they need the new office blocks for private partners of the university? Do they need to storm heaven with new glass monoliths?

My head's aching, I tell W. My head's going to burst.

BullRing: for fuck's sake, W. says, reading a sign. What happened to the 'The'. What happened to spaces between words? It's a New Labour thing. It's a bullshit rebranding thing.

It was a name for a street once, a public space, W. says. And now it's the name of a mall, a private space of consumption, he says. It's a brand name, Bullring. It's supposed to suggest a distinct retail experience.

Well, at least they can regenerate it, W. says. They can't do anything with the Pallasades. Even the city planners knows it's unredeemable. A multi-storey carpark in the middle of the city, right at its motor-city heart …

At least they pedestrianised New Street, W. says. At least you can walk for a few hundred yards without seeing a car …

There's no river here, that's the trouble. There's nothing to open up, to liberate. There are the canals, of course, but they're further out. And they're too straight, too orderly. A city needs a river!, W. says. It needs an expanse.

How many times has the centre been rebuilt? How many times have they wrecked the city centre and wrecked it again? And yet it looks exactly the same as any other English city, only worse. The same complexes for shopping and eating, clustered around the same waterfronts (in Birmingham, canal fronts). The same so-called luxury flats for aspirational buyers, the same industrial-aesthetic chic, the same bullshit public art, the same daft quarters …

Birmingham's a wound, a terrible wound. But it's his wound, W. says. He takes it personally.

Edinburgh morning: it's a song in our hearts, this city. Coming out from out hotel, we feel a great upsurge of love: opposite, spread before us, the Old Town rises up in layers. We tremble with love – don't we feel lighter here in Scotland? Isn't the air fresher, keener? And we have the whole day before us. We have time, the whole day, like an empty expanse.

The relation to a city can be sexual, of course, W. says over breakfast. We remember the graffiti from May 1968: I came in the cobblestones. And wasn't there a woman who recently married the Eiffel Tower? But the young of '68 came collectively; theirs was a collective orgasm, enveloping those who were supposed to stand against them – the men and women of established power.

All or nothing: isn't that what the Situationists demanded of the city? Human freedom, in urban form. A transformed cartography. Wasn't that what they sought in their derives, their driftings – an exodus from the capitalist urban grid to the utopia secreted in the city? Wasn't it the concidence of desire and architecture for which they looked, the free associative passage of meanings and moods, a reading of the city like a book of poetry?

Debord and the others drifted for weeks to find what we've found. They passed through half-demolished houses and dossed down at night in public hardens looking to escape alienation and reification writ in stone, the capitalist transformation of space into its own decor. They wandered in forbidden catacombs in the name of a critique of human geography. They drank – how they drank! – to break their fetters, to usher in the reign of prodigality and glory, of a true metropolitanism.

Some places drew them closer, some repelled them; they sank into some routes like fissures, following the cracks in the urban network. They drained into sinkholes and found havens in the drift, temporary stopping places: certain bars, certain quarters. But above all, they moved, they kept out of place, and for months at a time. They moved, and the will to change life as it was moved with them. Life as it was, life as it is: they blazed through Paris like a trail of fire …

London, the heart of London. Wasn't this where we refused to come to launch our books? We had to refuse!, we agree. What other choice was there? To be admired by the academy is to become corrupted by the academy, we're agreed on that. We have to remain outside the academy, indifferent to it. We have to pursue our work in obscurity and silence.

Of course, this is not a time which admires modesty, we agree. We'll have no followers; we'll found no school: W.'s reconciled to that. No one will seek us out to discuss our ideas. So be it! Ah, we have our friends, of course, W. says. W.'s friends (they're his friends really). He sought them out! He approached them!

Ah, our thinker-friends, W. weeps to think of them. Hasn't he taken them into his home, treating them as the mnost honoured of guests, for weeks at a time? Hasn't he held conferences and symposia in their honour, granting them whole afternoons in which to present their ideas? Whole afternoons, and then whole evenings, nights, the bar open, the college quadrangle bathed by sunset colours, by dusk, by starlight, by shooting stars.

Haven't these thinkers thanked him for restoring them to the world, for bringing them back among others. Haven't they told him of their terrible melancholias, of disorders of the spirit that their effort to think has only driven deeper? Haven't they told him about finding God and losing God, of desertions and abandonings, of cosmic lonelinesses and apocalyptic banishments?

