Lars Iyer's Blog

No more, says W. No more. He's passing through a dead zone, he says, as you are beginning to find in the oceans: blank regions where there is no life. There's no life in him! It's all over!

W.'s despairs are like magnetic fields, he says, like great clouds in the air through which he passes. They have nothing to do with his inner states at all. It's not a matter of emotion. His despairs, W. says, are not even his.

Why does he always feel he's falling? Why does he feel that nothing is real?

The argumentum ad misericordiam, that's the name for it, W. says, my basic scholarly move. It's the fallacy of appealing to pity or sympathy, which in my case is implied in the general state of the speaker, his bloodshot eyes, his shit-stained clothes. Don't I always give my presentations as though on my knees?, W. says.

It's as though I'm praying for mercy, W. says, although it's also, no doubt, a plea to put me out of my misery. Kill me now, that's what my presentations say. Don't spare me, which is why, inevitably I am spared. It would be too easy to destroy me, W. says. And who would clean up afterwards?

The proofs are spread around me, I tell W. I've marked them with little proofreader's symbols, but it's no good. What's the symbol for complete rubbish?, says W. What about burn immediately? What's the symbol for the desecration of thought? What's the symbol for kill me now? – 'What you've put your proofreaders through!', W. says. 'It's appalling'.

Literature destroyed us: we've always been agreed on that. The literary temptation was fatal. Of course, it would be different if read literature alongside philosophy, W. says, but literature, for us, could not help infecting our philosophy.

Yes, that's where it all went wrong. But don't you admire the fact that we feel something about literature?, I ask him. Don't you think it's what saves us? But W. is not persuaded. It makes us vague and full of pathos. That's all we have – pathos.

The argumentum ad misericordiam, that's the name for it, W. says, the fallacy of appealing to pity or sympathy, which is to say the basic argument we give on every occasion. Isn't why we always give examples of nuns and dogs in our presentations? Isn't it why we give our presentations with tears in our eyes?

W. speaks of his dream of a community, of a society of friends who would push each other to greatness. We speak of our absent friends over pints of Bass. Where are they now? Scattered all over the world! If only they were closer! Of what would we be capable! They would make us great! Perhaps that is his last temptation, W. says, the thought that something could make us great.

W., as always, is fascinated by my eating habits. He asks to put his hand on my belly. – 'It's big', he says. 'You look pregnant'. And then, 'This is just the start. You're going to get really fat'. It'll be elasticated trousers soon, he says.

W. has always liked chubby men, he says. We remember the fat singers we admire, drinking wine out of bottles on stage. Fat, angry men. He's angry because he's fat, I said of the singer of Modest Mouse. – 'No, he was angry and then he got fat', says W. Do you think he minds being fat?, I ask him. – 'He has other issues'.

Kafka was thin, W. reminds me. Yes, but he was ill. – 'Blanchot was thin', says W. But he was ill as well. - 'I bet Brod was fat'. Definitely, I agree. He drank too much, that's why he got fat. – 'Why do you think he drank?', W. says. Because he knew he was stupid.

My hair is shaved, W.'s piled up in a quiff. Does he pomade his hair? No, W. says, it's naturally like that. He looks like Gary Glitter, post disgrace, I tell him. I look like a thug, W. says. A monkey thug with great dangling arms in an army vest. Who could suspect me of any delicacy of thought? I look like what I am, W. says. I can't pretend otherwise. What about him, then? Was Gary Glitter a philosopher? Did Immanuel Kant have a quiff?

At night, our open-hearted hosts dream of the Yukon. How did they end up here, in the American south? How did they chance ending up here, in Nashville of all places, in the heart of the south?

It's a third world country!, cries our host. It's gone mad!, he says. When they first arrived in the country, he saw two 12 year old kids held face down by an armed security guard in a supermarket. The guard was pointing the gun at their heads, he says. At their heads! Kids! Our host went home and locked himself in and didn't come out for 10 days. This country is insane!, he cries.

We sit out on the porch drinking Plymouth Gin. This is yuppie hour, says our host, who is slowly recovering from his ordeals, when joggers and dog walkers fill the streets. At night it's too dangerous to go out, though. You never know what might happen. He rolls up his shirtsleeve and shows us his tattoo: workers of the world unite, it says.

