Wittgenstein smiles. He likes listening to our nonsense, he says. He glories in our inanity! In the poverty of our prattle! It is like a balm to him. It is possible to bathe in nonsense, he says. To be refreshed by it.
We are his assistants, he says. His helpers. No, that’s not it. For we do not really help him — we are more likely to get in his way. We are obstacles on his path. But we are necessary obstacles — obstacles placed there by God. Obstacles to remind him of lightness. Obstacles to show him that his way is too heavy — too arid, when it should be lightness itself; too dull, when it should flash and laugh and dazzle.
The path to thought lies also through laughter and forgetting: that is what we recall him to — that there must also be a giddiness of thought; that God Himself laughs; that God wants us to laugh … Christ’s Pieces, after class. On the benches, Wittgenstein among us.
Guthrie performing Doyle’s new show, based on the life of the real Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein’s visit to Bertrand Russell’s Cambridge rooms (Guthrie expertly playing both men: Russell, languorous, relaxed, the English don, at ease in the world; Wittgenstein, frenetic, feverish, the Austrian intellectual, pacing the floor).
First song: ‘Am I an Idiot, Or Just a Philosopher?’ Sample lyric:
I knocked on Bertrand Russell’s door
Just before the First World War
I said, Tell me, Sir, am I a real philosopher
Or have you heard it all before?
Wittgenstein’s period as a soldier, hating his fellow soldiers, and possessed by the most terrible despairs (Guthrie’s face an expressive miracle), but filled, too, with a new mysticism, a new religiosity (Guthrie’s face luminous, God-touched) …
Second song: ‘Absolutely Safe.’ Rousing chorus:
And when the enemy machine guns strafe
God keeps me … absolutely safe!
Wittgenstein’s break with philosophy — his period in the Austrian countryside, teaching peasant children, inspiring peasant children, but being over-severe with lazy peasant children. Wittgenstein, boxing their ears, spanking their backsides (Guthrie masterfully playing both Wittgenstein-the-teacher and the lazy pupils) …
Third song: ‘No One Understands Me.’
When I box the children’s ears
It’s just in order to still my fears
That they will grow up fearful slobs
And they will not believe in God …
Wittgenstein’s architectural period, designing and managing the building of a house for his sister. His extreme rigour, his eye for the smallest detail. And the uninhabitable home he constructed in the Bauhaus style, all severity, all sharp corners. (Guthrie’s face an image of intensity, of focus, of exasperation … Guthrie playing both Wittgenstein-the-architect, and his put-upon project manager, bursting into tears with stress …)
Fourth song: ‘Sharp Angles.’
Don’t think I’m just acting
I’m not cruel, I’m just very exacting …
Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge, not in triumph, but in humility. Philosophy, for him, now no longer a mapping of depth, but a topography of the surface (Guthrie, shoulders rounded, eyes to the floor).
Fifth song: ‘Ordinary Life.’
I’m in love with ordinary life
I’ll take the everyday as my wife
I prefer the chat of porter and bedmaker
To academic talk and the cocktail shaker …
How Wittgenstein works! How he writes! (Guthrie miming the philosopher sitting at his desk, copying his remarks into an enormous ledger.) Wittgenstein, taking solitary Cambridge-hating walks (Guthrie, stomping, scowling). Wittgenstein, estranged from his colleagues (Guthrie, wagging his fingers, looking vexed). Wittgenstein, full of apocalyptic thoughts about the end of the world (Guthrie, hand to brow, shaking his head) …
Wittgenstein, diagnosed with cancer. Wittgenstein, dying. Wittgenstein, speaking his last words (Guthrie, in swan-song brilliance).
Sixth song: ‘A Wonderful Life.’ As moving as Susan Boyle singing ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’ As Paul Potts doing ‘Nessun Dorma.’
Tell them I had a wonderful life!
Tell them it was worth the strife!
Laughter, from Guthrie’s fans. Even Wittgenstein smiles.
After philosophy, lightness will be the highest virtue, Wittgenstein says. Blitheness will be sought after above all things.
Divination: that’s what he sees in our idiocy, he says. Prophecy. We are fragments of the future.
When the end of philosophy comes, we will weep, without knowing why we weep, he says. We will laugh, without knowing why we laugh. And as we weep, we will laugh. And as we laugh, we will weep …
Mulberry and Doyle are modelling their relationship on George Michael and Kenny — free to fuck whoever they want; free to surf Grindr and cruise.
But Doyle’s heart is not in it, he says — he just isn’t promiscuous. Besides, he’s too busy with the theatre. There are other things in life besides sex. But Mulberry …
DOYLE (rolling his eyes): Well, you know what he’s like.
Last night, Mulberry smoked crack on the roof of his house, Doyle says. Up on the roof, the ridge tiles between his thighs, laughing like a maniac, he declaimed a poem about a coffin full of shit … Mulberry’s obsessed with death, Doyle says. Even his laughter is tinged with death; even his laughing mouth is a pit of death …
Nihilism: that’s Mulberry’s disease, Doyle says. A sense that nothing’s really worth the candle. That the meaning of the world is vanishing. That all that is left are parodies of parodies of parodies. The blackest of black laughter. A laughter that laughs at itself, and laughs at itself laughing … That all his laughter is laughter before a mirror …
I’ve been possessed, Mulberry told Doyle last night. I am legion. There’s a horde of demons inside me, mocking me, he said. Laughing at me.
Doyle reminded Mulberry of Wittgenstein’s words. We must not think about our thinking. We must not philosophise about philosophy. To know our dividedness, to state it, is to be divided yet further. And when Mulberry climbed onto the roof, Doyle shouted up to him that we must not laugh at our laughter. But Mulberry was too high to hear.
E-mails from the Careers Service. Posters and flyers everywhere, advertising the employers’ fair. Recruitment agents, from the big City banks, from consultancies and law firms.
Brochures in our pigeonholes: Your future starts now (image: graduates throwing mortar boards in the air). The career of your life starts here (besuited trainees laughing with other trainees). What if the next big thing is you? (Godzilla-like graduate striding about). Individuality rocks (long-haired graduate playing a Flying V guitar). Be more than just your job (graduate sledding in the Arctic behind a team of huskies). Grow further (graduates in snorkels and flippers, exploring a coral reef). Scale new heights (free-climbing graduate, halfway up a cliff). Apply if you want to go faster (graduates on a down-plunging roller coaster). Think big (graduates in crampons crossing a ravine). Are you extreme? (parascending graduate, soaring into the sky). We’ll take you further than you imagine (graduates slashing their way through the jungle).