Dogma (2 page)

Ah, why do we get invited on these lecture tours?, W. says. What do people expect? In truth, we should refuse all invitations. We shouldn’t go anywhere! Isn’t Bruno’s fate a warning to us all, that we should go
nowhere near America?

The chicken is cosmic
, that’s what we have to understand,
W. says. It’s a bit like that statue I have in my flat. Who is it supposed to be again? Lord Shiva as Nataraja, I tell him. The cosmic dancer. Ah yes, he remembers, W. says. The dance of the cosmos, the cosmos as a dance, all that sort of thing.

‘What’s your cosmic dance like?’, W. asks. ‘It’s the funky chicken, isn’t it? Go on, fat boy. Dance’.

W. likes to watch me dance, he says. It’s so improbable. So graceless. W. admires my
non-dancing
, as he calls it. I am a non-dancer, he says. But the ‘
non-
’ of my non-dancing is not privative, that’s the secret, he says. It’s liberatory! I’m not like the others, who only dance in their chains. I’m not a
victim of choreography
.

Of course, I’m also a
non-thinker
, W. says, which is in no way liberatory.—‘You
seem
to think. You
look like
you’re thinking, but in fact you’re doing nothing of the sort’. He grants that I
feel
a great deal—I am subject to great waves of pathos—but that’s not the same as thinking. ‘You’re a
pathetic
man, but not a
thinking
man’, W. says.

Still, W. suspects that the power of thinking—
his
thinking—might be joined to my non-thinking. Might the attempt to think
messianism
, the current stage of W.’s
Denkweg
, his thought-path, require a kind of
pathos
? Perhaps there’s something like a messianic
mood
, W. muses.

The chicken won’t stop
. That’s what’s etched into the runoff groove of the last Joy Division album.
The chicken won’t stop
: it’s like a mantra to W.—‘You won’t stop, will you?’, he says. That’s part of the horror: I show no signs of stopping. But it’s part of my glory, too. Who am I amusing? Not even him. And certainly not anyone else.

Innocence … artlessness … a kind of childlike simplicity … In my best moments, I really do resemble Bruno Stroszek, W. says. In my
best
moments, he emphasises. Otherwise I resemble no one but myself, more’s the pity.

But sometimes I achieve a kind of
pathetic grandeur
, W. says, almost despite myself. There I sit, in the squalor. There I am, a squalid man amidst the squalor, beer cans and discounted sandwich boxes lying empty around me, plaster dust in my hair, and I say something truly striking. I make some pronouncement.—‘You’re like a savant’, W. says.

If I resemble Bruno Stroszek, W. supposes that he can only resemble Bruno’s elderly neighbour—‘what was his name? Scheitzer? Scheitzerhund?’ Just Scheitz, I tell him, Mr Scheitz. Mr Scheitz had an interest in
animal magnetism
, W. remembers. He bothered people with it. He confused them. That’s how it is with
his
interests, W. says, which are equally improbable, equally irrelevant.

Heathrow. W. has a horror of airports, he says. Herded through corridors! Driven, like cattle in a slaughterhouse! You can smell the panic, W. says.

Krasznahorkai writes about the horror of airports, W. says. About the way they need all of your concentration. Every bit of it. About the dreadful din, the chaos, the constant flow of people. About the stony-faced guards, hands on their machine guns, looking in thirty-six directions at once.

We mustn’t joke in the security queues, W. says. We mustn’t laugh, or they’ll beat us with their rubber truncheons. They blind us with tear gas and then they’ll gun us down, like dogs.

But I’m at home in an airport, he can see that. I like the fear. I like being driven, herded, forced along. It’s because I’m fundamentally
bureaucratic
, W. says. I’m an
administrator of the spirit
.

Even an administrator of the spirit can get it wrong, W. says when we arrive in Nashville airport in the early hours. Have I really lost our hosts’ address? Will we really have to wait until morning to contact the university for their phone
number? There’s nothing for it but to pass the night on the rocking chairs in the airport lounge.