Night falls and we are lost in the Smokies. Where's our cabin? Precipitous falls to the left and the right. Our host, the driver, is edgy. We get out and walk – the road's too steep for the car. What are we going to do?

Then we see it: the cabin. It's almost too late for our host. He's raving. What's he doing here? How did he end up here? He can't drive anymore, he, a non-driver! Not another mile! Later, he collapses on the balcony, still wet from the hot tub: the dying swan, half wrapped in a towel.

What's this country doing to him? How did he end up here? We talk softly to him over our Plymouth Gins cut with water. When he recovers, he speaks movingly of the early blues players. They led such short lives! But life is short! There's so little time! And here they are, our hosts, in America! What's going to become of them, Canadians in America?

We'd listened to early gospel and country blues while we drove. The Golden Gate Singers. Barbecue Bob. Memphis Minnie. It kept us sane. Route 441 took us through the 'Redneck Riviera', Pigeon Forge. With every mini-golf course or water ride we passed, our host sank lower. With every giant golden cross on a hilltop, every novelty motel and advert for apocalyptically-themed shows for all the family (aerial battles of angels; re-enactments of the crucifixion), his cries grew louder. Kroger's, The Old Time Country Shop, more huge crosses looming over nowhere … There's no room for satire, he wailed. It satirises itself! It satirises us! We're helpless!

Only turnip greens can save us, he decided. We put on a great pan of them in our cabin, to have with our Plymouth Gin. Turnip Greens! Barbecue Bob! Memphis Minnie! The Golden Gate Singers! These are the talismans that might allow him to survive the USA.

It's a car city, our host tells us of Nashville. You're nothing without a car. When they'd first arrived in America, they tried to do without a car, he says. They walked and rode the bus everywhere. The buses are great here, he says. You can have great conversations. Everyone talks, he says. But it takes hours to get anywhere.

They took up cycling. Everyone thinks you're crazy if you cycle here, he says. People yell at you. People yell, why are you cycling? But he cycles to work nonetheless, he says.

But they've bought a car now. They had to. How else could they get to La Hacienda, their favourite restaurant? The only thing for them is to become Mexican, they decided. To learn Spanish. To learn to Salsa.

And how else would they get to their favourite Vietnamese restaurant? The only thing for them is become Vietnamese, they decided. To learn Vietnamese. To make ramens.

The size of the carpark outside the Vietnamese restaurant amazes us, when our hosts take us there. Madly, our host drives us round and round in circles. I can't get over the amount of space here!, he says. It's madness!

Over dinner, he tells us of his project to photograph the old parts of Nashville before they're demolished. There's virtually nothing of it left, he says. It keeps him sane, he says, cycling round the old ruins and finding a way to break in and take pictures of what he finds. When we get home that evening, he shows us a slide show of photographs on his laptop and trembles with melancholy. Where did it all go wrong?

In a bar at Five Points, Nashville, W. berates the bartender about the poor choice of gin. Bombay Gin is terrible, he tells her. Tanqueray isn't bad, especially with tonic, but Bombay Gin is a marketing gimmick. She says her customers like it. W. tells her to introduce them to Plymouth Gin. Why hasn't she got any Plymouth Gin? You can get it in America. Our bartender looks annoyed. She'll get what her customers want, she tells us. But how do they know what they want when they haven't tried Plymouth Gin?, W. asks. I don't think she wants to hear about Plymouth Gin, I tell W.

Later, as we sit out on our hosts' porch drinking Plymouth Gin, we talk about music. He plays us Barbecue Bob and Memphis Minnie (trading licks with Kansas Joe McCoy) and Big Joe Williams (with his nine string guitar). Our host makes us listen to the funk guitar style of the Mississippi Sheiks. You pronounce it sheeks, he says. He points out their sophisticated harmonies, and the subtle interplay of instruments. It's their microphone technique, he tells us.

You find the ultimate blend of melody and rhythm in string bands, our host says. He's become a real enemy of melody, he says. He hates dead syncopations, he says. He hates drums. As soon as drums came in, that was it. W. thinks he's gone too far. So does Sal. Fuck melody!, says our host. I'm swept up by his arguments. Fuck melody!, I shout. Fuck drums!

