Lars Iyer's Blog, page 82

Gin! W. demands. We wants a respite from his judgement.

W. is soothed by the Plymouth Gin botanicals. He can taste the oris-root and the coriander seeds. He can taste the orange peel.

Plymouth Gin is our realitätpunkt, W. says, our rallying point, our place of safety. Sipping Plymouth Gin is always a homecoming, W. says. Always a return to what is most important.

If only we had some Vermouth, we could make Martinis, W. says. In the Plymouth Gin cocktail bar, they swill your glass with Vermouth, specially imported from America, and then pour it out. Only then do they fill the glass with fresh Plymouth Gin and add a spiral of lemon peel, W. says. You need Vermouth only to pour it away, W. says, like an offering made to the gods.

My hotel room. W. takes his seat on the Chair of Judgement. It’s time to list my short-comings! It’s time to examine where I’ve gone wrong! To bury down to the root-cause!

‘Would you call yourself a moral man?', W. asks me. 'Would you call yourself a man of honour?', he asks. 'Do other people look up to you? Are others moved by you, inspired by you?' A pause. And then: 'Do you think you've touched other people's lives - in a good way? Do you see yourself as a man of thought, a man of profundity, a man who will leave a legacy?’

These are the questions that constantly circle in W.’s head, as he knows they do not circle in mine.

‘How do you think you’ll be judged?’, W. asks me. ‘As a serious man? As a man attuned to what matters most?’ And then, ‘Will you be remembered as a great soul? As a spiritual leader?’ A pause. And then: ‘How do you understand your failure? Who do you measure yourself against? What standards have you failed to meet?’

What was my significance?, W. asked himself, back then when we met. Did I illustrate some broader trend? Was I a man of our times, or against our times? And then the true horror dawned on W.: Lars is ahead of our times, he thought to himself. He’s a prophetic witness. He’s a living sign, such as you might find in the Bible.

W. thought of the later prophets, who are no longer speak with God as Moses and Abraham did – as with a neighbour, face to face, or as the Bible says, mouth to mouth. He thought of the prophets who God commanded to incarnate the message they were charged to deliver.

W. thought of Isaiah, told to wander naked and barefoot for three years, in order to send a message to the king of Assyria to parade his prisoners naked and barefoot to shame Egypt. He thought of Jeremiah, whom God told to make wooden yokes and put them on his neck; and when a false prophet broke them, to replace them with yokes of iron, in order to send a message that Israel will not put its neck under the yoke of Babylon ...

But I was a prophet who didn’t know that he was a prophet, W. says. I was a sign who didn’t know what he signified. Didn’t his own role become clear?, W. says. Wasn’t it obvious what he was put on earth to do?

Philosophy gives substance to our suffering, W. says. Philosophy gives sense to suffering by communicating it to others. Speech, dialogue: that’s what overcomes futility, W. says. That’s what does combat with the senseleness of the world.

W. was going to let me speak: that was his role, he says. He was going to hear the suffering of the world as it resounded through me. He was going to decipher my bellowing. The Jew in him would redeem the Hindu, W. says. His Catholic atheism would redeem my Protestant atheism. He would bring fruit trees to my waste, and calm to my troubled waters ...

The word, philosopher is an honorific, W. says. It’s a title that can only be bestowed on you by others. Do I think you deserve the title, philosopher?, W. asks me. Did I deserve it back then?

The desecrator of philosophy: that’s what I had become, wasn’t it? The destroyer of philosophy. I was at one with the apocalypse of philosophy, with the end times of philosophy. And wasn’t that why he was drawn to me?, W. says. Wasn’t that why he proposed our collaboration? I was close to the truth, W. says, despite everything.

‘True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves’: that’s Adorno, W. says. And I didn’t understand myself, did I?

I used to sleep in my office, W. remembers that. I’d unroll the sleeping bag I kept in the cupboard, and lie under my desk. All the better to get my work done in the morning! All the better to keep working halfway through the night! I’d wake up, bleary-eyed, and eat a day-old discount sandwich at my desk. I’d wake up, and brush my teeth in the bathroom, before anyone had arrived at work.

And then I’d get to it, W. says. Or imagine I was getting to it. I’d work, W. says. Or imagine that I was working. Because I wasn’t working at all, was I?, W. says. I wasn’t advancing in my thought. I wasn’t testing myself, running forcibly against my own limits, was I? I wasn’t reading philosophy, and I wasn’t writing philosophy. I was administering, W. says. I was lost in administration. I taught, it’s true, but I taught like an administrator. I gave lessons like a bureaucrat. Really, I’d become a galley-slave of philosophy. I’d become a drone of thinking.

In the meantime, in the southwest, W. would spend whole weeks preparing his lecture courses. Whole weeks, distilling his latest researches into something teachable. He would spend months carefully crafting his lecture notes, going over them again and again, writing up the research notes he made for his own studies. And what would I do?, W. says. Crib something together from Wikipedia, or whatever they had back then. Cobble something together from Sparks Notes, or some other online rubbish. Draw on one of the innumerable introductions to philosophy, the introductions to this or that thinker, this or that idea, that everyone’s writing.

Of course, that was before I bought my flat, W. says. It was before I made my amazing decision to invest in a property. It was before my damp years! Before the years of rats! I hardly knew what a slug looked like, did I? I’d barely ever seen a mushroom up close. And damp was something I read about in books, W. says. Something I associated with slums, with tenements.

