Our Visit to India

6th January

We arrive at Chennai airport. Warm night. An uncle and his daughter meets us; we are conveyed by taxi to the hotel. It’s been a long time since I was here last. Roadside shrines to Ganesh. Advertising hoardings painted by hand. Construction sites. Argument with the night porter at The New Woodlands Hotel: we’d booked the Krishna cottages but they only have double rooms. In the hotel foyer, a map of South India and then a map of Chennai.

7th January

Masala Dosai for breakfast. Thinner and crisper than in London. Coffee sweet and milky. I read The Hindu and then we change rooms to the Krishna Cottages. Then the oldest uncle comes, and his son. I present my uncle with my book. We talk about it, briefly. We are given a car and driver, and arrangments are made to meet later. To Anna Silai through what seems at first the madness of Chennai traffic. But there is a logic to it; you have to work it out. No more people die on the roads here than in England. Business of the streets: bicycles, mopeds, rickshaws, cars. People run across the street. Horns constantly sounded: be careful, I am here.

Chennai pollution and chaos. I visit a bookshop and pick up Deleuze’s Francis Bacon and Delanda’s Intensive Science for £2.50 each and books about the future of India. In the evening, to the family’s new block of flats. Happiness to see everyone again. My sister and brother in law married again, she in a sari, he in a veshti. Photographs, conversation.

8th January

With our car and driver to Mahabs. Tsunami damage along the coast. Resettled villagers. The Shore Temple by the sea, surrounded by granite sculptors. Wild dogs, hawkers and beggars. Great waves crashing in from the Bay of Bengal. Beauty of the landscape south of Chennai: palm trees, grass. Folk art on the trucks: written, Sound Horn Please, and then images of birds and animals on yellow and blue.

In the evening, dinner Bengali style as a guest of my cousin. He loves Oscar Wilde, and quotes from Earnest. We talk about film; he hasn’t yet seen any Bela Tarr. We walk on the beach. 6,000 died here; the Tsunami came early in the morning. It was further along the beach that my father’s ashes were scattered in the water, my cousin explains, and talks about the 13 days after death, as the soul finds its way to heaven. Above us, he says, the rishis are the stars. And so will our father find his place there, among the stars.

9th January

To another uncle’s for lunch. A gift of gold sovereigns. Then to the school to which we have donated in memory of our father. A plaque by the door of the Chemistry lab: from the heirs of N. Ramakrishnan Iyer, Wokingham, England. Ceremony. Shawls placed on our shoulders, milky tea and biscuits in the classrooms. Outside, the children at drill. Seeing us on the balcony, they march towards us and hold thumbs aloft when we do the same. My mother stops in an embroidery class to look at the childrens’ work. We feel rather like the Queen; beneficient guests who receive great hospitality. Later, in the car, my oldest uncle commends the school on the ceremony they arranged for us. A long conversation with my cousin: what is like to study and then work in America? He tells me of the tax reform of which his cousin in Delhi, with whom we will be staying, is an advocate.

10th January

To The Music Box and Landmark in the shopping mall in Chennai. Purchase of a good stack of Carnatic music. Western books and CDs readily available. Later to receive our gifts from the uncle who came with us in the taxi from the airport. I choose a big statue of Natarajan and a little statue of Ganesha, who is everywhere here. Then to a wondrous Sari shop. Beautiful fabrics, lined up in order of colour. Counters where the assistants spread saris before us. What magnificence! I buy a shawl for RM. Later, out for dinner, we eat talis on banana leaves, but I am unable to justice to mine. My sister and brother-in-law eat a two-and-a-half foot dosai.

Our last night in winter Chennai. We have been fortunate: blue skies, and as hot as our English midsummer.

11th January

To the airport to fly to Delhi. How cool it is in the North! What beautiful weather! A cousin to pick us up and the drive along the avenues to the Friends colony. My cousin lives in a luxurious flat with plants along the balcony. The same dogs as in the south everywhere, apparently ownerless. We stay in a hotel nearby, to which we return after a meal in a huge complex – more than a mall, more than an entertainment centre.

Conversations on the future of India. 50 years – we’ve been robbed of 50 years, says my cousin. Tax cuts; foreign investment; poverty to be wiped out by 2025 -but will the new wealth be redistributed? I think about our conversation all night. What has happened to Nehru’s socialist India? What of Ghandi’s dream of resisting industry and returning to small crafts and village life? The taxes were too high to encourage industry and investment, said my cousin. There is a great deal of work to do, he says, everyone realises that, he says, but there is a new self-confidence.

12th January

A long drive to the Taj Mahal, with one of my cousin’s drivers. As magnificent as you would expect; evening thermals bear birds around the dome of the building, setting off its massiveness. I walk barefoot on warm marble. A low wall and a sheer plunge to the river: what beauty! Three mischevous boys follow us around. Other tourists ask to have their picture taken with my sister and brother-in-law. We would like to spend longer here, but we do not have time. Back through the gardens to the doorway through which we first saw the Taj Mahal, when it seemed without size, until you worked out those dots at its base were people.

On the way home, a policeman stops us: we are white tourists be driven by an Indian – is this an illegal unlicensed taxi? Of course not; he is looking for a bribe. All of this outside of sight of us, the passengers; we learn what happened later, from my cousin. Our driver in a jumper, like many of the locals here. How strange, for us, to have arrived in the middle of the coldest weather in the capital for 70 years! But still the mosquitos reach us.

13th January

We are to visit the attractions of Delhi, but it is the Cottage that holds us. Crafts from all over the country; I buy another shawl for RM. Then to the open markets in Delhi and then to the Kahn market, which I’ve been looking forward to all day. I buy Hindustani music and Sufi music – at last, I have a recording of Hamd in Raga Mishra Khamaj, which I know as Allah hoo. Illustrated books about the gods so I will understand their iconography. Then we visit a Kashmiri clothing and rug shop in the Defence Colony. We marvel at the shimmer of the silk-on-silk rugs and drink Kashmiri tea. Rugs spread magnificently on the floor before us! What splendour! It is an enticing as the Sari shop in Chennai.

We learn it is Lhodi and on this day, branches are burnt to celebrate the new year. We are invited to a party to celebrate, but go out as a family to eat Italian style near the Friends’ Colony. My sister is in cahoots with my cousin’s daughter. Across the table, I drink a Margarita.

14 January

My cousin drives us to the airport. He explains how many cities overlie one another in Delhi. We pass along the great avenues and he points out the great buildings to us. Here we are in Delhi! But we have barely explored it; Chennai is familiar to us by now, but not Delhi. Roadside temples once again – Ganesh, his palm pressed towards us, his round pot belly. How many kinds of Ganesha icons there are! Sometimes he sits, legs in the lotus position or perched on a mouse or a lotus, sometimes he lolls, and sometimes stands, each time with four arms, with his trunk (he has an elephant’s head) to the left. Over his shoulder, the sacred thread.

Later, we see the Himalayas from our plane. Over the Black Sea and then grey Berlin, and then home to drizzle and clouds.

£2,600

Conversation with W., who has wheedled £2,600 from somewhere or other; he’s pleased with himself; he’s serious. We are to Do Things. What are we going to do? Give something to the world, he says, rather than taking. Because that’s what we always do, he says, we take something from the world. Our books are a taking from the world, not a giving to the world. They suck life from the world, rather than give life to it.

No original thought, no contribution to the world of ideas, only commentary, and there are better commentaries around, no question of that. And what of our much vaunted DOGMA movement in philosophy? W. sends me his latest DOGMA piece – it’s all there he says, the whining – that’s what DOGMA is about – the self-pity. Yes, that’s what it’s become, DOGMA, whining and self-pity, with everything dragged back to the ‘I’, the self-pitying and whining ‘I’.

We talk about Bela Tarr. Why don’t we send the money to him, says W. He’s right. Send the money to Bela Tarr. Send it all to him. By that we’d give something to the world. Yes, by that, we’d have given something rather than stealing something. W. asks me about my latest DOGMA piece. It was a disaster, I tell him. A disgrace – nothing worse. I made a real fool of myself, that’s what I told him. It was like performance art, I tell him. I got more and more manic – it was grotesque. A real disgrace, no question of that.

W. is impressed. He’s never heard me say something like that before: a disgrace. He tells me I remind him of the landlord in The Big Lebowski, the performance artist, who dances to Wagner. I tell him he’s like the idiot dancers in Damnation, splashing in the rain and the pools of beer on the floor. That’s what you are, I say, an idiot dancer. W. has the 7 hour Satantango, he says. He’s obsessed by it; it’s all he can think about. He’s going to use the money to visit me, he says. And then I can visit him. And we can watch Satantango, he says. That’s what we’re going to do. Night and day, over and over again: Satantango.

I tell him we should make a film, that’s what we should do. Imagine it! £2,600, and out first feature film. Von Trier’s already made a film called that, he says, when I tell him we should call it The Idiots. The Idiots! Imagine! Sucking life from the world! Taking life and giving nothing! Giving nothing back to the world! No ideas! Nothing creative! We’re anti-creative! We take and do not give! The opposite of creators! Anti-creators, idiots! You’ve achieved a new level in your whining, W. tells me. It’s my great gift to humanity, I say, it’s all I have to give.

He uses non-professional actors, says W. of Bela Tarr. We talk of the great speech in Damnation about madness and coal scuttles. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in a film, I tell him. He agrees. And the bit in the mud with the dog, with him barking at the dog. Nothing better. Because that’s where we’ll end up – in the mud, covered in mud, barking! And that’s too good for us! Barking – in the mud!

What else have you been doing?, W. asks me. Nothing. Admin. So’s he. Were you in, working, on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, I ask him? He wasn’t. I was in, doing my admin. W. says he was so alone over Christmas he forgot how to talk. I’m not like you, he says, I don’t need people. I don’t need to be adored, he says. Look at you with your weblog, he says. I write just as much as you do, he says, but I don’t put it all online, he says. I’ve written about Spinoza, says W., and what have you written about? He sends me his lecture notes. He sends me a paper by someone cleverer than us. He sends me his introduction to a special edition of a journal. That’s what he’s been doing. He’s been busy. Not like me. I’ll tell you what your problem is, says W., you’re lazy – l-a-z-y! And you want to be adored! And you’re a binge eater! All you think about is food! And adoration! You want to be adored!

W.: How are we going to get the money to Bela Tarr? Should we go to Hungary ourselves? I tell W. about the jobs in Kazakhstan – should we apply for them? Imagine that – Kazakhstan! It could be the making of us! The regenerators won’t have got their yet! The buying-second-homes lot won’t have got there yet! We should go! But we won’t go, will we?, says W. We’re not going anywhere, are we?, says W.

Bela Tarr made his first film when he was 16, W. says. 16! No chance for us then, he says. 16! Non-professional actors! When did you know?, says W. When did you know you weren’t going to amount to anything? It’s a curse, isn’t it?, says W. Knowing you haven’t really got it. W. says his students had to explain the plot of Damnation to him. He didn’t understand it. This after I asked him to explain the plot. He sold his friends to the police said W. Oh that’s what happened, I said, feeling stupid. But W. hadn’t understood the plot either. His students, whom he says are clever than him, explained the plot. Ah. I saw the film twice, I said, and hadn’t understood it. So had he – twice – and he, too, hadn’t understood it.

DOGMA!, W. says, we invented it, and look what it’s made us into! It’s true – it’s amounted to nothing. But X. liked us, didn’t he?, I ask him. Oh yes, X. liked us, that’s true. Yes, we’ll always have that – X. liked us. Was that our high point?, I ask him. Yes, that was probably it. Downhill from here. I tell W. I’ve already peaked. I’ve done it, I say, I’ve shot my load, there’s no more. But really, says W., who likes a running mate, what are you planning? Tell me, he says, because W. loves a bit of friendly competition, what are you writing? Nothing, I tell him. Not – a – thing. And nor do I intend to. I’ve shot my load, I tell him, that was it. There’s no more.

What’s he working on? Nothing, he says. He’s done his Spinoza lectures, and now he’s editing his special edition. It’s a real pain, says W. He doesn’t like it at all. He whines – it’s a lot of work! And he’s completely sick of Blanchot! He’s had it with him! We should introduce Blanchot to Kazakhstan, I tell him. They won’t have heard of him. We could make out fortunes – in Kazakhstan.

Bela Tarr – he was 16, says W. 16! That’s when he started, says W. When did you first realise you were going nowhere?, says W. When did you really understand you weren’t going to do anything with your life? I knew about Rimbaud, I say, but I wrote nothing when I was 16. I knew about Radiguet – but I wrote no novel by 18. And D.H. Lawrence was a prodigy, I say – but I was no prodigy. And it went on from there, I say, I fell at every fence. At every fence, I took a tumble.

It’s a curse, says W., with great feeling. Yes, we’ve always been united in this. Think of them, the great friendships – Blanchot and Levinas, Foucault and Deleuze, Blanchot and Bataille. And then us – who write on these great friendships – and are friends, that’s true, but for what? Often, in his cups, W. will talk passionately about friendship. It’s all about friendship!, says W. It’s true. I’m carried away. We’re in the only late night bar in Oxford, the only one open after closing time. It’s true, he’s right – friendship. That. But what has it become, friendship, with us? It’s soured. It’s curdled. Nothing was made, nothing was produced, by way of our friendship. The opposite, in fact.

W. and I have a game of over-praising the other. The praise has got to become more extravagant each time. That’s part of DOGMA, says W. DOGMA! What dreams we had for DOGMA! What a good idea it seemed, that night in Oxford! And what has it come to? £2,600. We should send it to Bela Tarr. How can we get it to him? Imagine it – we might be able to redeem ourselves if we can get the money to him! £2,600!

Over Again

I should have the strength of the morning, but I have no strength; where is the power to write, for I would like to write – where is it, the power that makes the incidents of my life, everything that has happened, only the fuel from which writing will burn? Until writing consumes everything but itself, solitary star. Yes, that’s what the morning should be for: the ardency of the star, the light absolute. And when it is impossible? When it’s impossible to write in the dream of the fire that would reach me from the other side of writing?

The drains have been unblocked; the yard is no longer filled with sewage. Two green wheelie bins and plants rotting because they have not been propped on bricks above the sludge; the long scar in the wall where the pipe was pulled away; the wall from which patches of paint have fallen: mediocrity, that’s what I see. The mediocre world, the backs of the houses opposite, and above them trees without leaves. The cold has returned, but the wet surface of the yard is not streaked with frost as it was a couple of days ago.

How stubborn and obdurate the world this morning! The yard: algae-covered stones, a couple of bricks, the rotting plants: everything that will not allow itself to be taken up in writing. The fire will not come; the world is a damp bonfire that will not ignite. What does it matter? This morning, the world won, not writing. Defeat is to be pressed up against those same things as would be dissolved by writing.

Isn’t that the struggle: to clear a space to live by way of writing? To clear a living space, a breathing space by a writing which folds the world back upon itself? But if it is freedom that is sought, it is not mine. It arrives, freedom, it is the event of that folding-back; it is the day no longer lived as necessity. Receive it again, the day, the mediocrity of the day. Receive it by way of writing and let it pass thus the test of the eternal return. It is the same returning; it is not the same. The same returns – and by returning it is not the same.

And if you cannot write? Receive nothing. Receive the same barren nothing that opens itself in the morning.

The Moon and its Planet

Sometimes it is nice to throw a memory into the air like a kite, hoping the wind will catch it. To throw it into the air, a memory, and let it be caught by the wind and borne into the sky. Why? Why throw it thus? To remember again, or just to know the play of the wind on your face – to know, by the way it is caught, that streaming of writing that catches everything as it streams. Writing! Not to conserve, not to remember now, once and for all, but simply to let itself be written – to play across the memories I give it like wind over a wind harp.

When he couldn’t sleep, David told me, he used to speak to God. Pray? I asked. No: he spoke. Was he on speaking terms with God, then? Did he have a hotline to God? His big, messy bedroom was next to mine. I was sleeping, he was speaking to God. I slept – though sometimes I couldn’t sleep, I kept awake, but he spoke to God; he knew God was close, and spoke to him. For a long time, I was afraid of the dark. For a long time, when I was already old, I was afraid of it – the dark. No God there; only thieves and criminals. David told me how his Aunts prayed – to this saint, to that saint. He said whenever he needed money, even to give to someone else, it appeared in his wallet – just like that. He wanted £1013, and it suddenly came to him – a cheque for £1013. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that, he said.

When he was young, David was clairvoyant. He’s still so now, but he’s too afraid of what he was made to see. Don’t make me do it, he says, don’t make me read your palm. But he does – he reads it, and not at my prompting. He spreads it out, my itchy palm, and reads what he finds there. I can’t remember what he said, although I wrote it down, just as I wrote down other things he said. What was it he said? Nothing; some banalities. Nothing in particular, something or other, but with great conviction.

He always spoke with that, with conviction. When visitors came to the house, they would sit at right angles from him, each in an arm chair and speak seriously of their lives. For my part, I wouldn’t stir from the computer game I was playing. I listened, no matter how irritating it might have been; I was there, listening – for after all, this was my house, too – I paid rent! They came, they spoke, and David would answer them in rolling sentences and rolling paragraphs, in a great torrent of speech.

He was not yet an old man, but he seemed infinitely old and infinitely wise; he had seen everything; he spoke. Was he right? He thought he was right. He spoke from his rightness; he rested in it, as he rested in God. How certain he was! And there was I, so uncertain! How certain he was, this planet among men, and we the orbiting moons of this planet! There were many who wanted certainty, and that’s what he gave them.

He rested in God; around him, icons, and in the corner of the room, holy water and a burning candle. God was there, in the room; he spoke; God spoke, one and the same. How marvellous that this grown man, nearly twice my age would lie prostrate in the church! But God lay down as he lay down; God lay down and worshipped himself – God was only his certainty, his sense of being right. Yes, that was all God was: the firmness and confidence of speech.

He is dead now, David, and I summon this memory only to remind me of those certain, self-certain men I have known, and into whose circle, stray satellite, I was drawn. Was I destined only to be a moon, glowing by borrowed light? Was that who I was, echo-chamber to those who talked in sweeps and gales? He spoke – did I listen? He spoke, and I was soothed in his immense speech.

In the mornings, he decided to come out with me for coffee. He talked in a single, uninterrupted monologue until we got there, the coffee shop, and then continued as we sat down, drank our coffees and walked home. And then he would keep me talking as we sat in the great lounge, he in his armchair and me at the other end, behind the dining table in a dining chair. We were surrounded by his things, by heirlooms, by possessions with stories; we were there in his great domain; that was the lounge and the house: his world.

And who was I, satellite to this planet? Who was I, turning around him as he turned round his own confidence, God? In the early days, we would drive out to the computer shop. What do you want, he’d say, looking over the games, pick anything you want. Then, the way home, he talking all the while and to the delicatessen to get groceries and our favourites – fisherman’s ciabattas with salmon and prawns. Then to the house, and I would set up the game, and the door to the garden would open and someone or other would come to consult him: that’s how the day would pass. One day, another, just like that. There were others, too, in the house – other tenants and guests who came and went, but I was the constant; I was in – I could be counted upon, willing ear, willing conversant.

In the evenings, often, to the restaurants; he had money; retired at 49 on a great deal – yes, he had money, and we ate at every kind of restaurant, returning late, bellies full, exhausted. And even then, guests would come, more guests, to speak, to be heard. But I was already dismissed; even David was tired; even he wanted to rest, to read a book, to watch television. And the next morning it would begin again, the great torrent, the wave of talk.