Our host plays us some early John Lee Hooker. He plays electric guitar rhythmically, he says. Rhythm is everything, he says. He puts on Bukka White. The guitar produces the rhythm, says our host. It doesn't follow it. Fuck drums!, I shout. Fuck melody!

Our first taxi driver in Memphis, who picks us up from the bus station, has a sign on his sunshade saying, It's My Birthday Today. He's a fat man, very fat, and it's as though he's been poured into his taxi. How fat he is!, we marvel to ourselves. But he seems very comfortable wedged into his car, as though poured there. Memphis, unexpectedly, is cold. The weather doesn't know what it's doing, he tells us.

Our second taxi driver, who picks us up from the hotel to take us to Graceland, is wearing what appear to be pajamas. Comfortable for driving, we surmise. Hearing our British accents, he asks where we're from. Nottingham, says Sal. We're from Plymouth – and Newcastle, W. and I tell him. Nottingham, says the taxi driver. Robin Hood and his Merry Men, they're from Nottingham, he says. Do you know them?

Then he gets a phonecall. I've got some passengers from Nottingham, says the taxi driver. You know, Robin Hood and his Merry Men? He has to go now, he says, on the phone. And then to us, that was my brother. We grew up on Robin Hood and his Merry Men. The Sheriff of Nottingham. The Adventures of Robin Hood, that's what it was called on TV. Is it a true story, Robin Hood and his Merry Men?, he asks. It's an amalgamation of different stories, W. tells him.

It's My Birthday Today, says the sign on his sunshield. Is it your birthday?, we ask him, when he drops us off at Graceland. It is. Happy birthday, we say. He's got a barbeque later, he says. He's getting together with his brother and his family.

He tells us we should take his card, and to call him when we're through with our tour. When he picks us up later, coming straight from his barbeque, he tells us about Elvis. The young Elvis used to come up to the black clubs on Beale Street, he tells us. He was no racist, he says, when W. asks him. He was the only white boy there, on Beale Street.

He tells us Beale Street was almost entirely rebuilt in the 1980s. Back in '68, when Dr King was assassinated, he tells us, he city authorities demolished Beale Street, home of the blues, and the surrounding areas, because they said there would be trouble. But there was no trouble, the taxi driver tells us, no riots.

He drives us past the Civil Rights Museum, right next to the hotel where Dr King was shot and waves to a woman who's kept a 25 year protest against the demolition of black businesses there. It's not what Dr King would have wanted, says our taxi driver, the demolition of the black businesses.

Our first taxi driver, A Somalian, picks us up from Nashville airport and detoured to pick up his checkers board. He and the other taxi drivers play checkers together when it's quiet, he tells us. One, another Somalian, was a checkers champion back home, a real expert. Sometimes he wins 10 times in a row, which antagonises the Nigerians, who generally dislike the Somalians. When he hears our English accents, he tells us he doesn't care for his adopted country. He's lost here, he says, though he's working hard. He pulls shift after shift, but it's hard to make any real money. It's quiet pretty often, he says. But there's always checkers, he says.

Our second Nashville taxi driver, who takes us to the bus station, is also Somalian. When he hears our English accents, he tells us without equivocation that the USA is a third world country. He tells us about the lack of healthcare and the low wages. You can't make enough money to live on as a taxi driver, he says.

People come to the USA for a better life, he says, and they end up killing themselves. He's known plenty of people who've killed themselves. They want to come to America, studying at college for a better life, and they work three jobs, he says. And then they kill themselves, he says. He's been to Bristol, our taxi driver says. He knows how people live in England. He has relatives there. People can get on in England, he says.

Our third Nashville taxi driver, on the way back to the airport, is the voice of the apocalypse. Upon hearing our English accents, he speaks to us in a voice of infinite despair and resignation. In America, he says, your teeth rot in your mouth, because you can't afford healthcare. There's the rich and there's the poor, he says, and the poor have nothing and will never have anything but nothing.