Ah, they've suffered like gods, his thinkers. They've been subject to impersonal agonies, to interstellar torture …

We need to be shocked into thought, W. says. Reached from without. He's seen it in the eyes of his thinkers: distance, starlight. He's seen starlight flashing in the empty expanse. He's seen all the way to the heart of thought's continent, all the way to the pole in the thinkers who have returned from that pole, their hair streaked with frost, their tears frozen on their cheeks. He's seen the broken ice of the Arctic of thought and the crevassed plains of the Anarctic of thought.

Thoughts should shatter the frozen sea within us, Kafka said, says W. And that's what he's seen in the eyes of his thinkers: a shattering. That a shattering has occurred with tremendous force. That the landscape of thought has been broken and reassembled. That it heaved upwards in a kind of earthquake, and crashed back down again, changed in its every detail in a way only a thinker could understand.

W. is dreaming of the Canadian city, he says. He's dreaming of a different kind of urbanism.

The Canadian city is part of the wilderness, he says; it includes it. To be inside the Canadian city is also be inside the Canadian wilderness, W. says mystically. The Canadian city is only a fold of the wilderness, a way of answering it, of echoing it.

The Canadian city is full of space, W. says. Its boulevards remember the ice-plains, its skyscrapers the gleaming summits among the mountains. Its windows flash back the aurora borealis to the sky. And its night time darkness recalls the darkness of the thick pine forests that cover the land.

And it's full of time, W. says. Everyone has time. People – strangers – stop and talk to one another. The Canadians are a patient people, W. says. They're not to be rushed. That's where he learnt what patience was, W. says. That's where he learnt to take deep breaths and walk upright. – 'Even you! Even you might learn to take deep breaths and walk upright'.

And I might learn French, too, W. says. That's where he learnt his French, W. says. He grew up speaking French, Canadian French, the French of the Quebecois, he says. The French of the wilderness.

That's how you can calm a wilderness bear, W. says, by speaking to it in Quebecois French. That's how you might calm a wilderness wolf, speaking softly, calmly, in a language full of space and time …

I have a Hindu story for every occasion, he knows that, W. says. What about for a train journey? Very well, I agree. I'll tell him a story for our times. I'll tell him how even God needs to cheat in order to serve dharma … 

The battle on the plains of Kurukshetra – the great battle of the Mahabharta, that even the gods looked down from heaven to watch – has raged for several days, with neither side gaining an upper hand. On the one side, the forces of the Pandavas, led by Arjuna, who fight on the side of dharma; on the other, and though their ranks contain many virtuous men, the forces of the Kauravas, who fight against dharma.

Disaster strikes for the Pandavans on the thirteenth day of battle: Arjuna's son is killed. Jayadratha, the Asurya, is the culprit. In his grief, Arjuna cries out that he'll avenge his son's death by sunset on the next day, or throw himself into the funeral pyre. Fighting stops at sunset, in accordance with the rules of war, and that night Arjuna meditates in silence, concentrating his powers on the task ahead.

The next morning, Arjuna rises more resolute than ever, and men and horses fall in their hundreds to his arrows. Chariots collapse in the dust. But the enemy, having heard Arjuna's oath, have set six of their greatest warriors the task of guarding his son's killer.

Fight as he might, loosing volleys of arrows, Arjuna can get no closer to his foe. And so, in the last moments of the afternoon, with the rules of war dictating that all fighting stop at sunset, there seems no choice but for Arjuna, leader of the Pandavan armies, to follow his son onto the funeral pyre.

Then Arjuna's charioteer, Krishna, the avatar of God, lifts his chakra over the sun like a great cloud. Krishna, who promised to have no part in the fighting having friends and allies on both sides, has made sunset seemed to fall all at once. Soldiers on both sides head back to their camp. Even the warriors who surround Jayadratha drop their guard, taking off their armour and turning for home.

'Strike now!', Krishna cries. 'He's unguarded!' Arjuna is aghast. – 'But it's sunset. I should put down my arms!' – 'It's not sunset', says Krishna, 'for the sun continues to shine above my chakra'. Arjuna shakes his head. – 'I don't understand, Lord!' And Krishna replies, 'You must win this battle. There are higher kinds of justice'. And so Arjuna does the bidding of his Lord, firing an arrow into the breast of his enemy, thus avenging the murder of his son.

'What is a chakra?', W. says. 'Do you have a chakra? Have you got one in your rucksack?' And then, 'So Krishna made it look as though it was night so Arjuna could kill his enemy? Sounds pretty dodgy to me'. Technically, it wasn't sunset, I tell W. – 'But he made it appear so'. But technically, sunset had yet to fall. This seems very unfair to W. Well, there was more unfairness to come, I tell him.