W. takes his copy of Spinoza’s
Ethics
from his man bag, the only thing you can do at times like this.—‘Spinoza teaches you to affirm everything’, W. says. ‘Affirm, affirm, affirm, that’s what Spinoza says’. But W. can’t affirm the copy of
National Enquirer
I buy at the kiosk, nor the Twinkies I stuff into my mouth. Somehow I always stand in the way of his beatitude.

This is a
car city
, W. notices of Nashville, as we are shown the sights.—‘You’re nothing without a car!’

They tried to do without one when they first arrived in America, our Canadian hosts tell us. They cycled everywhere, for miles and miles. People cried out to them in the streets.—‘Why are you cycling? Are you crazy?’ But our hosts continued to cycle. They cycled out to their favourite Mexican restaurant and their favourite Vietnamese restaurant. And in the end it was too much.

Our hosts have been forced into driving, they tell us, which is terrible. No one should be forced to drive, W. says. Especially not Canadians! The Canadian, in his imagination, paddles canoes through the wilderness. The Canadian rides horses! The Canadian sleds across the pristine snow! The Canadian is not made to be a driver.

He should know, W. says. He spent his childhood in Canada. Didn’t he paddle his canoe on the lakes of Canada? Didn’t he ride a horse through the Canadian forests? That’s why he’s never learnt to drive, W. says: to stay loyal to his Canadian childhood.

Downtown Nashville consists largely of car parks. Odd bits
of metal stick out of the ground at shin height. There’s no one around except a fully outfitted cowboy walking down the street.—‘Must be German’, W. says.

Where, we wonder, are the
people
of Nashville? That’s one thing we like about our cities, we agree: there are always people about. They’re usually drunk, of course. Drunk and lairy. But that is a good sign.

We visit the full-sized concrete replica of the Parthenon, which sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Nashville’s supposed to be the
Athens of the South
, our hosts tell us. The Athens of the South! I should feel at home here with my formidable knowledge of ancient languages, W. says.

W. insists on buying us souvenir togas. I take a picture of us posing on the steps. W. feels like Socrates, he says. And I am Diogenes, Socrates’s idiot double, a man who looked exactly like him, but who begged for a living, and lived in a barrel in the marketplace, his shameless habits scandalising all of Athens.

Of course, Diogenes merely
acted
like an idiot, W. says. He lived in squalor, true enough—but that was because he despised the conventions of society. He lived in poverty—but that was because of a disdain for the stupidity of the rich. He was shameless—but that was because he thought human beings lived artificially and hypocritically.

Diogenes had a terrible wisdom of his own, even Plato granted that, W. says. He had a terrible philosophy, which he taught by living example. A
Socrates gone mad
, that’s what
Plato called him. A
Socrates
, because Diogenes, too, believed in reason, exalting it above custom and tradition. But a Socrates
gone mad
, because Diogenes took shamelessness to a new extreme: eschewing all modesty, pissing on people who insulted him, shitting in the theatre and masturbating in the public square …

A
Diogenes gone mad
, W. says: that’s how he thinks of me. A man without shame, not because he rejects ideas of human decency but because he knows no better. A man outside of society, not because he was an ascetic but because no one wanted him in it.

W. insists on being shown
old
Nashville, although there’s very little of it left. Our hosts take us to Nashville City Cemetery, and I take pictures of the old gravestones. They drive us by the old McCann grocery, just off Broadway, and I photograph the skyscrapers reflected in its windows. But W.’s looking for something else, he says. He can’t explain exactly what.

W. tells me to photograph the words
closeing sale
graffitied across a shuttered shopfront. He tells me to photograph the rusting stairwells and broken glass in the derelict brewery, and the poster advertising
free Ninja lessons
stapled on a telegraph pole.

W. tells me to take a photo of an abandoned roller skating rink, and of a closed up loading bay. He tells me to photograph a sofa stranded on the sidewalk, and the neon signs on several Mexican restaurants (
Los Happy Bellies
,
Los Hipopótamos
…) Then he directs me to take a picture of the view of the sky through the girders of the pedestrian bridge that leads downtown.

