The Time of Stupor

Manchester was good to us, W. says, as we wait for our separate trains, back at Piccadilly Station. It was good. We gave our talk, fielded questions, we didn’t get lynched ...

Capitalism has triumphed, W. told our audience. Capitalism has conquered the external world, W. said; now it’s going to conquer the internal one, too. The very intimacy of our lives, that’s capitalism’s new frontier, W. said. Our private ideas, our tastes, our moods: that’s what capitalism has set out to conquer now.

In the end our loves and friendships will become capitalist loves and capitalist friendships, W. says. Our innermost hopes and dreams will become capitalist hopes and capitalist dreams. Our sighs will become capitalist sighs. Our wistfulness, capitalist wistfulness. Even our philosophy, opposed as it is to capitalism in every way, will become capitalist philosophy, W. says. Even our thoughts will become capitalist thoughts.

And our despair?, W. wondered aloud. Is that what’s left to us? Is that what remains of the good and the true? Is it in truly experiencing our despair that the path to our salvation lies?

Despair! W. took our audience through the twists and turns of The Sickness Unto Death. Of The Concept of Anxiety. He took them through crucial sections of Marx’s Capital. He conjured up a bearded Kierkegaard for our audience. A melancholy Marx!

W. spoke of the attempt to conquer despair while remaining in it. He spoke of the aim not merely to accept despair, but to invert its meaning, take pride in it, and regard it as a blessing. Despair does not destroy hope, but recruits it, W. said. Seen in the right way, despair contains prospects of joy.

And then W. passed the baton to me. The room, abuzz with excitement during W.’s half of the presentation, fell silent. And I, too, was silent. The sound of construction from outside. The beep of a reversing vehicle.

Starting slowly, quietly, I began to extemporise on what I called the time of stupor, the time of drifting. I spoke about Tarkovsky’s Stalker, about Tarr’s Damnation. I spoke about untensed time, about time out of phase, about temporal puddles and temporal ox-bow lakes …

I talked about Manchester as rust-zone, as sleeper. I spoke about the past and the rotting of the past. I spoke of those parts of the city that were cut off from time. I spoke of the unregenerated and the unredeemed. I spoke of the Sabbath, of the interregnum, of the great holy pause …

I spoke of attenuated despair, of grief stretched thin. I spoke of diffuse melancholia, and the of the disorders of the vague. I spoke of the fear of the everyday – of cop show repeats on daytime TV, of Columbo and Magnum P.I. I spoke of stale beer and gingerbread men.

I spoke of falling to the level of the everyday. Of letting yourself fall. I spoke of watching the end credits of Neighbours not once, but twice a day. I spoke of what Perec called the infra-ordinary, and de Certeau, the murmuring of the indefinite. I spoke of peripheries without centre, and of suburbs which never reach the city.

I spoke of nightbuses and eternal rain. I spoke of five hundred different kinds of boredom. I spoke of the wisdom of the long-term sick and the unemployed. I spoke of kebab wrappers blowing in the wind.   

I spoke of empty hours and empty days. I spoke of wave-froth on the deep body of the sea. I spoke of misty thoughts yet to coalesce. I spoke of hazy skies and clouds of midges.

I spoke of being lost in time, buried in time. I spoke of time piling up like a great snowdrift. I spoke of space as an ache, as a wound, as a sigh. I spoke of space as a prayer, as a plea, as a poem.

I spoke of the nihilism of Joy Division. Of music which came from the other side of death. I spoke of rigor mortis and lockjaw. I spoke of the dancing chicken of Herzog's Stroszek.

I spoke of the anti-gravity of dub. I spoke of the Rastafarians of Old Hulme. I spoke of polytricks and the Bablyon shitstem. I spoke of the exodus and of the repatrination. I quoted Prince Far-I: ‘We’re moving out of Babylon/ One destination, ina Ithiopia …’, I quoted. ‘Ithiopia, the tyrants are falling/ Ithiopia, Britain the great is falling …’, I quoted.

W. was moved, he says. I was moved. Our audience broke out into spontaneous applause. He’d thought my prophetic days had gone, W. says. He’d thought my oracle had shut up shop ...