There are two axes, notes W., the apocalyptic and the messianic. The apocalypse, W. says, is the time of capitalism: the catastrophe hidden by a sequence of events which is merely the projection of infinite credit and the ideology of progress.
The disaster's the imminent global catastrophe, W. says. The destruction of the climate equilibrium. It could happen at any moment, W. says. Now for instance. Or perhaps not for hundreds of years. A threshold will be crossed and after that ...
In the meantime, we think we can avert it. We think we might overcome the catatsrophe in an impossible present of the future perfect. In truth, the true catastrophe is hidden by these so-called events of our capitalism, W. says, and it is that which has to be redeemed.
You have to see the future as it could have been and not as what it became. It could have been otherwise, says W., just as the Messiah could arrive at any instant.
How are we going to redeem the catastrophe?, W. says. How are you going to redeem it, in your flowery shirt? Are you the Messiah? Am I? W.'s confused, he says.
But then we remember the conversation in the Talmud between the Rabbi and the prophet Elijah, who tells him he will find the Messiah sitting at the gates of Rome with the lepers and the cripples. When will you come?, the Rabbi asks the leper-Messiah. When will you come: the Messiah's there, he's no one other than the leper, but he's not there yet: what does it all mean?
Anyone might be the Messiah. The Messiah might be me, says one Talmudic commentary. Are you the Messiah?, W. asks me. Are you?, I ask him. It's all to do with the logic of relations, W. says, his favourite topic. I am the Messiah for you just as you are the Messiah for me not because of what each of us is for himself, but because of what we are for the other.
It's all about speech, says W. About speaking. We're very good at that, speaking. We're chatterers. Are we ever happier than in our chatter? That's always our high point, we agree, when we've worn speech away and there's nothing left to say. But we carry on regardless, we agree. We twitter like birds. We ascend to the highest, most rarefied plain of inanity.
W. says the Messiah will come through the gap that we open between us in our inanity. We're incapable of saying anything of interest about the Messiah, we're agreed on that. We've nothing to say on the topic, but that's what saves us. We're in the desert. The end is close. Idiocy is redemptive, W. says, but only for idiots.