On the fourteenth day of battle, I continue, Yudhishthira, the oldest of the Pandavas, makes a terrible mistake. In the midst of battle, the dead of his own armies all around him, he wonders whether there might be another way to resolve the battle.

'Duryodhana!', he cries to the greatest of the warriors of the enemy army, 'I will make you a deal. Choose any one of my brothers and fight him instead, in one to one combat. The victor will win the battle, and we can stop the carnage'.

Duyhodhana agrees, he says, but on one condition: that he chose the weapon with which they'll do combat. Yudhishthira agrees in turn; the battle ceases, and all wait to see who Duryodhana will pick. Will it be one of the twins Nakula or Sadheva, the youngest of the Pandava brothers, valiant warriors, but probably no match for their enemy? Will it be Yudhishthira himself, the son of Dharma, famous for his virtue rather than his prowess on the battlefield? Surely it couldn't be Arjuna, the greatest of archers, who has already felled thousands of enemy soldiers! And surely not Bhishma, a man with the strength of seventy elephants?

'Bhima!' cries Duryodhana, and everyone is surprised. 'We will fight with maces'. What a strange choice! Bhima is stronger than him, and Duryodhana and he were taught mace-fighting by the same teacher. What madness is this? Combat begins. Bhima lands some mighty blows on his opponent which thunder like earthquakes, but Duryodhana shrugs them off, striking mighty blows himself. Over the hours and days that follow, Bhima visibly tires. How could it be?: it is Duryodhana who is winning.

Krishna takes Bhima aside during a break in the fighting. – 'Duryodhana was given a boon', he tells him. 'He was led to the river by his mother, and prayers uttered over him. The gods granted that every part of him touched by the river became impossible to harm. That's why your mace cannot inflict the lightest bruise'. Bhima: 'Then I can't defeat him?'

Krishna: 'Listen carefully. Duryodhana was too modest to step naked into the river in front of his mother, and the river did not touch his groin. Strike him there, and he will fall'. Bhima looks shocked, for the rules of mace combat forbid blows below the waist. How could he maintain any virtue as a warrior after such an act?

He has no choice, Krishna says. – 'You must not lose. You must break the rules of war if you are to serve the higher rule, the law of dharma'. Bhima, who had sunk to the ground in despair, looks up at him. – 'Since it is you who have asked me, Lord, I will do as you say'. And sure enough, he strikes Duryodhana a terrible blow across his thighs and kills him outright.

'And I suppose you think that's technically alright, too', W. says. 'Hindu technicalities!', W. says. He's had enough of them. 'Anything goes when you think the world is illusory'.

Why did Krishna advise the Pandavas to break the rules of war?, I continue. How can a lie be superior to the truth? Some say Krishna had his eye on a greater duty, a higher dharma, than that which ruled men on earth; others that the enemies of the Pandavas deserved nothing else: weren't they unrighteousness, adharma, incarnate, no matter which men of virtue fought amongst them?

Others still say that the battle marked the transition from to the lowest of the Four Ages. In the Age of Iron, there is nothing left but cynicism and opportunism, and even gods have to lie.

W. will have none of talk of a higher dharma, he says. Religion is about seeking justice in time, in this world, not outside of it, he says. There is no higher law in Judaism, W. says. It's far more sensible. God's law is the same everywhere, W. says. Well, that's how it works in his Judaism, he says, which is to say, the Judaism of Cohen and Rosenzweig. It's entirely different to Hindu fatalism, he says. To Hindu cynicism. Religion should have nothing to do with technicalities, W. says.

And there's worse to come, I tell W.

The battle on the plains of Kurukshetra set family member against family member, friend against friend, pupil against teacher. I'm not sure how Drona, the teacher of the Pandavas, ended up standing against them in battle. Of warriors, he was among the most feared; not even the gods could defeat him so long as he held a weapon in his hand.

When he saw his side was facing defeat, Drona became furious enough to use the murderous and terrifying brahmastra, the greatest weapon of the day. Now he was truly invincible, destroying whole divisions of the Pandavan armies.

What to do? Krishna tells the Pandavas that Drona can only be killed if he lays down his weapons. But how can he be made to do that? Drona's son was the very meaning of his life, the very reason he relinquished a brahminical life in order to became a warrior. He would lay down his arms only if he hears his son Ashwatthama is dead, Krishna says.

Yudhishthira is baffled. But Drona isn't dead, he says. – 'But we will have to tell Drona Ashwatthama is dead', Krishna says. Yudhishthira can't make sense of this. 'So you're telling us to lie, Lord?'

