Lars Iyer's Blog

It's not going well, is it?, says W. it's going badly, I agree. Worse than ever. But why does it surprise us? What did we expect? Some Kant-like resurgence, late in life? Some awakening from our dogmatic slumbers?

It'll be my turn next, W. says. They're coming to get me. The cursor, on someone's monitor, is already hovering over my name.

'You want them to come, don't you?', W. says. I want to be a member of the secret police which will lead me away, or a rifleman in the execution squad who will make me stand blindfolded against the wall.

Only W. listens to me, really listens, he says. Of course, I don't know what I'm saying, not really, says W. I'm not really aware. But in the calmest of conversations, I'm like a witchdoctor whose eyes have rolled backwards in his skull. When I speak of nothing at all, I'm like a pentecostalist writhing on the floor.

But that's when the apocalypse speaks most deeply in me. That's when it resounds, the truth of the end times, of the end of the world.

And who is he, W. – the Pythia to my Oracle? What is our significance, taken together?, W. wonders. Whose sign are we to interpret?

Make it stop!, that's my secret cry, isn't it? Someone make me stop! Of course, he'd commit the act, if he didn't find my predicament so funny.

That's my trouble – something in me wants to inspire outrage and frenzied attack, but all I do is make everyone laugh. It's like a chimp shitting itself, W. says. A chimp sitting in its own shit, with a bemused expression on its face.

I would have been happiest in the period of show trials and autoconfessions, W. says. I would have liked nothing better than to have confessed for imaginary crimes, the greater, the better, signing every confession the police brought to me and admitting my role in the greatest of conspiracies. It would have given me a sense of importance, of epic grandeur. I did it, I would say. I was the worst of all. It was me, it was all my fault: what have I ever wanted to say but that?

There are some thoughts that will be forever beyond us, says W. The thought of our own stupidity for example – even that's beyond us. We'll never understand, really understand, the depths of our stupidity, W. says. Since we've failed, and could do nothing but fail, we can never really understand the extent of our failure, the extent of our stupidity.

Oh he has some sense of it, W. says. More than I have, but then he's more intelligent than I am. But he's not intelligent enough! That's his tragedy, W. says. Mind you, if he were intelligent enough, wouldn't he kill himself out of shame because of his stupidity? Wouldn't he realise just how immeasurably he had failed? Ah, but if he were intelligent enough, he wouldn't be stupid, W. says.

Sometimes, W. feels a terrible sickness, he says. He wants to vomit it all up – and not just everything he's eaten, everything he's drunk. Everything: his whole life, all that he is, his past, his present. To expel it. To get it all out, all that has been, as though he were only a foreign body in his own skin.

Everything – but more still, for doesn't he want to vomit up the world, too, everything that has happened, everything that is happening, the very fact of existence? Somehow, he is responsible for it, the catastrophe of the world. Somehow it all begins with him. – 'With you', he says.

No one finds us funny anymore, W. says. We're like a joke that's been told too many times, and amuses no one. A joke of which everyone is sick and tired.

The audience doesn't laugh anymore, W. says. They grimace, teeth bared, like a chimpanzee about to attack.

He's not going to protect me when they turn. And they're about to turn, don't I see?

What has he learned?, W. muses. What are his four noble truths? He knows only that I am wrong, and that I have always been in the wrong. He's certain of that.

Could he, given such the indubitability of such a starting point, begin to reconstruct his certainty of things, like Descartes? Could he, having reached such a realitatpunkt, begin building everything up again?

But from the realitatpunkt of my stupidity, there's nothing to build, and nothing that can be built. The realitatpunkt is that I continue to destroy everything W. tries to build.

'Your stomach never lies', W. says. 'It's got more integrity than you have'. That's why I'm always in such an appalling state. It's why I always look so bilious and green. – 'Something in you must know', W. says. Something must know my lies and pretension and that, in fact, my life is only a lie and a pretension.

Glee: that's what W. always sees on my face. That I'm still alive, that I can still continue, from moment to moment: that's enough for me, W. says. He supposes it has to be.