I will not deny the marvel, the brilliance of what he said. Often, it was marvellous, clear and fresh – the opposite of dogma, the contrary of received wisdom. He spoke quickly, ebulliently; everything had happened to him or someone he knew; to his house came all kinds, from all religions, all backgrounds. He had known them all – famous people and obscure ones; they’d ring him, the famous, the obscure – the phone would ring, and it was a well-known composer, a well known pop star, a dignitary of the church or a man high up in radio; he was a broadcaster, and spoke a high, clear voice, on Thought for the Day on Radio 4. And there he was, singing on a Channel 4 documentary; and wasn’t his good friend, who visited everyday, in the pages of Hello with Prince Andrew?

The world turned around him. Where he went on his high-arched feet, the world revolved around him. The answers he had! The confidence that was his! What a relief to be spoken to and told – what relief to be listened to by a man who knew! Taxi drivers vied for his custom. In they would come, having transported him home, for tea and conversation. In came the postman and the builders and the roofer! In they came – to be heard, to be spoken to.

And who was I, in the midst of this? Who was I, who was there every day and saw everything, every episode? His tenant, that’s what I was called; that’s how I was introduced, so there’d be no misunderstanding. I was invited to everything, I met everyone, dined with everyone – but I was his tenant, and there were others of us; he always arrived, this planet, with a moon orbiting him.

Some nights, at Michaelangelo’s, we would joke the road outside was the sea. At the Nehemet Kadaha, he would be invited to dine on quail’s eggs for free; at Kyria Tina’s, we would eat big plates of – what was it called – Greek pork; at Renos’s, the mezes that would keep coming through the night. At the Nepalese, Raj would bring us whatever he liked – yes, this was the world; they knew him when he arrived, everyone knew him, and would bring him something to surprise and delight him, and he was always delighted and surprised. Manchester was his; it was his city. Manchester – and Salford – and Bolton: the whole conurbation: his, his kingdom.

And when I spoke to him? I could barely say a word. When I spoke? A few words, a phrase, a sentence – but it was never mine, when I spoke to him; I fell short of it. His presence was like the court in the courtroom: what was said there was said by way of that instituted space; it could not be otherwise. I was the defendant and he the prosecutor, even when he spoke, as he did, with words of kindness. Who was I to be perpetually defending himself? And who was he, with his hotline to God the judge? The case would never be resolved in my favour; I knew that. I was losing – I knew it. So did my twenties pass – there, being spoken to, the echo chamber of conversation, the perpetual defendant.

Why these memories? Why now, these memories? Only to know the writing that bears them. Only to let writing make itself from what lets itself be borne. Is it true, then, that I, too, would like to be certain? That writing would be my God, the certainty in which I spin like a neutron star? Or is it that by writing writing spins everything from it but itself, and this is the struggle: that to write, to continue to write must be to feed it memories, not to conserve them but to break them, to let them be broken across the surface of forgetting. For isn’t that writing always turns aside when I’ve nothing more to remember? Isn’t it that it plunges underground, away from me, then when I’ve got nothing else to feed it?

One day, I dream, writing will collapse on itself. One day, the collapse and everything – my whole life – will be drawn across its event horizon. When I stop, when I stop remembering and writing, writing disappears, it withholds itself from me. Hasn’t it thus transformed itself into forgetting? Doesn’t it become at that moment the edge of a black hole?

Too much writing; too much remembering – that’s what I said today to myself. There’s too much of this – too much going on – that’s what I said. For my own sake before anyone else’s. Yes, for my own sake, as though I was addicted to feeding my memories to writing, as though it was thus I could keep writing turning, spinning – writing that was confident in my place; writing sure of itself in my place. Is writing God? Is that what it’s become? Or is it that place where gods cannot be – the chaos from which gods are born and into which they must return?

The Wilderness

In the Meantime

We’re at the sand dunes – they’re supposed to be building something here, but nothing is being built. A cliff of sand, a halted mechanical digger, a wide field of long grass: this is where us children play, the ones who will be the last to know patches of wilderness such as this in the Thames Valley. We bring our bikes here in the long summer, a few of us. And what do we do? Scramble up and down the cliff; start fires in the dry grass. Above all, it is a wilderness, it is not here for any reason; they were planning to build a school here, but did not; soon, it will be transformed into a golf course. But in the meantime?

In the meantime: that is our time. Our friendship includes our relationship to this space and others, that have not been transformed into places of leisure and work. Off by bike to find other such places – patches of land forgotten by others, woods behind houses, the barrows; all gone now, all disappeared. Now are the suburbs as if they had been there forever. The takeover is complete when all signs of a struggle have vanished. For us, at that time – we were eleven or twelve -, passing through a new housing estate was enough. An estate just like ours, but unalike in one detail or another. A lake, say, or a river – that was enough to make it exotic. But best of all, open space. Best of all, open space without function, a space torn from space.

Through the long grass to the pond with tadpoles. Through the grass, with nets and jamjars. Or, travelling further, to the lake under whose rocks leeches are to be found. We press them on our arms – suck! They never suck, but drop off into the water. We put scrap wood down among the trees and turn it over weeks later in search of slow-worms and toads. And there are snails with different coloured shells which we will place on one side of the road to watch them cross, risking being crushed by cars. Then there are the ant’s nest between kerbstones, and that day when they swarm, and winged ants crowded the pavement. And the drains, down which we drop stones and mud and whatever we find: drains by which we sit and make up songs. Our wilderness, the gaps in the housing estates.

How is it the labyrinth of roads becomes a prison? How is it that the estates becomes the obstacle to our lives? We buy maps and cycle out to the larger expanses, the ranges the army claims as its own. We wander into plantations and through farmer’s fields. What is it we’re looking for? Why do we climb the low hills and look into the distance? There is something missing from our lives – what? Something is missing from our lives, but what is it?

We are friends by way of the wilderness. Our friendship is one of movement; we cycle – we search. So do the days of summer pass. One day, another – summer is passing. What will we have done this summer? Of what was it comprised? Day lies down on day. Days accrete, until summer acquires a shape, like a coral reef. That was our summer: we turn the object over in our heads. Yes, that was it, our summer, and our friendship which passed by way of the summer.

Later, when we are older, there are parties. Our days are spent waiting for parties; we count down each day as it comes. Forty-one days … forty. We play computer games. We cycle to a far town to buy cheap cans of drink. All time is lived in the direction of the party; the days point ahead of themselves like an arrow. We live in the not-yet; the days stand out ahead of ourselves. For what are we searching? When will it come?

But they come, the parties. And then – the post-mortem. Detailed discussion of everything that happened. Analysis. Did it happen, what we were looking for? What happened, even as it seemed to vanish in the crowded details of the event? Our lives were turning. Our schooldays were ending. Was this it – life? Was this all it was? At sixteen, seventeen, our days were full of vast holes. We had time on our hands, all of time! But now time wasn’t liberation, but oppression. Time became oppressive. What were we to do? What were we doing with our lives? Was this life? Was this it – life?

Still we were friends by way of the wilderness. But now it was the wilderness of waste, the expanses of waste. The days were closing themselves down; nothing new was beginning. Gradually, it became clear – gradually, it revealed itself: the extent of the day, the day’s mediocrity. The fields were lost under houses. Sometimes we would go to the construction sites and break the windows of the new houses. One night we went on a vandal’s trip and the security guards shouted at us and we laughed. What could we do? The fields went; the ponds were drained. Now came the companies – Microsoft and Digital Electronics! Now they appeared, the great companies and their workforces. What of our friendship? What of the wilderness by which our friendships lived?

Already they were succumbing to drugs, our friends. Already they were making a wilderness of their evenings, tearing time apart. They were disappearing, our friends – lost in hashish, lost in the smoke-haze. No longer scavanger’s trips to the backs of the shops on Sundays to see what we could find.  No longer thief’s trips to construction sites (rolling home a huge ball of lead). No more vandal’s trips to the new houses.

Once, the wilderness was full of promise. Each gap in the world pointed beyond itself: there was the future – there it was in time subtracted from time, just as space was subtracted from space. The wood glade was an indication; the lake pointed beyond itself; the diving beetles prophesised. And now? The future had arrived; we fell out of the world.

And then, one day, I was the last one left. The others had gone away to study, and I was left. Now it came, the apocalypse. Now came the unveiling, whereby I knew the gaps were closed and there was no future. What did I see? The completion of the suburbs, the indefinite expansion of the housing estates: it was over, the world was over. Walls on all sides. Escape – but to where? I worked; I took no holidays. I worked – the day was over; this was the apocalypse.

No need to search, it’s all – here. No need to travel; the world was expanding from – here. No escape; apocalypse: everything that was to happen had happened. Time had stopped going forward. It was a circle: time and space, a circle. I lived the same day over and again. And when they returned, my friends, from their holidays, it was only a brief reprise. When they came back, it was only to seize upon those few moments from which the last drop hadn’t been squeezed.

We were friends by way of the wilderness. Now, when we visit them, our friends have disappeared from themselves. Haze of smoke; a rented flat – three of friends collapsed, half-dead. Was this it? This was the apocalypse: this was all there was and would be. I worked at Digital Electronics; I worked at Hewlett Packard: there was no more time.

Two Alterities

Time is the other, says Levinas; no surprise that it is to erotic love, to romance that he will first trace the gift of time (even if such love is subordinated by him to the engendering of the son, by which the relation to the infinite is accomplished). Love: is it by that the wilderness might be found again? It is true in those days I did find such love, even as it eluded me – even as it did no more than vouchsafe itself and disappear.

Was that enough to be able to look beyond the world – or at least, receive it, the world, by way of the gaps in its extent, its unbroken horizon? It was nearly enough. Nearly – but didn’t it, that love, set itself against the apocalypse of the everyday so as to throw the latter more starkly into relief? Didn’t it confirm the closure of the world it opened?

And would I say the same of reading? I know this: that it was not by success that such love as I refer to could be known, but by its failure. Impossibility was its path; the wilderness was revealed to me because of what did not happen. Only by its withdrawal could love be known: this was its pain, but also its promise.

By this love had I been elected – but to what had it returned me but myself? I could say I learnt then of a wilderness inside that was the correlate of an outer wilderness: that the horizon of the world was breached even as my own horizon – the closed space of my identity – was likewise breached. What was awoken outside was awoken inside me too; henceforward I would know that inner falling away by her name, the one I loved. So it became, this name, a magic charm.

And what of reading? I consumed books; I was hungry; I read several a week. Came the day when I could not consume the book I read: Kafka’s The Castle held itself from me even as I read it. What was I reading? That by which I knew the meaninglessness of the world, its very extent as promise. This was miracle: an affirmation occurred by way of reading, of the very closedness of the world – or rather, that closedness, the wall of the world, became the blank screen upon which the world was projected, just as, by night, the window reflects the lit room with darkness behind it.

What had I discovered? Something like the nothingness of the world, only I did not suffer from what the world was not. Was it Sartrean freedom I had discovered? Heideggerian authenticity? Rather, it was the fall away from the self – the giving up of those contours which had held me intact and held the world apart from me. Who was I? The ‘who’ resounded without answer. In those two alterities, which came almost at once, I received the world again. But how long it took to learn the lesson of what I received by love and by reading!

The Ogre’s Heart

But perhaps I never learnt a thing. Is it because I’m a certain kind of person that I was attracted to the thinkers I admire? Or is that what I am was made by that encounter; that I cannot subtract myself from what I read? Perhaps this is a false alternative: isn’t that I was ready for the encounter and was changed by it, such that I was not myself thereafter? But I was already changed by what I encountered by way of the two alterities. How did I know that Blanchot would become important to me, I who could barely understand a line he wrote? But I understood and that reading laid the path I am following now. That was my life: is it possible to say that? Or is it that to live was to have been dispossessed and to have known friendship by way of dispossession. Wasn’t it in the wilderness I was already lost? Wasn’t that what I always sought – to lose myself?

The ogre in the fairy tale buries his heart in a chest somewhere far away; the hero, to kill him, must discover its location. What of me is buried in the Thames Valley? What is buried there, such I lag behind myself, snagged so that it is necessary to pass by way of the Thames Valley in order to speak of myself? My heart? Only if the heart is the organ that turns the body inside out. Only if it is by my heart that I am claimed by the two alterities that opened for me, then.

Others

Protection

How old am I – nine? ten? – when it comes to me that if I do not meet him, dad, at the top of the road as he comes home from work, he will die. Nine or ten, no older than that, and if I am not there to meet him, he will have died, I am sure of it. Do I already know he is ill? Or is it something else, a greater threat that I sense? Now it’s up to me to meet him, to hide and then surprise him and then to walk home with him.

But why? Does he really need my protection? If I do not meet him, then what? If I am not there to meet him, what will happen? But I must be there, so I am there. As if he needed my protection – from me, still a boy. As if I, still a boy, can afford him protection. But then he is the only brown man in these parts. And didn’t a girl reach out her hand in class to scratch me with her fingernails to see if I was brown underneath the surface of my skin, I who am not really brown at all? And think what my friend’s mum says about the Jews who employ her: they so greedy! We are not Jews, of course not, but if they’re in for it, so are we, that much is clear.

Us and the Jews on one side, the rest on the other. Us and the Jews on one side – and blacks, but there are no blacks here, I’ve scarcely seen anyone black since we moved out of Southall – and the whites on the others. The odds are stacked against us, that’s clear. We have to stick together, and though I don’t know any Jews, it is clear they’re on our side. Jews, us, blacks – all of us together, not like it was in Southall.

Jews, us, blacks versus the rest. There’s a Polish family up the road – on our side. And there’s my half-Egyptian friend at school – one of ours. There’s the rest, the whites, a great undifferentiated mass, the whites, hundreds and thousands of them, everywhere. All the whites! And then us!

Deaf ‘Uns

Back in Southall, whites and the blacks got along fine, but the we played by themselves. The blacks had some cachet with the whites, and the whites, who never needed to be called whites, they were still the majority, rubbed along with the blacks, but we played separately from the blacks and the whites on the concrete playground, when the others played on the school field. They broke Baraj’s arm, the blacks and the whites, but it was just rough and tumble, I knew that. His mum came in, crying, but it was just rough and tumble, boys will be boys, and so on. But we were best off avoiding the whites and the blacks, that was the lesson.

Sometimes, the whites and the blacks would together hunt down the deaf kids, the deaf ‘uns. Off they went, a great hunt for the deaf ‘uns. Summer on the playing field, hunting down the deaf ‘uns and pulling down their trousers and their pants – that was the sport. The deaf ‘uns, taught in a separate terrapin, and with boxes around their necks to help them hear – they were the Others, and they were for it. Open season on deaf ‘uns! Chase them! Pull down their skirts and their knickers, pull down their trousers and their pants! Separate one from the other and give chase, all across the field!

Paki Shops

When we moved out to the Thames Valley, it was our turn to be Others, we who never thought of ourselves as exotics, but whose names gave us away. How unfortunate, our names! How unfortunate, to be asked to explain where it is our names came from! ‘How did you get a name like that’? Now there are no blacks and only a few Asians, who run what are called paki shops. That’s what they’re called – paki shops. The mums and the dads of our friends refer to the paki shop – ‘are you going to the paki shop?’ Paki – that’s the word, that’s what they’d call us, given half the chance.

The Poles run one shop, the Asians another shop. It’s clear: the foreigners are here to serve the whites. There are whites, and there are foreigners, and the foreigners serve the whites. How unfortunate to be lumped in with the Asians at the paki shop! A morose, expressionless old lady served there, her hand cupped for our money – how unfortunate to be lumped in with her! Back in Southall, there were Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs – but out here, just an undifferentiated morass: pakis, each one the same as the rest.

The vandalism is directed at us – pakis out; NF – initials in a circle. At us. As a reminder – we were not welcome here. My friend’s mum would talk about the greedy Jews and the paki shop, so what did she say about us? We were pakis, to her, no question about that. To her: pakis, and though her son was allowed to play with me, he later joined the British National Party with her approval. ‘It’s a free country. He can do what he likes’.

Middle Class Hatred

She didn’t like the Jews. She resented them, with middle class resentment. She spoke about their greed, with middle class hatred. Quietly, but with hatred. Satirically, but with hatred. We didn’t know any Jews. Jehovah’s Witnesses we knew, but no Jews. Mormons we knew, but no Jews. True, there was the Jewish home for the handicapped, where some of the mums worked, but no Jews, or the Jews amongst us had not declared themselves.

Where were they, the Jews? I wondered what their houses were like. Back in Southall, I’d visit Indian friends and drink sweet tea from stainless steel cups. We’d sit on the floor and drink sweet, milky tea from hot cups. What would a Jewish house be like? They were greedy, said my friend’s mum, but she was not to be trusted. We had a German friend, and her house was different – a samovar and china and portraits of old barons; we were served Stollen and unfamiliar biscuits and she would speak to the children in German; and I had a half-Egyptian friend, a Copt, though there was nothing particularly Coptic about his house; his mother was Dutch, but there was nothing particularly Dutch about his house.

I knew the white middle class had a special punishment waiting for the Jews. I knew it, for they were loathed for being so similar to the whites. At least we weren’t similar to the whites, us lot. At least there were clear identifying marks to tell us apart from the white middle class. But the Jews – what trouble! They had the temerity to look like them, the white middle class! What temerity! Special punishment for them, then! Special punishment for looking so similar and being so different! We’d be up against the wall, no question, but they’d have a special torture for them, the Jews.

The Pack

Later on, at secondary school, I was moved to the back to sit with the skinheads and thugs. Truce in the classroom, but open season in the playground. Truce in form period, when they’d carve WHITE POWER into their knuckles with compass points and Indian ink and talk about skinhead bands and setting their dogs on pakis and tramps, but open season in the breaks. But outside the classroom – avoid them! Keep clear of them! They went around in packs – avoid them! Keep out of their way!

Luckily for me, there were many Others, all sorts at our school. A sprinkling of all races – just a sprinkling. There were the weaker remedials, who were taught separately from the rest of us. Plenty of Others to pick out from the herd! Plenty of Others, where weakness and victimhood is all, regardless of anything else! So was the retarded boy thrown in the river in the winter. So did they break the ice with his body. So was the brown-skinned boy chased round the school and beaten to the ground and kicked and kicked. They were on the look out for weakness. For Others. Others didn’t have a chance. They’d be found. No bolthole could hide them. They’d be driven out, exposed. It was time for a kicking. Time for a beating. For the most part, I escaped. Mostly, I was cunning enough to escape. But for the Others – no mercy.

Sometimes, they were made to fight one another, the Others. The burnt boy whose hair grew in clumps and patches around his scars was set upon the big lad with learning difficulties. Let them fight it out! Let them fight, for everyone’s entertainment! Let them scrabble for a place slightly higher than the lowest rung, for everyone’s entertainment!

Like dogs in the mud, they fought. Like dogs – fighting, and around them, the crowd, the crowd encouraging them. Fight! And they fought, pathetically, one against the other. Weak blows, weak neckholds – the Others couldn’t even fight! How pitiful! They can’t even fight! And so the crowd dispersed and turned away. The Others – they couldn’t even fight!

Later, the pack would be kept busy with dramas with their girlfriends. They stand about smoking, their arms around their girlfriends, at peace for the first time. They’ve become gentler; soon it will be time for them to leave school. We come out from our boltholes and hiding places; they’re busy, the pack-hunters, the thugs; the school is ours again to pass out the long sentence of our childhood.

The Protector

Earlier, before the rot. I am 9 or 10, long before secondary school. Dad’s coming home in the sun. Would he die on the way home? Would he be stabbed on the way home? I’ll surprise him, I think to myself. I’ll meet him at the top of the road, I tell myself.

