Lars Iyer's Blog, page 79

Manchester lacks a river, W. says. It lacks an expanse. That’s why Mancunion thoughts are always claustrophobic thoughts, he says. It’s why Mancunion thinkers are constrained, trying to fight their way free.

And there’s the rain, the terrible Westerlies, W. says. Manchester is particularly prone to Westerlies, which roll across its plain. The weather is so heavy here, W. says. So crushing.

The Mancunion thinker has constantly to struggle against melancholia, and thoughts of suicide. He thinks of Alan Turing, eating an apple he’d coated in cyanide. He thinks of Ian Curtis, hanging himself from a clothes-airer.

Sometimes W. thinks that it is only the destroyed thinker who understands what matters most. That it is only destroyed thoughts that can think the whole. Is that why, despite everything, he reads my work so carefully? Is that why he still believes that I might have something to say? I am a destroyed man - that is clear enough. But a profound one? If I have depths, it is despite myself, W. says. If I have a significance, it's one that I myself do not grasp. But my life, in its own way, is a kind of witness to the end. My writing is what philosophy becomes before the last judgement.

But there can be no thought from a regenerated city, W. says, as we look up at the warehouses converted into luxury flats. There can be thought without dilapidation! No thought without urban blight!

RTE1 radio interview from May 30th.

Letters and Sodas reviews Dogma.

Bonalibro on Dogma and related things.

W. sends me his essay questions to amuse me.

1. In Vino Veritas. What have you learned from drinking?

2. 'I am outside the truth; nothing human can take me there' - Simone Weil. Do you consider yourself to be inside or outside the truth?

3. 'Salvation always comes from where nobody expects it, from the depraved, from the impossible'. Explain what Rosenstock means by i) the depraved, and ii) the impossible.

4. 'Nobody can truly say of himself that he is filth'. Is Wittgenstein right? Are you filth? Explain why/why not.

5. 'Our talk of justice is empty until the largest battleship has foundered on the forehead of a drowned man'. Is Celan right? Explore with reference to badminton ethics.

6. 'I think joy is a lack of understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves'. Is Tarkovsky right? What do you think he means by 'the situation in which we find ourselves'.

7. 'There are not only social problems. We have some ontological problems and now I think a whole pile of shit is coming from the cosmos'. Distinguish between what Tarr means by social shit, ontological shit and cosmological shit with reference to i) Damnation, and ii) your life.

8. Sports science is the enemy of civilization. Discuss.

9. What is the significance of the dancing chicken in Herzog's Stroszek? Explore with reference to i) human life, and ii) the cosmos.

10. 'Salvation will come, but only when we choose despair' - Kierkegaard. Have you chosen despair? Why/Why not?

Above all, we must be unafraid to remake Kierkegaard in our image, W. says. Hasn’t he dreamt of a Kierkegaard who stayed happily married to Regine?, W. says. A Kierkegaard who understood that the religious sphere is no higher than the ethical one, and that the love for God is really a love for the other person? Hasn’t W. dreamt of a Kierkegaard who never believed that Jesus was really the Messiah, or that the messianic could ever be understood in terms of the coming of a particular person?

For his Kierkegaard, W. says, Jesus never proclaimed himself the Messiah and the Son of God. For his Kierkegaard, Jesus is above all the man of the parable, the man who speaks in ordinary words to ordinary people. He is a man of everyday speech, who opens himself in dialogue to all comers, to anyone who wants to speak and to listen. Just as he, W., has to speak with great simplicity to me!, he says. Just as W. has to try and explain things so they can be understood by a simple person like me!

His Kierkegaard is turned to the world, W. says, towards politics. He is a Kierkegaard of the barricades, whose despair has caught fire, whose inwardness has become outwardness, whose religious faith has become ethical faith, has become political faith.

I’ve been institutionalised, W. says. Bureaucratised! It was when I became the perfect administrator that I stopped doing any real philosophical work.

What do I do in my office? Answer emails. Fill out spreadsheets. Take home management communiqués, and read them with bloodshot eyes.

My work is absurd!, W. says. I know it's absurd. But I thrive on absurdity. I want absurdity. I want to be the most absurd man alive, gleefully doing the most absurd of work. I want to concentrate the absurdity of the world into my life, and to do so with my gleeful smile, which says: the world has finished.

I don't suffer my absurdity, that's what troubles him, W. says.

It’s snowing on the streets, as we head to our rendezvous. It’s cold! I’m lucky I have the thick skin of a Scandinavian, W. says. Thick skin, to keep the Viking warm during the long winters.

There's blubber under my Scandinavian skin, W. says. I'm as warm as a walrus, no matter how cold it is, he says. As warm as a sperm whale, diving beneath the Arctic ice. I am insulated by my fat, just as my head is insulated by my stupidity.

A fathead, that's what I am, W. says. But perhaps you need a fat head to dive into the depths of thought. Perhaps you need a kind of insulation, to respond to what must be thought. Perhaps only the fathead can think, W. says. Only the whale of thought, who can dive deepest!

Well, he'll dive with me, W. says: a whelk on the side of a whale.

To speak is to bless the world, W. says. It is to offer salvation to all things. How can he explain it to me?

W. remembers a story I once told him about my monk years. Every night, before dinner, the monks would bless the garden with incense, I told him. Incense would waft through the leaves. It would waft into the night and towards the animals of the night, I'd told him. Towards city foxes and barn owls. Towards the slugs and the snails and the rats. Incense would waft to the people of the night, I'd said: to the prostitutes on the corner, and to the burglars who used our garden as a run-through. To the junkies looking for their fix, and the muggers waiting in their alleys.

It's similar with speech, W. says. We speak to the others. For the junkies and burglars. To the prostitutes on the corner. We speak to the outcasts, to the widows and the oprhans. We speak to the city foxes! The barn owls! We speak to the slugs and the snails and the rats! We speak to them, W. says. We address them.

The walker, the real walker, can have no destination, W. says. He walks as a means without end. As a pure means, uncoupled from the purpose that might channel him!

In this way, the street is as open as the desert. As open as an ocean — a pure expanse. You can wander this way, or that. You can make this turn, or that. Freedom — for you are without the aim that would determine your course.

My passivity. Every story I recount is in the passive voice, W. says. – ‘You're never the agent in your anecdotes. You're always acted upon, never acting.'

Of course, I always tell him I tell my stories in the middle voice, which is neither active nor passive, which has neither a subject nor an object. I would never say, I shat myself, W. says. There was a soiling, I’d tell him. There's been a faecal emergency, I’d tell him.

Origen has his cock cut off in order to think without distraction, W. says. Perhaps that's what I should do, if I could find it. You'd need a microscope, he says. A nanoscope. Ah, but it wouldn't make much difference in the end, he says. I've always had a low sex-drive. A low thought-drive!