Spurious

Et Tu, idiot?

Our friends, what has happened to our friends? W. dreamt we could stand shoulder to shoulder with them all; that, standing together, we would form a kind of phalanx, stronger than we would be on our own. He dreamt we'd mated for life like swans, and that we could no more betray one another than tear off our own limbs. But he was wrong, terribly wrong, for news has come that they are turning on one another, our friends, just as we, one day, will turn upon one another, W. says.

To be betrayed by your friends: what worse fate is there than that?, W. says. To know your friend has betrayed you in the name of cynicism and opportunism?

It had to happen; he sees that now. It had to fall apart. Wasn't his dream, always, that we could save ourselves from the end? But we will not hold it back; the disaster will begin with what is closest to us. And what's my role in all this?, W. wonders. Where do I stand? Et tu, idiot?, W. will say as I slip the knife between his ribs. Et tu?, as he sees my face is only that of the apocalypse ...

How many times have I betrayed him?, W. wonders. I'm on every page of his Book of Betrayals. He's always taken detailed notes. And there are pictures, too. W. wants to remember everything. Everything! One day, he's going to read his notes to me and show me all his pictures, he says. One day, standing at the head of the bed like the Archangel Michael, he's going to read me the great list of my betrayals and show me the pictures.

A Black Sun

The end is coming, W. says. He's sure of that. Our end, or the end of the world? Both!, W. says. The one is inextricable from the other. Do I see it as he does? Is he the only one who can read the signs?

He can see them now, even on this sunny day in Cawsands. He sees them in our honey beer, W. says. In the 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? - 'In you above all', W. says.

The Rising Sun: what sun is going to rise over us? A black sun, says W. A sun of ashes and darkness. He sees the image in his mind's eye: the man and boy of The Road, pushing a shopping cart down an empty highway. Only in our case, it'll be two men, squabbling over whose turn it is to ride in the cart. Two men with ashes in their hair, exiled from the cities and all cities.

At the busstop, W. speaks of his dream of a community, of a society of friends who would push one another to greatness. Where are they now, our absent friends? Far from us! Scattered all over the world!

If only they were closer! Of what we might be capable! They would make us great!, W. says. We'd make each other great! Or perhaps that is just our last temptation: the thought that something could make us great.

Conditions

Whitley Bay, walking among the boarded up sea-front buildings. Something has finished here, we agree. Something is over. But at least they haven't begun the regeneration yet. They're going to turn it into a cultural hub, imagine that! A cultural hub where there was once the funfair and the golden sands.

A search and rescue helicopter hovers over the sea. Someone must have gone missing. Someone's disappeared. As we draw closer, we see an ambulance on the beach, and bodysuited lifeguards running into the water with floats.

We gather with other spectators along the railings at the edge of the beach. A second helicopter has joined the search, following the edge of the shore where the sand gives way to rock. The currents are very strong, the man next to us says. You never know where a body will end up. A teenage boy, head bent down, hand to brow, sits on the steps of the ambulance with a towel around his shoulders.

The whirling blades of the helicopter leave a shadowy impression in the sea. Beneath it, the lifeguards, spread out over a few hundred meters, paddle out on their floats. Sometimes they dive and then reappear. Much higher up, rising at an angle, the second helicopter surveys the whole area. Maybe it has special equipment, a kind of sonar, we speculate.

Two men run out onto the beach and take off their clothes. They're drunk, we can see that. They splash out into the sea, nude, laughing and shouting, the helicopters hovering above them. But when they turn and see the long line of spectators looking out at them, and realise they are in the midst of the search for a missing swimmer, they become suddenly embarrassed. Shamed. They wade back to the beach, hands cupped over their genitals.

How much time do we have left?, we consider, on the way to the station. 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.

But it could come at any time, that's the horror, says W. The end could come tomorrow, or in another thousand years, we have no idea. The time of reality is non-linear, W. says.

Are we part of those conditions?, W. wonders sometimes. Are we part of the conditions of the collapse? He suspects so, he says. In some important way, it's all our fault. - 'The mirror is broken, but what do the fragments reflect?', W. says, quoting some Bergman character. 'You', W. says. 'Your stupidity. Your immense ugly face'.

