Cosmogony

by Lucy Ives

  —That’s good. (laughing)

  —(laughing) So I don’t have a lot of empirical information on that front. I guess I would say doesn’t everybody expect someone going through a divorce to be highly unstable? Isn’t that even what society wants from you?

  —I think so.

  —Aren’t you just fulfilling a role in a way?

  —OK, so, there are roles, and then there are these social effects that are associated with gossip.

  —Yeah.

  —But I felt like when we talked about this before you were also talking about something that comes from the person themselves, the aggressor?

  —I completely think that’s true.

  —So, what is that?

  —The truth is that I don’t know that many of those aggressors ever deal with it, but it’s inside. Like, I can guarantee you that if either of those two people ever took a solid dose of psychedelics they would be dwelling on their situation with you for a good portion of time. It’s the kind of thing that gets trapped in there and like maybe you deal with it ten years later or twenty, but whenever you strip off the first layer of mind—I can say from experience that you don’t give up the times that you’ve hurt people. They come up really fast and strong when your mind is able to see it. It’s all in there.

  —It’s like the ghosts of genocided aliens? Like in Scientology?

  —There’s a “th” word for it?

  —I don’t know.

  —It is a “Thetan”?

  —Yes! They’re Thetans! That’s really good that you know that.

  —I was like, “Thanatos”? But it’s not Thanatos. (laughing)

  —(laughing)

  —No, but those things are—I can only speak analogically because I have not perpetrated anything like this, but when my conscious mind is not in control, I mean, a drug is just one example. It could be dreams, it could be grief, or whenever you find yourself in an unusually vulnerable situation, that stuff is very close to the surface. The body does not forget about those things.

  —This is really helpful because when my mind is not in control or doing whatever it does to produce consciousness, for me everything goes back to something that happened to me when I was a child that I don’t understand at all and it’s really horrible. I don’t know what it is, I can’t see it; it’s so scary that I can’t see it, or look at it, and it’s like everything that has happened to me interpersonally since then doesn’t even show up. It makes it really difficult for me to understand how it is for people who are picking up these things as they go. I think in a way there’s some truth in what Cody was saying about me always being a victim.

  —Interesting.

  —I have a kind of aphasia. I can’t understand how people change as adults. I’m stuck.

  —This is probably difficult to answer and why would you know, but, are you sure that there is an event associated with this thing, or is it possible that it is just a miasmic malevolence that has filtered into your way of being and has no specific and singular cause?

  —I thought for a while that it was that, that it was a series of things that tipped something and became something that the sensorium couldn’t process anymore (coughing). Sorry (coughing). Sorry, when I start talking about it I get physical symptoms. It’s always associated with my throat. That’s all I know. The other weird thing is I know that both Cody and Darren were people whose parents beat them up. I think Cody had it bad in a lot of ways, particularly because he had a lot of allergies and circulatory and respiratory things that were caused by his mother smoking when she was pregnant, and for years they had a dog that he had terrible allergies to, and he couldn’t breathe. This is a thing that causes me to have a really deep connection to people, but it’s a connection that’s along something that’s so fucked up, I really don’t want to keep doing it.

  —So are you saying, common victimhood? Is that what it is?

  —Maybe. Or maybe it’s a thing where there’s something that happened, but the person doesn’t have access to it. Like Cody would never talk about this stuff. I just know it through bits and pieces. Darren was aware of what had happened to him, and all of his mania about making money and having success is basically about avoiding being the person someone’s hitting. Which is why I empathized with him so excessively.

  —Too bad it made him unbearable.

  —Yeah.

  —He is not well liked, I hope you know.

  —I’ve gotten that impression.

  —In part from envy, but just, in general. He’s in that world and people are like, fuck that guy.

  —I think he represents a lot of stuff that hurts other people. He took one path in relation to harm. Anyway, what you’re saying about the internal things is helpful. It makes sense. But then the question is, how does that play out for that person? I don’t know whether it’s in terms of their feelings or their actions or how they live. Are they always running away from that?