Krishna whispers in the ear of Bhima, who rises and disappears. – 'I have told him to kill one of our elephants, whose name is Ashwatthama', Krishna says. 'Now you can tell Drona that Ashwatthama is dead without lying'. The son of Dharma shakes his head. – 'Is this really what you want, Lord: to deceive a virtuous man?' And Krishna says, 'It is what I want'.

In the midst of battle, corpses of his enemies piled about him, Drona hears a great cry: 'Ashwatthama is dead!' It's Bhima's voice, he says to himself. Can it really be true: his son – dead? He shakes his head. No, he will not believe it. – 'It is not true!' he cries. 'You're deceiving me'. And then, 'Yudhishthira: is it true?' And then another voice comes, Yudhishthira's, who is incapable of lying: 'It is true: Ashwatthama is dead'.

Drona, as Krishna predicted, lays down his arms in despair. The former Brahmin, teacher of the Pandavas and their enemies alike, allowed himself to be beheaded on the fifteenth day of battle.

He's never heard anything so stupid, W. says.

'Go on, have an espresso', says W. He's having one; why not me? But he knows why not. He knows the effect coffee has on me. He knows the excitement, the fever-dream. W.'s hoping for a moment of illumination. He's hoping for the clouds – my clouds – to part and for me to say great things. He's waiting for my eyes to roll back in my head …

My prophetic days seem to have gone, W. says. Once I was worth listening to. Oh, not for what I thought I said, and nor indeed for its content. No, it was the pathos W. remembers. The mood.

Is there something like a messianic mood?, W. sometimes wonders. My voice used to tremble, W. remembers that. I sounded upset, as though about to cry. And then it began, then I began to speak – or someone spoke, at least, W. says. The espresso spoke. The caffeine. I became the sock puppet of God, W. says.

Oxford Spring. It's always Spring in our Oxford. The sky is open, expansive. We feel wistful, full of a vague sense of possibility. This year, things will be different, we tell ourselves. This year will be a new beginning.

But of course, nothing will begin. We've long since worn out any beginning. Long since mocked it, laughed at it, and finally sunk beneath it, staring mutely upwards like apes in the gutter. Life, real life is elsewhere. And who might we have been in that foreign country, that glittering elsewhere?

Until the seventh day, some theologians say, the creation was unfinished W. says. Until the Sabbath. And what is the day after the end of the world, our eternal day, our non-day except a kind of Sabbath?

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters … Why aren't our souls restored as we wander out to Jericho? This is the day the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Because our day is a mockery of the Sabbath; it laughs at it. Because our day is what has unmade the Lord …

Still, it's good to be out of the city, we agree over our pints. Why, almost as soon as we arrive in Oxford, do we try to escape it? But the answer is obvious. What do we see that others do not? It's finished, it's all finished, and never more so than there: in Oxford (though Jericho, too, is in Oxford, the periphery to its centre).

The sky has become a great door shut against us. And the earth, too, is a shut door. We live in two dimensions, not three. Our world is a thin film, a kind of stain to be rubbed away. And it will be rubbed away.

And in the meantime, our non-Sabbath, our parody of rest. Meanwhile, our pints, and pint after pint. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Consider the idiots of Jericho, how they drink …

We need to escape!, W. says. We need to get out of here! Zizek's gone, and why shouldn't we? He'll follow me, W. says. I have a great instinct for escape, like a confined ape waiting for his keeper's inattention. At a moment's notice, I'll vault the walls …

W.'s ready to vault after me, he says. He's had enough! Isn't that why he keeps me with him: to be alongside another who has had enough?

But it's always too much for me, that's the thing, W. says. I seem always to be thinking of what I left behind. I am, first of all, a man of the outside, W. says. A man who knows what lies beyond all walls …

Somewhere, in my head, I'm running along screaming, W. knows that. Somewhere, head back, mouth open, I'm screaming as loud as I can. W. can hear it sometimes, he says. He can hear it even hundreds of miles away, my great scream, like a dog howling in the night. And he wants to send up his howl, too, he says. His scream. He wants to run along the streets like a madman.

Zizek called him comrade in an email, W. says. It was a fine moment. He'd been put in charge of inviting Zizek to speak. They'd corresponded: emails went to and fro. And then W. sent Zizek a piece he had written, taking up something or other Zizek had said. And Zizek's next email to him began Dear Comrade …

Dear Comrade … And for a moment, W. pictured himself alongside Zizek on some barricade or another – some philosophical barricade …

We sit under the tree, a few of us, some smoking. Zizek is going by. – 'So this is where they exile the smokers!' he cries, with great vigour. W.: 'Yeah, it's shit, isn't it?' Zizek agrees, nodding vigorously as he goes by.