Then, behind me, an older boy on a bike calls out: ‘what are you doing?’ – ‘Waiting’. – ‘What for?’ – ‘My dad’. He cycles away. Then, later, when I am coming home with him, my dad, who has miraculously survived another day, I see him again on his bike, the lone boy, the lone hunter. Will he turn, this boy who would sometimes kick a football around with me on the wasteground? Will he join the great pack? I can tell: he’s on the cusp. I can tell already: he’s on the cusp. Like the others, he’s waiting for a Hitler. Like the others, he’s primed and ready and waiting for a Hitler.

But money is coming to the Thames Valley, and soon new people move into the area. The motorway reaches us; the big American companies set up in new industrial estates. In truth, this is what saves the region from being mired in hatred and mediocrity. It comes, the great tide of capital, and with it, new workers from all over the world. We are not the only ones anymore, the only Others. They have come, the other Others, from all over the world. The town is changing; the region is changing, it’s beautiful. They’re coming from all over the world, and there are plenty more of them to come. The white middle class can fantasise all they like; we’re here – this is no longer pioneer country; we’re here and Hitler’s coming is infinitely deferred.

I won’t have to meet him, my dad, from work any more. He’ll survive. And now another story begins – no longer the violence of bullies and tormentors, but the slow triumph of capital. No longer discipline, but control.

Hopelessness

Hopelessness without hope – what does that mean? Hopelessness and no hope, without even the glimmer of hope – what does that mean? It is inconceivable – that you can think of hopelessness, conceive of it, already attests to the power of thought; to think is already to hope.

But what of an experience without power, where power drains away and you are immersed in the great marsh of the moment? You have lost your hold on time; you are beneath time; time gives you no purchase. But you cannot think of this, cannot conceive of it. To think is to find purchase, to move upstream of the great marsh; it is to discover the fresh movement of the river.

What is it to live beneath time? You cannot remember – to remember is to have grasped the moment and inserted it among others. Memory depends on the commensurability of such moments; it cannot grasp hopelessness, which is ungraspable.

Hopelessness: no purchase, no fleeing upstream or downstream. A wound in time; the wounding of time, imaginable as a wound in space – as the marsh on which nothing can be built and nothing began. What is it, hopelessness? The absence of time, time unworked. What is it, to lose hope?

True, I can remember nothing of hopelessness. But does it not insist, hopelessness, in my memory? Does it not insist, pressing towards me, as a non-memory within memory? As though forgetting were something tangible and present, such that it exceeded everything present and the measure of presence. As though forgetting brought to memory something more present than anything. As though it brought from the past the collapsed sun that consumes everything.

Now the past is the event horizon; now, across the past and the return of the past, disappears everything present, everything alive. Hope disappears; the past envelops you. Who are you, no longer alive, but not dead? The past has come. The measureless past has come close to us. It has returned, the past, but the past unremembered. It has touched memory, the forgotten past. And isn’t this the way hopelessness comes? Isn’t this the way it returns, hopelessness? It is the past come again; the stretch of marshes in which nothing is possible.

I am wounded; time has left great marks across me. Wounded, and the past has left claw marks in my flesh. I can’t remember; I’ve lost hold on memory. But the past remembers; it remembers in my place. Who am I, thus forgotten? I am buried deep in the earth. Who am I? The dreaming one, whose dreams are the aurora borealis. I’ve forgotten; forgetting happens in me and across me. The wind scrapes the marshes; the wind flattens the marsh-reeds. Above me, somewhere above, aurora borealis.

Dreaming, Dying

From R.M., I receive a copy of Leiris’s Nights as Day, Day as Night, a book of dreams. It is as important to know that such a book exists as to read it. Important to know that dreams can be remembered. Here are notes on three of my writing dreams (dreams dreamt while writing, not while sleeping).

Contorsion: image of the animal with a broken back. Image of the broken-backed creature crying out. I think of the teleported chimp in The Fly. What survives? Bones and flesh, twitching. Bones and flesh, grotesquely contorted, half-alive, still twitching.

Why is it that in bones and flesh do I see the truest image of the human, as though it was only in agony that a human cry could be heard? A human cry, and not an animal’s – a suffering, now, that is endured in bliss. For though the animal, like the human, comes close to death in that cry, it is the human who endures death and survives it. Who survives and love death like the salamander that would live in its flames.

What is this happiness, this desire for death? What is it, this desire, in which death is lived and lived by dying? How magnificently the human being turns on itself! How strange, and how magnificent, this turn into dying!

What does the image of the salamander tell me? Is it a dream? I wonder whether it is possible to dream in writing, to let myself, by writing, be brought to this dream, this dreaming. Salamanders, the contorted beast: each is an image, and an image among others. Is it the beginning of a reflection – a kind of root, from which new growth could take hold? Or is it, instead, the bloom of a marsh plant, the result of a refusal to begin (the marsh: the place without beginning; the shifting earth that never permits the beginning-place)?

Another dream. The water locked in the ground, in the permafrost, is melting. Above: the flash of the aurora borealis, and each star is as though drilling into the darkness; each is a stigma in the body of the night. Disgusting flowers bloom from the damp earth. Disgusting insects swarm around the flowers. The earth has become fetid; there is no death, only dying. What creatures live here? What creatures survive here, in the midst of dying?

Below the earth, the dead are dreaming. Below the earth, as the earth is unfrozen, the dead dream. But they were never dead, only frozen. The dead were never dead: this is my third dream. I am among the dead in my third dream. I never died, in my third dream. And then I know that sleeping is a kind of dying, or a survival of death. That to dream is always to dream with the ones who cannot die. And writing, what is that? Writing: awake when every animal is asleep. Writing, awake even beyond death. Writing: the salamander, the marsh flower, the dreaming corpse.

Webs

It’s the caffeine, I tell myself. Too much caffeine – you were always sensitive to it, and now it’s the ruin of you. Patches of dry, itchy skin over your palm-heels – caffeine. Resurgence of eczema – caffeine. And reading back over the blog for the last few months last night when I couldn’t sleep (I can’t sleep anymore), I thought: this is terrible writing. It’s the caffeine.

I remembered the experiments where they subjected a spider to various drugs and photographed the web it made. First, the marajuana-spider – a lazy web, just a few glistening strands. Second, the alcohol-spider, no web at all, a few strands collapsed on themselves. Third, the caffeine-spider, a very intense web, but a mess of strands, a complete mess. So too with this writing, I thought at five AM this morning. It’s no good, I thought, as I weeded out the really terrible posts.

None of this is any good. A lot of activity, but for what? It’s like the web of the caffeine spider – a mess of webstrands, holding nothing, capturing nothing. What was I thinking? That I could publish anything I pleased? That my anything-at-all was worth publishing? But nothing I wrote was worth publishing, and it certainly wasn’t worth reading. Then it came, the dream: a cool, clear prose. Then it came: the dream of bell-like clarity, of limpid prose: the replete and glistening web.

But isn’t that its sleight of hand, that clarity? Is precision precise – is calmness another way to stand apart from the world and from the streaming of the world? Isn’t cool, precise prose the final temptation – the idea of a language that could say it all, in which everything could be said and could be said calmly: the many-stranded web on which the world would allow itself to be caught?

How I distrust it! How it is to be distrusted, the prose which makes nothing of itself, which makes no fuss! Clarity, precision: nothing worse. Measuredness, calmness: nothing worse. Better the web that laughs at itself, I thought. Better the web that knows it will capture nothing, I told myself. That laughs at itself, and is deliberately ragged. That laughs at itself and its own imposture. Better the drunken web and the caffeinated web! Better the web made on Cava and green tea! Better the revel-web that laughs at itself, at its own imposture, and that first of all!

Nothing worse that the calm and reflective voice, which is really the penitent voice, the craven-on-the-ground-before-God voice! Nothing worse than the sober voice, which is really the maudlin-drunken voice. Nothing worse than the voice that would lift itself above the others as if to deliver itself to a God’s-eye perspective, to the summit of the tower of Babel!

Below: the swarming of all the voices, the vulgar crowd. Above: the voice of God, the voice that sails close to God. What is worse than this voice, which considers everything and assesses everything and is untouched by everything? What is worse than it – this voice, which would lift itself from the babble of which it is part?

How to have done with it, the judgement-voice, the transcendent-voice, the surveying-everything-and-decreeing voice? How to plunge it, this voice, into the Babel of all voices? How to dissolve it in the Babel of voices disgusted with themselves and laughing at themselves?

How I revolt myself! How I disgust myself! – But without this revulsion, without this disgust, which is first of all a revulsion at God and a disgust with God – without this mobile horde of destruction which is first of all self-destruction? Without the daily confusion of tounges?

The Waterwheel

How rare to have a day, a whole day, to myself. But here it is, that day, after weeks of travelling back and forth from one place to another. I am here in the South; the room is light. We watch Fanny and Alexander, mum and I; I have borrowed her laptop.

A Danish family does not celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day, but on the day before. Yesterday, it was Christmas, and today? Other people’s Christmas. Books about India piled up on the floor. A new edition of Scrabble, which we played until the early hours last night. Jo Malone bags and a new diary and the copy of In the Shadow of No Towers I bought for my sister, and the set of Allen Keys I got from my brother-in-law and the bicycle lights I bought for him.

Why not write about our meals and conversations, the time at the pub – these events which make up the substance of life? Sometimes I imagine to myself these events are like the water that turns the waterwheel, flowing ceaselessly in order to turn it, time – that they do not occur, these events, within time but across it. Yes, that’s how I imagine it: we exist for the sake of time, for the turning of events; so we are drawn into the drama of life and death.

Then it is by passing events across time that moments are separated from their original co-happening. As though everything happened together, all at once – and all events are overlapped, even now. It is a question of perception – of finding the right angle, from which all can be seen. How old am I now? How many Christmases have there been? But they have all happened at once; they overlap. What day is this? What year?

Leave time to itself, and what would it become? Leave it to itself, time, and what would it become? Non-event, non-happening; the return of what does not occur and does not happen.

Son of The Book

Books about books: you moan about them, don’t you? Books about books – not books, but books about books – that’s where you think the problem is’ don’t you? Books about books – and not books, that’s the problem, for you, isn’t it? Not enough – books. Too many – books about books.

Well then, are you going to write a book? Are you going to write a book that is not a book about books? What are you going to do about them, these books about books? Are you going to write a book – a real book – of your own? Because everyone’s writing books about books, that’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it? Books about books, and not a single book, you whine. Books about books about books, Byzantism and Alexandrianism, the long decline, you whine. Books about books but no books, you whine.

So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to write a book that is not a book about books? Are you – a book and not a book about books? Is that what you’re going to do? Is it? I’ve never heard anyone say, I want to grow up to be a critic, said Richard Pryor. You don’t want to be a critic, do you? You don’t want to be a writer who writes at one remove, do you? You want to be a primary author, don’t you? You’ve bought the myth, haven’t you? You want to write your own books in your own name, don’t you? That’s what you’re dreaming of, isn’t it?

A book. Under your own name. Not a book about books, but a book. In your own name. A book on its own two feet. A book alone, and that is not about other books. A book! And not a book about books! That’s what you want, isn’t it: to write a book! No longer writing at one remove, but a book! On its own two feet: the book! That will not even require your signature! That will dismiss you as soon as it is written! A book, all by itself, with no need for you, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be refused by the book you made! To be given back to yourself by the book! To feel your own book slam the door in your face! To be dismissed by your own book!

Not a book about books, not a commentary-book or an introductory-book, but a book unto itself, a book on two feet, a book that raises itself out of nothing and hangs there in the void. The book like a star contracted upon itself. The book like the star that burns only itself, remote and distant. The book that does not need you. Pinnochio who does not want you to be his father. The golem who no longer obeys your commands. There it goes, the Frankenstein book, sufficient unto itself. There it goes, cleverer than you and better than you, the book that is sufficient unto itself.

Better than you, cleverer than you, surprassing you in everything: your book that is no longer your book. The book which says: I don’t need you and disappears. The book which has already gone off on its own adventures, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be dismissed. To be expelled by something you wrought. To create what finds you imperfect. To create what is more perfect than you. To be dismissed by it, its perfection. To be cast out into contingency and flux. To be exiled by the book, which is paradise. To be expelled, sent out by the paradise of the book, that’s what you want.

To make something you could not make. To write beyond your abilities. To make – the book. And not a book about books. The book – on two legs, its own two legs, running through the forest like Baba Yaga’s hut. The book – appearing and disappearing like Doctor Who’s Tardis. The book – not a book about books, but a real book. Not a fabrication, but something real. Not dead, but alive – a living book that leaps up and runs about. A living book, a living flame, a star which consumes only itself.

And you, who will you be, cast into the outer darkness? Who will you be, measured by your book? Like a miserable father whose child surpasses him. Like a miserable ancestor of a glorious forebear, dismissed, cast out. That’s what you want, isn’t it – to cast yourself out. That’s what you want: to dismiss yourself. To say, get out!  Leave! We don’t want you here! To say it to yourself through the book! To hear it from the lips of the book! To hear the book say, get out! we don’t need you here! and for the book to turn its shoulder to you. For the book to turn its great back to you.

You are not Fay Wray to the book’s Kong. You are not Naomi Watts to the King of the jungle. The book does not want you; it wll not seek you. It closes itself to you. It will lie in your hands, closed and inert. There it is, in your hands, dreaming of who knows what. There it is, the book, but elsewhere the book is already adventuring. Here it is, sent by the publishers, the book – but it’s already having adventures of its own. Adventures – away from you, dismissing you. That’s what you’d write, isn’t it – the book, and not a book about books.

That’s what you’re aiming for, isn’t it? That’s what will justify your life, isn’t it? The misery and stupidity of your life. The pointlessness of your life – that’s what will justify it, isn’t it? That it’s going nowhere, that it was botched, that it missed all the marks – that’s what will redeem it, won’t it? You remember what Zarathustra said about redemption don’t you? It’s to will your own past – to have willed that you lived as you lived. That’s what you want by way of the book, isn’t it? To expunge all the misery and failure, isn’t it? To wipe it clean, the mess of a life – to remove the stain of your life.

For that’s what your life is, isn’t it – a stain. You’ve left a stain instead of a life. A stain – and not a legacy. And so you dream the book will be your legacy. And so the book becomes the dreamt-of-legacy, the anti-stain, the wiping away of stains and smears and scum. So the book will justify and redeem the misery of your life. So you can say: I willed it thus, my life. So it can be said: I willed it thus, willed that it happened thus, my life.

You will say: so was my life justified and redeemed. So did it make sense – through the book. Through the book which was not a book about books, but a book. Through the clean gesture of the book. Through the knife stroke of the book. Through the sword of judgement that comes down as the book. Redeem me, book! Redeem my life, book! Let me say: I willed it thus, all of my life. Let me say, as I cross the bridge: it was worth it, and let it come again, my life. Let me say: let it come again, all of it, the whole cosmos – let it come again, one more time, I will it thus. That’s what you want, isn’t it?

Because what would your life be worth otherwise? What will it have been worth? Because what else will your life have been but the attempt to write the book? Mishima got it wrong, didn’t he – trying to redeem a life outside of the book – to redeem writing by a violent act. Isn’t it that the act, too, must belong to the book? Mishima’s ritual suicide lies outside of his book, and is therefore unredeemed. His death, his hostage-taking of the army general, his doomed speech to the troops lies outside the book, and means nothing. You will not die, you who the book will give birth like a son? You will not die, you who are reborn as the book gives birth to itself, father to the matrix that will bear you.

I will be the son of my book, that’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it? I will be the father of my book, which will give birth to me as to its son, that’s what you hope for, isn’t it? Whisper it: I will be alive and dead by the book. Whisper it: I will live in death by the birth of my book.

Quirks and Tics

You always take the easiest path, don’t you? Always the easiest path, the simplest one. Think of the sacrifices everyone made for you. Think of what they did for you, all the others, to throw you a little farther ahead than they were able to get. Think of them, the others, who prepared the way for you and made things easier for you. And what will you do? What contribution will you make?

All you’ve ever wanted is a corner in which to work. That’s all you want, isn’t it: a corner, quiet, in which to work. Outside, the storms are raging, outside it’s all going to pot, but you are in your corner, inside, warm and safe and taking account of nothing but what you call your work. Peace, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Peace, that would be enough, wouldn’t it? Is that’s how you’re going to pass your life: in your corner, working away? Will that be what you did with your life, working in your corner while the storms rage outside?

Because the storms are raging and a world is ending. Because they are here, the great storms, and soon the old world will have passed. But you’re working, aren’t you? You’re busy, aren’t you, busy in your corner, too busy for anything but what you call your work. Do you understand what it is like for them, for the rest of them? Do you know what sacrifices were made for you and in your name? And for what? What have you done with your life, what have you done for anything but what you call your work? I’ll tell you what: nothing.

And you’ve done nothing for yourself, do you understand that? You’ve not even done anything for yourself, do you know that? One day, another, on the same detour. One day, another, on the long trail away from life and meaning and purpose. For you took the wrong turn, didn’t you? You let yourself get lost, didn’t you? And where have you found yourself? In the corner, working in the corner. In the corner, away from the others, your back turned to the world, working.

And what is it you’re working on? What is it that’s so important you’ve neglected everyone around you? What is it of such world-shaking significance which means you can justify your neglect of everything about you? What is the mighty task for which you require such peace? What is so significant that you require such silence?

Think of them, your ancestors. Think of how they worked, how they came to this country from afar and worked. Think of them, sacrificing themselves for you. What have you done? What is it that you’ve done with your life? For you’re not young, are you? You’re not even young any more, are you? What have you got to show for it, your youth? What can you show for the chances you’ve had?

Isn’t it time to do something with your life? Because there’s no way of justifying it, is there, your life? You can’t justify it to yourself, can you, your life? Is that why you work? Is that why you turn away from the world to work? You’re turning away from yourself, aren’t you, and your own shame? You’re turning away from your shame, the shame that should fill everything you do, aren’t you? Because you know it’s a lie, don’t you? You know your own imposture, don’t you?

You turned your back to the world, and from what needs your attention in the world. You turned your back on the world and ignored the storms of the world. You know it. You know what you might have done. You know what you could have done. And it fills you with shame, doesn’t it? It fills you with shame to think what others might have done in your place, and with the opportunities you had, doesn’t it? It fills you with shame to think of the ancestors, that they came to this country with nothing and made a world for themselves with nothing?

What a childhood you had! You wanted for nothing! They had nothing, your ancestors, and what did you have – everything? It fills you with shame, doesn’t it, which is why you call out for peace and turn yourself to the wall? It makes you ashamed, doesn’t it, which is why you draw the curtains and turn to your corner? Everyone did what they could for you and what do you do? Nothing.

But you’re getting old, there’s no question of that. Old, and you’re cultivating tics, aren’t you? Old – and you’ve tics and quirks, haven’t you? Your eyes and dulling and your hair is greying. It’s going wrong, you can’t deny that. Old, old, and what have you done? Old, too many years passed, and what are you doing?

You took the easy path, didn’t you? You took the way of indolence and idleness, didn’t you? You took the way of laziness and slackness, didn’t you? The storms are raging, and what are you doing? The world’s tearing itself apart and what have you done?

Quirks and tics – that’s your future, isn’t it? You’re becoming an eccentric, aren’t you? Life’s giving you up, isn’t it? Life’s giving up on you, isn’t it? Tics and quirks, and soon they’ll have to make excuses for you, your friends and family, won’t they? Quirks and tics, and they’ll have to excuse you, won’t they? Because you’ve turned away from them, haven’t you? You’ve turned away from everything and everyone, haven’t you? And soon the process will be complete. Soon, it will be done. You’ll tell yourself, I failed, but I tried. You’ll say to yourself, I failed, but I tried – but that is a lie. Because in the end, you took the easiest of routes, didn’t you?

