Déjà Vu in the Desert of the Real
“To two smells,” he said, “pussy and gunpowder…. Live for one. Die by the other. Lllllove the smell of both.”
Escapism was always my vice: Read, drink, fuck. The usual suspects.
The two of us together was a form of suicide. It took teamwork to get your life fucked up so bad.
I once felt these acts unwound a certain social tailoring, lent some perspective, were therefore individualizing. I now realize that this ‘bent’ of mine is, in fact, one of many delusions I share with the addled masses.
“I feel empty somehow. I feel as if I don’t exist.”
Whatever the response, it will never hit the RIGHT target, bringing us full satisfaction.
I’m twenty-five years old and I don’t understand what it is that people do. It’s as if all this were built on nothing, and nothing were holding this together. And then I hear people talk, and that just makes things worse.
In the same way that we drink beer without alcohol or coffee without caffeine, we are now getting war deprived of its substance.
We echo each other in these ways.
And yet...
What awaits us is something much more uncanny: the specter of an ‘immaterial’ war where the attack is invisible -- viruses, poisons which can be anywhere and nowhere.
When you have been afraid for a long time, you see how fear will come and go. How fear will overtake you. How fear will subside. How fear guts you for a moment. How hope puts you back together, till the fear comes back.
At the level of visible material reality, nothing happens, no big explosions, and yet the known universe starts to collapse, life disintegrates.
“I feel empty somehow. I feel as if I don’t exist.”
The Real Thing is ultimately another name for the Void.
Then the hope. Then the fear.
A cradle made of medicated insularity. An intensified sense of The Wait.
It effectively appears as if the split between First World and Third World runs more and more along the lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth, and dedicating one’s life to some transcendent Cause.
We’re happy enough, though we’re often sad because we feel like we’re losing everything.
Resigned to tongue-arrested delusions, Whateverism, a glorified laughing gas.
Although we in the West are perceived as exploiting masters, it is we who occupy the position of the Servant who, since he clings to life and its pleasures, is unable to risk his life..
And I am bitter,
broke,
but always entertained.
This was the life we fought for.
You can produce pop art on your eyelids if you apply enough pressure.
XXX
CUT-UP SOURCES:
Welcome to the Desert of the Real by Slavoj Zizek
