Lars Iyer - Dogma

Even an administrator of the spirit can get it wrong, W. says when we arrive in Nashville airport in the early hours. Have I really lost our hosts’ address? Will we really have to wait until morning to contact the university for their phone number? There’s nothing for it but to pass the night on the rocking chairs in the airport lounge.

W. takes his copy of Spinoza’s Ethics from his man bag, the only thing you can do at times like this. — ‘Spinoza teaches you to affirm everything’, W. says. ‘Affirm, affirm, affirm, that’s what Spinoza says’. But W. can’t affirm the copy of National Enquirer I buy at the kiosk, nor the Twinkies I stuff into my mouth. Somehow I always stand in the way of his beatitude.

This is a car city , W. notices of Nashville, as we are shown the sights. — ‘You’re nothing without a car!’

They tried to do without one when they first arrived in America, our Canadian hosts tell us. They cycled everywhere, for miles and miles. People cried out to them in the streets. — ‘Why are you cycling? Are you crazy?’ But our hosts continued to cycle. They cycled out to their favourite Mexican restaurant and their favourite Vietnamese restaurant. And in the end it was too much.

Our hosts have been forced into driving, they tell us, which is terrible. No one should be forced to drive, W. says. Especially not Canadians! The Canadian, in his imagination, paddles canoes through the wilderness. The Canadian rides horses! The Canadian sleds across the pristine snow! The Canadian is not made to be a driver.

He should know, W. says. He spent his childhood in Canada. Didn’t he paddle his canoe on the lakes of Canada? Didn’t he ride a horse through the Canadian forests? That’s why he’s never learnt to drive, W. says: to stay loyal to his Canadian childhood.

Downtown Nashville consists largely of car parks. Odd bits of metal stick out of the ground at shin height. There’s no one around except a fully outfitted cowboy walking down the street. — ‘Must be German’, W. says.

Where, we wonder, are the people of Nashville? That’s one thing we like about our cities, we agree: there are always people about. They’re usually drunk, of course. Drunk and lairy. But that is a good sign.

We visit the full-sized concrete replica of the Parthenon, which sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Nashville’s supposed to be the Athens of the South , our hosts tell us. The Athens of the South! I should feel at home here with my formidable knowledge of ancient languages, W. says.

W. insists on buying us souvenir togas. I take a picture of us posing on the steps. W. feels like Socrates, he says. And I am Diogenes, Socrates’s idiot double, a man who looked exactly like him, but who begged for a living, and lived in a barrel in the marketplace, his shameless habits scandalising all of Athens.

Of course, Diogenes merely acted like an idiot, W. says. He lived in squalor, true enough — but that was because he despised the conventions of society. He lived in poverty — but that was because of a disdain for the stupidity of the rich. He was shameless — but that was because he thought human beings lived artificially and hypocritically.

Diogenes had a terrible wisdom of his own, even Plato granted that, W. says. He had a terrible philosophy, which he taught by living example. A Socrates gone mad , that’s what Plato called him. A Socrates , because Diogenes, too, believed in reason, exalting it above custom and tradition. But a Socrates gone mad , because Diogenes took shamelessness to a new extreme: eschewing all modesty, pissing on people who insulted him, shitting in the theatre and masturbating in the public square …

A Diogenes gone mad , W. says: that’s how he thinks of me. A man without shame, not because he rejects ideas of human decency but because he knows no better. A man outside of society, not because he was an ascetic but because no one wanted him in it.

W. insists on being shown old Nashville, although there’s very little of it left. Our hosts take us to Nashville City Cemetery, and I take pictures of the old gravestones. They drive us by the old McCann grocery, just off Broadway, and I photograph the skyscrapers reflected in its windows. But W.’s looking for something else, he says. He can’t explain exactly what.

W. tells me to photograph the words closeing sale graffitied across a shuttered shopfront. He tells me to photograph the rusting stairwells and broken glass in the derelict brewery, and the poster advertising free Ninja lessons stapled on a telegraph pole.

W. tells me to take a photo of an abandoned roller skating rink, and of a closed up loading bay. He tells me to photograph a sofa stranded on the sidewalk, and the neon signs on several Mexican restaurants ( Los Happy Bellies, Los Hipopótamos …) Then he directs me to take a picture of the view of the sky through the girders of the pedestrian bridge that leads downtown.

W. speaks of kernels of time , and dialectical images . He speaks of re-enchantment and re-awakening . He speaks of the tradition of the oppressed …

W.’s looking for the America hidden by America , he says. The submerged America of the poor, W. says: that’s part of it, he says. The third world America of the wretched and the broken-hearted, he says. But also, close by, as hope is always close to despair, a messianic America ; an America re-enchanted and re-awakening; a perpetually new America stretching its limbs in the sun …

At Katie K.’s Prairie Style , W. decides to be my dresser. He knows I’ve always wanted a Nudie Suit, or at the very least a Western-style shirt. I want embroidery! I want fringes!

W. fetches me Western-style shirts, bolo ties and cowboy boots, while I stand in the dressing room in my underpants. But nothing works. I still don’t look like a Rhinestone Cowboy.

Over lunch, our hosts tell us of their Nashville misery . W. does impressions of me to cheer them up. — ‘This is Lars thinking’, he says, making chimp noises. ‘This is Lars speaking German’, he says, making louder chimp noises. ‘This is Lars reading Rosenzweig’, he says, falling silent and scratching his head. But our hosts are unmoved. They’re too full of American despair .

W. takes me aside before we get back in the car. I should talk more, W. says. I should try and engage with our hosts!

Ah, why have I never learnt to talk? he wonders. Why has it always been left to him, when we’re in company, to speak for both of us? For long periods, I’m mute, thinking of God knows what, W. says. I’m like some great block of stupidity. Like some great stupid Easter Island statue …

What does stupidity think about? W. wonders. Is it ever aware of its own stupidity? Does it scratch its head and wonder about itself? Ah, but stupidity can never uncover its own truth, that’s its tragedy, W. says. Stupidity can never look itself in the face.

Sometimes he likes my silence, W. says. He imagines it to be a kind of integrity — a way of guarding something, some secret. ‘He knows something’, W. says to himself, looking across at me. Or, better: ‘something knows itself in him’.

One day, they’ll decrypt me, W. likes to think to himself. One day, the Rosetta Stone of my stupidity will yield up its secrets. — ‘You see!’, W. will say. ‘I told you so!’, he’ll say, when they solve my riddle.

Perhaps we should be silent about fundamental matters, W. says. Perhaps there’s nothing we can say that does not immediately destroy what is most important.

But there’s silence and silence, W. says … There is the reserve of the wise man, full of learning, full of modesty, who knows that the truth is infinitely subtle, infinitely complex, and that one must never speak too soon. And there is the roaring silence of the idiot, W. says, which resounds with dark matter and barren wastes and bacteria — with everything that is unredeemed in the universe.