There's no minimum wage here, the driver say. People are paid 5, 6 dollars an hour, that's all. People are dying, he says. People are shooting other people …

Americans! How we love them! They're everything we want to be! Blithe! Innocent, as though they've just arrived on the earth! Look at them! Look at us! What's wrong with us? Everything that's right with them! What's right with them? The exact opposite of what's wrong with us!

They belong on yachts, a great fleet of yachts! They belong on the open sea, yachting along! We'd be their cabin boys, we agree. They'd be upstairs, on the deck, and we'd be downstairs, cleaning their things, scrubbing them. How fresh they are! How clean!

Their teeth dazzle us. What do they think of English teeth?, we wonder. What do they think of us? They'll never understand, we agree, these Americans. They're not mired in themselves. They're not stunted, or bitter.

Of course, these are the rich Americans, we agree. They can afford to fix their teeth, which look radioactive, we agree. Where are the poor Americans? Back at home, without healthcare! Back at home, teeth rotting, in a worse state than ours, with no healthcare.

There are the Americans on one side (we're thinking of the ones queuing up for the tour bus), we agree, then us, then the Europeans. We're in the middle: not as softly spoken as the Europeans, to be sure, not as intellectual – for the Europeans are intellectual, perpetually intellectual, all of them, but not as loudly spoken as the Americans, not as forward, not as bright, for the Americans are bright, we're agreed.

What does it mean to be British?, we muse. We're neither of the new world or of the old world, neither one or the other. We lack confidence; we lack tradition. We can neither make a new world nor live altogether in an old one. This country … Rats running over rats, we agree. Cynicism and opportunism, we agree. And where are we in all this? At the bottom, we agree. At the very bottom, and full of sourness and resentment.

Didn't W. have the chance to live in Strasbourg? Couldn't he have stayed on there, long past the 6 months he actually spent there? It was his Britishness that prevented it, W. says. He was too British! The boulevards were too quiet for him. The streets too civilised … Above all, it was the humour.

They don't hate themselves, he says of the Europeans. They don't despise themselves, not like us. We despise ourselves, and that's our humour. It'll come to nothing: that's what our humour says. Don't even begin.

The Americans don't hate themselves, of course. Neither do they love themselves, not Americans. They're full of newness, the salt is in their hair, their deck shoes on, and they're facing the future with their caps worn backwards. If only we could be as young as them, as innocent, we say over our morning beers.

Here we are, on the way to oblivion, and there they are, all fresh and new. Here we are, drinking steadily, drinking to reach the other side of the day, and there they are, free of alcohol, free of anything but their freedom, the sun dazzling us from their white teeth.

Americans are taller than us, we agree. They have whiter teeth – much whiter, it's dazzling – and whiter shirts, or blouses. They wear deck shoes, we notice, as though they were on a yacht. And they're first born, as William James would say, not old and jaded like us.

They are as fresh as the sea breeze, we agree. They're louder than us, and more confident. Who else would wear caps back to front? Yet there they are wearing caps back to front. Who else queue up in such an orderly way for their tourist bus? Yet there they are, the young Americans, queuing up, while we drink our morning beers in the sun.

Of course, I'm fascinated by the damp, I tell W. I can't help it. I go out there again, to the kitchen, to the bathroom. I put my hand on the clammy wall. The damp is calling me. The damp wants a witness to itself. And who am I but the one who sees it, touches it? Who am I but the one with its spores in his lungs?

One night it grew me, I tell W. One night a spore unfolded itself to a make a man, a golem of damp. And the damp wrote its name on my forehead and placed its charm on my tongue …

Somewhere, on the other side of the wall, life has reached a new level, I tell W. Somewhere, damp mutters to itself; damp dreams, there behind the wall. And what will it say when it comes to itself? What will the damp say when it wakes up?

'The damp', says W. 'That's your apocalypse'. Does he know I have mushrooms growing from the ceiling? Does he know they're gathered in the far upper corner of the kitchen as in an armpit? It used to make me shudder, I tell W. I used to hate it. But now …

That's how the leak from upstairs was found, I tell W. It was a sign. But there's something coming from beneath the flat, I tell W. Something rising. You'll have to get someone out, said the plumber. It's urgent. He thinks a pipe's burst, I tell W. He thinks I should get on to the water company.