  —I don’t know. I know very little about theories of mind. I’ve never studied them, aside from a stray Freud essay here or there.

  —But what’s your intuition?

  —My intuition is that disordered behavior results from these things, and the way that disordered behavior manifests happens differently depending on the person, but I think it gives rise to impulses or desires or compensations that remain mostly invisible. We build up fortresses of ideas. And it does affect a person to have a fortress in their brain.

  —So, how should society react? Let’s just pretend it’s the nineteenth century and we can have these kinds of conversations! Because we’re going back there anyway, you know.

  —But this is the central disorder of human existence.

  —It’s what tragedy is based on, you mean?

  —This is the disorder of our world. This is why we have everything.

  —We’re completely on the same page.

  —This is our sickness. That’s what it is. (laughing)

  —(laughing) Right, but so, how should we react to it? I’m not denying its centrality.

  —(laughing) This is why everyone in 1967 felt like it would be good to take LSD and meditate and make the Pentagon lift off the ground.

  —Is that what we should do now?

  —I sometimes think about this in relation to the way people use social media. On the one hand, everyone has to use social media in a somewhat performative way. And they have to come to terms with the voice they use. For some people it’s a very false voice, like a picture, like “This is who I am!”

  —Shrill.

  —Or, “This is what I’m dealing with.” There is a countercurrent to performativity where people are like, this incredibly intense thing has happened and I’m telling a lot of people. I’m having horrible issues in my marriage or someone close to me died in a really horrible way, or my kid is incredibly sick or I’m really sick or I’m infertile.

  —I was fired.

  —Right. I was fired, or I’m going to call out my harasser; things it was impossible to be honest about in the past. Or you could potentially use the press.

  —As long as you weren’t harassed by Harvey Weinstein.

  —Right.

  —In which case you could not use the press.

  —So, in our society I feel there’s a lot of duplicity, but there is also a countercurrent of candor. Which is interesting. I’m not saying that the candor itself is not in some way performative. It often is.

  —Or self-exploitative?

  —It’s a very mixed bag. But one thing I will say is that certain stigmas are being shattered and in service of what is always a question. I’m not going to deny that aspect of it. I’m merely identifying a current. People are different about this stuff than they were a half century ago or even a quarter. It’s one of the few things in our society that I think is OK.

  —Yesterday I was taking this bus, and it had these movie screens in it? And for some reason they played the Steve Jobs movie with Ashton Kutcher.

  —Did you
watch it?

  —I didn’t listen to the sound but I would gaze up. There’s something very revealing about watching a movie without sound. You find out what it’s about. And it’s amazing because the movie is about, I mean, there are like two female characters in it; it’s just all about these mostly white men and how they get together in these windowless rooms and they’re like, we have this idea that only we can understand, let’s use it to make money. That’s what the movie’s about. And then, at the end, suddenly Steve Jobs is in a garden with his wife, who’s put him in touch with the earth, and he’s reunited with Lisa Brennan-Jobs, who’s sleeping on the couch, and he has a loving non-incestuous relationship with her, although he steals her blanket. And then he goes and dies, but we don’t see that. I mean, Ashton Kutcher is a moron and he’s playing a genius, and it kind of works in this interesting way if you don’t listen to the sound. It’s like an L.L.Bean catalogue.

  —Ashton’s very L.L.Bean.

  —I love his emotions. He’s like a muppet. But I did think about how it’s the last time we can tell this story in this way. Like there’ll be a niche show where there’s a Midwestern guy with a beer belly and a beer and it’s like, oh you’re so crazy, and he’s like, I’m so crazy, but there won’t be this Knights-of-the-Round-Table sort of thing. I’m just saying I see this occurring on a representational plane. I don’t know what it means for actual people.

  —Yeah.