What have you done? What have you achieved? Nothing. But that’s not new. You knew that, didn’t you? You knew it had to be that way, didn’t you? But what’s worse – what’s so much worse is that you never tried, did you? Worst of all is that you did not try, did you? You’re getting old, you can’t ignore that, though you try to. You’re getting old, and you’re too old to lie to yourself, aren’t you?

All around you the storms are raging. All around you – the raging storm. And you turned from the storms. You turned away. You turned – and what is worst is you knew you were turning. You turned – you knew, by the shame in you, you knew. In shame, you knew – knew from what you were turning, just as you still know it. And isn’t that the worst thing about you? Isn’t that the worst, that you know what you’ve done and what you’re doing?

1,000,000 Words

Anabasis

I want by writing to move the day forward, I know that. Want, that is, something to be achieved by writing and simply by writing that moves the day forward. And when it goes wrong? When the post is malformed – when it is published too early and I do not see that until the next day? The event I thought happened did not happen; I am in lieu of a day – I still owe that day something if I am to put it behind me. But what do I owe?

Right now, I am writing in the space of yesterday’s second post. The second post went wrong; it was all wrong, I saw it this morning. I am writing in place of the second post because of what I owe to the day. Unless I overwrite it, unless something else is saved in its place, the day will not turn, and today will be yesterday, that’s what I tell myself.

But what went wrong? I blame the scripts I was reading yesterday afternoon. I blame my reading of yesterday afternoon. Chris Marker. It was his scripts I was reading, and I thought: I’d like to write in short paragraphs. Would like to write without continuity, in short paragraphs, where each paragraph rests in itself like an island. An archipelago-text of islands, each paragraph closed upon itself.

Why did I fail? Overuse of phrases like ‘once’ and ‘I remember’. Undeveloped scenes; it was all wrong, it had all gone wrong. This morning, two cups of coffee and back to the blog. This time, it’s not pleasurable, I do not have a sense of the morning ahead of me, and last night’s cider still inside me. No pleasure: writing as duty. Writing as a discharge of debt. I owe something to the day; I am deficient. I am snagged by the failure of yesterday. Which means I have to write today, and that’s my first priority. Without writing, today will not be today. If I do not write, the day will not turn.

Failure. It was the wrong thing to read, Chris Marker. How many years I spent reading the wrong things. Wonderful texts, very beautiful, but the wrong thing, the wrong thing for me to read. St.-John Perse, Char, Claudel – all wrong. Even Char was wrong. And Marker’s beautiful texts remind me of Anabasis. Anabasis! Book of books! I did not read the literature of apes. Did not read the words apes wrote, who knew they would never write Anabasis! Did not write as an ape, but only apishly, by imitation. Just like yesterday, by imitation!

Sentinels

How far things have fallen! How far they’ve fallen when there is nothing left of skill and talent! How far in a writing – mine – devoid of skill and talent! You are an ape, I should have told myself, and should not write apishly. Write as an ape, I should have told myself, and not apishly. Drive skillessness and talentlessness as far as you can, I should have told myself. Drive the prose on, paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, my the force of an ape who is unashamed to be an ape, unashamed to write when he should not be writing – when he, above all, should not write. Let the prose drive itself on without talent, without skill, I should have told myself. Read nothing exquisite. Read nothing that is written with grace and poise. Because that’s what you most lack, grace and poise.

In truth, you are a creature of your age, I should have told myself. Of this age, when anything goes, when even someone like you can get on. In an earlier age, I should have told myself, it would never have been allowed, you would never have been let near a pen, let alone paper. At another time, you would have been kept from pens and paper, from writing materials and desks, and rightly so.

They would have stood before you, calmly and intractably, barring your way. You do not belong there, their folded arms would say. It is not for you to write, it will only make you unhappy to do what you cannot do, that’s what their height and broadness would say. We are made for different things, they would say, and you are not made for writing, that’s what the muscles of their forearms would say. Just as they stood there simply to bar my way and bar the way of others like me, I should find that place where I could discharge what I was made for.

As it is, I know only what I am not made for. As it is, I know what I cannot do and have failed to do. Apishness. How is it, then, that I’ve been permitted to do what I should not do? I thought I’d deceived everyone, thought I’d found my way in by animal cunning. I thought: it is by my cunning that I’ve written books and written essays, that I was able to sneak in, an ape among humans. But in truth, everyone could see exactly what I was; it was obvious to them straightaway. In truth, I was clearly an ape – it was as clear as daylight, and they let me in knowing I was an ape.

I had fooled no one; I had no animal cunning. Fooled no one – they all knew, it was clear to them, but they were indifferent; they did not stand there as they would in the past, tall and strong and with folded arms. I had got past them; but this was no struggle. Anything goes. Anything goes because nothing matters. No skill, no talent, no learning, no scholarship: it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. No one cares, and this above all. No one cares and none of it matters. Your bad books do not matter. Your bad articles do not matter. None of it matters. What you write at the blog does not matter. None of it matters. You can write as much as you like, but it will disappear and it does not matter.

They do not care. They did not bar my way, but nor did they welcome me in. I got in – how was that? I was in – but by their indifference. I arrived after the collapse. That I arrived was a sign of the collapse, it’s truest sign. That they would take me in was the clearest possible sign of the collapse, its clearest evidence. If only I’d come sooner, when they were standards: I could not think that. If only I’d been pushed, if only there were others around me to force me on: I could not think that.

Because I could not have arrived any earlier than I arrived. Could not have come a day sooner. That I arrived already betokened the collapse. It was finished, it was over, and I was an ape playing in the ruins. It was already over, and I was the ape who fooled himself into thinking what he did mattered. What did they expect from me? Nothing. What was expected of me? Nothing at all. So why did I expect anything of myself? In truth, it had already collapsed. In truth, it was finished, it was already finished, and what chance did I have.

Did they laugh at me, those who let me in? Did they laugh at my apish exploits, the ones who had left me pass? Not even that, for it didn’t interest them. Not even that, because they had already turned away and I was allowed to do whatever I liked. It was my stupidity to think they were still watching. It was my idiocy to think they were watching me, despite everything. I thought: I’ve failed, without understanding there was nothing to gauge my failure and no one who cared whether I failed or not.

What little I might have achieved, I will not achieve now. What little I could have done, I will never do now. When did I turn from trying to publish to writing here? When did I turn from the effort to publish, to write publishable work, to writing here? Was it when I finally realised that it did not matter what I published? Was it the moment when I saw it was immaterial what I published and did not publish? Was it the moment when I knew the complete indifference of everyone around me?

For there are no sentinels and no one watching. No one is watching and no one cares. After years of trying to get in, I was in, and no one cared. After years of trying to get in, I, who never should have been let in, was in. I was in – I who should never have been let in. Who let me in? In truth, no one let me in. That I was in was proof that being in did not matter anymore, that it had collapsed, the distinction between inside and outside.

Inside, not outside. Writing and publishing, inside. Publishers coming to my door and asking for my manuscript – what could it mean? That I’d got in because of my skill and because of my talent? That someone had seen promise in me? That I had pulled an elaborate confidence trick? None of these things: I was in, because nothing mattered anymore, the sentinels did not care, anyone could publish anything, anywhere, anyone could write whatever they liked and get published somewhere. Nothing mattered – and that first of all.

What little I might have achieved in the old system is impossible now. What little I might have done, what work might have been coaxed from me, is now without chance, and rightly so. It’s finished, and it was finished from the first. I run up and down the halls, an ape in his freedom, without knowing that there is only indifference, and no freedom. Up and down the halls, making my apish hoots and calls and none of it matters.

And when it finally dawned on me? When it finally became clear that I could do whatever I like? I stopped writing. I stopped trying to publish. And wrote here, instead. And blogged here, instead. What have I achieved over two years of blogging? What has been done, in the two years of Spurious? Two years, 900 posts, 25,000 words a month. Two years, 600,000 words in total, more than the 400,000 words I’ve published. 1,000,000 words in the public domain, 400,000 published and 600,000 vanity published, that is, blogged. And what’s been achieved? What’s happened as a result of my 1,000,000 words?

I run up and down the halls, hooting and hollering. But no one is listening and no one can hear me. I run up and down, hollering, standards have collapsed! it’s all finished!, but no one cares, because they already know it’s finished, and that I, an ape, can run up and down the corridors is already a sign of the collapse. 1,000,000 words: the first 400,000 is the cry of the ape to be noticed and the second 600,000 is the whining of the ape who knows he will never be noticed.

Gifts

1. Before he became ill, he would play cricket for the company in the playing field on the other side of the canal from our house. I remember him very smart and handsome in his cricket whites. As a child, you want your father to be a champion. When we played rounders on our picnics, he could be counted upon to hit the tennis ball in a great, high arc with his bat.

2. Once, when I went to meet him from work on my bike, he raced me the half mile to our house, running all the way in his suit with a briefcase in his hand. And I remember, too, the time we tried to make a kite from balsa wood and brown wrapping paper. It didn’t fly; the wind didn’t take it as it did, years later, the bought kite that sailed what seemed a mile into the sky until there was no twine left on our spool. Then there was the paper plane he used to make us, much better with its complexly folded nose than our simple darts, in command of its movement, moving dignifiedly through the air.

3. When he came home from business trips overseas, he would bring us gifts, and we would wait as he ate and changed his clothes to be given these gifts, although the rule was we were never to be greedy, and never to show our impatience.

What had he brought us? For mum, perfume from duty free and fabrics, and for us, the children? Black market tapes: a cassette of David Bowie songs called Golden Years, Ultravox’s Vienna, a compilation of songs by the Beatles, but never Roxy Music, which I always asked for. Never Roxy Music, whose name I liked. He brought us Thriller, and the pirates had added creepy sound effects between the tracks, and Wham’s Fantastic!, with a whole other band playing Wham-like tracks on the B side.   

After one trip, he brought us a soft toy. We felt a mixture of appreciation and disappointment. He’d gone to the trouble of finding a soft toy for us; we appreciated the effort. But the toy itself? A mother goose with a bonnet, suitable only to be hung in a pram. A mother goose – but we were children, and we wanted our toys, too, to be children. True, we had a family of sausage dogs, knitted by my grandmother, with a mummy and a daddy, with an older brother and a rapscallion uncle, but its centrepiece was always the ‘youngest’ dog, or at least the smallest one. But a mother goose? At that moment, I felt sorry for him, because he hadn’t understood why this toy was the wrong toy.  Sorry for him, and even tender, for a man who didn’t know what toy to buy, although he wanted to buy us a toy. Was I older than him, who was older than me? Was I wiser than he was in the way of toys? In that moment I was older than my father: yes, that was why I felt tender.

4. Soon, it would happen that the company for which he worked lost their bids, and he no longer went on those foreign trips. They took him from his office and put in him in the new open plan office. We knew from our visits that he had an office of his own, with a secretary just down the hall. He ate in the second of the three canteens – the first was for technicians and secretaries, the next one for engineers and salesmen, and the third for managers. One of his colleagues would reach out to shake hands with us and place a wrapped sweet in our hands – what a treat! But now, our dad had been moved from his own office, with its high ceiling and wide, white walls, into an open-plan office, his desk facing a filing cabinet.

5. On Fridays, he would come home with beer on his breath. He’d been to the office club, and was now jolly, despite the long drive home through traffic. A pint, two pints – he was jolly, and when he came home in the summer, we said to each other, he looks like a film star, with his aviator shades and his shirtsleeves, and his blazer over his shoulder. I would go to open the door for him, the film star who had come home to us.

6. Your face is spicy, my sister would say of his stubble. He rubs his jaw and cheek. Do you think I should grow a beard? And we both say: no!

7. Every year, the Christmas party at the club. One night, as we were coming home down a hill, he let go of my pushchair. I felt something of the same panic when, twenty years later, I was learning to drive, and he wanted me to reverse into the busiest of roads. Curious, this desire for risk, for risking himself and risking others. He would drive too fast, and mum would protest. But he liked to go fast and he liked risk, and I think he liked letting go of that pushchair, even as I, picking up my mum’s worry, panicked as I felt it gather speed.

8. He had a way of smiling at mishaps. When something bad happened – nothing really terrible – he would smile, as if to say, how could it have been any different? what did you expect? I’ve caught it from him, that smile. When my friend fell off his bike, I smiled in that way. It made my friend angry. But by that smile that day I knew I was like my father.

9. Once, on a picnic, when a group of us children were allowed to run around as we pleased, I hurt myself and separated myself from the others, crying. I was away from the playground, and there he was, on the path. We walked together, he holding my hand. How old was I then? 9? 10? Too old to cry at such a light injury, no doubt. But we went along the path, and this time he didn’t smile at my mishap. I appreciated his quietness. Why was he walking alone, away from the other adults? Why did he know what to do, that day, as a father? But he knew.

A few weeks ago, before he died, I read Sarraute’s Childhood, and wrote a few notes on memories I would like to write about one day. Holland Park, I wrote, and underlined those words. Yes, Holland Park – that’s where it had taken place, that’s where I had cried and we had walked, he and I. We came across Holland Park while walking in London, R.M. and I: the Commonweath Institute, the adventure playground; it was as it had been, 25 years before.

How is that time passes? How is it that it passes, time, when everything, all these events seem held simultaneously in my memory? That’s what I thought as we walked, R.M. and I. She was disappointed – you call this a park?, she said in her American accent. She was particularly unimpressed by the Japanese garden: is this it? Is this all there is?

I wondered which was the palimpsest: the day of the picnic, or our new day, with its fresh autumnal air. I wondered at the events which overlay one another in that same space. Today, in deep winter, it is already night at four o’clock, and I have lost hold on time. Who will remember these things when I am gone? But I’m not sure I’m remembering anything. The events seem to remember themselves.

Early Retired

He is a man of routine, rising at 9.30 and watching morning television in a dressing gown with a bowl of cereal. Then, at 12.00, he has more cereal, again carefully put together according to nutritional guidelines. He is diabetic; above all, he wants to avoid injecting insulin. By careful control of his diet, this may be possible. But now he is slim, even thin, his legs are brown sticks. Thin, but with an iron will, eating his museli, which he puts together from ingredients he keeps in separate packets in a tub in the kitchen. Dried figs and pumpkin seeds; flakes of brain and powdered wheatgerm. That’s 12.00. Then, television until the 1.00 news – the end of This Morning or Vanessa or whatever else is on, and the BBC news, which runs until 1.30, until the weather and then local news reports.

Then he leaves the television on for me while he goes upstairs to get ready. Neighbours, he knows I want to watch Neighbours, and perhaps he thinks I should watch it, just as, earlier, he used to leave The Word on on Friday nights and, still earlier, the radio programme with Arnold the dog in the mornings. Never mind what I say, he thinks I should watch and listen to such things. In the morning, he pushes the tabloid section of the Guardian to me. I should read it, the tabloid section. It is for me to read. On Fridays, I read the review section. I look forward to that, reading as I drink coffee. But at 1.30, I watch Neighbours, and he goes upstairs to get ready for the world. Then at 2.00, we can go to town.

Do you want to go to town? Do you want to go to the university? Ok, he’ll give me a lift. My bike is in the shed, rusting. My bike’s in the shed, the wheel buckled. He’ll give me a lift, and we’ll go to town or he’ll drop me at the university. 2.00: the day is half gone, but nothing begins until 2.00. 2.00: what is there of the day, what is left? Never mind, this is where it begins; it’s when things start. From 2.00 to 5.30, when my mum gets home, that is the time of day for action. For a time, he does volunteer work, my dad. For a time, having taught himself about computers, having learnt about databases, helps out at the volunteer centre. He helps out there and as the treasurer of a charity, maintaining databases and records. That’s the afternoon; that’s when things happen in the day.

For my part, I go to the library or to the unemployment office. I go to the library, where they sometimes give me old copies of the TLS for free, or I go to the unemployment office and the temping agencies. Any work? No work. It’s the recession; there’s no work here. So I borrow books, and borrow books about books. I read the Writers at Work series. I read biographies and critical studies. Sometimes, for a pound, I borrow a CD. I talk to dad on the way home, telling him of my plans. I’m to do a TEFL course in October, but first I’ll have to get a Career Development Loan. Then, when I’ve done the course and am working a few hours here and there, I tell him I want to get funding for further study. Then, meeting him near the university library, where I can get in unnoticed though I am not a student, I will tell him as we drive home of my plans. There is funding about, I tell him.

For his part, he does not understand a world in which a degree is not enough to get you a job. He watches me fill out application forms for graduate training schemes and then sees me open rejection letters. And when I find work – a week here, a few days there – he is amazed that his son is opening and closing umbrellas to check the printing of a company logo, or entering data into on-screen boxes, rather than embarking on a career. What has happened? What happened? It’s the recession, I tell him. And the expansion of higher education. The recession and the great expansion, which means there are many more of us looking for work. What use is a non-vocational degree? He thought any degree would do, but he was wrong; things had changed. But he sees I have plans and is confident in my plans. He knows I have plans, and even when they go wrong, like my attempt to find work in Greece, he is reassured by the force of those plans and my planning.

What else I am doing? Copying out things I had written longhand onto the computer. Using the computer when he is not using it to copy out what I had written in notebooks and journals. I copy out my notes in the mornings, in the early evenings, when he is not using the computer. And I make new notes; I copy phrases and paragraphs from the books I am reading. He, dad, watches the television and reads the paper and reads about computers and I copy out notes and make more notes.

He, unemployed, lives alongside me, who am also unemployed. The air is stale and fetid, and we are unemployed. The windows cannot be opened – he feels the cold – and we are unemployed. But the house is nearly paid for, he is reassured by that. The house is nearly paid for and the credit cards paid off, he knows that. There is no problem surviving, he knows that, he who comes from a family who were poor and had difficulty surviving. There’s no problem; the house is standing, and although he is in ill-health, his diabetes is under control and his operation was a partial success; there is no immediate danger.

Poverty is far away; the family in India are doing well just as we are doing well. The next generation – his nephews and nieces, are doing well, and are scattered all across the globe. The next generation, all of whom are graduates, are doing well, he knows that. His unemployment does not bother him. My unemployment – it will be temporary, he knows that. I am an organised person, he can see that. I have plans, he can see that. I work hard, even though I am unemployed, he sees that. And so in communication with his family, he says, Lars is looking for work. We have a recession here, and he is looking for work.

We are both unemployed, but perhaps unemployment saved him, he who was in poor health, from an early death. Perhaps by unemployment would he enjoy a few more years. But he does not speak of this, he who would never complain. He does not share his anxieties with us. He does not speak of himself, for he is from a family who do not speak in that way. He is retired, not unemployed. Retired early, and this is the hand dealt to him. Early retired, and in poor health, and instead of playing golf, he is at home. At home in the mornings and later, when he stops working at the Volunteer Centre, in the afternoons, too. Listening to Indian classical music on his computer and, later, when he had gone out to India to sort out their microphones and webcams, chatting to his brothers through the internet. Now India is close to him again. Now Madras, which is called Chennai, is close to him.

I leave for the North and for further study, but he is there, and the house, in the day, is his kingdom. I leave for study and for work, but the house is around him. In the early evening, he clears up the kitchen and hoovers. In the later evening, he cooks South Indian food for himself, making samba from samba powder. Then, television again, documentaries, and the computer. Then he will sit down and listen to mum tell him about her day, and the television will be there, and the computer in the other room.

The Music Lover

That night I spoke on the phone to my father, who knows a great deal about Indian classical music. On the phone to my father, who knows about Indian classical music and specifically Carnatic classical music, the music of South India. Speaking with my father, who knows all about Indian classical music and in particular South Indian Classical music, I tell him I would like to speak about Indian classical music at a conference to which I have been invited.