Where's he off to?, we wonder. He's got better things to do than hang round Oxford, we agree. He's probably going to see his wife, who's an Argentinian model, or something. A model-psychoanalyst. No, they got divorced, someone else says.

We remember the photograph of Zizek and his model wife the day they got married, which was circulated on the 'net. He looked hungover, regretful, vaguely surly. We felt he was one of us. How else would we look on the day of our weddings? 

W. won't hear a word against Zizek, he says. In fact, it's only the petty, small-minded and envious who speak against Zizek, and when they do so, it is only as an excuse to exercise their pettiness, small-mindedness and enviousness. He's what we all should be, Zizek, W. says. He's a grafter, just as we should be grafters. He fills bookshelves with his publications, just as we should fill bookshelves with our publications. He constantly travels from one conference to another, just as we should constantly travel from one conference to another. He's killing himself with work and stress in the name of thought, just as we should kill ourselves with work and stress in the name of thought.

He's got diabetes, no doubt from the sheer intensity of his philosophical thinking, just as we should have diabetes from the sheer intensity of our philosophical thinking. He has a sense of his impending end, which makes him work ever harder, with ever greater ambition, just as our sense of our impending ends should make us work ever harder, and with ever greater ambition. And he has a sense that we really do live at the end of times, with the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding towards us, just as we should have the sense that we live at the end of times, with the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding towards us.

Zizek's off, possessed by the most urgent of philosophical questions. And where are we going, who sit smoking under the tree? What possesses us?

Oxford, again. Why do we come here? Why, year after year? W. feels as though he's suffocating, he says. As though his hands were clawing the air. Still, at least we didn't bring Sal, though she wanted to come. She'd run amok, we agree. It's like matter and anti-matter, we agree. Bringing Sal to Oxford might destroy the universe.

Still, here we are, suffocating again, buried alive again. Being buried alive is bad enough, W. says, but being buried alive with an idiot! At least I should amuse him. At least I should do something funny. But Oxford even gets to me. It's like going round with a sulky ape.

It's happening just as you predicted, W. says. The collapse of universities. The collapse of civilisation. Don't you realise how good we're having it?, I always said to him. These are the best of times. He thought it was bad then, W. says. It's going to worse, much worse, I told him, and I was right.

It's not even that we're in the End Times, I've always insisted. We're beyond them. We've gone past the End Times. Oxford after the end looks quite like Oxford before the end, we decide. The same colleges, the same river. And the same walk for us, through Christchurch Meadows.

After tragedy, farce, we agree, remembering Marx. And after farce? This. Us. Christchurch Meadows.

'You need a woman in your life', says W., as he always does when very bored. 'Why haven't you got a woman in your life?' Sal's more intelligent than him, W. says. More intelligent than us. – 'And better than us. More consistent. She thinks something and does it. We think things, and what do we do?' She's our Rosa Luxembourg, we agree. And who are we? 

Sometimes W. dreams of a great political act, of a great deed as pure and simple as a swordstroke. Of an act of great goodness, great justice. But all he can think of is suicide. – 'Let's jump into the river'.

The son of Man will bury man, while he himself will remain unburied: where's that from?, W. wonders, looking through my notebook. – 'Ah, who will bury us?'

On Magdalen Bridge, a junkie in a sky-blue jumper asks for money for 'chippies'. To the left, the meadow to which we can never work out how to get. If only we could find our way to that meadow, which runs along the river! If only we could feel the grass under our shoes! What thoughts we would have! What ideas!

Sometimes W. thinks we might walk our way to ideas. That to walk – if we walk far enough, hard enough – might also be to think. Or at the very least to think about thinking. To have ideas about ideas, ideas we might one day have.

What's my significance?, W. wonders. Do I illustrate some broader trend? Am I a man of our times, or against our times? Sometimes, W. thinks I'm ahead of my times, a kind of augur. – 'Go on, predict something'. But the future is unclear.

We're in the desert, W. says, and the meadow by the river is our Canaan. In the desert, the face of the wilderness … that's where the Biblical prophets went to be alone with themselves. To be alone with God! What else did John the Baptist seek? What else Elias and Eliseus?

The fidelity of the desert, W. reads in my notebook. Cassian: prayer of fire. – 'What have you been reading?', W. asks. I will give you rest (hesychia): God to Moses. Jesus to his disciplines. I seem to be drawn to Christian pathos, W. says. He feels it himself, he says.