  —I do know that in classes I teach I consistently have a white guy who writes super-violent, exploitative stuff. That guy’s always there.

  —Do you call that person out?

  —There are some things I can say, but they are dissociating and it can be dangerous. The people I’ve dealt with so far are genuinely ill. I have a really bad one right now. It’s this guy who’s written a story that takes place in “Hispaniola” and it’s about this girl who’s raped in incredible detail. And it’s like eighty pages long and he’s completely done with it and has handed it in and is like, respond to this now! It’s written in a magical realist style. It could not be more awful.

  —Oh.

  —This is a trend.

  —I feel bad for white men, and bear with me, because I think they do this to say, I’m relevant.

  —But they can be raped and beat up, too!

  —No, I know. But they’re like, I’ll never get anywhere because I’m not trans or a person of color. This is a thing that white men feel. Hard core. So they’re like, oh, I should make art about those things. I’m not kidding. Like this person doesn’t see that they’re being appropriative. They just think they’re engaging with the issues of their time.

  —It’s scary.

  —I know.

  —It’s unreadable, these descriptions of penetration. I’m like, we don’t need—we get how this works, mechanically.

  —I would put money on the fact that he believes that he’s woke and engaged.

  —I think the part of him that’s conscious is also thinking, I really enjoy these scenes. I’d like to see more violence like this.

  —Did you read Preparation for the Next Life?

  —No, but I have it. Mike gave it to me.

  —If you ever read it, I want to know. It has the most violent and disgusting rape scene I’ve ever read in any piece of literature. I just felt it was exploitative. I don’t know if that’s defensible on my part.

  —Mike has a lot of interest in violence.

  —The other night I was trying to explain why I thought it was not a good book because of this rape scene. I mean, it is a good book. But it’s melodramatic. The book is sodden with sentimentality and melodrama. And the linchpin of the sodden-ness is this revolting rape scene.

  —That’s very nineteenth century.

  —Indeed. So I was trying to explain to people how I was impressed by the book but I morally object to it.

  —It’s like The Road.

  —Tell me, doctor, how can I defend my opinion using the proper tools?

  —I think you already did.

  —If rape is just a fictional tool, why is it objectively objectionable to use that tool?

  —I think that trying to argue that something that happens in a book is objective is usually a mistake.

  —That’s not what I’m saying.

  —But I think that’s part of the difficulty you’re having. You don’t have to decide that other people have to accept your argument. I think you can say that you think that this rape scene is designed to elicit a kind of prurient interest.

  —This is what I said.

  —In violence.

  —It is.

  —Do a comparison. For example, the most violent thing I’ve ever read is in this Joyce Carol Oates novel called Zombie, which is about a psychopath slash serial killer slash rapist who has a fantasy about creating a passive sex slave who will love him forever, and he reads something or sees something somewhere about lobotomies and tries to give lobotomies to—

  —His victims.

  —His victims. It’s so disturbing. And what’s so disturbing is not the act of trepanation or whatever you want to call it, putting holes in someone’s head or putting a stick in there. It’s the period of time when he tries to keep the zombie alive.

  —Right.

  —I feel like I’m going to vomit. It isn’t about someone being beaten in the present, it’s about the way in which things that have already happened are leading to events in the present. Leading to hopes that inspire violence, that inspire enslavement, even in the face of death, even in the face of the fact that the victim is already dead and this completely passive object and you can’t do anything more to control them. So, if I were going to try to criticize the Lish book I would set up a comparison between the two and talk about why what Joyce Carol Oates shows you in this super-exploitative book—because who’s more exploitative than she is?

  —Number one. Number-one exploiter.

  —I would be like, look how much more disturbing this is. And look at what you’re being disturbed by. And look how agency is being deployed in the Lish book and don’t be fooled. And once you say that, the reader is like—

  —I surely would not want to be fooled.

  —My strategy.

  —I suppose I don’t have to read this Oates book.

