“The important thing is to continue production, creation [thus] preventing
stagnation. The most dangerous delusion of all being that this has to mean
something…”
Whilst it is tempting say that I
hate eating my own words, the truth is I’m so accustomed to it I find it almost
palatable. Hindsight renders the outcome of the most minor of personal goals crushingly
inevitable, to the extent that I have on occasion developed an irrational
aversion to ever recording any kind of plan. It’s a sort of inverted magical
thinking, whereby the magical act of spelling out a desire absolutely ensures
that it will not happen. I doubt Noel Edmonds and I would get on very well,
though that would likely be true even if our respective perceptions of causality
were not diametrically opposed.
In my [pseudo-]academic work this
attitude has helped me to embrace the philosophy of process over goal, though
in truth the seeds of this shift were sown by my interest in psychogeography.
The derive can occur on the page as
well as the street, in a free-flowing concatenation of words or an apparently
meaningless arrangement of pencil marks. It doesn’t have to mean anything, per se, though it does have to be done.
And the ‘doing’ part presents a significant challenge.
At present I teach English as a
foreign language to Vietnamese students in Huế. It is a challenging and rewarding occupation, but one that has
gradually absorbed my time to the extent that I pretty much eat, sleep, plan
lessons and teach. There are moments of respite, but these are characterised by
a stupefied exhaustion, usually witnessing me staring blankly at a movie in the
local coffee shop, or clumsily hitting balls around a wonky pool table with an
equally wonky stick.
If all this sounds familiar, it
may well be because I wrote about this back in October. Oh well. I’ve also written
that repetition is a form of change, perhaps as an insurance measure (that being
the case it would show some of that foresight I’ve previously described as
uncharacteristic).
As of Friday further
investigation into Huế’s “psychogeographic
currents” will be postponed for a fortnight at least: I will be in Saigon,
teaching at a new language school. This promises to be a rewarding period for
the work alone, but also presents another chance to explore Vietnam’s largest
city, as well as the chance to buy some quality English language literature.
Until then, I will tentatively present
the ultimate goal of this literary and pedestrian (in every sense, perhaps)
meandering as this: metamorphosis. Not a destination, but a state of being,
something like that which Deleuze& Guattari describe in Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus:
“…a free man,
irresponsible, solitary, and joyous, finally able to say and do something
simple in his own name, without asking permission; a desire lacking nothing, a
flux that overcomes barriers and codes, a name that no longer designates any
ego whatever. He has simply ceased being afraid of becoming mad. He experiences
and lives himself as the sublime sickness that will no longer affect him.”
But yeah, process not goal,
unless the goal is the process...