It is August; I am stranded at a station in Yorkshire; I have phoned up my father, just as I had phoned him a few months before when I was stranded at an airport in Cardiff. This time, unlike the time before, I tell him of my invitation, and ask him what he thinks. I know I know much less than he about Indian classical music, but I wonder whether he might help me. I ask him for this, his help. They don’ t expect me to be an expert on Indian classical music, I tell him, but it would be interesting, I think, for me to say a little about Indian classical music. And perhaps you can help me, I suggest to him, thinking to myself: today, in the early evening, stranded in this station in Yorkshire, I’ve had a bright idea.

I thought: this will be nice for dad as it will be nice for me; I can learn more about Indian classical music, and specifically the music of South India, from him, and he will enjoy the fact that my interest is not casual, and I want to do more than occasionally attend Indian classical music concerts with him. We used to attend for a few weeks in a row. Concerts on the South Bank, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and then sometimes concerts in a private house, concerts in a living room. Sometimes North Indian classical music, sometimes South Indian classical music. One or the other, and sometimes, if there were several performers, South Indian and North Indian classical music in one concert.

North Indian classical music strives for effects, I said to him once. It’s too romantic, I said to him once, too expressive. I prefer South Indian classical music, I said, because it is less about self-expression. It’s more austere, I said, and every raga is not made to come to a swooning climax, I said. I prefer South Indian classical music, I said, because there’s more of an idea, when it comes to a concert, of a programme of music. With North Indian classical music, I said, every raga has got to be pleasing; the audience cry out, that is expected, but in the end it is too romantic, too expressive, I said. With South Indian classical music, I said, there is more austerity.

Late Beethoven compared to early Beethoven. Bach compared to Mozart. More austerity, I said, less self-expression. And more of a sense of an entire programme – with a starter, a main course and a pudding, I said, and he agreed, my dad, although it was he who would hum along to the music and would sway his head to the music. Although he was the one who would be carried away by the music, surprising for a man who appeared so self-controlled. He agreed – it was quite true, he thought – but he was the one carried away by music and who would weep as he listened. How was it that he who never wept would weep when he heard music? He wept – and he would speak of himself weeping. Later, he would say – it moves me to tears, emphasis on tears. He was surprised as I was – why was he – of all people – moved to tears. But there he was, moved to tears. By South Indian classical music, but also by North Indian classical music.

South India, North India – did I know the difference? Once, on the way to the South Bank, coming over the pedestrian walkway from Waterloo, I had said, they’re South Indian, referring to a group of men and women walking ahead of us. Can you tell because of the way they tie their saris?, dad asked. But that wasn’t why I could tell. I had just said it: they’re South Indian, without knowing why. Oh those South Indian girls, said dad on another occasion, who never said things of that kind.

A station in Yorkshire, early evening. A few hours until the connection. Cross the railway bridge in search of food, cross the bridge in search of something to drink. But I am soon back at the station. And I call up home. Dad answers, his accent heavier and more noticeable on the phone. And I tell him to ring me back. And dad, always slow, rings me back. We speak, I tell him of my invitation and he tells me he’ll send me some documents about Indian classical music. Lately, he’s been teaching himself, he tells me. Just lately, he’s been learning about Western notation and comparing it with Indian notation, South and North. He’ll send me some documents, he says. He’ll prepare them for me.

My father expresses his reservations about Western audiences. They always like the tabla, he says. They always want tabla duels, he says, and disapproves. The audience I’m going to speak to aren’t like that, I tell him. Some of them are trained North Indian classical musicians, I tell him. But he says what he always says, Western audiences always want percussion, and tabla duels. Then he tells me about recent medical research, which shows the beneficial effects of hearing certain ragas. It’s just like it was claimed in the Vedas, he says, and the earliest myths about music.

We speak of the notation of Indian classical music, and different instrumentation. Of course, from the first, Indian classical music was a vocal tradition. First of all, the voice – only later was it adapted for instruments. They started playing on violin in the nineteenth century, he said. And I remember when he spoke of U. Srinivas, the mandolin prodigy. On electric mandolin!, said dad. Of course, Srinivas was from Madras, like dad. From the old city by the sea, in the old South, where they play Carnatic music. Purer, said dad, without Islamic influence. North and South Indian classical music diverged in the fifteenth century, he said, and because of the Islamic influence. Until then, there was one tradition.

One tradition, uniting all of India. One tradition, for all of India. He used to keep a Sanskrit copy of the Bhagavad Gita by his bed. A copy, in Sanskrit, of the Bhagavad Gita, so small you could keep it in your hand. The Bhagavad Gita, which was likewise read across India. The Bhagavad Gita, which I learnt about first of all in the graphic novels dad used to buy for me. Amar Chitka Katha – comics which retold puranas, myths. And in amongst these bloody retellings, where Indra struck the arms of a demon and then struck off his head, or Shiva, in rage set a torrent of demons on his prospective father-in-law, leading to his beheading, before Shiva revived him now with the head of a goat, there were stories of teachers like Sankara (our family guru) who died at 31, Sankara (8th century C.E.) and had foregone the life of a householder to become, at an early age, a wandering sanyasin – and even a one edition retelling of the Bhagavad Gita itself.

How marvellous, I thought, when I first read the Gita! So that’s who Krishna was! That’s who was all along, mischevous, blue-skinned Krishna! That’s who he was, the scourge of the wicked and the husband of a hundred wives! There he was, Krishna, his vast blue body above the surprised Arjuna in the middle of the battlefield. Later, dad would complain about Peter Brook’s production of the Mahabharata: I can’t understand what they’re saying. Beeshma, in the production, was an African, very black and slim, and Krishna, a white man, I’m not sure from where – and the accents were too thick for my dad. I can’t understand them, he said. And the Bhagavad Gita was beside his bed. The Bhagavad Gita, which was but one part of the vast Mahabharata.

He always wanted to die in India, in Madras, that’s what he told my sister, a few weeks earlier. He wanted his remnants scattered in the Ganges, that’s what he told me before his first bypass operation many years ago. And hadn’t he told his friends he wanted to die back there, in Madras? That was where he died. That’s where he died, although he went there not expecting to die. He died in Madras, while not expecting to die there. But it’s where he died, in Madras, all in one go, dying all at once, in Madras. That’s where he died, back in Madras, after a few days with his brothers, all in one go, at single stroke. Death at one stroke in Madras, just before he was to begin a course of treatment. At one stroke, with minimal suffering.

So did a life end. So he died, among his brothers, whom he had left behind to come to the UK. Among them, his brothers, to whom he spoke almost daily through the internet. Whom he saw almost daily on his webcam, his brothers. He died amongst them, his brothers, and his remains were scattered in the Bay of Bengal the next day. Madras, December; just before the concert season. Madras, December, as the concert season was about to begin.

Tomorrow I am to speak at the conference. Tomorrow I will speak as I told my dad I would speak. I have his notes here, ‘Music Notes for Lars I’, and ‘Music Notes for Lars II’; I have his notes, and tomorrow I’m speaking. Not so long ago, just before he was to fly the next morning, I told him I’ve been working too hard to research South Indian classical music as I had intended. The night before he flew, I rang him, and he sounded happy and excited – he was off to India! Back to Madras! And for non-invasive surgery, a remarkable procedure, which he’d read about in The Hindu. To Madras, to his brothers! He asked me when my new book was coming out. I said I’d send it to him when it arrived. I’d send him a few copies, I promised. It should be better than the first book, I said.

Then, not long after, I tried to prepare an obituary. What words should I use? What should I say? He came to the UK in 1956, I write. He worked in Newport, Gwent, I write. He went to study in Birmingham, I write. He moved to London, I write, as a Chartered Electonic Engineer. He had a great love of music, I write. Yes, that’s right – a love of music. He had a great love of music, I write. He was a music lover, I write.

Nothing Must be Illustrative

Soon I will go to work; soon I will wheel the bike onto the street. Meanwhile, a few minutes to write. Always something else is about to begin, always errands elsewhere and tasks elsewhere. Soon, to work, soon the bike must be lifted over the threshold into the street, and meanwhile, a few minutes, not long, no more than half an hour. Soon, the trip to work, not far, and even less far if I cycle rather than walk, and in the meantime, a few minutes to write, but what shall I write? Soon, the cycle on the street, the front door locked, and I will roll down the hill to work. A few minutes left, however, a few minutes to write something, but what shall I write?

– The flat smells of rubber, write that. – The flat smells of rubber from the wheels of the bike. – The cereal bowl is in the sink, write that. – The cereal bowl is in the sink, soaking with the coffee cup. – Nothing in particular is happening, write that. – Nothing in particular is happening. The washing up soaks in the washing up bowl in the sink, the bike is the hallway and light comes through the bevelled window which divides my bedroom from my living room. – There, that’s better, you’re writing something. – But what I am writing? – You’re setting down details, you’re writing about the world, this is already enough. 

– Soon, the trip to work. Soon, the trip to the office by bike. Downhill all the way to the office. Meanwhile, a few minutes to write, but what to write? – Write of what you see around you. Write of the room and the flat and the view through the window. – I’ve written of that. – Write of what you hear in the room and the flat. – I can’t hear anything. Nothing at all. – Write about your keyboard and your monitor and the desk. – I’ve done that all that. I’ve written enough.

– Then what is there left to write about? What do you want to write about that is not this and not that? – Everything. – What prevents you from writing about everything? Don’t you understand that writing must pass by way of everything in order to say everything? That it must pass through the room, the flat, the rubber wheels of the bicycle and the bicycle, the office and the hill on the way to the office? Though all things, omitting nothing. Through the things of the present and the things of the past. Through the things of the present and the past and even the future. And above all, nothing must be illustrative. Everything is everything. Again, above all: nothing must be illustrative. – The bike in the hall. The cereal bowl in the sink, in water. The coffee cup by the cereal bowl in the sink, in water. The long hill to work.

– Nothing must be illustrative. All motifs, concepts, images must be linked; there must be no narrative residues or blind alleys. – The bike. The smell of rubber. The cereal bowl next to the coffee cup in the filled sink. The long hill to work. – Everything must carry meaning, refer to something, recur. Not one detail must be illustrative. Everything must exist for the sake of the whole. Everything must be borne in narrative. Everything must be made to speak. – The bike, the smell of rubber, the cereal bowl, the dirty coffee cup, the rooms of the flat, the hill: all that? – All that.

– But what if they are what cannot be borne by narrative? What if they are what cannot be made to speak? Resistance: the things of the world, as they resist. Resistance: is it because of their resistance I want to write of them? Nothing must be illustrative; but only because writing is only ilustration. Nothing must be illustrative; because nothing, in the end, can be borne in narrative.

Ne-uter Ne-uter

You’re not quite up to it, are you? You’re not really up to it, are you? You’re not up to much, are you? What is it you think that you’re doing here? What is it you think you’re writing? You’ve stopped writing books and trying to write books, but for what? For moaning about being unable to write books? For writing about being unable to write and disappointing yourself by writing, but for what? For what and for whom? Who is reading and who is bothering? Because you’re not reading this yourself, are you?

You’re not interested in it yourself, are you? What does it do for you? What work does it perform for you? What is the point of all this? But there is no point, is there? Verbosity with barely any form, barely any content, and what for, and who for? What was it you said to W. yesterday? What was it you said on the phone to W., yesterday? I want to produce a 30,000 word rant, that’s what you said. I want to produce one single paragraph of pure rant, issuing out of itself, propelled forth from a few simple elements, a few simple images, a few simple ideas, just that, and spinning itself out of itself, that’s what you said. But you’re impressing no one. You’re writing for no one.

Once, you wrote books for others and now you’re writing for no one. You’ve driven away your readers, what few readers you had. What readers you had are gone. The first book sold 233 copies, and who knows what the second book will sell. The first book, 233 copies, 54 in the UK, 150 or so in the USA, the rest elsewhere. 233 copies, that’s not much, but it will reach far more readers than this will ever read. And how many copies will the second book sell? How many hardback copies at £50 a pop do you think it will sell? Less than 233, there’s no question of that. Much less than 233, and probably deservedly so.

Once you wrote books for others. Once you tried to explain things, writing clearly, writing carefully. It’s true that by the second book, you’d given up on this. It’s true that the second book is already something else, another way of writing and not a good one. The second book is the worst kind of failure, because it does not even fulfil the elementary tasks of comprehensibility and rigour. It is neither comprehensible nor rigorous. Neither one nor the other.

Was the first book comprehensible and rigorous? It was not – far from it – but it did not set itself up as a little war machine against comprehensibility and rigorousness. What is amusing about the second book, which you haven’t even received yet – just wait for that – is the blurb you wrote for the back is written in a pidgin English. Yes, even the blurb, which you supplied, is grammatically suspect. The blurb says it rightaway: this author can’t write and shouldn’t be allowed to write. The blurb says: who allowed this author to write a book, when he can’t even write a blurb?

W.’s blurb has a grammatical mistake in the first line, but he didn’t write his blurb, his editor wrote his blurb, as he pointed out to me. I said to him, with glee, you have a grammatical mistake in the first line of the blurb and on the first page of your book, but he was unperturbed. I didn’t write the blurb, he said, and I still haven’t got anything like the number of grammatical mistakes as in your first book. In the latter, he is probably right. But what of the former?

W.’s editor is scrupulous. W.’s editor visited him and bought him dinner, whereas my editor doesn’t reply to my e-mails. Whereas W.’s editor visits W. in his hometown, hundreds of miles from where the editor lives, my editor does not acknowledge my e-mails nor, it is likely, my existence; he is indifferent to me. I still remember when W.’s editor first offered him a contract; it was at a conference two years ago. W. and I had given up on the conference from the first and gone to straight to the bar and held court in the bar.

The editor, who had also given up on the conference joined us in the bar and for beer and whiskey and chips in the bar. We ordered beer, then whiskey, then chips, then beer again, then whiskey again, then chips again. W.’s friends blamed me for W.s degeneration. Even since you’ve been hanging out with X. (me), you’ve changed, they told him. We were in the bar, the conference was elsewhere, but we were in the bar, and the bar was everything. Beer, whiskey, chips – all you could want. Something to drink, something to eat, and the pleasant sense of having escaped something. Yes, beer, whiskey, chips, and relief: we had escaped. And he was with us, the editor. He was with us, and he and W. discussed the book and we thought to ourselves, despite everything, despite the fact that we’re in the bar, and we were here as soon as it opened, we’ve done something with out day. That’s what we thought: something has happened, we’re in the bar, but we’ve already achieved something, and what have the others achieved?

Hours passed. Beer, whiskey, chips, the editor disappeared and we had other visitors. But all was well; the bar was around us, the conference was going on elsewhere, we had plenty to drink and plenty to eat and we’d already achieved something – there was W.’s book, which he’d been writing without publisher, and now he’d found a publisher in the person of our friend the editor. For everything has to be done through friends, as W. always says. Everything through friends and by way of friendship, says W., who is the least sentimental of people. Through friends, and not through distant and artificial connections such as I had with my editor, W. pointed out.

And was it then he told me I’d sell less than 80 copies of my book? Was it then he told me how many copies of the book I would sell? As I pointed out to him on the phone, I’ve sold twice that number in the USA alone. As I said to him yesterday on the phone, I’ve sold far more than 80 copies in the USA alone. W. insists that I begin a third book. W. is insistent: why don’t you do some work? And I said, I’m tired, I don’t want to do any work. And W. said, you’ve got to do some work, this is no good. And I said, I ordered some Bergson books. And W. said, have you read them? And I said, no. I don’t do that anymore. And he said, you don’t read anymore?, and I said, I’m tired. I worked too hard on the last book.

Evenings and weekends for a year. Evenings and weekends for a whole year – gone. I’ve had enough, I said. And W. berated me. What do you think you’re doing?, he said. I want to write a 30,000 word single paragraph rant, I said. Why do you want to do that?, said W. There is no why, I said, I just want to do it. But how likely is that?, said W., you won’t finish it, will you? And I said, I’m tired, I want to rant, I want to write a 30,000 word rant in which I say everything there is to say about the state of the world. And W. said, it’s not going to happen, is it? And then he sent me an article I’d written for a special edition of a journal he’s editing, with corrections. It’s not bad, said W., and they’re not many typos. There it was, my article, with W.’s corrections.

What have I told you about referring to your own books? wrote W., in his corrections. You shouldn’t refer to yourself. Do you think Blanchot referred to his own books? said W. on the phone. He did sometimes, I said. Yes but not all the time, said W. Then W. told me about what he was going to say about Blanchot’s notion of the neuter. I’m going to chant neu-ter, neu-ter like an ape, he said. Just like you, he said. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Like an ape, said W.

The Second Book

When is it out, the second book? When’s it coming out, the second book? This week, isn’t it? It’s coming out this week, isn’t it, the second book? The first book wasn’t enough, was it? There had to be a second book. The first book, by itself, was insufficient, but why did there have to be a second book? Why a second book, when the first book was so wretched? Or was it because the first book was wretched that there needed to be a second book? Was it because of the wretchedness of the first that there had to be the second?

The first book: wretched, and the second book? Did you think the second book wouldn’t be just as wretched as the first? Didn’t you think: the first book was wretched, and the second book … will also be wretched? How was it you could summon the hope that the second book would be better than the first? How was it you could find strength enough to hope that the miracle would be achieved and the second book would be better than the first? For it wasn’t better, was it? And that was inevitable, wasn’t it? In what other direction could it have gone? What else might have happened?

The first book: wretched. The second book: also wretched. Did you really think things would change with the second book? Did you really think something had changed between the first book and the second one? Nothing changed, did it? Nothing changed, between the first book and the second, did it? The second book, like the first book: wretched. The first book: wretched, like the second book: also wretched. How amusing it was for me to learn as soon as the first book was out that there was to be a second book! How funny to learn of the second book that would follow on the heels of the first!

For all your modesty, you’re full of hubris, aren’t you? You think you’re special and unlike the others, don’t you? Whereas in fact you are just like the others, and worse than the others. Whereas you, compared to the others, are lacking in what allows them to refrain from writing a second book which repeats exactly the same errors as the first book. Restraint: that’s what you lack, isn’t it? Measure: that’s what lacking in you, isn’t it? The first book was bad, so what did you do? Take a few years out? Spend a few years thinking and meditating? No: you wrote a second book. As soon as the first book was done, you began the second book.

It wasn’t enough that the first book was wretched – you had to write a second book, too, didn’t you? And tell us, what did you hope to gain from the second book? What did you hope to achieve? To redeem the first book – well you didn’t do that, did you? To abolish the memory of the first book – well that’s what you didn’t do. You were the author of one bad book, weren’t you – just one. And now – now – you are the author of two bad books. You weren’t content to write one bad book, you had to write another. First one, then the other. First one book and then another, on the heels of the first book.

And have you learnt your lesson now? Have you learnt that there is absolutely no chance of you writing anything of quality? Have you learnt of your total inadequacy with respect to writing? Has it be burnt into you as it should be burnt? Has it been branded on your forehead as it should be branded: BAD WRITER? Because you’ve won awards for it, haven’t you – bad writing? Who else but you could have won such an award? Who but you would be capable of it – an award for bad writing? I’ll bet they made that award up especially for you. I’ll bet they dreamt up that award especially for you and gave the award to you and then discontinued the award as soon as you received it, didn’t they?

Think of what the others could have written in your place. Think of what others might have achieved, had they been given all your chances. You’re an usurper, aren’t you? You occupy a place others should have, and you do so through luck. Yes, you were lucky as others were unlucky, weren’t you? You were lucky, others unlucky, and so you found yourself in a place where you could begin writing books.

An oeuvre – is that what you dreamt of making? An oeuvre – was it that you dreamt of putting together, volume by volume? Your collected works – was it that of which you were dreaming? But instead, what have you realised? One book – botched, a second book – also botched. And a third – is there to be a third book? Are you going to make it a trilogy: three botched books? Is there to be a third bad book? And then, if there’s a third, why not make it a tetralogy? If there’s to be a third, why not a fourth?