If I realised for one moment … If I had any real awareness … But it would be too much, W. says I couldn't know what I was and continue as I am. I couldn't come into any real self-awareness.

'That's what saves you', W. says. 'Your stupidity'. If only he knew … That's what everyone thinks when they see me, W. says. That's what he thinks.

Meanwhile, it's left to him to bear the terrible fact of my existence, W. says. It's his problem, not mine as it should be, W. says. Everyone blames him for me. What's he doing here?, they ask. Why did you bring him? But he had to, W. knows. He has all the excuses. He's sorry in my place. I'm his responsibility.

'What keeps you going?', W. asks. 'What, from moment to moment?' If he had my life, he says, he'd kill himself straightaway. It's a disaster, a travesty. – 'How do you go on? How -really?' W.'s never been sure. He has enough trouble with his life, he says. It's already too much. But mine – mine!

He shakes his head. – 'If you had any decency …' But I don't, do I? I'm still alive! I do it just to annoy him, don't I? It's my little victory, from moment to moment … It's It's why I always look so gleeful. It's why I always look as though I've pulled one over on him, which in fact I have.

I'll die with froth on my lips, W. says. He knows it. I'll die like some rabid animal with wild eyes and dirt under my nails. I'll have tried to dig my way out. I'll have gone mad from confinement, and they'll have shot me out of disgust like a dog.

What do I think's going to happen to me at the end?, W. asks me. – 'They'll round you up', says W. Everyone will expect it. Children will point at my door. – 'Him, him', they'll cry. And I'll be dragged out and shot and I'll fall down in the mud.

Has it really come to this?, W. wonders. It has. Is it going to get any worse? Much worse. This is only the beginning. He feels like a Marie Antoinette being led out to the chopping-block, he says. He feels like Joan of Arc being bound to the stake.

When's the blow going to come? When are the flames going to leap up and surround him? It'll be a relief after everything that's happened, W. says. The horror of uncertainty will come to an end. The horror of not knowing how much further down I will lead him.

For where are we going? Downwards, that much is obvious. Down – and out – that, too is obvious. We've long since left all friendly terrain. We've long since left the last human house. We're in the wilderness now, W. says, mapless and unsure.

Why does he listen to me?, W. says. But he knows why. There'd be sense in keeping people around to inspire him, W. says. But not to destroy him. Unless it's his death-drive, W. says. Unless I'm his death-drive, for how else could he account for it?

Ostracism, that's what I've brought him, W. says. Derision. Every door that was open to him is now closed. The shutters have been slammed on the windows, and W.'s out in the cold, stamping his feet for warmth, and there I am beside him.

What do I want from him?, W. asks. What does he want for himself? Ah, there's no way of telling. He'll simply have to follow where I lead, and listen to what I say. We're heading out, out into the wilderness, he knows that. Out beneath the flashing stars and the silvery pines to where nothing can live.

'Have you ever had an honest thought? Have you ever been true to anything?', W. says. The answer is no, he says. It's always been no. A great no should be roaring in the sky. The no should deafen me, W. says, and deafen anyone who speaks to me. No!, he cries. No!

It's our fault, it's all our fault, we should at least admit that, W. says. It's our fault and particularly mine. My fault, W. says, because my existence couldn't help but contaminate his. And his fault, somewhat at least, because he continues to allow his existence to be contaminated by mine.

But what can we do about it? To whom should we apologise? Each other? I should certainly apologise to him, W. says. I owe him a lifetime of apologies. But doesn't he owe me an apology, too? Doesn't he, by his continual presence in my life, perpetuate the disaster?

He gives me license, W. says. He gives me encouragement – but why? In the end, perhaps I'm only a figment of his imagination, a kind of nightmare, he says. Can't you see I'm burning?, I ask him in his dream. But in the end, he is the one who's burning, W. says. He's the one who set himself on fire.

Do I understand, really understand, the reality of my situation?, W. says. Of course not; it would be quite impossible. I'm not really aware of myself, says W., which is my saving grace. Because if I were …

It's enough that W. knows. It's enough that he's aware of the the reality of my situation. He tells others about it, but they scarcely believe him; they have to blot it out. Screen memories replace real ones.

