Lars Iyer - Dogma

Bar queues. Roadies setting up on the stage. Day one of the festival.

What are the kids listening to? W. wonders as we sip Plymouth Gin from our water bottles. The kids are gentle. They drink, like us, through the morning and the afternoon, through the evening and the night. They sit on the grass outside their chalets, smoking.

We play them The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads . We tell them about Josh T. Pearson. W. plays them apocalyptic Canadian pop. I play them Jandek. I only listen to Jandek, W. tells them. He admires it in me, that consistency, that obsessiveness.

You have to understand that Jandek plays non-music , W. tells the kids. That it has very little to do with music at all. Non-melody, non-competence … in each case, the ‘ non- ’ is not privative, W. explains. Non-melody is larger than melody, he says. Non-competence comprehends competence. The universe of non-music is much, much greater than the universe of music, he says.

Later, in our chalet, Sal passes out drunk. There she is, slumped by the wall, unconscious, and we are too drunk to get off the bed. We can’t cross the room! We can’t stand up! How else are we going to reach her?

We play her some Jandek, very loud. It’ll reach her reptile brain, we agree. Her reptile brain will react in horror. It does. She opens her eyes. — ‘You twats’, she says. ‘Why did you wake me up?’

Sal hates Jandek. — ‘Fucking Jandek. I hate him’, she says. — ‘Lars loves him’, says W. — ‘Well, he would’, says Sal, rolling a cigarette, ‘he’s a fucking twat’.—‘Don’t anger the Sal’, W. says to me. And then, ‘We have to sober up’. We have to sober up! Our leader, Josh T. Pearson, is playing at midnight!

We have to compose ourselves, we tell Sal, because our leader is playing. — ‘He’s not my leader’, says Sal. And then, ‘He’d better not be like fucking Jandek’. We tell her she has to come, but she’s too drunk to stand. We’re too drunk to stand! we tell her. Look at us!

We need food! We need to metabolise the alcohol. We call out to the kids: Bring us some food! But the kids ignore us. They’re gentle, W. says of the kids, but lazy. — ‘Cook something for us, Sal’, W. says. — ‘Fuck off’, Sal says.

Day two. The long afternoon. We’ve set up camp at a table in the upstairs hall. It’s dark, the floor’s sticky.

We consider the enigma of Josh T. Pearson as we sip our pints. He’s living in Berlin, we’ve heard, and has no intention of recording anything. He’s given up recording! He’s dreadfully poor, we’ve heard. He can only afford to eat one meal a day. And he’s an illegal immigrant, which means he can’t get benefits. He can’t afford dental work.

Josh T. Pearson’s beard’s getting longer. His hair’s getting longer. He’s vowed never to cut it, we’ve heard. Not until the problem of Africa is solved. He’s an ethical man, W. says. Josh T. Pearson thinks only of the suffering in Africa, that’s what he said in interview. It’s very impressive, W. says.

Josh T. Pearson is a one man band. He doesn’t need his former bandmates, we agree. Not when he can stomp his feet for percussion. Not with his array of effects pedals. He sounds like the Pentecost, we agree.

Last night, he sang of celestial wars, of angels battling demons, of the apocalypse and the end of times. He sang of prophets and messiahs, false and true … He sang of the messianic epoch , says W. Josh T. Pearson was dreaming of justice. He was dreaming of the redemption of Africa and the redemption of the world.

Josh T. Pearson! Ah, how can we understand what he’s become? It’s beyond us, we agree. He speaks from inside the burning bush. He speaks from the whirlwind. The battle takes place in his heart. Angels versus devils. Christ versus the Anti-Christ …

And who are we, in our festival afternoon? Devils ourselves, W. says. Anti-Christs ourselves … Ah, when will Josh T. Pearson do battle with us ? When will Josh T. Pearson wipe us from the face of the earth?

Day three. ‘Are you going religious?’, says Sal. ‘I hate it when you go religious’. We’re having a religious afternoon, we tell her, as we sip our beers in the sun. God’s here, we tell her. God’s everywhere, we tell her. But this only winds her up.

‘You don’t even believe in God!’ We do when we drink, we tell her. We drink to find God, we tell her, well, the Messiah, we tell her. And when we wake up, hungover, we know we’ve lost it again: messianism, the messianic epoch.

Everyone’s religious nowadays, we tell her. Look at the kids! We look around us at the other festival-goers. The men have long beards, the women have long hair. They look peaceful, serene, sipping their beers in the sun. It’s like a revivalist meeting, we agree. Ah, this is what it will be like after the revolution!

The last day, queuing for the bus.

You have to be gentle with the young, W. says. They’re a gentle generation, like fauns, he says, and require a special tenderness. Their lives are going to be bad — very bad — and, at the very least, we should be tender with them, and not remind them of what is to come.

Our generation, he says, still had hope. The residues of hope. Theirs has nothing; hope itself is a luxury. What chance do they have? W. says.

They don’t want much, W. says. They don’t expect a great deal. As for us … We come from the last of the generations that looked for a great change, for a kind of revolution to occur, W. says. — ‘And it might have happened, too’, he says. Didn’t Godard make a film on W.’s university campus? True, that was long before he arrived. But there were still communists outside the student union in his time. It seemed like the beginning of times rather than the end of them, the endless end, W. says.

Hindu pathos is very mysterious to the Jew, W. says. Why, for example, did I send W. the creation hymn from the Vedas?

There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep? Was there death or immortality? Was there a sign of night and day? Who really knows?

Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen? Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not. Only the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows — or perhaps he does not know .

Where the Hindu finds pathos, W. says, the Jew finds only evasion and vagueness.

In the depths of the night, lying awake while the world is asleep, W. asks himself the great questions. How did it all begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there anything at all? It’s the fact of existence that confounds him, as it has confounded so many philosophers.

But above all, it is the fact of my existence that confounds him, and that confounds him alone. Why? How? Who put me here? Who’s responsible? Was it a joke? A kind of cosmic trial? And why was I placed before him ? This is the question, the question of questions, W. says.

It’s time, W. says. No: it’s after time. It’s too late. We’re living a posthumous life.

Perhaps this is already hell, W. muses. Perhaps we already live in hell — is that it? They — the ones we once were — lived out their whole lives somewhere else. No doubt they committed terrible crimes. No doubt they were guilty of the worst. And we’re what’s left, serving out our sentence having been stripped of our memories … Hell, but perhaps it’s heaven, for is life really so bad? Not now, not today, on this pleasant afternoon …