  —Don’t read it! I remember when I was sixteen or seventeen, I guess I was trying to read all her novels and I came to this one and read it all in one night and had this horrible cold clammy sweat and was like, why?!! Why?!?

  —God. A mere high-schooler.

  —That was when I was really at my best.

  —Reading-wise?

  —Reading-wise and also just—no, I mean, I like myself better now, but that was the time when I look back on how I behaved and I’m always like, that was the way!

  —Acting out on the reg.

  —Do you need to go back to your desk?

  —Not yet. What have we not gotten to?

  —The reason I was up all night. It’s that I was trying to write this talk for Friday I’ve been meaning to write all week but just been too scattered. I’ve been thinking a lot about satire, and this talk is about satire and realism and the ways I see them being interrelated. And about how people have a misapprehension of what satire is, how they think it’s like an insult or a hyperbolic portrayal but it’s actually a more complex, older category.

  —This week’s flap about the correspondents’ dinner is a perfect example of the misapplication of satire.

  —Exactly. It’s interesting to me that the thing that was so upsetting to people was actually the one satirical moment. That thing about the perfect smoky eye.

  —That was the one true satire?

  —Everything else was basically insults. Cheap shots. And if you look at the recent jokes, like Hasan Minhaj’s jokes or the lady from SNL whose name I can’t remember who I find very generic, they all told exactly the same jokes. That’s what I find really strange! Everyone’s like, this is all so original, but it’s a
ll exactly the same.

  —I didn’t watch Hasan or the person before that.

  —Hasan is very beautiful.

  —Isn’t he?

  —You’re just like, oh say anything.

  —Just say it out of your beautiful mouth.

  —But anyway it’s all exactly the same jokes. You know there was a media blackout around Colbert’s thing?

  —I vaguely remember that.

  —It was an emergency in 2006 in a way that this thing in 2018, it’s really just a topic that’s being offered up. Like, oh yeah, she’s a brassy lady who doesn’t wax her pussy, etcetera, so let’s say mean things.

  —But wait, how does this relate to the question of satire?

  —Well, it used to be that novels and other forms of literature partly existed to explain these things to us, to explain invisible things, to be like—

  —Here’s human interiority; now you can understand what’s happening.

  —Right. Edith Wharton’s like, here’s a guy who doesn’t consummate a relationship; or, Henry James is like, here’s a guy who doesn’t consummate a relationship; or, Virginia Woolf is like, here’s a guy, who doesn’t consummate a relationship. And they’re like, here’s why! It’s a very common theme. And it seems like we are in this moment when—I’m having trouble describing it except by calling it the intersection of satire and realism.

  —Hmm.

  —Realism is just a mode of novel-making that talks about the event as secular. Realism emerges when you have secular events that are produced by the confluence of material conditions and human history. And there’s no god. But satire is an older category. It’s an older democratic category predating Christianity. It comes from Latin: it’s a medley; literally, it’s a full plate. It has nothing to do with s-sa-say—how do you say that word?

  —Satyrs? I always heard about satyrs.

  —It sounds too much like the Passover dinner! So I’m trying to think about that in relation to laughter but also in relation to the idea that literature can be a place where information is leaked.

  —Right.

  —Literature used to exist to share information that couldn’t be shared otherwise. And it seems like social media does not obviate that. And the correspondents’ dinner joke is another site where you can have that information leak. That’s why I thought that Michelle Wolf’s observation about Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s smoky eye is true satire. It’s very intricate. Like, there is this concept, The Perfect Smoky Eye™ that exists, and, like, if you’re not female, chances are you don’t know what that is. Like, I don’t mean you don’t know what it refers to; you don’t know what its deeper meaning is, what meaning is encoded in it. It has to do with female aggression and control of the visual realm, and it also has to do with how women have entered the white-collar workforce. There’s a lot of stuff in that term that she was pointing to by using it. Which is actually, I think, a lot scarier and more unstable than other things she said.