If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions, and give to the poor … and come, follow me. Is that what we should do?, W. wonders. Should we head further into our desert? But there's no pillar of cloud to lead us, no pillar of fire, and we have to get a bus back to town from the Oxford suburbs.

When he wants to think of my compromise, my shortcomings, when he wants to underline for himself the outrage of my existence, W. compares me in his head to Shostakovich.

To Shostakovich essentially alone, essentially defenceless before a system that was destroying him (W.: 'You essentially in company, with all the others, worse than all the others, leading them into ruin …'); Shostakovich with raw, exposed nerves, with his terror of officials (W.: 'You craven, you kneeling before the officials, asking them what they want');

Shostakovich pale, emaciated, his physique undermined by constant cold and hunger, by tuberculosis of the lymphatic system, a bandage always round his neck (W.: 'You full of rude good health, free of illness except for occasional coughs and colds');

Shostakovich whose genius will ring through the centuries (W.: 'You whose non-genius should likewise be legendary, whose stupidity should likewise be remembered'); Shostakovich who wrote his music in full score, straight away, with the greatest intensity and speed, never needing to try things out on piano (W.: 'You who write nothing, who will do anything to avoid writing');

Shostakovich pacing up and down the room, writing his music down while standing up; 'Not a day', he said 'without writing a line' (W.: 'You at your desk, playing Tetris on your mobile phone'); Shostakovich keeping back his chamber music, his string quartets (W.: 'You not keeping back anything; you lacking all sense, all discretion');

Shostakovich with his amazing and original pianism, his fast tempi, his fantastic octaves despite his small non-pianistic hands (W.: 'You who listen to Jandek plink-plonking; you whose spade-like hands are incapable of any delicacy');

Shostakovich with his self-possession, his capacity to work, to just get on with it, never succumbing to fads (W.: 'You reading the latest thinker just translated French, you reading the latest stupid secondary commentary about the latest thinker just translated from French');

Shostakovich oblivious of his surroundings and to any form of comfort, demanding only an unlimited supply of the strongest bitterest tea (W.: 'You only wanting to be well fed, drunk, and in the brown light of the pub');

Shostakovich whose work like all great Russian artists carried a moral charge (W.: 'Your work shows no moral charge, no ethics, no goodness');

Shostakovich carrying a packed suitcase with him at all times, waiting to be taken away (W.: 'You who I wish were taken away'); Shostakovich sitting out on the landing so the Secret Police wouldn't disturb his family when they came (W: 'You who would volunteer to be taken away, who would hold out his hands to be handcuffed. Arrest him!, you would say, pointing at me. Arrest of all them!, you would say, pointing to all your friends');

Shostakovich forced to join the Party against his will – 'I am a whore', he cried (W.: 'You who would have joined any Party that would have you, you who are the whore of all whores, the whore of Babylon');

Shostakovich lost in the complex labyrinth of Party bureaucracy … (W.: 'You willingly losing yourself in the labyrinth, plunging into it …'); Shostakovich playing the role of an obedient Party member (W.: 'You playing no role; you absolutely yourself');

Shostakovich weeping out loud in front of his pupils - 'They have been hounding me, they have been pursuing me' (W.: 'You who want only to be hounded, to be pursued. You who cry "chase me, chase me" to the audit team, swimming away through seas of paper'); Shostakovich hysterical, his teeth chattering (W.: 'You dry-eyed and composed amidst the catastrophe');

Shostakovich weeping uncontrollably as he composed his 8th Quartet (W.: 'You never weeping, and knowing nothing of weeping'); Shostakovich weepingly telling his friend of the sleeping pills he'd bought to kill himself (W.: 'You who above all should kill himself, not killing himself, you who drive other people to want to kill themselves, not killing himself');

Shostakovich accused by functionaries by the Ministry of Culture of sinning against 'Soviet reality' (W.: 'You who want to belong more than anyone else to what is called reality'); Shostakovich denounced by his colleagues, his fellow composers (W.: 'You who are first to attack yourself, first to attack him, to whom I should be closest. You always on the verge of betraying him, and betraying everyone. Of betraying yourself');

Shostakovich harried, hassled; subject to scrutiny by the most stupid Party officials (W: 'You harrying and harassing yourself to work and harrying and hassling yourself at work'); Shostakovich dismissed from one Conservatoire, then another (W.: 'You somehow undismissed from your job, from one job and then another');

Shostakovich due to be arrested and taken away, called in to be arrested and taken away, saved only as the person arresting him was arrested and taken away, and when he turned up, there was another official there who had no idea who he was (W.: 'You wanting to be arrested, presenting yourself to be arrested, but with no one to arrest you');