I called them first thing, the water company, I tell W. First thing, when the lines opened in the morning, and then for forty days in a row. There were no direct lines, of course. The same queues. The same dumb music every time. The same half hour wasted, and explaining to someone new, someone else, the whole history of the problem.

I tried pleading and wailing and severity, I tell him. Sometimes I lost my will, all hope, and sometimes I was filled with new hope and a fresh will. My heart leapt like a flying fish; it sank again. Every day! Every morning! And for forty mornings. And still the damp in the air. Still the mould in my lungs like wet asbestos. Spores grew in my heart, mildew on my skin; the air was wet …

It was the industry regulator who saved me, I tell W. It was his advice, W.'s, to call the industry regulator, he said. Call Offwat!, he said. I called Offwat. I spoke to someone. The next day, a subcontractor of the water company phoned back; they'd dig up the lane behind the flat to find the leak.

The next day they were there, without announcing themselves. But they were working far away in the lane, and the leak was close, in the yard. I called a workman in. Listen, I said, I tell W. Do you hear it? He pressed a listening cup to the concrete. He heard it, he said. It's where copper meets lead, he said. The lead comes off the mains in the lane and then meets copper, he said. They're always leaking, he said. But he wasn't allowed to dig up the yard, he said. I'd have to sign a permission slip for that.

Weeks passed. Offwat were on the case; the complaints department knows me; the subcontractors who work for the water company know my name, but still nothing was done. Forty days passed – another forty, until finally, they came out again to dig up the lane, the same hole, and gave the same verdict.

'Did you pray?', W. says. I didn't pray. – 'You should have prayed', says W. I made phonecalls instead, I tell W. Those were my prayer-wheels. I rang; I spoke to people; they spoke to me. A reassuring voice. It's in my hands now. But I've heard that before, I reply. I've heard it many times. The same voice. We'll do what we can, Mr —. I'll personally see to it. Or, another time, I understand your frustration; I'd be just as annoyed if I were in your position. Or, still another time, Don't worry, you'll hear from us soon.

Sometimes the water company tells me to speak to the subcontractors instead. But then the subcontractors tell me to speak to the water company. And there's Offwat, too, the industry regulators, who claim to speak to both the water company and the subcontractors, I tell W. – 'You're in the desert', W. says. 'It's a test'. It is a test. – 'You bear it calmly', W. says. 'You're used to the apocalypse. Mired in it. Lost in the mud'.

'How's your damp?', W. asks. 'Tell me about your flat again. It's shit, isn't it? You've got the worst flat of anyone I've ever met. My God, I don't know how you live there. What's causing it? Do you have any idea?'

It's a mystery, I tell W. I called six damp proofing companies in turn, I tell him, one after another. The water's getting in behind the rendering, says one. You'll have to strip it off, repoint the brick, and render it again. It's the holes in your wall, said another, referring to the long scar left where the lead pipe had to be pulled away.

It's your hopper, said yet another, showing me a thick patch of green on the top of the pipe through which it drained. Ah yes, I said, I tell W., impressed at his observational powers. Do nothing, said another; let the wall breathe. To breathe!, I said, I tell W., but I need to breathe! I need to take a single non-damp breath! I've got spores in my lungs! I'm coated in mildew!

A fifth pressed his nose to the brown plaster in the pathroom. He put his hand on its wet surface. He sniffed. It's condensation that's causing it, he said. Condensation, I said, behind all this? The flat all around us, brown-walled with damp. People underestimate condensation, said the damp whisperer. In a flat like this, with the double-glazing, there's nowhere for water to escape.

He told me about the dew point, I tell W. He told me how the wall comes forward to offer itself to the touch of condensation. I imagined a runner breasting the finish line, I tell W. I imagined a dolphin leaping from the sea.

But the sixth interpreter said he thought it was penetrating damp, the sort that permeates through pasty brick and the gaps between bricks. Penetrating, coming through, a slow ceaseless tsunami, a brown, persistent wave …

Damp calls for a Talmudic inquiry; I go from one wise man to another, from one to another, I tell W., but none is really certain of the Law.

