Kitschy

You’re the one who’s kitschy, aren’t you, X tells me. You’re the one who’s out there faking it, but I’m the one who really feels it, so I’m not the kitschy one, am I? I bear the real brunt of your kitsch, don’t I?

Endings and beginnings

We have endings, X tells me, that much is clear, everything ends all the time, in fact his life seems like one long ending. But to end you have to begin, he says, there are no ends without beginnings. Thus we begin as often as we end, and end as we begin, which makes our despair meaningless. Or is my logic flawed? he asks. Probably, he says. We breathe the dust of the dead and living, he says. The corpses we plant become seeds and we’re the seeds of past and future corpses, hardly distinguishable from one another. Am I part of you or are you part of me? he asks. I come to you in my tiredness, he says, in my exhaustion, to renew myself in these words, in all the things I have to say to you, in all my questions. My questions unanswered, they begin again in new forms, so lightly here, like clouds that form and disperse. And yet it could be, he says, it could very well be that I just need to get laid.

A forest of kitsch

Talking to you is like moving through a forest, X tells me, like the one that grew next to our house, the one I grew up in and played in. Except I knew then I’d be able to get back home no matter where I went, but now I don’t, now I come out where I thought was home and realise I’m in a bigger forest. A forest of kitsch. And where are you, he asks me, who do you think you are to lead me astray?

Needy

X tells me he’s finally found the truth about himself. He’s needy, he says, that’s the basic truth, isn’t it? He needs the sound of my voice, he says, he needs me to tell him something kitschy and comforting. He’s like that teenager who got lost in the Australian bush and was kept alive by his longing to hear his mother’s voice, he says. He wants to curl up in a foetal ball and listen to me whisper words of comfort in his ear. That’s the perfect image of what he wants, a foetal ball, rocking back and forth, being lulled to sleep by words of comfort, isn’t that what you think? he asks me.

A mess of rats

I’m right, X tells me, how could he have said all that to me, what drove him to say all those pompous, absurd things? Where does this need for puffed-up declarations and personal kitsch come from, and how can he excuse it? he asks. He can’t, he says, and that just adds to his problems. I’m right to wonder if he thinks the world revolves around him, he says, if he thinks he’s the hero of his own kitschy drama, because he clearly does, doesn’t he? he asks. Like some delusional case in a room somewhere, rocking in his chair and scribbling all the reasons why the world is against him and vice versa, and why it’ll all end in tears. No, he says, he needs to sober up, beware of himself and try to understand his circumstances instead of making them worse. Maybe wearing a suit would help, he says, or getting laid. Maybe he should keep a notebook, he says, a healthy, normal notebook, countering all his negative thoughts with positive ones, isn’t that how it’s done now? What’s certain is he’s out of line, he says, out of touch with reality. He needs to clean himself up with limpid, objective thoughts, he says, see himself from the eyes of the world, society, God, Sigmund Freud, Margaret Thatcher, anyone. But first he has to get rid of me. He doesn’t want to be that guy down the street, he says, the guy with the stained jacket. But it’s like a mess of rats is running around his brain and mating, he says, that’s why he talks to me like this, he’s doing it now, can’t I hear, why can’t I help him instead of making it worse with my silence? But of course I’m right, he says, he has to help himself because no one else can, so in a way my silence is a blessing.

Who was it?

Who was it who came between me and my life and made me kitschy, X asks me, was it you? But you’re right, he says, I should have seized the moment when the time was right and I was still young and malleable, I should have stepped into the world when I was still wide-eyed and it might have sunk in. I could have been wearing a suit now, he says, chairing a meeting, I could have a career and a house and enjoyable hobbies. I missed my chance, he says, when the timing was right, in those early wide-eyed years. I should have become an athlete when there was still time, he says, then it would have sunk in thoroughly and I wouldn’t have to carry you around everywhere. You showed up at exactly the wrong time, he says, perfect timing as always, was it you who barged into my life or me who let you in? What I know is that it was when I took up with you that I got kitschy, he tells me, that’s when the mist descended.