Before the Law

Before the law sits no gatekeeper, W. says. No one guards the gate that would allow you gain entry into the law. It stands open. It's nearly falling from its hinges. And beyond it, other doors, or empty walls where there were once doors, or rubble where there were once walls, or deserts where there was once rubble. And beyond that: empty space without stars. Nothing at all.

No one comes here, although the law is accessible to everyone. No one, and perhaps that is why: there are no more secrets. Nothing is hidden, not anymore.

After the Barbarians

Why do I think we're going to be caught out?, says W. Haven't I told him that: no one cares anymore; no one's on the look out. There's no one could regard us as interlopers; there was no guard on the door. It's like Rome after it was sacked by the Barbarians, says W. They've come and gone, the Barbarians, the wreckers of civilisation. There is no guard; there's nothing to protect. We're inside - yes. But that's only a sign that there is no longer a distinction between inside and outside.

In the end, we have to understand that we got away with nothing; our stupidity is in plain view. It doesn't matter; it's irrelevant to everyone. No one's worried about our credentials, because there no credentials. There's only luck, and opportunism. Luck - that we were there, then; that we were young at the right time - and the opportunism that allowed us to seize upon what advantages we had. Were we lucky? Of course. And stupid? Yes - and especially me, W. says. And no one minds, W. says. No one notices.

It's not as if we're a threat. We hold out our hands so we can be handcuffed, but no one wants to arrest us. We pack our suitcases and leave them by the door in the hope that the secret police will come, but no one batters down our door. No one's going to shoot us, W. says, more's the pity. No one's going to put us up against the wall. We're not going to executed as traitors. We're not going to be sued for our seditious writings. We're not going to Siberia for twenty years. We're not going to live out our lives as dissidents in exile.

He sees it, W. says, like an enormous fact. A great fact, like the wide sky, that says, it doesn't matter. Over the Bodelian, it says: it's all over. Over the college quadrangles, it says: it's finished. You're too late. Over the gowned academics, it says: it is all as nothing. 

Why do I think we're going to be caught out?, says W. Haven't I told him that: no one cares anymore; no one's on the look out. There's no one could regard us as interlopers; there was no guard on the door. It's like Rome after it was sacked by the Barbarians, says W. They've come and gone, the Barbarians, the wreckers of civilisation. There is no guard; there's nothing to protect. We're inside - yes. But that's only a sign that there is no longer a distinction between inside and outside.

In the end, we have to understand that we got away with nothing; our stupidity is in plain view. It doesn't matter; it's irrelevant to everyone. No one's worried about our credentials, because there no credentials. There's only luck, and opportunism. Luck - that we were there, then; that we were young at the right time - and the opportunism that allowed us to seize upon what advantages we had. Were we lucky? Of course. And stupid? Yes - and especially me, W. says. And no one minds, W. says. No one notices.

It's not as if we're a threat. We hold out our hands so we can be handcuffed, but no one wants to arrest us. We pack our suitcases and leave them by the door in the hope that the secret police will come, but no one batters down our door. No one's going to shoot us, W. says, more's the pity. No one's going to put us up against the wall. We're not going to executed as traitors. We're not going to be sued for our seditious writings. We're not going to Siberia for twenty years. We're not going to live out our lives as dissidents in exile.

He sees it, W. says, like an enormous fact. A great fact, like the wide sky, that says, it doesn't matter. Over the Bodelian, it says: it's all over. Over the college quadrangles, it says: it's finished. You're too late. Over the gowned academics, it says: it is all as nothing. 

Connoisseurs of Nothing

We're conflicted, there's no question of that, W., says. On the one hand, we have a natural fear and loathing of our contemporary culture, of what our culture has become. But on the other, a Messianic sense of what it might have been, a wholly impractical sense of what it had been and what it could be again, and of our role in bringing it about.

On the one hand, a knowledge that our careers, such as they are, could only have meant the collapse of contemporary culture, and, on the other, a simultaneous and wholly unearned sense that we are part of a glorious European past, and indeed part of the glory of Old Europe, that we have a legitimate share in the world which the philosophies we teach was born.

On the one hand, a knowledge that we are connoisseurs of nothing, that we've come too late, that nothing we take to matter is of any importance - that the only reason we've been allowed to teach and speak on such topics is precisely because they matter to no one, and, on the other, an improbable sense that we are the last of the scholars, the last archivists, the last custodians of thought; that the preservation of Old Europe, all that really matters, has fallen to us.