Have you the decency to stop now? Have you learnt to keep it under control and to stop? You haven’t, have you? You’re going to continue, aren’t you? You have other books you’re going to write, haven’t you? There’s more to come, isn’t there? You’re not going to be content with two, are you? When’s the next one going to be written – and the one after that? When are they coming out, the next volume and the one after – your oeuvre? When are they going to come out, your collected works?

What a life! What a travesty of a life, writing in the place others could have had to write something worthwhile! Who let you write a book? Who let you write one book and then another? Why aren’t people preventing you writing books? Why aren’t they writing you strong letters of complaint, day after day about your books? Why aren’t there people at your door crying out against your books?

I’ll tell you why: because no one cares about books, that’s why. Because your books are the least interesting thing in the world, that’s why. Because your books, like other books, are produced at a loss, that’s what. A publisher’s potlatch, that’s what. A sop to the academic community, that’s what. In the end, you were lucky, by some strange lapse you were allowed to publish something, and then, by another lapse, you were allowed to publish something else, weren’t you?

Do you think you could have published something in the old days? Do you think you could have brought out a first book and then a second book when there was proper peer review and proper editors? Because it wouldn’t have happened, would it? You’re a sign of what is wrong with the entire publishing industry, aren’t you? That you published one book and then another is a sign of what is wrong with the whole industry, isn’t it?

What happened? When did it collapse, the publishing industry? When did it occur, the great collapse? Because it happened, didn’t it? They published your first book, didn’t they? And then, to compound the error, they published your second book, didn’t they? Because it’s out in the next few days, isn’t it? It’s out, published to an indifferent world, isn’t it? Why didn’t they have the sense to pulp it? Why didn’t they pulp the whole edition? Why didn’t they spot your first book and then your second book? How did you slip them past them? How did you slip a first book and then a second book past them?

But in the end, you slipped nothing by them, did you? It wasn’t due to your cunning or your cleverness that you slipped a book by them, is it? For in truth, they didn’t care what they published, did they? In truth, it didn’t matter them, what they published, did it? No searchlights were seeking to pick you out, were they? No sentries were posted on the gate, were they? You slipped nothing by, that’s the truth. They came to your door and knocked on their door, didn’t they? Came to your door and knocked on your door and asked you whether you had anything to publish, didn’t they?

And what did you say, when they asked you the first time? Yes, please. And what did you say, when they asked you the second time? Yes, please. Did you think you were published because of your reputation? Did you think it was the good esteem in which you were held that got you published? In the end, it’s an indictment of the entire publishing industry that you’ve published another book. In the end, it’s a sign that everything’s gone wrong with the publishing industry that you’ve published a second book.

Joubert

Look at you, with your pens lined up on your desk and a space cleared on your desk. Look at you, with a moleskine on your desk and the pens and the keyboard on your desk. Look at you, all ready, ready to begin, with your keyboard and your monitor and a fresh page open on the word processor. Ready to begin, the flat is quiet, your room is quiet, a pool of light falls on the desk, and there are your pens and your moleskine with your pencilled notes and your keyboard and the monitor, all ready.

Look at you, in your flat, living alone as you always dreamed of living, living in peace as you wanted to live. Look at you, living, tonight, in quietness, because the students above you are quiet. Your whole life led up to this, didn’t it? This is where you wanted to be your whole life, isn’t it? In a room that’s quiet and with a computer of your own and an internet connection of your own, isn’t it? This is what you always wanted, isn’t it, a room, and some time to write? And where’s it going? In what direction is it heading? What are you up to in your room, with your pens and your moleskine and your computer? Where’s it all going, tonight, the night to which all other nights were point? Where it’s heading, what have you prepared yourself for, what are you ready for, tonight, this night of nights?

Because you could be out, couldn’t you? Your friends just rang you from the pub, didn’t they? You could be out, couldn’t you, but instead where are you? I’ll tell you where you are: inside, that’s where you are. Inside, inside your room, with your pens and your moleksine and an open page on the monitor. What are you doing, all alone? What are you doing in peace, and in the warmth of your flat? Where’s it all going? Before, you only had a room, isn’t that right? Before it was one room or another, a room in a succession of rooms, isn’t that right? Before, you lived with others, and you had to put up with others, all the while dreaming of a quiet room in a quiet flat in which, finally, you could set to work.

So here you are alone, at last, in peace, at last, and ready to begin, with your pens and your moleskine, with your monitor and your keyboard. Once you had to borrow your housemate’s internet connection, didn’t you? You didn’t have a connection of your own, did you? You had to wait for him to finish his own work and then ask his permission to use his computer and then endure him watching over you, didn’t you? And now you have one, what are you going to do? Now you’ve got a connection, what are you going to do with it, what are you going to send out into the world? Because that’s what you were waiting for, wasn’t it? You spent your whole life waiting for it, didn’t you? And now you’ve got it, haven’t you, a computer of your own and an internet connection of your own, haven’t you?

Once you had the oldest and most unreliable of computers, didn’t you? Once it was the most unreliable of computers that was yours, wasn’t it? And now? Now you’ve a reliable computer and a flatscreen monitor, haven’t you? So what are you going to do with it, your computer? What are you going to write, now you’ve got time and peace in which to write? For a long time you had no money, did you? For a long time, it was a struggle passing from day to day, wasn’t it?

The council owed you Housing Benefit and the university owed you backpay, didn’t it? You went daily to the council and daily to the university, back and forth on the bus, didn’t you? You were eaten up with frustration, weren’t you? And now? You work; you pay for your flat, don’t you? You have a decent flat in a decent area, don’t you? So what are you going to do in it, your flat, now you have it? What great work are you going to write in your flat, on your computer? What is it you’re going to achieve in your flat, after years of struggle?

I’ll tell you: the same thing you’ll achieve when one day you get Wi-Fi and a laptop and you have a car outside: nothing. The same as you will achieve when you’ve been promoted and you can move to a bigger flat which isn’t damp and has a garden: nothing. The same as you’ll achieve when you can go on holiday and take city breaks: nothing. You’ll achieve nothing, just as you always achieved nothing. You won’t achieve anything just as you have never achieved anything.

Shall I tell you where it’s going? Nowhere. Shall I tell you where it’s heading? Nowhere. You’ll never write anything, do you know that? It’s going nowhere, do you know that? You’re getting older, aren’t you? The years are passing, aren’t they? How old are you now? How old will you be next year? The years are passing. You’re doing nothing, writing nothing, achieving nothing. And you’re getting older, aren’t you? Another year’s nearly up, isn’t it? Another year, and what have you done? I’ll tell you what you’ve done: nothing. I’ll tell you: not a thing.

With everything that’s happening in the world, you’ve done nothing. With all the horrors of the world, you’ve not a done a thing, have you? Have you helped anyone? Have you contributed to the greater good of mankind? You’ve not even helped yourself, have you? You’ve not even made anything of yourself, have you? Look at you, with your clean desk and your moleskine. What’s in its pages, tell me that? What’s in them, what have you written? What did you write on the train today? I know: a few lines from Joubert. You copied a few lines from Joubert.

Joubert, of all people! You, reading Joubert, of all people! In truth, you only read Joubert, you only picked his book off the shelves to give you the last hope, the last possible hope. You read Joubert, who published nothing during his life, after you read Kafka, who wanted his novels burnt; and you read Kafka, didn’t you, after you read Lawrence, who wrote a whole oeuvre, didn’t he – and you read Lawrence after you read Rimbaud, didn’t you, who was a prodigy. And each time you failed, didn’t you? failed to be a Rimbaud, failed to be a Lawrence, failed to be a Kafka and now – you’re reading Joubert.

Do you think someone will publish your jottings after you die? Do you think your friends will get together and publish a volume of your meditations a few years after you die? Because it’s not going to happen, you know that, don’t you? You’ve read Joubert – now read back over what you’ve written. You’ve read Joubert – but what have you written? Do you think, with a few lines from Joubert in your moleskine that you’ll be inspired to write like Joubert? Because I can tell you now, the last person you resemble is Joubert.

Look at you, at your desk, typing. Look at you, with quotes from Joubert written down in your moleskine beside you. Look at you, ready to write, ready to begin. But you won’t begin anything, will you. Nothing is brewing, is it? Nothing’s readying itself, is it? It’s night outside, isn’t it? In the window, you can see yourself reflected, can’t you? What do you see? Tell me what you see? I’ll tell you what I see: a failure. That’s what I see: a failure.

Do you know you’re a failure? You don’t quite know it yet, do you? You haven’t quite come to terms with it, your failure, have you? Still, there’s always Joubert, isn’t there? Perhaps your work will be gathered by your friends after your death and published, mightn’t it? Is that what you’re waiting for? It is, isn’t it? Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? There’s always hope, isn’t there?

But unlike you, Joubert, it says in the introduction, was a man immensely admired by others. Unlike you, who have lived in one room after another, ready, waiting, but devoid of achievement, Joubert was known for his sharp critical intelligence; he was celebrated for the lucidity of his ideas and his gift for friendship.

In short, he had a life outside writing, whereas your life is an attempt to write. In short, his writing was part of a life, whereas yours is written in lieu of a life. Do you see the difference? It is not difficult? Do you see it? For all that you have prepared yourself, you’ll never be a Joubert just as you’ll never be a Kafka, will you? And you’ll never be a Lawrence nor a Rimbaud, will you? The game’s nearly up, isn’t it? But how old will you have to be before you see it? How old?

You are already fairly old, aren’t you? You’re surprised at how old you are, aren’t you? And it’s not as if it crept up on, age, is it? It’s not as if you were too busy to notice how the years were passing, is it? The years pass; you’re getting older. You lived in a succession of rooms and now you have a flat, don’t you? Years passed; nothing happened; you tried to write and you failed to write, didn’t you, but you wrote nothing, did you? Nothing happened, did it? You failed, didn’t you? But still the sliver of hope, still something in you that is undefeated, isn’t there? How does it survive, in the face of everything?

Joubert welcomed the Revolution, did you know that? He was a Justice of the Peace in the years after the Revolution, did you know that? He was admired for his fairness and his vigilance, did you know that? And he was a man of principle, resigning as a Justice when he felt the Revolution had become too violent, did you know that?

Are you a man of principle? Are you known for the clarity of your ideas? Are you beloved by the best minds in your country? Do your friends urge you to publish a book of your meditations? Will they bring out a volume of pensees compiled from your writings after you die? Can you write in a calm and measured prose? Will your musings be published and then translated into other languages?

You know the answer, don’t you? You know where it’s heading, don’t know? Look at you, staying in and not going out. Look at you tonight, staying in with your moleskine and your computer, staying in having cleared you desk. Look at you, still hoping, still dreaming of the prize. Is that why you’re here, tonight as every other night, ready to begin? And is that why you’ll leave your desk, tonight like every other night, without having written a line? In a child it would be charming, in a young man, romantic, but in a middle aged man? Laughable, and perhaps not even that, not even laughable. Pathetic – is that the word? Contemptible – is that the word?

Failing Failure

That’s what you’d like above all: an excuse. Above all, first of all, that’s what you’d like: an excuse to say why you failed to achieve what you might have achieved. To say: I did not achieve it, for this reason, for this excuse. To say: I had 2 children under 5. To say: I was nursing an elderly relative. To say: after the accident, what could I do?

And without children? Without an elderly relative, without an accident? Failure, and that first of all. Failure, full stop, no alibi, full stop. No alibis and no excuses. Only incompetence and laziness. Why did you fail, you who had every chance? Why did you never succeed? Think of all those who could have succeeded in your place! Think of all those who could have achieved everything given the chances you had!

Why did you fail? Why, in the end, did you fail? Do you think it was a question of talent? Do you think it mattered whether or not you had talent? In the end, that is already an excuse, only this time, one no one will believe. What does it matter, whether or not you have talent? When did talent matter? What does it matter, whether you are gifted or not? Because it is a matter of will, and only that. It is a matter of will and of desire, and only that.

Because too much facility is the enemy of the work. Too much talent is already dissipation. To have choice to do this or do that already too much. For there can be no choice; it is not a matter of choice. You either have to or you do not have to. And if you do not have to, then nothing can be done. If there is no ‘you must’ then nothing can be done.

For it can only begin in the teeth of the impossible. In the face of it, the impossible. In the face of the others who tell you it’s the last thing you can do. Only then, when you know it is completely the wrong thing for you to do can you do anything. Only then, when there is no choice, no possibility, but there is only one choice and one possibility can there be a beginning. Only when there is no chance of a beginning can there be a beginning.

Unless you’ve reached the very limit of your talent, nothing. Unless you’ve come right up against the edge of your ability, then nothing. Only inability counts. Only impossibility matters. There are no excuses, though you’d like an excuse. To seek out excuses is already to have failed, don’t you understand that? To seek out excuses is to have failed failure, do you know that? Because to give an excuse is still to want to succeed. To give an excuse is hubris itself, because you claim if it were not for x and for y and for z you would have succeeded. When it is only when you know there are no excuses that it might be possible.

Only when you have passed through any possible nostalgia for success that even anything might begin. No failure, only the failure of failure. No failing and no failure – only the failure of failure. Failure itself must fail, just as the measure of success must fail. Both failure and success are not enough. Only when you fail failure itself might something begin.

Who are they, the ones who’ve failed failure? How to tell them apart from the others, content to succeed or content to fail? I’ll tell you: they never talk about failure, or success. Never will you hear from them talk of failure or success. Never will you hear them celebrate or lament. For they are beyond lamentation or celebration, just as they are beyond failure or success.

What need have they for excuses? What notion have they of talent? They work, and that first of all. They work, not doggedly, not with gritted teeth, but with calm endurance, and that first of all. There is work, they work, they give themselves to their labours, and when they’ve finished for the day, they stop working.

No celebration, no lament. To them, the day means: work, and even if they’ve spent all day in a miserable job, they come home, clear a space and work. No matter that they’ve come in late from the dreariest job, there’s still the work, and they work.  They need no one, only the work.

I know those who work do so without needing to brag about the work. They will speak of their books, it is true, but not the work. They will never speak of it, the work. They barely know of it, the work; they only trust it, without knowing what they trust. Or they know it only by what they write, by the steadiness of their labour.

And you, who can never stop speaking about the work? You, whose life is an endless gibbering about how you failed the work? In the end you are the buffoon of the work, its idiot. In the end, you are the foaming-mouthed prophet who points towards what he cannot know and cannot understand: the work.

The Buffoon

1.

Blogging is not a work of time; it is not cumulative; the 24 hours which separates one post from another is enough time to forget what was written and to lose the thought that was conserved by writing. What do I remember, today, of what I wrote yesterday?

To keep a journal is to collaborate with time, returning to its pages to reclaim the events of the day – to reflect, in the wisdom of the evening, on the day’s course. Each of us has grown old by the evening. The morning belongs to youth, and the vigour of youth. The afternoon is long middle age. The journal is always the work of an old person.

What, then, does it mean to write in the morning? What does it mean to write now, when the world is still young and nothing has happened? I am young and should be acting in the world; I am young, and with the vigour of youth, I should be transforming what I find around me, participating in the immense labour of the day. To write now, to reflect now, is premature and wasteful.

Couldn’t these hours, the hours of strength, be used to write something more substantial? Wasted time! Wasted youth, as though I was unemployed before I began! Writing in lieu of action; writing lacking the experience that would substantiate writing – now it is only the ‘nothing is happening’ that asks to be written. Truancy, unemployment – nothing is happening, nothing began. Nothing happened; it failed to begin.

What does it mean to have failed before you tried to succeed? How is it that you failed before you even tested your strength against the day? Perhaps it is that you’ve fallen below failure – perhaps it is failure itself you failed, since you did not even try with your strength to make something of yourself in the world.

Then what success is this, this writing? What kind of success, a writing that can make itself out of a failure that has failed failure? Nothing is happening; this morning is the same as any other. Nothing happens: there is the same back yard, the same plants in the back yard, the same wall of the back yard and the backs of the houses opposite. Nothing happens, and the coffee beside me is cooling and the empty cereal bowl dries in the sink.

2

Today I know I’ve never written a line. I know it, I am sure of it, I’ve never written a line, never completed a sentence, and barely written a word, not even a word.

Begin, do not begin. Begin, fail beginning and the work of beginning. Begin, fail and fail the beginning and the work of beginning. You will not be caught by the beginning; it will not seize you. Do you think you can begin? Do you think you have anything to say and the means by which to say it? Do you think anything can be said, and be said by way of writing?

But you will conserve nothing by writing. You will keep nothing by writing, no memories. Nothing will be kept by writing; never will there have been writing. Never will writing have begun. Never will it have been possible for you: writing. Never writing and only the withdrawal of writing. Never the power to write, and only the withdrawal of the power to write.

You will not begin: that is what writing says to you. You will never begin, and you are barred from beginning, this alone is what is allotted to you: this is what writing says to you. It was given that you could not begin and could give yourself nothing by writing: that is what writing says. It was decreed that you would be able only to destroy by way of writing, and that your way is the way of destruction: writing laughs.

3

It is not that you write with a hammer. It is not that you destroy anything by writing. Rather that writing, in your hands, destroys itself as achievement and as the result of achievement. Rather that writing laughs at itself and arrests itself, lying on the floor. Rather that by your hands writing trips over itself and lies on the ground and laughs at the sky.

In truth, you can destroy nothing just as you can make nothing. Do you think you’ve said anything today? Do you think you’ve said anything by way of writing today, which is a day like any other? What do you think you have done today? I will tell you: nothing has made itself, nothing has substantiated itself. Nothing has enfleshed itself and made itself real. Nothing has given itself a body and made itself real. I will tell you what’s happened: nothing. I’ll tell you what will happened: nothing. You have made writing laugh and laugh at you. You’ve made writing laugh, and you are writing’s buffoon.

First of all you are a buffoon. First of all, the buffoon who can do nothing, write nothing and cannot stop writing. First of all the one who cannot write and cannot not write. First of all, the one committed to the ‘first of all’, the one who would write by way of impossibility. First of all the buffoon, the dunce of writing, the one even writing laughs at, the one even writing makes space for. Laughter: writing is laughing at you, buffoon. That’s your achievement, buffoon, that your tools have fallen from you and laugh at you. Yes, that’s what you have achieved buffoon: the very means of your non-achievement has fallen from you and laughs at you.

Just as you, too, have fallen, buffoon. Just as your place is on floor, buffoon, with the things of failure. On the floor, buffoon, unemployed like the others, and listless like the others. On the floor, as writing laughs at you and you laugh at yourself, buffoon. On the floor, laughing as the world laughs at you and writing laughs at you and you laugh at yourself, buffoon. There is laughter, buffoon, and that first of all. There is laughter, laughter is laughing and writing is writing as it laughs.

4

What will you achieve, buffoon, what will you make? Do you dream of achievement, buffoon, do you dream of success? For you write of failure too often for me to believe in your failure. You write of failure too often and at too great a length for me to believe in your failure. And I know you do not believe in it, buffoon, and isn’t this your buffoonery? I know you do not believe in your failure, buffoon, and that for all you write of it, you still dream of success.

And isn’t that the joke, the final irony? Isn’t the joke that you would still make a work of what cannot succeed, and that you would succeed by way of failure? Isn’t the joke that failure is your means and your procedure, that what you would make and would have made here is a sign of nostalgia? You would be successful, that’s your drama. You would succeed, that’s the whole drama.

For the irony outplays you as the drama outplays you. For it is evident to all what you want to achieve and by way of failure. Evident to all and clear from the first, and clear to all, what you would make by way of failure! Evident to all, and even to you – even you know what you would achieve, and by way of failure! What bad faith! What irony! What buffoonery, the buffoonery of writing!