W. invested in a Georgian town-house, he says. In a former ship captain’s house with three stories and marble fireplaces. He moved into a house which didn’t need a bit of work. He made a study of one of the third floor bedrooms. He rose early each morning, and was at his desk before the sun had even risen above the Plymouth rooftops.

And what about me, W. says. Dare he ask? Dare he even consider the mess I had got myself into? It was like The Blob, W. says. It was like X: The Unknown, he says. I was living in the wilds, W. says. I was living in the philosophical wastes ...

The electricity failed in my kitchen, and began to fail in my living room. The walls turned green, then brown, then black. Rats settled beneath my floorboards. What horror! What horror! And how did I respond to my new surroundings?, W. asks. How did I hearken to the philosophical muse? I wrote, W. says. I blogged. Because that’s when they began, my blogging years, didn’t they? That’s when the years of raving began.

So the end of philosophy really has come, W. says. The philosophical apocalypse really is here. What has it shown? What’s been revealed? Lars lecturing. Lars publishing. Lars who actually has a job. If that isn’t a sign of the eschaton, what is?, W. says.

I actually think I earned my job, that’s the irony, W. says. I actually think I beat all the other postgraduates to full time employment because of my own merits.

‘What do you think they saw in you, your interviewers?’, W. asks. ‘Why do you think they gave you the job?’ Oh, he knows I struggled to find work. He knows that it took me years and years. I had a long period of whoring for work, just as W. had a long period of whoring for work. I had a long period of teaching an hour here, an hour there, of taking fractional posts in faraway places, just as he had long period of teaching an hour here, an hour there, of taking fractional posts in faraway places. I lived exclusively on discount sandwiches, just as he once lived exclusively on discount sandwiches. I drank only the cheapest vodka, just as he drank only the cheapest vodka. I worked, I worked night and day, just as he worked night and day. How I published! How he published! I spoke up at conferences! He spoke up at conferences! I tried to get my name known! He tried to get his name known. But I was a little more desperate than him, wasn’t I?, W. says. A little more keen.

W. got his job at his church college, where he taught no more than one hour a week, and I got my job at a northern university, where I taught no less than fifteen hours a week. W. worked with the warmest and gentlest of colleagues, who were genuinely interested in intellectual inquiry, and I worked with the most savage and difficult of colleagues, who had absolute contempt for intellectual inquiry. Administrative tasks at his college were equally shared out, W. says; everyone did his or her bit. Administrative tasks at my university were given to me, and only to me. W. was left to his own devices for research. He was given time – oceans of time! He was given lengthy sabbaticals of a year or more! I was denied any time for research. I was given no time – no time whatsoever; no sabbaticals, no research days. W. rose each morning and read and wrote all day. I rose each morning, and taught and administered all day. W. found it all very amusing.

I was a workhorse:  was that what the job search committee saw at the University of Northumbria? I would do anything whatsoever to keep my job: was that it? I was a man of desperation, that’s quite true, W. says. A man who feared unemployment above all other things: ytes, yes. But that wasn’t the only reason why they gave me a job, W. says.

It was because I was a man of the end that they employed me, W. says. Because I was a kind of wild man of thought, a man who’d emerged from the philosophical jungle. Not for my interviewers a candidate from a real university, like Oxford or Cambridge. Nor for them a properly scholarly applicant, a researcher fluent in several modern languages, and familiar with several ancient ones. Not for them a man of the archive, who had studied in the great libraries of Europe. Not for them a man of broad learning, a man of civilisation, a gentleman educated in the best independent schools of our country.

My interviewers knew things were at an end, whether consciously or unconsciously, W. says. My search committee knew the philosophical end times were here. So consciously or unconsciously, they decided to make a joke appointment, an appointment that laughs at the very idea of an appointment. They decided to create a parody of a lecturer, a position that satirisises the very idea of a lectureship. It was like Caligula appointing his horse as senator, W. says. It was like Cal, in 2000AD, appointing his goldfish as Chief Judge.

Will we have known what philosophy was?, W. wonders. Will we have understood what it might have become? No, they will never destroy philosophy, not entirely. Philosophy will survive so long as people suffer. But philosophy without an institution, philosophy without the university: what will it ever be but a cry of suffering, pure pathos? What will philosophy ever be but the roaring of the end?

Will we have known what philosophy was?, W. wonders. Will we have understood what it might have become? No, they will never destroy philosophy, not entirely. Philosophy will survive so long as people suffer. But philosophy without an institution, philosophy without the university: what will it ever be but a cry of suffering, pure pathos? What will philosophy ever be but the roaring of the end?

Joseph Sutton reviews Spurious for The Huffington Post.

Toby Wallis reflects on Spurious.

Mad Guru reflects on Spurious at Rain of Error.

Bluestalking reflects on Spurious.

Q. I got the impression that the film is not really about the horse but about Nietzsche's silence. It's almost a silent film.

A. Not only Nietzsche's silence - the silence of everybody. These people have a daily life. I wanted to show how it's difficult to be - how being is so hard, and so simple.

[...] Kundera talks about 'the unbearable lightness of being' - I wanted to talk about the heaviness of being.

Bela Tarr, interviewed in Sight and Sound