into the time of American cop-show repeats.
Columbo-time , W. says, I could never bear that, could I? Instead I’d go out for walk, that’s what I told him. Instead, it was time for a bike ride. Anything to be active! Anything to have something to do! I’d head up to Tesco for discounted sandwiches, wasn’t that it? I’d head into the library for another video, all the time full of fear, all the time anxious about—what? How did I put it? The infinite wearing away , I said, quoting Blanchot. Eternullity , I said, quoting Lefebvre.
It’s no wonder I’m no night-owl, W. says. No wonder that I’m always worn out by dinnertime. I always revive myself, when I visit him, with a slab of Stella and some pork scratchings. That’s my pre-dinner snack.
W., meanwhile, would have been refreshed from his nap, if I’d allowed him to sleep. He would have come downstairs, a man refreshed, reborn, having had a power-nap, he says.But instead, I insist on conversation, W. says. I insist on wearing him out: he lying on the sofa; I, sitting up at the table. I insist we make some wild plan or other, W. says.
For me, the afternoon’s always planning-time, world-conquest-time , as W. calls it. I have to pretend to some kind of hold on the future, W. has noticed. It’s like a climber throwing up a grappling hook, or Spiderman swinging by his squirted webs. I’m never happy in the moment , W. says. I’m never happy in the belly of the afternoon .
St Hilda’s College, looking at the river. Capitalism and religion, W. muses. He hasn’t got much further with his thinking, he says. His notebook’s nearly empty. I flick through it.
Where there is hope there is religion : Bloch , I read. Sometimes God , sometimes nothing: Kafka , I read. I have seen God , I have heard God: a ray of light under the door of my hotel room: Celan . Beautiful! But there are few thoughts of W.’s own. He’s going through a dry period, W. says.
Maybe he should try his hand at poetry, like me, W. says. He could write haiku: ‘ Half ton friend / in trouble again ’. ‘ Fuckwit in a vest / Friend I love best ’. Or he could draw some pictures. Study for a Divvy. Landscape with Idiot .
Here’s his favourite quotation, W. says. They should put it on his gravestone. It’s by Hermann Müller, he says. It’s called ‘The Luckless Angel’:
The past surges behind him, pouring rubble on his wings and shoulders and thundering like buried drums, while in front of him the future collects, exploding his eyeballs, strangling him with his breath. The luckless angel is silent, waiting for history in the petrification of flight, glance, breath. Until the renewed rush of powerful wings swelling in waves through the stones signals his flight .
Sometimes, W. thinks it’s fallen to us: the great task of preserving the legacy of Old Europe. It’s our task, he thinks, our allotted mission, to keep something alive of continental Europe in our benighted country, W. says.
Ah, how was it coupled in us, the fear and loathing of the present world and the messianic sense of what it might have been?, W. wonders. How, in us, are combined the sense that our careers—our lives as so-called thinkers—could only have been the result of some great collapse, and the conviction that we are the preservers of a glorious European past, and that we have a share in that past?
How, in us, was joined the sense that our learning—which is really only an enthusiasm for learning, for our philosophy, for literature—is of complete irrelevance and indifference, and the mad belief that our learning bears upon what is most important and risky of all, upon the great questions of the age?
We’re delusional, W. says. He knows that. We’ve gone wrong, terribly wrong, he knows that, too. But don’t we belong to something important, something greater than us, even if we are only its grotesque parody?
We’re hinderers of thought, W. says. We trip it up, humiliate it. There’s thought,
Columbo-time , W. says, I could never bear that, could I? Instead I’d go out for walk, that’s what I told him. Instead, it was time for a bike ride. Anything to be active! Anything to have something to do! I’d head up to Tesco for discounted sandwiches, wasn’t that it? I’d head into the library for another video, all the time full of fear, all the time anxious about—what? How did I put it? The infinite wearing away , I said, quoting Blanchot. Eternullity , I said, quoting Lefebvre.
It’s no wonder I’m no night-owl, W. says. No wonder that I’m always worn out by dinnertime. I always revive myself, when I visit him, with a slab of Stella and some pork scratchings. That’s my pre-dinner snack.
W., meanwhile, would have been refreshed from his nap, if I’d allowed him to sleep. He would have come downstairs, a man refreshed, reborn, having had a power-nap, he says.But instead, I insist on conversation, W. says. I insist on wearing him out: he lying on the sofa; I, sitting up at the table. I insist we make some wild plan or other, W. says.
For me, the afternoon’s always planning-time, world-conquest-time , as W. calls it. I have to pretend to some kind of hold on the future, W. has noticed. It’s like a climber throwing up a grappling hook, or Spiderman swinging by his squirted webs. I’m never happy in the moment , W. says. I’m never happy in the belly of the afternoon .
St Hilda’s College, looking at the river. Capitalism and religion, W. muses. He hasn’t got much further with his thinking, he says. His notebook’s nearly empty. I flick through it.
Where there is hope there is religion : Bloch , I read. Sometimes God , sometimes nothing: Kafka , I read. I have seen God , I have heard God: a ray of light under the door of my hotel room: Celan . Beautiful! But there are few thoughts of W.’s own. He’s going through a dry period, W. says.
Maybe he should try his hand at poetry, like me, W. says. He could write haiku: ‘ Half ton friend / in trouble again ’. ‘ Fuckwit in a vest / Friend I love best ’. Or he could draw some pictures. Study for a Divvy. Landscape with Idiot .
Here’s his favourite quotation, W. says. They should put it on his gravestone. It’s by Hermann Müller, he says. It’s called ‘The Luckless Angel’:
The past surges behind him, pouring rubble on his wings and shoulders and thundering like buried drums, while in front of him the future collects, exploding his eyeballs, strangling him with his breath. The luckless angel is silent, waiting for history in the petrification of flight, glance, breath. Until the renewed rush of powerful wings swelling in waves through the stones signals his flight .
Sometimes, W. thinks it’s fallen to us: the great task of preserving the legacy of Old Europe. It’s our task, he thinks, our allotted mission, to keep something alive of continental Europe in our benighted country, W. says.
Ah, how was it coupled in us, the fear and loathing of the present world and the messianic sense of what it might have been?, W. wonders. How, in us, are combined the sense that our careers—our lives as so-called thinkers—could only have been the result of some great collapse, and the conviction that we are the preservers of a glorious European past, and that we have a share in that past?
How, in us, was joined the sense that our learning—which is really only an enthusiasm for learning, for our philosophy, for literature—is of complete irrelevance and indifference, and the mad belief that our learning bears upon what is most important and risky of all, upon the great questions of the age?
We’re delusional, W. says. He knows that. We’ve gone wrong, terribly wrong, he knows that, too. But don’t we belong to something important, something greater than us, even if we are only its grotesque parody?
We’re hinderers of thought, W. says. We trip it up, humiliate it. There’s thought,
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