For you are our fool, writer! You are our fool and we can hear the bells on your cap jingling! Fool! Buffoon! Entertain us! Come to us with your writing and entertain us! Show us what you have written and entertain us! We know you will join in our laughter! We know you, like us, will be swept up by laugher! What laughter there will be, us laughing at you and you laughing at yourself! What laughter that will be heard by the stars and by the darkness on the other side of the stars!

It is noon and you’ve already failed the day. It is noon, the hands of the clock point straight upwards and you’ve already failed the day and failed yourself. But what laughter you have given us in your failure and your cavorting! What laugher you have given us in your dunce’s cap and your bells! Say it again, fool: ‘I am a dead man’. Say it again, fool: ‘I am a dead man’. Say it for us, fool and bring down the sky and the stars: ‘I am a dead man’.

You’re an Idiot

Listen – can you hear it? Listen – strain your ears – can you hear them? Can you hear what they’re saying? You’re an idiot – that’s what they’re saying. You’re an idiot.

Idiot – is that it? Idiot – is that what they’re saying? You can hear them, can’t you? You can hear what they’re saying, can’t you? It’s echoing everywhere. It’s whispering in the wind. Idiot. You’re an idiot.

Everything is telling you this. The stars are telling you this. The full moon is telling you this. The earth, rolling into morning, the silent trees over the houses, the cars parked in the cul-de-sac – it’s the same in each case, the same being said in each case. You’re an idiot.

You’re an idiot, that’s what they’re saying. You’re an idiot: whispered in the night hush. You’re an idiot: the birds who sing by the streetlights. You’re an idiot: it’s cosmic. The universe knows it. Everything knows it and it was known from the first: you’re an idiot.

After the Book

I’ve passed through its seasons and its climates, passed through its speeds and its slownesses, passed through the slow pages of the end when the narrative broadened like a great river – broadened, and flowed more slowly as the whole of what had gone before gathered mightily behind it. Slow river of the end, passing through everything and nothing; slow river of the day to day: there was no detail too small to be passed over; nothing that could not be borne by your great streaming.

What happened? Nothing happened; it was the story of the narrator’s days, those only. What happened? The narrator wrote of his days; he became the chronicler of days. And what was learnt by way of this chronicling? As reader, I learnt of the pulse of time, the return, each day, of the beginning. I knew, with the passing of each paragraph, how his days turned, the narrator of the no man’s bay. And I knew how my days turned in the reading of the book.

It is true, I struggled with these pages; I fell behind them; I thought: there is nothing to make me read further, and even though I want to read slowly, I am not as slow as this chronicle asks me to be, and how can anyone be that slow? I even resented the chronicle and its slownesses, saying to myself: the narrator has too much time and too many luxuries – how can I sympathise with him, he who already has a house, who is able to walk out in the world each morning; what has he to do with me and the world I live in? What does he know of administration and bureaucracy? What does he know of red-tape and resentment?

He is a man of leisure and he writes for men of leisure; his is the luxury of time without projects and without tasks. As chronicler, he sets down what happens in non-time, of his passage through the day. The rest of us do not pass; we cannot. For the rest of us, there is no passage. For the rest of us in our offices, the day is a series of obstacles and frustrations. What need have I of his Olympianism? What need have I to learn of a day which is not mine and cannot be mine?

Or is it for this reason his chronicle should be read? Is it because he passes through that which I cannot pass that I must read him? And it is true that my reading engendered a kind of writing. It’s true that by reading I learnt to write of a time beneath time, of truancy and unemployment, my favourite themes. Yes, perhaps this is what I was taught: to write a chronicle like the one I was reading.

But this is what I already knew – why else would I be chronicling my reading here, at the blog? Perhaps it was that I was taught anew what it was to write of the day, and the passing of days. Wasn’t this the reason why I picked this book, by this author? Wasn’t this why I ordered it from the USA and awaited its arrival from the USA? I knew it would watch over my writing. I knew, by my reading that my writing would be watched over.

Yes, it was that which I wanted: for the book to accompany me in every line that I wrote. To be accompanied – isn’t this a way of overcoming the loneliness of writing? To write is to do so before readers have come, even as I am one of those readers. They are to come; they belong to the future, but I do not yet know their proximity. But to write as I read, after I have come, as a reader, to a book that waited for me, is to write with, not alone. Or it is to write as a forebear, as one who inherits and is seized by writing just as the broad river bears all things? This is where I am, at the edge of the delta. Here I am, at the delta’s edge as the river broadens to become as wide as the sea.

Book, you have fallen behind me. Or is it, book, that you burn on the river like a funeral barge? Ashes are scattered across the water; so too are your ashes scattered. Reading’s beginning and reading’s end – all this is carried by writing; all this does the river carry in suspension. That is what it means to write with the whole of one’s life. In truth, mourning is with us always; there is not a day without it, and when death comes, it will already have been announced by a thousand other deaths. Finishing this book, I will have known death again, but by the detour of writing, I will know life.

The Great Work

1.

Is this it, is this all there is? Is this what you’ve been telling me about? Is this your grand design? I expected more from you, I admit it. I expected more, no doubt I was foolish to do so, but what you’ve done is very little. Is this really what you’ve been working on, is this the fruit of your labours? Is it this, is this all there is? Because it is not much. Because when it comes to it, it’s very little. It’s true I expected more of you. It’s true I always had hopes, I always harboured hopes in you, foolish no doubt, misplaced no doubt but I thought, if anyone can do something, it’s him. Yes, I thought you had it in you, I thought you could be more than the others, did you know that?

Did I betray my hopes to you? Did you have some intimation of them? Did you come to understand what I sought in you? Of course not. You were blind to me and blind to everyone. You were young! If I spoke to you, if I took you aside and spoke to you, it was nothing to you. I spoke; you listened; all was well – how could you know that I had picked you out, that I had selected you and thought: yes, he might be capable of something.

You would not believe how I watched you! True, I was away a good deal, I used to take long business trips. I was away, crossing the country one way and then another, but it was of you I used to think on those trips when I thought of our hometown. If anyone is to succeed, it will be him, I thought. Yes, he is the one in whom I place my hopes. Those were the thoughts which came to me in shabby hotel rooms and roadside cafes. So I consoled myself when I thought of our hometown that at least one of us might achieve something.

But what have you achieved? What is it that you’ve done? Is this it, is this all there is? Perhaps I should blame myself. Perhaps I am to blame, I who, alone among others, had watched out for you. Was it my fault, what you’ve done? I knew your face from the other faces. I thought: he is not one of the others, one of the rats. I thought: he isn’t a rat, he isn’t one of the swarm, one of those bodies that climbs on top of other bodies and sniffs the air. I thought: he isn’t one of them, but something else. No, he’s not one of them, even though he goes amongst them. He is there with the rest, but he will achieve something; he has potential.

2.

Even as a child, you had it, that potential. Always your great schemes! Always grand designs! True, you never finished your projects, true, you began with a great enthusiasm that disappeared almost at once. True, those projects went unfinished, your life was littered with great plans and great projects, but you finished nothing, you fell short of what you set yourself. For a time you gathered others around you, other rats; you inspired them. For a time, yes, the rats would crowd round you, excited by your ambition, they would pause from their crawling and their sniffing and look on.

How great your enthusiasm was! How much you dreamt of achieving! But it was not personal ambition which drove you. It wasn’t to be a rat greater than other rats, quite the contrary. It was enthusiasm, pure and simple. It was inspiration, pure and simple. A gust of wind passed through you; your eyes lit up, your mouth opened a little: what was it you’d seen – the future? What had you seen that the rest of us had not seen? And you set to work on your plans, on your projects, and others, enthused, worked around you.

When was that phase over? When did those plans run aground? Is it because you never finished what you began? Is it because you couldn’t quite bear finishing? The others left you, didn’t they? The others returned to their swarming, rat swarming over rat, rat climbing over other rats and sniffing the air, didn’t they? I saw; I’d looked on. What would you do now? Where would you turn, with your enthusiasm? Did it turn inward? Did it hollow out something inside you? Is that what I saw in the dulling of your eyes? Is that I saw in your distraction?

You were still young, weren’t you? You still had youth on your side, didn’t you? But something had changed, hadn’t it? Your enthusiasm changed direction, hadn’t it? It had changed direction, your enthusiasm, in retreat from the world, hadn’t it? What was happening to you? Could I see it? Could I tell, or was I fooling myself? Could I tell, or was it because I wanted to place hope in hope, in youth, in your youthfulness, in the capacity to begin?

What could I see? What did I want to see by the dulling of your eyes? What did I want to see by way of your retreat? In those days, I began my journeys. In those days, so long ago, I took a job that required I criss-cross the country as a sales representative for my company. It’s true I saw little change in you when I came home after my journeys. No sooner was I home than I set off once again, but still I kept tabs on you, still I welcomed news of you.

What was it that you were planning? What great plan were you hatching? True, you were still young, but you would not be young forever. True, you were young, you were still young, but that time was coming to an end, the time of youth was coming to an end. And how was it by the thought of this ending that I began to hope? Was it the ending of your youth in which I placed my hope? He is planning something, I thought to myself. Deep in his soul, something is happening; somewhere inside, the Great Work is beginning. Yes, something will happen, and probably at the moment he leaves his youth behind. Something will happen at the threshold, and as he crosses the threshold; then it will begin, and only then. How magnificently he will announce his adulthood! With what greatness will he step forth from youth to adulthood!

It’s true I was away during much of this period, driving on motorways and eating in roadside cafes; it’s true I heard little when I was away, and slept when I returned – but didn’t I hear stories? Didn’t I hear of your concentratedness and your silences? Didn’t I hear of your retreat and your solitude? What was it you were doing? What is it you were you planning?

You cast aside your old friends – was this a sign? You stayed in your room night and day – was this a sign? The world turned; years passed and I heard me you were working. Years passed – what happened to you? The others moved up in the world, and you stayed where you were. Years passed; the others went on to success or failure, but you stayed where you were, where you had always been, in one room or another, in a room that was always the same room. Years passed, and what was happening? The threshold had been crossed and what was happening?

You were old now – there was no question of that. No longer a youth – no question of that. And what had you done? What had you achieved? You were old, the threshold behind you and youth behind you, and even a few years of adulthood behind you, and what had you done? What of the great work that had filled your days and nights? Years passed; I, too was older. I was older; I had aged; that was expected. But you – for you to have aged, what did that mean? For you to have aged without producing the Great Work, what did that mean?

3.

Then, the other day, I ran into you in the street. Did I run into you, or was it you who sought me out? We ran into one another and you, who had never acknowledged me, told me you’d send me something.Yes, I saw you, you had never sought me out, who knew me only as one among others, as a friendly face among other faces, came to me and spoke. I was concerned; I thought: it’s too late, it’s too late in the day, the world has turned, and it’s too late for him to speak to me – for him – for you – to address one to whom he had never spoken. When you spoke and said you’d send me something, I thought: it’s too late for him, it’s too late for me and God knows it’s too late for the world. You spoke to me, you who had never addressed me, who had barely addressed anyone, and I thought: what’s happened? Have we all grown old? Has the world grown old? Is it really over? Has it come to this?

Did we meet by chance? I was crossing from one side of the road and you the other, but when you spoke to me of what you had been doing I thought: it’s too late, it’s already too late, he knows it’s too late and I know it’s too late. When you spoke, I thought: he, too, must know it’s too late; he, too, must know he’s been working without beginning and without a hope of beginning. You spoke and I thought, he must know it’s taken too long, that’s it’s taken too long without anything done, he must know he is too old, too old for one has never begun and is still trying to begin.

I thought: he must know I’ve been watching him and asking after him. He must know I had hopes for him. I thought: at last he has spoken to me, at last he has singled me out from the others just as I singled him out, but it is too late now and that he approached me is a sign of decline. I thought: after all this time, after his long silence and his long concentratedness, that he must look to me now is already a sign of failure. That he should seek me out, that he should address me, when it was I who had hoped to be addressed by way of his work, when I had lived to be so addressed and in the hope of such an address is a sign of failure.

That he should address me is already wrong. He to me, and not I who had been addressed by his work, his great work that would have reached me by other channels, his work that would simply have arrived, while he, on the other side of town was doing he knows what – he to me, and not I, among others, to him, as the triumphant author of the work that would crown this town like a fiery halo! He to me – this is wrong; it means there is no work, that there never was a work, that the Great Work was botched and unbegun – that the work was never brought to the verge of the beginning!

He to me – already disaster, disaster for the first, disaster for him who had spent so many years working without working, and disaster for me, who had waited for his work, not for him, but for his work, for the great work that would write itself with his fingers, I who would have been content merely to pass him in the street, to pass him in the knowledge of what he had achieved! Content merely to pass him, to occupy the same street as him, he who had achieved what the rest of us had failed to achieve, he who was not part of the rats and the swarming of rats, he who had lifted himself from the rats and from our town of rats!

I thought: he knows that to acknowledge me is a sign of his ruin. Look at him now! Look what’s become of him! He is old, like me. We are both old, and this is the tragedy. It’s not our world anymore, and this is the tragedy. He is old and I am old, I thought, and there are other young people now, others in whom we should place our hopes, and that is the tragedy. He knows it and I know it; that he approached me is a sign it’s already over for him and for his generation as it was over for me and for my generation.

He should know he’s failed, why does he pretend? Too many years have passed; why does he pretend? He’s crossed the threshold, and there’s nothing between him and death, why does he pretend? His potential is exhausted, he’s out of time. Once I asked questions after him and awaited news about him; once it was I who sought news, and now? I believe he sought me out, that he waited for me; that he waited on the street knowing it was my habit to pass that way in the street. He sought me out, waiting outside on the street just as I would sometimes discreetly follow him. Only he was without discretion. Only he was without shame. Only he addressed me.

It’s over – botched, he never began and now it’s too late to begin. Out of time, having never begun. Out of time and out of it from the first. How could he have begun? How could I ever have thought he might begin? How could I have thought our town could throw up a Creator, a Genius, a Worker of the Great Work, a Dreamer of the Grand Design?

4.

And when I received what you sent me, a few mornings after? When I received a few pages from you, stuffed in an envelope, a few days after? When the envelope came, pressed through my letter box, not a few days later? When it came, the A4 envelope, not thick but thin – when it came, not via the Royal Mail but by your own hand, brought by you on your own legs, brought by one who had walked up my garden path, who had opened the gate and come up my front garden path, when you brought it to my letterbox and slid it through, when, through the letterbox of one whom you had scarcely known and scarcely acknowledged until that time? When I found the envelope on my doormat after a few days away, when I reached down and picked it up and placed it, fearing the worse, among a pile of unopened mail on the desk in my study? When I finally opened it, the envelope, and took out the few sheets of typewritten paper it contained?

I thought, there’s nothing of merit, nothing of value; everything  he’d written was already exhausted. Nothing of merit, nothing done, didn’t he know it? How could you have sent me this? How could he have sought my approval for this? He should have burnt it. Should have thrown it away. Those pages were an affront! An affront to me and to him and to my waiting and to his promise! An affront and embarassment to what he had worked for and what I had waited for! A mockery of my hopes and his hopes and the hopes of our town!

Was this it, I thought? Was this all there was? After all those years? After all those days and nights indoors? After all those days and nights in one room after another, feverishly working? Why hadn’t he given up? Didn’t he know his time had passed? Didn’t he know he’d had his chance? Why hadn’t he settled down like the others? Why hadn’t he settled down into the long afternoon of life like the others?

He needn’t have joined the rats, it is true, I thought – he could have settled down among the others, needn’t have lived with another and bred with another, and from time to time come to the study that he had never had and riffle through a few pages in the draw of the bureau he had never had and typed on the laptop he had never had – could have played for a few idle hours with the accroutements of writing, which he had never had and never needed, which only old men like me have and needed to have. But still he should have given up and put the manuscript aside. Still, years ago, he should have given up and put aside the manuscript. Years ago, and long before now, he should have put aside the manuscript aside as he put his childish things aside, should have put it aside and given up his hopes and placed them in another.

Is this it, I said to myself, is this all there is? Is this how it ends? For something has ended for me, too. Something is over for me, who had lived only to wait. I, too, have finished as my hopes have finished. It is over for me as it is over for him. Over, having never begun. Over, having spun itself from childish dreams and childish delusions. Over, having finally revealed itself in its true guise, which is to say in no guise at all.

Will I see him now, an old man among old men? Will we speak commonplaces as old men among old men, he in whom I’d placed my hopes and he who had destroyed them? Will he speak of his regrets and of what he had given up for a foolish dream? Will he smile over a life lived in a succession of rooms instead of a life with a wife and a life with children? And will we smile together over what we hoped for in spite of our town, of a writing and a waiting in spite of our town and in the face of our town?

But perhaps I was wrong; perhaps I picked the wrong one. And perhaps you, too, picked the wrong one. Perhaps this is the wrong time and the wrong epoch; perhaps we both missed the appointment we wanted to keep – perhaps it missed us both and passed us by. Was it our fault? Was it our failure? Was it the rats swarming over one another, one rat climbing over another and sniffing the air and then another rat coming to sniff the air?

In truth, it was our fault and our failure, and anything else is a lie. In truth, we were the ones who failed, he by writing and I by waiting, and this is what binds us together. Failure, redoubled failure, the failure of one and then the failure of the other: failure and without excuse and without mitigation. No excuse, no extenuating factors, only failure. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances, failure pure and simple.

The Outer Circle

1.

Where do you think it’s going, I’ll tell you where it’s going: nowhere. Where do you think it’s going, do you think it’s going anywhere, well I’ll tell you it’s going nowhere, it’s over now, it’s all over, it was over before it began, it was over from the first. Over, no question about it. Over, having never begun.

Where do you think it’s going, did you think it’s going somewhere, well I can tell you, it’s doomed, it’s going nowhere, you’re already lost. Where was it you supposed you were going, what was it you undertook to do, then, when you were younger, when you were full of confidence, when you wanted to begin? You didn’t understand, then, did you? Didn’t understand the way it was going to turn out and the way it has turned out.

How could it end but in disappointment? Who were you to think it could end in anything but disappointment? By what right did you think you could begin? By what right, and this is the same thing, did you think you could do better than others who failed before you, who had failed before you began. Didn’t you heed the signs? Hadn’t you been shown? Wasn’t it apparent from the first? Wasn’t it clear: failure was your lot, and that from the first and before the first.

Failure, yes, that’s what was decreed and that was how it had to be: how was it you couldn’t understand this law for what it was? How was it you dared to act otherwise? You will tell me it was your youth that led you astray, that it was by your youth that you forgot what you’d been shown and that you’d ever been shown.

Wasn’t I the one who carefully showed you, who took you here and took you there and showed you? Wasn’t I the one who took you round and showed you, and did not only show you, but explained to you, and not only explained to you, but wrote it down for you and sent it to you, wasn’t I the one who bothered, who saw your youthfulness, your impetuousness, and recognised the one he once was in his youth, in his impetuousness?

What could you have known then of disappointment? What could you have known of failure? In truth, you had never really failed. In truth, you had never quite failed, because there was still hope in you, still hope that tomorrow you might succeed where today you had failed, and that tomorrow you might succeed where others had failed. I saw it in you – how could I not see it? – for I saw myself, and only myself. Yes, I saw the one I was, I lost my hope anew, I lost my faith anew, it was painful for me, do you think I enjoyed showing you the evidence and explaining how it was and writing to you, writing it down so you could keep it before you, writing what I had learnt and took half my life to learn?

