Lars Iyer's Blog, page 85

How did I put up with Manchester for all those years?, W. wanders. How come the city didn’t get to me, destroy me? ‘I wandered through that part of myself called Spain’, wrote Jean Genet in his Thief’s Journal. I wandered through that part of myself called Manchester: isn’t that how I thought of it?, W. says. Manchester is part of me, and not I a part of it: isn’t that what I said to myself?

I’ve always been a solipsist, W. says. I’ve never been part of anything. I’ve been involved in the world. I was reading Kafka, wasn’t I? Reading, and writing – in my own way. Trying to write. Failing to write. But continuing to write regardless.

I had my bedsit, W. says. I drew the city around me like a cloak. And when I graduated, I stayed on the plain of Manchester, lost on those plain, a man without ambition, a man without significance. What did I think I was going to do? I was dreaming of internal exile, W. knows that. I was dreaming of going inside, and never coming out.

He sees me, in his mind's eye, as a kind of Lenin, W. says.

The ideal revolutionary must submit himself wholly to the collective will, Lenin argued. A will that barely understands itself! That hardly knows what it wants! The militant can have no personal life, no feelings or attachments. What do ordinary concerns matter to him? What, sentiment, or vagueness?

Revolutionary purity: isn't that what Lenin sought? Revolutionary intransigence! The plough of the revolution must turn the world over ... The people must be drenched in their own blood ...

Because the people have no idea of what they want, according to Lenin, W. says. The people have no understanding of the collective will. So the revolutionary leader has to decide what to do on their behalf. The revolutionary leader has to massacre half the people, on their behalf ...

It's for your own good! It's what you want!: Isn't that what I say to myself as I've ruined his career, W. says. You want to destroy yourself! You want to go under!: isn't that what I whisper to myself when I see W.'s former friends turning from him.

But I want the world to go under, too, W. says: he can see that. I also want to destroy the world, but in the name of no world to come. I am Lenin gone mad, W. says. A Lenin who wants nothing but destruction. God knows, I've destroyed his life, W. says.

We must watch out for the Kehre, for the turning point, W. says. We must watch out for the kairos, for the moment of conversion. We must watch out for the moment of History ...

The trick of politics is knowing when to ask, according to Debord, W. says. You have to study the logic of politics. You have to learn lessons from it. And, sometimes, you have to set the rules yourself, and follow those rules through to the end.

We need a strategy! We need tactics! We need to aim our blow, as Clausewitz said, on the centre of gravity of the whole war. And it is a war, W. says. Politics is war, at the end of times.

He has always understood me to be a kind of Bartleby of politics, W. says. 'I would prefer not to': that's what my indifference to social questions says, W. says. Or, better: 'fuck off, I'm eating'.

Of course, he would prefer not to hang out with me, W. says. But he thinks that it is perhaps by spending time with someone who associates with no one (except him), and who has no real friends (except for him), that he might understand what politics might mean. That perhaps it is only by passing the day with someone who had failed to grasp even the most rudimentary of social rules, that he might discern the essence of politics.

'Vot vot': that's all Lenin could say, when his mind was destroyed by brain disease, W. tells me. 'Vot vot', to express agreement or disagreement, satisfaction or annoyance, as he was wheeled along in in a bath chair, wrapped in blankets, at his rest home. 'Vot-vot' to the visiting Trotsky, soon to be expelled from the Soviet Union; 'vot-vot' to Stalin, soon to become its absolute ruler.

Lenin's nurses trying to teach him the the word worker again, and the word revolution. His aides tried to tried to teach him the words peasant and people; they tried to teach him the words cell and congress. God knows, his wife even tried to get him to say kulak, a word he used to spit out in hatred ...

What will be his last words?, W. wonders. What will he say, as his mind dissolves into mush? 'Lars's fault', he will gasp. 'Lars', he will say, when he can say nothing else. 'Lars, Lars, Lars ...' 

W. looks through my notebooks. Notes on Robert Walser's confinement. Names and dates. Ah, very interesting, W. says. Didn't Walser volunteer to be taken into Herisau asylum?, W. says. Didn't he want to go there for the peace and quiet?