On the one hand, a certainty that our learning (our enthusiasm for learning, for our philosophies) is of complete irrelevance, complete obsolesence and on the other, that it bears upon what is most important and riskiest of all; that we're like secret agents hidden in deep cover, and our cities on the peripherary will be like the Dark Age monasteries on the edge of Europe, that is, the only place in which the old knowledge will be preserved. Or that we're part of a secret cell, the secret police everywhere and our teachings samizdat, our reading is covert, clandestine, and that we're about to be taken away by the authorities.

Of course, when he says us here, he means him, W. says. And when he says we know nothing, he really means I know nothing, because he at least knows something, W. says.

We're conflicted, there's no question of that, W., says. On the one hand, we have a natural fear and loathing of our contemporary culture, of what our culture has become. But on the other, a Messianic sense of what it might have been, a wholly impractical sense of what it had been and what it could be again, and of our role in bringing it about.

On the one hand, a knowledge that our careers, such as they are, could only have meant the collapse of contemporary culture, and, on the other, a simultaneous and wholly unearned sense that we are part of a glorious European past, and indeed part of the glory of Old Europe, that we have a legitimate share in the world which the philosophies we teach was born.

On the one hand, a knowledge that we are connoisseurs of nothing, that we've come too late, that nothing we take to matter is of any importance - that the only reason we've been allowed to teach and speak on such topics is precisely because they matter to no one, and, on the other, an improbable sense that we are the last of the scholars, the last archivists, the last custodians of thought; that the preservation of Old Europe, all that really matters, has fallen to us.

On the one hand, a certainty that our learning (our enthusiasm for learning, for our philosophies) is of complete irrelevance, complete obsolesence and on the other, that it bears upon what is most important and riskiest of all; that we're like secret agents hidden in deep cover, and our cities on the peripherary will be like the Dark Age monasteries on the edge of Europe, that is, the only place in which the old knowledge will be preserved. Or that we're part of a secret cell, the secret police everywhere and our teachings samizdat, our reading is covert, clandestine, and that we're about to be taken away by the authorities.

Of course, when he says us here, he means him, W. says. And when he says we know nothing, he really means I know nothing, because he at least knows something, W. says.

The Dancing Chicken

We have to watch Stroszek to prepare us for our trip to America, W. says, and read Marx. You have to read Marx, W. says, if you're going to the heart of capitalism. The heart of capitalism, the heart of darkness, W. says.

What Marx should we take to the USA? Perhaps we shouldn't take any at all, W. says. We might get arrested at customs. We might get sent home for Unamerican activities.

W. forwards the DVD to the famous sequence of a chicken dancing in an amusement arcade booth. Bruno Stroszek, the film's protagonist, puts a few quarters in the slot and wanders off to shoot himself. The chicken dances - how it is made to do so is a mystery - bobbing on its claws. The chicken dances, its comb bobbing, its wattle swinging, its black eyes manic ...  

Herzog speaks of finding images adequate to the world, to the state of the world, W., says. The chicken is one of those images, do you see? I see. Everything is there. Everything, the horror of it all, concentrated in the image of the dancing chicken.

Stroszek: didn't Ian Curtis watch the film just before he killed himself? He saw the chicken, W. says. He really saw it, and it was too much for him. The chicken is cosmic, that's what we have to understand, W. says. It's a bit like that statue I have in my flat, W. says. Who is it supposed to be again?

Shiva,  I tell him. The highest of the gods. Shiva as Nataraja, the cosmic dancer. Shiva's dance shook the foundations of the world, I'd told W. His locks, whirling, collided with the stars, his steps split mountains asunder and his arms whirled through the full breadth of the universe. The gods descended from heaven to watch him. They saw the very dance of the universe, the great cosmic cycle of creation and destruction.

'What's your cosmic dance like?', W. says. 'Do the funky chicken. Go on, fat boy. Dance'. W. likes to watch me dance, he says. It's so improbable. So graceless.

The chicken won't stop. That's what's etched into the runoff groove of the last Joy Division album. The chicken won't stop: it's like a mantra to W. - 'You won't stop, will you?', he says. That's part of the horror: I show no signs of stopping. But it's part of my glory, too. Who am I amusing? Not even him. Certainly not anyone else.