I was doing you a favour, no question of that. I wanted to help you out, as I had not been helped. Had I been helped? Now, thinking of it, I wonder if I wasn’t helped, if another hadn’t sought to help me as I sought to help you, if another hadn’t recognised himself in me just as I recognised myself in you. Perhaps this is the way it is with us, perhaps this is how what is called wisdom is transmitted from one generation to another. Yes, from one to another as from father to son, it is passed down. Passed down, yes, but forgotten almost at once – forgotten at once, yes, and isn’t this the tragedy?

Perhaps I was told, as I told you. Perhaps I was shown as I showed you. Perhaps it was explained to me and written down for me just as I explained it to you and wrote it down for you. Where did I lose it, that bit of paper? Where did I lose it, if I ever had it, and now it seems I remember a scrap of paper, lost, no doubt, gone, no doubt, like so many other things – where was it lost? I would not have known its value – how could I have done? How will you know its value, what I will pass to you?

You will not know just as I did not know; this is how it is; this is how it must be. One generation tries to pass on its lesson to another, but that lesson is forgotten. The fruit of one generation’s wisdom is to be passed on, but there’s no chance, it’s lost almost straightaway, and the coming generation will have to learn for itself, the new generation will have to make the same discoveries for itself. How painful it is to grow old and know it will be forgotten, everything I’ve learnt! How painful to grow older and know nothing will be transmitted, and all forgotten!

Was I told? Was I shown? Was it explained to me? I’ve forgotten. Where was the evidence? The scrap of paper? Lost, just as you will lose the scrap I would pass to you. So where do you think it’s going? Where do you think it’s heading? Where’s it off to, towards what is it bound? Where it’s going, where are you driving it, where is it being driven? I’ll tell you where it’s going, though you won’t want to know. I’ll tell you, though you won’t listen, just as I, no doubt, wasn’t prepared to listen.

I’ll tell you, I’ll show you, I’ll write it down for you, I’ll take this stub of pencil from my coat pocket and write it on the scrap of paper I keep in my other pocket. I’ll tell you, I’ll write it down, I’ll pass it to you, the message, as though you were my own son and I was your father, even though there’s no point, even though it’s a wasted effort, and I know it just as the one who wrote it for me knew it and the one who wrote it down for him knew it and so on ad infinitum and unto the ages of ages and so will it be ad infinitum and down unto the ages of ages.

Where’s it going then? Where do you think it’s going, I’ll tell you, it’s simple enough, it’s going nowhere, there, that was simple: nowhere, it’s going nowhere, you haven’t a chance, you won’t even begin, you won’t even start, because it was over before it began, because it was botched then and it is botched now just as it will be botched for the youth whom you, one day, will try to instruct, just as another, with all the keenness of youth will refuse to be told.

Botched from the first, botched from day one, not beginning, not even bringing itself to the beginning, not even at the starting line or in the race. Outside, from the first. Counted out from the first. Did you think you could begin? Was that really what you thought? Did you think the world would make an exception for you? Did you think you were the exception? Did you think it was your mission? I would have told you. I could have told you then, even before you made your plans, could have said: you haven’t a chance.

Yes, I would have done, and perhaps I did, even I can’t remember. Yes, perhaps I told you before – or was it I who was told – I forget. Someone was told, that’s the thing, whether you or I it makes no difference. There was something told, the old wisdom, there was the old wisdom to be transmitted, there was the wisdom to be passed from one to another, even though nothing ever passes from old to young.

Do you think we speak of our failures for our own benefit? Do you think we speak for our own sake? You never listen, you never deign to listen because you think that’s what the old do, talk, and for their own benefit. But in truth we never talk for our own benefit, in truth it is never ourselves of whom we are thinking. We are old; we have stood aside; we have made room; there are many of us, but still, we’ll make room, still there’ll be place for you, still the opening in the crowd, still we’ll stand back, some will stand in a ring around you, yes, you were protected, even loved, do you understand that?

And it was out of love that we told you, that you heard the same on all sides, and from each of us old men. There are many of us, it is true, and you heard it over and again. On all sides, bearing down on you, a ceaseless muttering. Yes, surrounding you, the same crowd, each interchangable, one as good as any other, one as wise as any other – we told you, we spoke to you, though to you no doubt it was babbling and madness, we told you, we spoke, and when we thought we couldn’t be understood we wrote it down, we set it down on paper, on scraps of paper, writing with pencil stubs we’d saved in our coats.

You don’t have a chance, we said, forget it, we said, it was over from the first and it’s over now, don’t begin, don’t start, spare yourself the effort, spare yourself suffering, stop at once, give up and lie down in the circle we’ve cleared for you, give up now, lie down. That’s what we said, and it’s what you wouldn’t hear. We said it, but you would not listen.

2.

Is it true, as some of us wondered, that we wanted it thus? Is it true that you were our hope, our bravest, our first-born? Is it true that we placed our hopes in you, and what we told you was by way of a test, a wall through which you had to break? Is it true that each of us receives our youth again by way of your strength, by way of your hope and your courage, you who would break out of the circle of the old and out of all circles?

Begin, we hope. Begin! Begin, and live for us, begin and overcome us, trample over our bodies – is that what we hope? Perhaps there is truth in that, and we too are young. Perhaps, beyond our circle, there are others older than us and more weary than us. Perhaps, beyond our circle, beyond us, there are others still, old and wizened, who have given up on hope and on hoping for hope. That’s why they do not speak, those others. That’s why you’ll hear not a word, for what have they to convey? What lesson have they to transmit?

They know nothing will get through, they know, even as their glance falls on us by chance, even as, when they open a rheumy eye and it glances upon us, that we have no hope just as you have no hope. They know, but they are utterly without hope, those of the outer circle, those to whom we never turn. In truth, we fear the outer circle. In truth, we fear it, the circle to which we’ll be driven, we who think ourselves as of the inner circle.

When will hope collapse? When will become too weary for hope? When will the measure fail us? Because it will fail us. We’ll fade; we’ll lose hope and we’ll be forced outside, to lie down, body among other bodies, to lie with the others, outside. We’ll wear away, we’ll find our way on the outside even as you who were young will fill the inner circle. And so it will go on, generation unto generation, one after the another, down unto the ages of ages.

Ontological Shit

W. on the phone: ‘So you’re meta-whining now?’ – ‘Well, I’ve run out of things to write, it’s terrible’. – So come on then: what’s your latest line of flight? How are you going to escape this time?’ – ‘I tired of that. I’ve no energy to escape’. – What’s happening, then?’ – ‘Nothing. Still on my ‘lost weekend’; nine months left to go’. – ‘How long’s it been?’ – ‘Since May. Nothing substantial since May’. – ‘It’s always like that with you. Everything or nothing’.

‘Look at Steve’s posts. You’re in one’. – ‘I know. You’re not’. – ‘Ah yes, but I’ve interesting things in store’. – ‘What?’ – ‘I’m going up in the world, you’ll see’. – ‘So what’s going on at work?’ – ‘Nothing. It’s all terrible’. – ‘No it’s not, it’s getting better all the time’. – ‘Oh yes, so it is, everything is getting better all the time’. – ‘Quality’s always improving, you know that’. – ‘It has to get better -‘ Both of us together: ‘or someone’s going to get shot’.

Me: ‘It never gets better though, does it?’ – ‘No. It’s getting worse. It’s going to get a lot lot worse’. – ‘We’re doomed, right?’ – ‘Oh yes, finished’. ‘I’ve seen Bela Tarr’. – ‘Oh yes, that’s more like it. There’s a film where these guys end up at the bottom of a pit, covered in shit, completely miserable. That’s where you’ll be, in the pit’. – ‘But you’re be the other guy in the pit. That’s who you are. Covered in shit’. Laughter.

W.: ‘He’s great, Bela Tarr. Total despair. Shit everywhere. Ontological shit, cosmological shit. It’s your life, isn’t it – ontological shit?’ Laughter. – ‘You’re ontological shit’. – ‘No I’m not. You should see my Spinoza notes. They’re great. So what are you lecturing on?’. – ‘Heidegger’. – ‘Again?’ – ‘How much time have I got? Besides it’s R.A.E.-a-rama here. I’m filling in my esteem indicators’. – ‘Oh yes, what are they? I could do with a laugh’. ‘I can’t think of any’. ‘What about humiliation indicators? What about soiling yourself indicators? ‘Buffoonery indicators? Apishness indicators?’. Laughter.

Me: ‘God, I’m bored. And I’m staying in tonight’. – ‘I thought you were out every night’. – ‘No, not tonight, I’ve had enough. I’m staying in and watching more Bela Tarr’. – ‘So what’s your latest fantasy. Go on – tell me. Does it involve the net?’ – ‘It might do’. – ‘It’s a support device for your fantasies, the net. That’s all it is’. Laughter.

W.: ‘Why do you need to be loved so much? Why do you want to be adored?’ – ‘Come on, it’s the opposite, it’s the other way round – don’t you see it?’ – ‘It’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing’. I am looking out of the window as I talk. ‘Do you think the world’s going to end soon?’ – ‘Yes. And you’ll be the only one left, in your pit’.

Succour

When your life fails, you can write, my life has failed; failure becomes success – something has been achieved and this something bears what you have written. But if you were really a failure, would you have been able to write? Bad faith of writing: to have marshalled the strength to write, I am a failure is already to have left failure behind; you are a liar.

I have failed – with this lie, everything can begin; will you have the strength to ring changes on this sentence? To link it to others? Now you have made something: a few sentences, a paragraph – is that enough? Is it enough to push failure aside? Draw back, reread what you’ve written and what do you find? Is there a dramatic plot? A particular incident? Only nuances, variations – more and more of them.

Chronicler, what you have written shows failure as though lit up from within. Writing has interposed itself between you and failure. It has not saved you. Failure: that is what is written on the shell of writing – but the shell protects the soft inside of the egg. Consolation: a soft light reaches me through the membrane of writing.

Writing does not substitute itself for failure, but has potentiated it: now failure is propitious – it is on the brink of giving birth. To be close to that light! To know failure by way of writing! Everything else is mere episode. How is it I’ve always seemed to be living a double life? Failure, I felt you come near and write this sentence out for me. Failure, was it you I was waiting for when in moments of fulfilment, I thought: it’s not here yet?

It is important, I tell myself, to give the writing project a vulnerability – it must be exposed on as many sides as possible. So is blogging a beginning again each morning. So must creation begin as if for the first time. But what risk can there be when there is the strength to write? The strength that makes what you write of failure the happiest of lies?

In the afternoon, it is true, what was written in the morning is forgotten. And in the evening? We grow old each day, but whereas the journal keeper meditates in the evening on the day’s events, speaking with the wisdom of old age, I prefer to begin when there is nothing to say. Today – what will happen today? What is ahead of me? Here, at the head of the day, nothing has begun. This ‘nothing has begun’ asks for justice. How to write without recourse to experiences, without plots and conflicts? How to write of nothing in particular?

Failed writing – why is this not a novel, a continuous narrative? Why does it fail to lift itself from the occasional and the day to day? Because it belongs each day to what surprises me by writing’s interposition. Bad faith, succour: one and the same, so long as what is written is first of all the surprise of writing. There is writing – that first of all. There is writing – and so does a soft light reach you through the things of the world by way of writing.

Aurora Borealis

Is the dream over? I used to have a nightmare – a nightmare daydream (for it would come to me in the day, too, when my attention was drifting): the wasp with half its body missing buzzing in a glass. It was a real memory – a trapped wasp which by the rim of the trapping glass I had accidentally severed one part of its body from another. Distress: the animal divided in two, not dying, but still alive, buzzing against the glass.

That was my nightmare. One day I wrote about it, here – one day, when, I don’t know, I wrote about a trapped wasp with half a body and the nightmare disappeared. Isn’t this what Tarkovsky said of Mirror? By Mirror he spoke of his childhood, of his childhood home, even sowing the seeds around the house with the crops he remembered. But by Mirror he lost his childhood; this film about dreams was also the end of dreaming.

And here at the blog, when I write of trapped wasps – and of other obsession-dreams? The dying cat, for example. My friend the drunk for example. I have not thought of them since. So do I forget by writing, by way of writing. Plato was right: I have delegated memory to writing, and by that I have lost it. But how welcome the dark waters of forgetting! How welcome this great forgetting-flood!

Is the dream over? Is there nothing else to write, now I’ve lost the thread which carried me from day to day? It’s true, there’s no momentum here, the blog’s becalmed, and there’s no wind to fill the sails. I am content; there is no hatred. But contentedness is not joy; the days turn – the days accrete, one on top of another, forming a coral reef of weeks and months and seasons. If I stay in this city, my life will be this gentle laying-on-top; years will pass, and there will be nothing to write.

Pleasant days; my living room floor is covered with candleholders and beer glasses, an empty bottle of Sake, a full bottle of Tequila. And can’t I imagine, one day, the whole of my life will be similarly marked by a few objects? – the whole of my life in remainders of a life lived, known by its evidence. So will I have lived. But will that have been life? Death comes like the waters of forgetting. But what was it that was forgotten?

It is winter; I haven’t opened the curtains yet, but perhaps I will see snow. Isn’t the desire to retreat into warm rooms – to leave behind the world, and everyone else – a sign of winter? Retreat. Hold out against the cold. And isn’t each post at the blog a warm room, a habitation at the beginning of the day? I would like so say each post marks a stage on the journey, but there is no journey. Only each day to forget – to release memory into forgetting. By each day comes forgetting – this is welcome. Each morning, a dream is forgotten – this is welcome.

And on the day when there is no more to write? I’ve opened the curtains; the blizzard did not come. The sky is blue and far. And when you’ve written enough that your own life is likewise blue and far? You never will have lived – you will have rubbed out your traces as you went. There is writing instead. Writing will have remembered for you. Writing remains – but what remains?

I have always marvelled at those books, those voices, which seem to issue out of themselves, like the scarf pulled from the magician’s mouth. A speaking of nothing in particular, a writing held together only by its own volubility. How marvellous it would be to find this babbling voice! Marvellous to write without particular topic, to drift through memory and to forgetting!

Sign of this writing: a path of forgetting through memory. As though memory were a block of snow and writing-forgetting the tunnelling that leaves great, hollow absences. As though writing opened a tunnel in the snow: forgetting and what is written is written on the ice beneath the sky. Who remembers? Writing remembers for me. Unread, open to the sky, writing remembers, but I have forgotten.

I remember a poem where the narrator is ill, perhaps dying, and says his dreams wander on without him. So writing – that strange body that is not ours, strange prosthesis we do not own. Of what does it dream? Now in my dreamscape I image that above writing there shines the aurora borealis, sign of the dream of writing, of writing as it dreams of my life without me.

In the Beginning was the Mixtape

We listened to music, music passed between us; it was a kind of economy: a mixtape from you, a mixtape for you, and one which circulated according to the general equivalent of the new (have you heard this? you’re not going to believe it!). Yes, music circulated – it was a gift from one to the other, but what kind of gift? What was given?

Was a mixtape a sign of my generosity to you – or of my musical perspicacity – my musical hard work, going from this record shop to that having heard this or that song on this or that obscure radio programme, or having read this or that article? Less a gift, then, than a kind of display – a show of peacock feathers: ‘this is a sign of the breadth and boldness of my taste’. But what gave itself to you, to whom my mix tape passed? My taste, yes – a sign of my prowess – but also a kind of address, for wasn’t the tape always an address, a declaration to the recipient, to the friend, a way of saying ‘here I am’?

This is unavoidable; the mixtape had a direction, it was a tape for you – even if there were more than one of you. ‘You have to hear this’: the mixtape was addressed to you. It wasn’t that I’d play you records then and there, but that I sought to reach you when I was not present. A mixtape in the post, a mixtape given just before you went (‘I made this for you’); this was a deferred sharing (‘you might like this’). Addressed to find you when I was not there.

Addressed to you? – But rather, wasn’t it to call forward a listener in you – to test you by the tape I’d made for you? Wasn’t it to draw from you one of a new people, of listeners to come? Wasn’t it to summon from you the listener who you were not yet, the one who would join me on the new shore and at the brink of a new country? I made this tape for you, yes, but only to call forward one who was waiting in you.

Who would you be, listener? One beside me, listening alongside me. We were the first listeners in the new world of which the mixtape dreamt. Listen, said the future, as it reached you in the mixtape. ‘I am coming’ said the future with the music of the mixtape. And didn’t I give you the future to receive the future in turn? Wasn’t it in expectation of another mixtape, a mixtape to come, in which the net was cast out yet further?

Celestial currency, whose coins are made of fire. Currency of fire, and the destruction of exchange value! I gave you a tape; I wanted another in return. You gave me a tape, and what did you expect from me? It was already an economy. But what happened by way of this exchange?

The future came; each time, with each tape, the future came towards us. And wasn’t this because the tape was an address, that it reached you from me just as I received a tape from you? Wasn’t this was because what was shared was received from the one who did not occupy the same level as me, who was higher, closer to the future and to the coming of the future? Just as I, for you, was likewise closer to the future and to its coming?

A double dissymmetry; a relation doubly dissymmetrical. Each time the gift came from where I could not be. Each time was given what was not in my power to give. It reached you by way of the remix of ‘Bang Zoom Let’s Go Go’. It reached you by way of that long track by Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn; it came by way of Terry Allen and The Uts. But how did it come? Via the signification of a music new to me (it was the explosion of ‘world music’ – the mid 80s) – via wild new significations? Or was it via what withheld itself from signification like the enigmatic navel of the dream?

It arrived by way of what did not signify, but waited nevertheless, watching out for me, looking for me, and then arriving, having dreamt of me, and by its dream, created me. It was the time of the great broadening – the time of WOMAD tapes and Folk Roots compilations. The music of the world waited for us; it had dreamt of us and created us; we were the people of a new world, a world that had not quite arrived, we stood at the head of the waters. Or was it that what reached us was more bare and more simple; that what came had nothing to do with breadth or range, of a music that was as yet unfamiliar (the instruments of Sardinia, the throat song from Tuva …), but what passed by way of that music and its unfamiliar signs?

Dreadful times: corporate buyouts, Linndrums, the triumph of the mediocre. Not yet the niche marketing that would allow performers with smaller audiences to survive. Not yet the ’boutique artist’; only big sellers and negligible sellers. Wasn’t it against this backdrop that we listened – and the backdrop of industrial strife and unemployment, of the completion of a new, vile order? Wasn’t it in terms of this backdrop that the future was intelligible? Non-signification: withdrawal, refusal. What mattered was that music said, ‘I would prefer not to’.The sixth-formers were listening to Level 42, the record player in the common room spun No Jacket Required. Evil times; but there were mixtapes –

Waiting for us, ahead of us, there was other music. Our friendship was only the circuit of this music, its network and we were the disobedient cells through which it spread like cancer. Yes, that was how the future arrived. First music, then friendship. First music, and then the double dissymmetry of friendship. That was how it came, the future: as refusal, and as the proliferation of refusal.

What was music without friendship? Friendship was its life; it required it, summoning a people around its newness. We didn’t know what it meant. What was this music? First of all, withdrawal. First of all it affirmed refusal. In the signs by which it circulated, there was the non-signifying, the ‘there is’ of music; its push, its novelty. The ‘there is’, the navel of the dream by which it dreamt us into existence, its audience. We were the preservers and sustainers of the work. Our friendship was its sustenance; it was the ark in which the future was carried.

First music, then friendship. First refusal, and then the friendship sustained by refusal. Music dreamt and gave birth to us. Music dreamt and laid out our world. And didn’t it, too, lay out the earth beneath the world? Didn’t it lay out the soil of the new country from which each of us rose like Adams and Eves? We knew ourselves by the music of refusal and by the mixtapes of refusal. We knew and confirmed our knowledge by way of mixtapes, currency of the new Eden. And each, for the other, was closer to the future than we were. And each friend was higher than the other, as we, for the others, were higher than them. By the tapes that reached us did we know the future. By those tapes was the future coming.