At the sanitarium I have the quiet that I need. Noise is for the young. It seems suitable for me to fade away as inconspicuously as possible.

One lies like a felled tree, and needs no limbs to stir about. Desires all fall asleep, like children exhausted from their play.

Walser was exhausted, W. remembers. He'd written himself out! He had nothing more to say! And there was no market for his feuilltons, W. says. He couldn't make a living. Why shouldn't the welfare state pick up the bill?

Notes on Celan's confinement. Of course, he was much worse off than Walser, W. says. He was much more ill!

'They're doing experiments on me', Celan said to a friend. 'They've healed me to pieces', he said to another.

And notes on Hoelderlin's confinement. Pallaksch, W. reads. - 'What does that mean?' Those were the words Hoelderlin repeated to himself in the 30 years he spent mad, I tell W. Pallaksch!, he sang out, as he played his piano madly. Pallaksch!, he cried up to the night, when he couldn't sleep for mania.

Internal exile. That was my solution to the problem of Britain, wasn’t it?, W. says. Expect nothing from the world! Sit life out! Go on the dole! On the sick! Claim to be seeing things!, hearing things! Claim to be in the grip of imaginary mental illnesses! Get yourself committed!, confined in a secure unit! Pull Robert Walser’s stunt! Enter the asylum because of the safety of the asylum! Dream away your life in a serene captivity!

But then there was Kierkegaard, W. says. Then, for some reason, K saved me. Either/Or: that was the book I came across in an Old Hulme jumble sale, I’ve told him that. Either/Or: that was the book which awoke me from my bohemian slumbers.

Of course, my type usually lose themselves in conspiracy theories and books about UFOs, W. says. My type loses itself in the collected works of Colin Wilson, and in Dennis Wheatley’s Library of the Occult. What was it about Kierkegaard? What was it about Either/Or?

Was it the infinite variations on the expression of despair of A., the pseudonymous author of the first part of Kierkegaard’s book, which impressed me?, W. wonders. Was it his pages of laments? Or was it the call to arms of B., the pseudonymous author of the second part of Kierkegaard’s book, which spoke to me? Was it B.’s exhortations to look at oneself in the mirror?

‘There comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask’, Kierkegaard has B. write. ‘Do you believe that life will always be mocked? Do you believe that you can sneak away before midnight in order to avoid it?’ Had I reached my midnight?, W. wonders. Had I finally unmasked?

Either a life of shit, or a life of thought: isn't that what I said to myself?, W. says. Either a life of living unreflectively in the shit, or a life thinking about the shit: wasn't that it? And so shit began to think about itself, W. says. Shit looked at itself in the mirror. And I came to embody the spirit of shit ...

Plato is turning in his grave, W. says. Kant is spinning in his grave. Did Hegel see what was coming? Did Cassirer?

We are not the murderers of thought, W. says, but we are complicit in the murder. We're not the ones who will slit thought's throat - but we stood aside, and let it happen.

The philosophical apocalypse. The philosophical end of times. Will it be clear, now, at the end of its history, what philosophy, all along, had wanted to say?

Philosophy will end neither with a bang nor a whisper, W. says. Philosophy will end in a  kind of thundering silence, he says. With an anonymous rumbling, which paids no heed to us at all.

No one will remember us (no one will remember him), W. says. No one will know what we tried to do (what he tried to do), W. says. No one will know what he had to put with ...

The times are changing, W. says. An epoch is ending.

W. has the terrible feeling that we are going to be its gravediggers, he says. That the pit we have dug for ourselves - the disaster of our careers, the ludicrous posturing of our lives as thinkers - is the grave into which philosophy itself will be lowered.

Philosophy can't survive the catastrophe, W. says. Philosophy is going to be destroyed with everything else: that's what he fears. The philosopher is a person of leisure, W. says. A person removed from everyday worries. And who will have leisure in the times to come?, he says. Who will be free from the worries of life in the midst of the apocalypse?