Death is close, says W. Death has set out to find us, all of us. And this will be a death of a kind we cannot anticipate. A meteor-strike, the flaming sky, the stars falling from the heavens … We have no idea of what is to come, he says.

What idea could we have? How could we anticipate our annihilation? Death will be everywhere, W. says. The earth a flaming ball. Why does no one understand? He understands, though, insofar as he can understand. He gets it, and that makes him feel very alone.

It's the opposite of cosmogony, W. says. It's the return of the pell-mell, of chaos, of the tohu vavohu, he says, quoting Genesis. Of course, I should know a great deal about that, with my flat, W. says. I should know everything about it, with the damp spreading across my wall.

It's like fate, I've told him, the damp. The water streams down the wall. It weeps. And then my flat's tilting sideways. It's pitching into the earth. If you look at the skirting, I've told him, you'll see how far they are above the floorboards, which are sinking, along with the joists beneath them. Sinking and leaving a great gap between themselves and the skirting, like the stretch of gum you can see when some people smile.

I think it's smiling at me, the flat, I tell W. I think it's beginning to laugh at me.

Of course, if we started to laugh, really started, we wouldn't be able to stop, how could we? If we really laughed, if we laughed from the bottom of our lungs, from our bellies …, what then?

Laughter would laugh at itself, W. says. It would laugh at laughter and at us, we laughers, who have the audacity to laugh. Hasn't he always dreamt of a laughter that would sweep us away? Of a laughter that would return us to the original state of the world, the empty fields, the empty sky … and to the interruption of that state – the first loping hominids, the first to move to stand upright, the first to split the air in two with their joy?

That's what we stood on two legs to do, says W. Laugh! To laugh at our imposture! To laugh at our standing up and the rest of nature lost in itself! If we started to laugh, how could we stop? At the imposture of our lives. At our mockery of uprightness … At ourselves laughing and the audacity of our laughter.

For our time is running out, says W. Soon it will be the empty fields, the empty sky once again. Soon the earth will turn into fire; soon a new, fiery dawn will burn away everything. That's what laughter knows, says W. That's what it knows as it laughs at itself.

A year after I submitted the final copy of my manuscript, W. is still polishing his. – 'It's like Gnosticism', he says, 'if your book is full of typos, which it will be, mine has to be pristine'. Pathos is not enough, he says. He wants precision, too; jewelled writing.

It's time to make distinctions, he says, serious ones, W. says with great severity. Lines have to be drawn, demarcations made! This is no time for sloppiness of thought. W. is becoming a jeweller of philosophy, he says, whereas I will only ever be one of those elephants who splashes with a paintbrush.

Ah, the revolution, the break in time! 'You remember what Benjamin wrote about the July revolution, don't you?', says W. During the evening of the first day of the struggle, simultaneously but as a result of separate initiatives, in several places people fired on the clocks in the towers of Paris. And in the coming revolution, where will they aim their rifles? Where will they aim them, in separate initiatives and from several places? – 'At you', says W. 'They'll fire them at you'.

Come the revolution, the turning of time, and friendship itself will be changed, that's W.'s great hope. What will it mean, friendship? What will it become?

Sometimes W. supposes that the revolution will be only the unfurling of friendship, and of a new freedom of speech that would accompany friendship. It would be possible to say anything at all, W. says. Anything!

And everyone would have something to say. Everyone would have something to write on the walls. In the end, says W. saying something was more important than what was said. It's the act of speech that will be most important. No one will speak on behalf of anyone else. The one will only speak to the other, W. says, addressing her, acknowledging him. The one to the other, in the anonymous, innumerable crowd.

And in the meantime? Friendship is but a sign of what will happen. Our happiness is not yet happiness. Our joy is not joy. But there are signs, signs …

Where does he find them, on this sunny day in Cawsands? In the honey beer, W. says. In that dog who wants me to play with him, dropping a stone at my feet. In the narrowness of the three-storeyed house opposite. In the name of the pub in whose garden we drink: The Rising Sun.

And in me, too? No, says W. Not in you.

The end has come, we know that. The end has come, the credits have rolled, and now it's the advert break, and that's our reality, or what passes for reality. So now what? What are we going to do about it?

