Lars Watch

There's something painful in a non-encounter. I watch Spurious from afar and delight in his prose. Sometimes I find it over-wrought and too indebted to my love Blanchot, whom I'll never write about, or Levinas, or perhaps even Benjamin, and I'll feel superior. And so from that I can take a narcissistic gratification and feel a sense of superiority from my mysterious British neighbor. At other times I am dwarfed by some dance of prose he or she (I don't really care, it's sexy and enthralling either way) has engaged in, and I can only stare with my jaw wide open. I experience awe at his narcissitic resistance to narcissism at how its had the courage to close its comments and so thoroughly cloth or hide its identity. What "Socrates-like" humility is this? And isn't it really the ultimate indulgence? I smile at its single minded devotion to a single question, its obsession, to the question of writing. Oh, I can tell you, the pleasure I took in its compliment it gave me in acknowledging my reading of Kafka. Such beautiful words to say "for Sinthome Kafka is...", and to gracefully overlook the omission of my memory pertaining to the ending of The Castle.

Lately Lars has taken to writing about some mysterious character named "W", has reformatted its blog, and has the image of a woman peering out behind a mesh curtain. The conversations between this W and Spurious are often of a pedestrian and facile nature, yet are profound and intense for this very reason. They are very basic conversations that we have with those whom we love, when we are able to surrender our apparatus, and when the world presents itself before us once again. There's something a little scandalous and indecent about presenting such intimacy this way. Yet Spurious is kind enough to hide itself, so that it's not quite so pornographic. Spurious is telling us the tale of a friendship and love, of idle conversations that are banal and inspiring. I'm sure it would read things differently, but it also knows enough to know that it is not master of its signifiers.

I think Spurious is exhausted, tired. Apparently it's written two books, and used to burn with a fire that would keep it up late up into the night, taking notes over various intensities and singularities that have occasionally populated the world. This voice that emerging is a voice that's grown sick of all that and that wants to say something plainly. Or maybe I just don't understand. But I think there's a certain grain of something-- I won't call it life even though that was the name of a recent post --that it's trying to touch. Is it boredom? Is it tenure? Is it nothing left to lose? Is it a moment of faith and conviction, a recognition of death and passing youth? I fear that Lars might be a bit of an objet a for me, a Rorschach. It's nice to watch though. I'm sure I'll have regretted writing this, which makes it all worthwhile.