Shostakovich always on the verge of becoming an enemy of the people – always in danger of being taken away for re-education (W.: 'You volunteering for re-education, wanting to be acquainted with the latest change in regulations');

Shostakovich criticised for formalism, for pessimism – 'What we want is an optimistic Shostakovich' – for musical degeneracy (W.: 'You uncriticised and unadmonished, you still surprised he can get away with anything, all the time wanting to be disciplined and told off; you who want to get away with nothing'); Shostakovich obediently writing patriotic cantatas and programmatic symphonic works (W: 'You wanting only to write what you're told, but lacking anyone to tell him');

Shostakovich sent as part of the delegation to the Cultural and Scientific Congress of World Peace in New York, hands twisting the tips off his cigarettes, his face twitching, his face disturbed; Shostakovich wanting only to be left alone, joining other speakers to read, in a nervous, shaky voice, standard Agitprop speeches (W.: 'You sitting like an ape in the midst of committees, keenly taking notes, nodding your head, wanting only to be with others and speaking officialese like the others');

Shostakovich having to admit that the Party was right to find flaws in his art, that he was even grateful for the party for helping him to recognise his flaws and mistakes – Yes, yes, yes, I've been wrong. Of course I'll write an operetta which the People will easily understand' (W.: 'You only looking for someone to tell you about the flaws in your work, you who want only to set you right');

Shostakovich constantly having to submit written justifications for his every creative work (W.: 'You who should have to submit such justifications, who should be made to apologise to the world, to stand trial, to be shot against a wall');

Shostakovich whose Fifth Symphony was tagged 'A Soviet's artist's reply to just criticism' … (W: 'You whose every work deserves criticism'); Shostakovich who had to write an apology for his tenth symphony – explaining it had been written in too much of a hurry, that the first movement was too long, the second movement was too short, etc., (W: 'You who have never apologised for your work, never taken it back');

Shostakovich having to make a speech of self-criticism at the Union of Composer's Congress – 'Music Against the People' (W.: 'You who should only make speeches of self-criticism, should only write auto-critique');

Shostakovich having to set words by officially approved poets – (W.: 'You who want only official approval'); Shostakovich writing socialist-realist works of all kinds, patriotic works, songs of the people, programmatic cantatas and symphonic works, but also works for the bottom drawer, having no hope for their performance (W: 'but for you there is no bottom drawer, you have no need for a bottom drawer, no conception of a bottom drawer');

Shostakovich sobbing in his hotel room after the premier of his Song of the Forests, hiding his face in the pillow (W: 'You never sobbing after giving one of your presentations, never hiding your face'); Shostakovich head bent in despair (W: 'You who do not know the meaning of despair; you who he has being trying to teach despair, to teach integrity');

Shostakovich accused of 'anti-people sentiments'; Shostakovich whose music was no longer performed or printed (W.: 'You whose work shouldn't be presented or printed'); Shostakovich in ill health, visibly lame (W.: 'You in rude health, visibly robust');

Shostakovich calculatingly giving the Party what they wanted (Glory to the Wise Stalin, The Sun Shines on Our Motherland); (W.: 'You who uncalculatingly give the managers more than they want, more than anyone could want'); Shostakovich rendering to Caesar things unto Caesar (W: 'You who only believe in Caesar and doing things on your knees for Caesar');

Shostakovich full of fear, desperate, and not just for himself, for his family, his friends and colleagues. Fear for his country. Fear for the persecuted in his country, for the Jews of his country. (W.: 'You fear for yourself, and only for yourself …'); Shostakovich who said, 'When I think about my life I realise I have been a coward', he said. 'Unfortunately I have been a coward' (W: 'What do you feel when you think about your life?');

Shostakovich in public: mouth drooping, lips trembling, stuttering, knees knocking, hands fidgeting, eyes frightened, chain-smoking, chewing his nails and fingers versus Shostakovich in private: calm and concentrated, sardonic, satirical, hypersensitive to cruelty of all kinds, desperately compassionate (W.: 'You in public: an idiot; you in private, an idiot. You in public: stuttering; you in private: stuttering. You in public: twitching; you in private: twitching. You both public and private: indifferent to cruelty (your cruelty), entirely without compassion');

Shostakovich lamenting the murder of Jews; Shostakovich the victims of the Terror; Shostakovich suspicious of the medals pinned on his chest after his rehabilitation; of being declared the supreme Soviet artist (W.: 'You rejoicing at all attention, at any attention; You winning Bad Writing awards and Idiot awards' (W.'s own Idiot awards));

Shostakovich, master of satire, writing satirically, composing satirically (W.: 'You unwittingly satirising himself'); Shostakovich, master of irony, of saying one thing and meaning another (W.: 'You who say one thing and have no idea what you mean; you who, by what you say, declare nothing to have meaning, that meaning is nothing, and we're all staring into the same abyss').

