‘At home in the Garbage World, festooned from head to toe with the very filth of Satan himself, whilst imagining ourselves to be gods and goddesses, resplendent in our celestial abode…’ Thus with a mighty flourish of my pen, I launched into what was to be my latest and most penetrating exposition yet into the nature of causal existence. Unfortunately, that was as far as I got. As is so often the case, that was as far as my inspiration would take me. Thus far, but no further…
Inspiration is at the best a fickle and unreliable beast, you see. As you know, not just as you see. As you yourself actually know. As you yourself actually know well. Well enough perhaps, but no better. It can let you down, in other words, and it will do so when you least want it to. That’s how it is with me, anyway. ‘At home and as happy as Larry in the Garbage World’, I recited sonorously, but I was only repeating myself. I always repeat myself – it’s an old trick of mine. It’s my only trick – it’s the only thing I have left to rely on. We cling to everything that it is possible to cling to in this world, we cling like bastards…
I am living in the past. That is the plain and unvarnished truth of the matter. I exist entirely within the dusty burnt-out embers of my own perfectly unremarkable past. I’m not convinced that it was worth living through even the first time around. Even the first time around it wasn’t original. It was already old, you see. It was already old, and not just old but defective too. Defective right from the very beginning. Jinxed. From a bad start can come nothing but more badness, hard though it is for us to admit this. But we’ll never admit it, will we? By jingo we won’t. No way. No fear of us admitting anything like that to ourselves. We’ll believe our own bullshit right to the very end.
It will all come right in the end, we say. It’ll come good somehow. God works in mysterious ways, we say. This is all part of a conversation I once had in Garbage Land – a conversation I had with myself. An in-depth conversation on very superficial subjects. I was perfectly at home you see, perfectly at home in the hideous nightmare web of my own inane conversation. ‘Will he ever escape?’ you ask. Will he ever. My words were murmurous, but at the same time strangely compelling, and isn’t that always the way? Isn’t it always. Not at all we say. Not at all, it’ll all come good in the end. Don’t ever give in, we say…
Art – , nytimes.com