W. speaks of
kernels of time
, and
dialectical images
. He speaks of
re-enchantment
and
re-awakening
. He speaks of the
tradition of the oppressed
 …

W.’s looking for the
America hidden by America
, he says. The
submerged America
of the poor, W. says: that’s part of it, he says. The
third world America
of the wretched and the broken-hearted, he says. But also, close by, as hope is always close to despair, a
messianic America
; an America re-enchanted and re-awakening; a perpetually new America stretching its limbs in the sun …

At
Katie K.’s Prairie Style
, W. decides to be my dresser. He knows I’ve always wanted a Nudie Suit, or at the very least a Western-style shirt. I want embroidery! I want fringes!

W. fetches me Western-style shirts, bolo ties and cowboy boots, while I stand in the dressing room in my underpants. But nothing works. I still don’t look like a Rhinestone Cowboy.

Over lunch, our hosts tell us of their
Nashville misery
. W. does impressions of me to cheer them up.—‘This is Lars thinking’, he says, making chimp noises. ‘This is Lars speaking German’, he says, making louder chimp noises. ‘This is Lars reading Rosenzweig’, he says, falling silent and scratching his head. But our hosts are unmoved. They’re too full of
American despair
.

W. takes me aside before we get back in the car. I should talk more, W. says. I should try and engage with our hosts!

Ah, why have I never learnt to talk?, he wonders. Why has it always been left to him, when we’re in company, to speak for both of us? For long periods, I’m mute, thinking of God knows what, W. says. I’m like some great block of stupidity. Like some great stupid Easter Island statue …

What does stupidity think about?, W. wonders. Is it ever aware of its own stupidity? Does it scratch its head and wonder about itself? Ah, but stupidity can never uncover its own truth, that’s its tragedy, W. says. Stupidity can never look itself in the face.

Sometimes he likes my silence, W. says. He imagines it to be a kind of integrity—a way of guarding something, some
secret. ‘He knows something’, W. says to himself, looking across at me. Or, better: ‘something knows itself in him’.

One day, they’ll decrypt me, W. likes to think to himself. One day, the Rosetta Stone of my stupidity will yield up its secrets.—‘You see!’, W. will say. ‘I told you so!’, he’ll say, when they solve my riddle.

Perhaps we should be silent about fundamental matters, W. says. Perhaps there’s nothing we can say that does not immediately destroy what is most important.

But there’s silence and silence, W. says … There is the reserve of the wise man, full of learning, full of modesty, who knows that the truth is infinitely subtle, infinitely complex, and that one must never speak too soon. And there is the roaring silence of the idiot, W. says, which resounds with dark matter and barren wastes and bacteria—with everything that is unredeemed in the universe.

Americans don’t go in for gardening, we notice as we near our hosts’ street: the back garden—brown grass, uncut—simply runs out unfenced onto the road behind. It’s exactly the same with the front garden. But Americans are tremendously neighbourly. Didn’t our hosts’ neighbour bake a pie for us, when she heard we were coming to stay?

Hospitality is a great sign of civilisation, W. says. Our houses should be wholly open to our guests. The guest turns the house into an offering … Of course, I have a flat, not a house, but the same thing holds. And my flat has little to offer except squalor and damp, but the same principle applies.

How many guests W. has welcomed! How many great minds have crossed his threshold! He’s opened his drinks cabinet to them, and his enormous fridge. He’s opened every kitchen cupboard, to whip up a midnight snack for some great mind or other. He’s had whole
parties
of guests, each person staying in another of his many rooms, each for whom W. threw open his airing cupboard anew, for fresh sheets and fresh duvet covers. Fresh towels!

How many times has he projected
Stroszek
for his guests on the walls of his vast living room? How many times has he
danced in his socks
with them to apocalyptic Canadian pop?

And what about me? Who have I had to stay? What thinkers have passed through my door? Just him, W. says. Just him, breathing in mould spores and plaster dust. Just him, wondering why the lights don’t work and the TV doesn’t work and the fridge doesn’t work and why the oven is upside down in the living room.

On the porch, with our
sipping gin
. Joggers and dog-walkers fill the streets. Fireflies hover over the grasses. This is what they should drink, here in the South, W. says: Plymouth Gin, neat, over ice.