Spurious - Lars Iyer [17]
We too, W. and I decided long ago, must give our lives in the service of others. We too must write interpretative essays on the work of others more intelligent and gifted than we will ever be. We too must do our best to offer support and solace to others despite the fact that we will always misunderstand their genius, and only bother them with our enthusiasm.
W. finds me in a despondent state on the phone. Yet another of my escape bids has been thwarted. Yet another dream completely dashed. My lines of flight always go splat! against the wall, don’t they?, W. observes. I’m like the cartoon mouse who hits the wall and then slides down it, he says. It’s painful to see, but also funny.
‘That look on your face!’, says W. And then: ‘Everyone can see it coming, even you can see it coming, but you run up against the same wall, don’t you? Every time! The same wall!’
We’re bottom feeders, W. always insists. We survive on scraps others leave us. That we can survive from day to day is miracle enough, W. says, let alone have any dreams of escape. We’re not even opportunists, he says, we’re too stupid for that.
We like to pretend we have some control over the circumstances of our lives, W. says, whereas in reality we have no control whatsoever. W. understands all this very well, he says. He learned it from me, which is why he’s surprised by my lapse.
We all have to face it at some time or another, W. says, there’s nowhere for us to go. No up and no down. We don’t have a chance. As soon as I realise this, W. says, something may be possible. But then again, nothing may be possible after all.
W. has wheedled £2,600 from some academic fund or other. It’s time to give something to the world, he says, rather than taking. Because that’s what we always do, he says, we take from the world.
We should send the money to Béla Tarr! Send it all to him! Béla Tarr’s our leader. How long have we been waiting for a leader? But there he is, working in Hungary, on the central plain, a long way from us. No doubt his producers have deserted him. No doubt he’s lost another cinematographer … We’re agreed: he needs our support, and we need his leadership.
But how are we going to get the money to Béla Tarr? Should we go to Hungary ourselves? My God, says W., what would he make of us? Two buffoons on the central plain! What would he think? Isn’t life hard enough for him as it is?
He uses non-professional actors, says W. of Béla Tarr. We talk of the great speech in Damnation about coal scuttles and suicide. It’s the best scene I’ve ever seen in a film, I tell him. He agrees. And the bit in the mud with the dog, with Karrer on all fours barking at the dog. Nothing better. Because that’s where we’ll end up—in the mud, covered in mud, barking! At each other, if no one else! Barking—in the mud!
W. says he was so alone over Christmas he forgot how to talk.—‘I’m not like you’, he says, ‘I don’t need people’.
He’s written about Spinoza, says W. What have I written about? He sends me his lecture notes. He sends me a paper by someone cleverer than us. He sends me his introduction to a special edition of a journal. That’s what he’s been doing. He’s been busy. Not like me.—‘I’ll tell you what your problem is’, says W., ‘you’re lazy! Lazy!’
Then W. tests me on Spinoza: What is a mode? What’s a substance? What’s an attribute? I tell him the Ethics is too hard. Get the Routledge Guidebook to Spinoza’s Ethics, W. tells me.—‘But that’ll be too hard for you, won’t it? Get the Idiot’s Guide to Spinoza, then. But that’ll be too hard, too. Start with these letters on a piece of paper: S-P-I-N-O-Z-A. Ponder that in your stupidity’.
‘How’s your damp?’, W. asks. ‘Tell me about your flat again. It’s shit, isn’t it? You’ve got the worst flat of anyone I’ve ever met. My God, I don’t know how you live there. What’s causing it? Do you have any idea?’
It’s a mystery, I tell W. I called six damp proofing companies in turn, I tell him, one after another.