- I had a very interesting walk home last weekend after Road to Rimini; let’s see if I can remember it. I took a pill that didn’t quite get the chance to spend itself in a positive manner, and so, as is often the case in these instances, triggered an unpleasant and somewhat schizophrenic trail of thought in my head, albeit a highly lucid one, which is almost always the case. In fact, I find the lucidity of my thinking when taking pills overwhelming, and perhaps it is this that is partially responsible for what we term a ‘comedown’. Some say, of course, that the drugs are to blame for my experience, but that is a gross over-simplification and misunderstanding of the experience.
It’s very important that we understand, first of all, that it is a mistake to divide this experience into independent factors such as ‘the drug’ and ‘the individual’. What occurs at such an intensification of self-reflective thinking is not made up of separate factors, but is in fact one experience, and whatever factors might be said to be present in the experience operate together and off the back of one another. The pill does not trigger an effect that is in some way contained within the pill and operates on the subject. Rather, the process that can be observed during the experience is one which is always already occuring within the subject as an inextricable part of the very fact of being a subject, or of the process of subject-formation, which is in itself a never ending process, but a continual process of layering, holding together, and breaking up of multitudes. There is always, at the same time as - and as part of – the will to stability, also present an undermining process of disintegration. This process, we understand from Nietzsche, Deleuze, and many other thinkers, must not be seen as a negativity, but as a crucial drive in a healthy psyche. Any identity can only maintain itself as identity, paradoxically, precisely through its capacity for disintegration and reorganisation. Too strong a tipping of the balance in the direction of this drive, however, can be dangerous, and it is perhaps true that only certain souls are fortunate to be strong enough to withstand such trials (although I’m wary of siding with Nietzsche’s opinion that these characters are in some way ‘stronger’ or higher individuals, or rather, some people’s interpretation of Nietzsche to this effect. One must ask ‘stronger for what?’ But we shan’t dwell on this point here). What occurs during the comedown is one experiencing the removal of the defence mechanisms that occult from view the fact of drives balancing off one another, and are exposed to the lie that is our life (this experience is necessary for one to learn the secrets of acting). Walking past a group of lads I heard one of them talking about Jermaine Defoe. Defoe, of course! England had played that evening the opening match of their world cup campaign and got off to a demoralising and disillusioning performance, drawing 1-1 with the U.S. Months and months, nearly two years of the most meticulous preparations, both mental and physical; the expectations of millions and the instilling of self-belief, cultivating an unshakeable faith, a strength, the strength to believe that they are, in fact, world class players capable of the ultimate feat in football – winning the world cup. All of these beliefs explode in one night of doubt. A few minutes where things don’t go their way during the game might trigger a chain reaction of self-doubt: “what if we lose this game? What if we fail to achieve our goals? What if we’re not good enough, not as good as what we’ve led everyone to believe?” And suddenly they find that they can’t answer those questions other than by forcing themselves to believe them, which they no longer can. How will they recover the belief in their stability and unshakeability? How do you do this once you’ve been exposed to the fragility of quotidian efforts for sanity? This is a call of conscience. I believe that most players might experience an instance of anxiety, in a Heideggerian sense, and hear the call of conscience, yet the majority must overcome this precisely by ignoring the call and reassemble their strength again around their identity as per its role within the sport of football. It must be this ability, after all, that makes them champions and others losers. They sacrifice a certain questionning in favour of social achievements, and I don’t intend this as a criticism. There is something awe-inspiringly impressive and strong about this, but it is a strength driven by fear – fear of disintegration – a fear of death. I wish to desire a stronger, truer strength. I wish to know what desiring that strength feels like. I wish to know what that strength is so that I may even begin to desire it. What would this strength be, this strength born from the embracing of death?
I kept walking past towering buildings in the sobering light of dawn that seemed to reflect the gradual awakening of my soul, its attention pointed towards its own frailty. A new Generator Studios building, not even finished yet, the product of Labour investment in this area and of so much waste. What will become of this building now that we have a Conservative government? What will happen to this city? It will be opened up to the folly of its own existence, the façade that Labour had managed to put up here for such a long time, the image of sustainable prosperity.