W. can't work anymore, so he's reading some crap on Wikipedia about the nine kinds of intelligence, he says on the phone. That must mean they're nine kinds of stupidity, too. He works through the list.

One, he says, spatial stupidity. – 'You can't find your way about, can you? You've no sense of direction'. I've led him down the garden path, for one thing.

Two. Linguistic stupidity. – 'You can barely talk! You stutter. You stammer'. And then, 'And you can't read! You haven't got the attention span! The diligence! You're not humble before the text'. And then, 'And, above all, you can't write. My God, your writing. The typos! The grammatical mistakes! What you've done to the English language …!'

And then, 'And you have no ability to learn foreign languages. How many languages have you learned and forgotten? What trace in you is left in you of French and German, Latin and Greek? And didn't you once try to learn Sanskrit? God, the hubris …'

Three. Logical-mathematical stupidity. I'm extremely poor with logic, abstractions, reasoning and numbers, W. says. This has always been clear. He's the last person to whom he would turn for assistance in his mathematical studies, for instance, W. says. In his philosophical studies, although turn to me he does, W. says. Perhaps that's his stupidity: self-sabotage. Self-ruination …

Four. Bodily-kinesthetic stupidity. I've poor control of one's bodily motions at the best of times, W. says. Grotesquely poor. How many pints have I spilled? How many beer-trays dropped? My abysmally poor sense of timing, of rhythm. My dancing, for example. W. shakes his head. 'You can tell a great deal about people from the way they dance', W. says. Oh, what has he learnt about me? – 'That you're a fucking idiot'.

And I know nothing of sport. I've no feeling for sport. When he took me to a Plymouth Argylle match, I cheered for the wrong side. – 'You were nearly lynched!' And then I made myself sick eating hotdogs. God, how many did I have?

Five. Musical stupidity. Ah, this is very clear, W. says. I've no sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, or pitch, meter, tone, melody, timbre … – 'You listen to Jandek, for fuck's sake!' And then, 'You only listen to Jandek'. W. finds my dedication impressive. I'm at least consistently stupid.

Six. Interpersonal stupidity. Where should he start?, W. wonders. Where to begin? I try to avoid everyone, for one thing. I'm always looking for escape routes, for excuses to leave. I want to avoid everyone! Well, everyone except him, W. says, who would most want to avoid me.

And I've no sensitivity to other's moods – to his moods, for one thing, W. says. To his despairs, which are largely despairs concerning my presence in his life. To his melancholy, which is probably also entirely due to me. Nor to others feelings – how many times have I hurt his feelings?, W. says. How many times have I turned on him? It's always the way, after the first two days of drinking: I turn. I become nasty. It's very upsetting, W. says.

Seven. Intrapersonal stupidity. – 'What does this mean?' This has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities, he reads. Well, I don't reflect on myself, my conduct, that's very clear, W. says. He's always wondered whether intelligence might be a moral category, W. says, and nothing to do with IQ. It's about feeling shame, remorse. It's about developing introversion. Do I ever, like him, curse myself for my failings? Do I ever ask myself how I might become a better person?

Eight. Naturalistic stupidity. I've no feeling for nature, W. says, but nor has he. Or rather, he has a Jewish distrust of the nature (- 'It's unredeemed!'), and of the cult of the natural. In truth, animals trust him. Robins would alight on the handle of his spade as he dug in his garden, if he had a spade or a garden. Squirrels would pick nuts from his palm with their tiny paws …

Children like him, of course, W. says. It's his calmness, he says. You can tell a lot by what children think of you. I just confuse them, of course. Animals watch me warily. - 'What's the ape man going to do?' Even plants seem worried, twisting towards W. for help.

Nine. Existential stupidity. – 'This is a good one', W. says. The ability to contemplate phenomena or questions beyond sensory data, such as the infinite and infinitesimal, he reads. – 'Who dreamt up this shit?'

You'd have thought I'd have some feel for the infinite, W. says. For the infinitude of my stupidity. Of my sin! And, for that matter, he'd have thought I'd have a feel for the infinitesimal, too. For the quantum. – 'For your micro-penis', W. says. 'For your nano-penis!'