In my best moments, I do resemble Bruno Stroszek, of Herzog's film, W. says. In my best moments, he emphasises. Otherwise I resemble no one but myself, more's the pity.

But sometimes I achieve a kind of pathetic grandeur, W. says, almost despite myself. There I sit, in the squalor. There I am, a squalid man, amidst the squalor, a bottle and a glass close at hand, some discounted sandwich boxes lying empty around me, and I'll say something truly striking. I'll make some pronouncement. I'm like a savant. It's like a possession.

Sometimes W. thinks it's from me that a thought will come that's adequate to our civilisation. This is what he hopes will happen in during our American trip. - 'It'll come to you', and by extension, to him, too. This is why he accepted our invitation. It's why we're going to America.

If I resemble Bruno Stroszek, W. supposes he can only resemble Bruno's elderly neighbour - what was his name? Scheitzer. Scheitzerhund. Just Scheitz, I tell him. Scheitz had an interest in animal magnetism, W. remembers. He bothered people with it. He confused them. That's how it will be with his interests, W. says, which are equally improbable, equally irrelevant. We're off to bother the universities of America!

Pure Immanence

W. dreams of a thought that moves with what it thinks, follows and responds to it, like a surfer with a wave. A thought that inhabit what was to be thought like a fish the sea - no, a thought that would only be a drop of the sea in the sea, belonging to its object as water does to water.

Pure immanence!, W. cries. Being thinking itself! What does being think in us?, W. wonders. Don't let these monkeys think about me!, being says. Especially him, monkey boy supreme!, that's what being says, says W.

A fold of order in chaos. A pocket - temporary and fleeting - in the formless void. That's what he dreams thought to be, says W. Thought, the pocket thought forms, would itself be temporary, fleeing, and open to change.

Thought would ride along chaos, not resisting it, not holding itself back, but riding with it, belonging to it as water does to water. And when it is finished - a thought, a life of thought - it should be turned back inside out like a glove, and it will have been shown to have only been made of what it would think.

The thought of God would be made of God, the thought of time made of rushes and pauses; the thought of space would ache with the distances between stars. The thought of tears wet with tears, the thought of thirst parched with thirst. A hungry thought, a dying thought, a thought of feeing that is all feeling ...

A thought of the disaster that was itself as disaster: will that be our contribution? Will our catastrophic thought be a temporary enfolding of the catastrophe of the world?

The People of Newcastle

W. is unimpressed by the regeneration of the quayside, with its so-called public art. So-called public art is invariably a form of marketing for property development, he says. It's inevitably the forerunner of gentrification.

W. is an enemy of art. We ought to fine artists rather than subsidise them, he says. They ought to be subject to systematic purges. He's never doubted we need some kind of Cultural Revolution.

The real art of the city is industrial, of course. Spiller's Wharf. The four stories of the flax mill in the Ouseburn Valley. W. likes to imagine the people of Newcastle, the old working class, coming to reclaim the quayside. What need did anchorsmiths and salt-panners have for a cultural quarter? Why can't the descendants of the keelmen, who ferried coal down the river, of the rope-makers and waggon-drivers come and redeem the new ghettoes for the rich. In his imagination, they're coming to smash the public art and tear down the new buildings.

Portugal

W. points out the building in which Eca de Queiroz, the famous Portuguese writer, used to work. How did he end up in Newcastle?, we wonder. Was he happy here? Did he miss the cramped streets of Bairro Alto? Did his heart yearn for the fado of his homeland?

I've always feel a spiritual connection to Portugal, W. knows that. Hasn't he always seen something of Bernardo Soares, Pessoa's great creation, in me? A Soares without the intelligence or poetic ability, granted. Soares as a disgruntled ape, snuffling through Newcastle streets.

Of course, it annoyed W. that I went off to Lisbon without him. Without him, W.! And to some daft conference! I told him later of the Portuguese Professors lounging like great walruses; I told him of the European flags they had lined up in the conference hall, as though we were delegates at some European summit, but it was no good. I shouldn't have gone there without him, W. says. Without telling him, regardless of the copy of O Livro do Desassossego I brought back for him from my trip.