They remember only owls, W. says. When he tells them about me, about the reality of my situation, it's only owls they see, owls with outspread wings swooping through the night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's Alain Badiou, sitting all alone. We should go and talk to him, says W. You talk to him and I'll listen, I tell W. I want to hear W.'s French again, he knows that. He knows I think he becomes a better person when he reads French – kinder, gentler.

But why should Alain Badiou want to speak to us? He's a man of rigour and mathematical precision, of course. He's a man of politics, of real political commitment! And what are we?

Badiou has lived through things, experienced things, but we've experienced nothing. He is a man of exceptional rigour, of dispassionate mathematical thought, whereas we are men of exceptional vagueness, of pathos-filled would-be religious thought, which, in fact has nothing to do with religion, which has its own rigour, its own precision.

What would Alain Badiou make of us? What would he conclude? Enemies, he would think. No, not even enemies, he would think. Pas enemies. Les tosseurs. But perhaps he wouldn't think anything at all. He'd just look through us, he couldn't help but look through us, a man of mathematical rigour wouldn't find anything in us with which to engage. It would be as if, like evil for Plato, we didn't really exist.

For the mathematical philosopher, vagueness doesn't exist, not really; it's only a deficiency of precision. And pathos doesn't exist either, unless it is the glint of starlight, impersonal and remote, on the eyeglasses of the militant, brick in hand, facing the police.

Ranciere, the keynote, is speaking. Should we go? Fuck Ranciere, says W. He wants gin. We need gin, and didn't he see Plymouth Gin being sold in the bar. Real gin. W. wants his favourite kind of Martini, in which the glass is filled with Vermouth before it's poured away and then replaced with neat, slightly chilled Plymouth Gin and a spiral of lime peel.

We sit out in the sun with our cocktails. Don't drink too quickly!, W. says. Enjoy it! Fuck Ranciere!, he says. Yes, fuck Ranciere! We admire The Ignorant Schoolmaster – who doesn't? – but Ranciere's a boring speaker. And here we are with our gin! Autodidacticism: that's our future. We don't need to listen to speakers, we'll teach ourselves, and over gin! By means of gin!

'And then you fell in with the monks …', W. says. It's the most mysterious of episodes to him, W. He's never had it satisfactorily explained to him how I ended up living with the monks. What drove me to them, or them to me?

How did I, who had no religious belief, no experience of religion, no understanding of religion, end up living among the monks as their guestmaster? Why, out of all the other candidates – and there must have been other candidates, other monk hangers-on, who would have wanted my job – did I become the live-in welcomer of visitors to the community?

He sees in his imagination, W. says: an ape-man who came to stand between the monks and the world, letting in their guests, preparing them lunch or dinner, and showing them up to their rooms, which he had carefully prepared. He sees it, although he doesn't understand what he sees: an ape-man making beds and dusting picture rails, an ape-man going out to Safeways to buy food for dinner, an ape-man taking coats and hats and making pleasantries in the oak-parqued reception room, an ape-man arm in arm with the monk he's escorting across the icy pavement. He sees the ape-man sitting in attendance at ecumenical dinners; the ape-man preparing fasting food for the visiting Copts and for the visiting Russian Orthodox, an ape-man calling a taxi for tired Dominicans heading to the station …

How it confuses W., for whom the story of my life, otherwise, is relatively clear. The monks took me in: but why? why me? what recommended me to them? what, when I had no idea of what living a spiritual life might mean? W., by contrast, has every idea of what living a life of genuine spirituality might mean. He, too, lived among monks, and for a time, even thought of becoming one.

Ah, but he can say little of it, not to me, who puts everything up about him, W., at his blog. A veil has to be drawn over some things. A kind of silence has to observed. But he came to know what it meant, a spiritual life. He met a holy man. They walked along the seashore, talking about the essence of religion.

And isn't that where it began, W.'s real sense of religion, of religiosity, which has nothing to do with sighing after a world beyond this world? Isn't that where he understood that the question of religion wasn't to be left to philosophers and metaphysicians, and with the philosophical and metaphysical conceptions of religion?