Looking out to sea, W. speaks of his overwhelming sense of shame. We do nothing, he says. We're parasites. And little later, in the beer garden, How did it get to this? At what point did we lose our souls?

Sometimes W. supposes we should live two lives, one turned to the world and to the horror of the world, and the other turned towards our friends. Two lives! One public, a life of immeasurable despair, and the other private, joyful, and withdrawn from the world.

But W. can only see this as a terrible betrayal. When the revolution comes, he says, there'll be no more friends. Or, rather, the meaning of friendship will change, how he's not entirely sure. Either way, he won't be sitting with me in a beer garden, W. says. We won't be sharing the water-taxi home.

How much time do we have left? You can't tell, says W. The conditions for the disaster are here, they're omnipresent, but when will it actually come? He reads book after book on the oil crisis and the climate crisis. He reads about the credit crunch and the futures market. The conditions for the end are here, but not the end itself, not yet.

Are we part of those conditions?, W. wonders sometimes. Are we part of the conditions of the collapse? He suspects so, he says. How else could he account for it? Somehow, at the end of the end, the door was open enough to let us in. Somehow, at the last minute, and in the last second of the last minute, it was time to admit us, but only as a kind of parody. Only as a kind of clown act, the auto-satire of philosophy.

Our eternal puppet show, says W. Our endless ventriloquy. Who's speaking through us? Who's using our voices? Sometimes he swears he hears a voice within our own, W. says. He can hear it, he says, on the threshold of audibility, a little like the grinding of the celestial spheres Pythagoras claimed to hear. Only this time it's idiocy that grinds itself out. This time it's an amazing force of idiocy, a solar wind sweeping through space.

Perhaps we've already had our idea, our great chance. Perhaps it's already occurred to us, and we've forgotten it: what a terrible thought! Worse still, perhaps it was something we exchanged in conversation, that passed between us and was immediately lost amidst the general inanity. 

That must be my task, W. tells me: remember everything! Write it down!, and perhaps then it will shine forth behind the pages like a watermark.

In the end, we fail at the level of the banal, W. says, that's the truth of it. It's not about our ideas, or whether we can think, but about forgetting what building we're staying in, or locking ourselves out of our rooms. We're incompetent in this general sense before being incompetent about anything to do with our thought, we should admit that. How can we sit down at a table and begin to think when we cannot find our rooms, let alone our buildings? How can we begin to read and write if we've lost our keys?

W. is cheerful and full of bonhomie. Why shouldn't he be? The apocalypse is imminent, things are coming to an end, but in the meantime …? It's always the meantime, for W. There's always time enough.

He has a critical distance from events, W. says, which I entirely lack. Life is a perpetual emergency for me. It's always at the very end of the end. It's always the final extremity, which is why I am so frantic, W. says. It's why I'm so paranoid. 

No one's out to get me, W.'s often told me that. And I should calm down, relax. Do some work! Find a quiet corner like him and get on with something. But I can never relax. I'm up at dawn, and sometimes before dawn, pacing the halls. It's why I look so tired. It's why my eyes are bloodshot.

I'm fundamentally self-dramatising, W.'s always known that. Do I really think the secret police and going to turn up and take me away? I'm not Shostakovich, though I like to think I'm Shostakovich, and this is not Soviet Russia. I'm the sort of of person who would thrive under a dictatorship, W. says. My paranoia would make sense; it would have a correlate. But as it is …

Why do I fear unemployment so much? Why do I fear empty time? It's becauseI have no projects. It's because I never get on with anything except the administrative tasks in the office. On the one hand, I'm frantic, I always look harried, but on the other …

'No one's after you', says W. 'You're on no one's list'. And then, 'You matter to no one. Your life means nothing'. Because isn't that the other side of paranoia; paranoia's fantasy: that your life would mean something, that it would matter enough to draw attention?

'You matter to no one', says W. Only to him. And even then, not greatly. In the end, it's some contingency that will wipe me out. The iceberg will loom because of some minor clerical error. My name will appear on some form, and will be crossed out, and that's it, I'll be gone, scratching my head and wondering what happened.