Kitsch

How can he get rid of his kitsch, X asks me, who should he turn to, since I won’t help him? Maybe he could turn to the English, he says, to learn to repress his feelings. Or maybe he should start reading political philosophy and learn to be more impersonal, get some perspective. Or better yet, science, maybe he should study science and evolution, that would take care of his kitschy religious yearnings into the bargain. Or maybe he just needs to get laid, he says, or get a guinea pig to care for, in other words start living like a normal human being and stop thinking the world revolves around his feelings. Because that’s what you think, isn’t it? he asks me. But you’re useless, he says, I don’t expect a response from you.

We don’t really talk like that anymore

All this business he broods over, X tells me, all these confessional phrases he collects, from what, for what, to concoct evidence of his inability to what, he says, trial is an obsolete word, to sit up like a duck for my silent judgement, judgement what an obsolete word, for the father’s judgement and the mother’s kitsch, he says. Accept it already and move on, he says, we know all this. A word in your ear, we don’t really talk like that anymore. It’s embarrassing, he says, and how embarrassing that he should have to feel embarrassed about my embarrassment. He should have got over it years ago, of course, it’ll only end in tears, grow a pair, lighten up. Maybe he just needs to get laid, he says, maybe I’m right, he feels old already, can I find him a girl? No, of course I can’t.

Death, silence and all that

He’s afraid of silence, X tells me. He dreads it, actually. Pascal’s infinite spaces, the silence of the stars, all that. He loses sleep over it, he says, imagine, he actually loses sleep. He’s afraid of sleep’s little abyss of silence, he says, who talks like this anymore? Yet that’s all he wants, isn’t it? he asks, he’s tired, it’s late and he wants to sleep, he wants to drift into the arms of Morpheus, into silence, he says, but to get there he has to make himself fall asleep. Sleep is Charon, he says, sleep is the ferryman, no, sleep is the skiff and death is the ferryman, who talks like that in this day and age, he says, how kitschy can you get. That’s it, he says, it’s death he wants, isn’t it, sleep is the coin and death is the skiff, he says. No, sleep is the skiff and death is Hades, silent Hades, because death is silence, and that’s what he really wants, he says, he wants the silence which is death, he wants to die from himself, fall out of himself, fall asleep, drop dead, he says, he wants the coin, who talks like this nowadays? And yet he doesn’t, of course, every cell in him clings to life, he says, his life, tenaciously as they say, even if he doesn’t, though secretly he probably does, tenaciously as they say, what if his life were threatened, what if he got sick, he says, he’d run from death and cling to life like a child clinging to his mother’s legs. He fears death like he fears silence, the silence which is death, it’s ridiculous to talk like this in this day and age, he says, kitsch is all it is. No, it’s silence he really wants, says X, a final break from himself, from his own kitschy voice, but he’s afraid of silence, he says, of my silence. It interrogates him, he says, it ridicules him, he’s not man enough for silence, he says, for death, or life for that matter, he needs the comfort of his own voice like a mother’s lullaby, right, isn’t that what you think? he asks. It grinds him down, he says, this silence, it grinds him into sand, he says, he’s sand, sand in the desert, a sandstorm in the desert, a noisy sandstorm in the heat of silence, who talks like this, in the heart of the silence of the desert, in the silence of silence. Maybe he just needs to get laid, he says.

X’s yoga

X wants to renounce hope, he tells me. He decided this yesterday while he got drunk and watched sitcoms. He wants to revolt against discourse like Bataille, he says, break down the refuge of the ‘I’. He wants to learn the feverish yoga of despair on the frontlines of the spirit in the trenches of experience and all that, he says. Maybe I can help him, he says, with my Detractor’s Voice. He can hear it now, he says, or maybe it’s his own, talking to him while he talks, calling him shameless, kitschy, telling him he’s no business even taking these words in vain. Keep talking, he says, it might help, that’ll be my yoga, he says, a yoga of shame, that’ll break me down. He’ll let my voice work for him, or is it his own, the voice that makes these words shameless. I’ll start right after I watch this new show, he says.