W. took a vow of silence, he says. He spent days in solitary prayer. Hadn't he begun to understand that it was the world here and now to which religion attended. To world as it currently is! As it is, and insofar as it harbours its redemption. Only insofar as it is close to eternity. It was his time in silent meditation that set him on the road to grasping what is so clear to him now: that religion is not a metaphysical affair. It's about ethics!, W. says. Politics!

What did I understand, when I fell in with the monks? What did I grasp of the vision of the world vouchsafed to me? That, too, is a mystery to W., for whom it has always seemed clear that I know nothing whatsoever of religion. There I was, nonetheless, a guestmaster, and for several years. There I was, reading Kierkegaard in my attic room as the monks around me prayed unceasingly for the world. There I was, engaged in my studies, or what I thought of as my studies, as they strove towards union with God.

The moment, the moment: what does Kierkegaard mean by this word? W. knows I am obsessed with finding the answer.

W.'s always been impressed by my obsessions, he says. My obsession to understand Anti-Oedipus, for example. Every summer, I reread Anti-Oedipus with fresh hope that I will grasp both the sweep of its argument and its finer points. Every summer!

W. likes to imagine monkey-boy poring over the pages of Anti-Oedipus, mumbling to himself. He likes the thought of my futile application at this task, day after day in my office, sunlight slanting through the windows, and dust motes in the air. He likes the idea of my walking through the streets in an Anti-Oedipus inspired haze, gaze lost in the distance.

How can I presume I'll ever understand Anti-Oedipus? But I do presume it, and W. finds this magnificent. It's like a hero of tragedy, he says. The hero who, at the highest point of the drama, rises up, freedom clashing against necessity. Rises and then falls all the more dreadfully.

There's no magnificence with me, of course. Tragedy gives way to comedy when you try the impossible too many times. It gives way to farce: What an idiot I am! What a splendid idiot, running up against my own idiocy over and again! How do you forget, with the beginning of a new summer, what happened the previous summer? How, such that I can begin again, in perfect innocence?

The tragic hero, crushed, eyeless, wanders looking only for a place to die. I wander having forgotten both my tragic flaw and the punishment for that flaw. I wander with W. beside me, laughing at me, but charmed, too, and even impressed by me, and my capacity for hope.

The moment, the moment: my new obsession. Ah, but it was my obsession back then, too – back in old Hulme, when I lived among the bohemians. That's what I was obsessed with as I coughed on the spliff that was being passed around clockwise (you passed spliff round clockwise in a time of war, which is to say, in Babylon, and anti-clockwise in a time of peace, which is to say, in Zion – I'd told W. that, he remembers, it was quite moving). That as the real bohemians sent me down, their pet monkey, for beer, chips and tabs, as they kept to their eeries, barely setting foot on solid ground for weeks.

The moment: that's what I was looking for as I wandered among the condemned buildings, through the crescents that were each named after a famous architect (William Kent, John Nash, Robert Adam, Nicholas Hawksmoor …) The moment: and isn't that what I dreamt I found after sniffing popper in PSV, head pounding, face flushed, hearing vocals and melodies drop out as the DJ slid down the faders, hearing only the interlocking rhythms of drum and bass, horns punched in at full volume and then punched out again, snare rolls amplified like detonations, hi hats echoing and exploding and fizzing out into white noise? Isn't that what I dreamed filled me as the blood filled my head, as the lyrics broke up, as full verses were abandoned for enigmatic fragments, as choruses were replaced with snatches of words, as the walls of the nightclub ran with sweat and the electronic ambience in the dub gathered humid and dark like a humming, squalling storm above the music …?

The moment, the moment: but what had I discovered, when I looked at my reflection in the nightclub toilet? A red face, with blood running from one nostril. A flushed face, and blood having already spattered my teeshirt …

And isn't that what will happen now, as I pore through my pages of Kierkegaard as sunlight streams in through my office windows? Won't a drop of blood splash down on the pages I turn in hope and bewilderment at my desk?