Outside, the moon illuminates a man in a baseball cap pissing on a car tire. It′s not your car, which is a relief. You don′t own a car, which is also a relief since that way you aren′t forced to figure out what to do with one. You could piss on the tires, you guess, but that is already an option without the trifle of ownership. The café in which you are sat has a bathroom, of course, though you don′t know where it is. That′s not the point. Very little about this place has a point. It′s the sort of establishment in which one spends time being pointless, observing tire-pissing, and writing manuscripts. Occasionally one drinks coffee. You drink coffee. Some people order food, and it has always appeared to you as a great indignity to receive nourishment from someone else, even more so if it′s in exchange for money, which you don′t have anyways. Come to think of it: there′s a use for cars. You could trade it for cash and buy a bagel if you had one. Maybe even buy your dignity back for the former. Or you could always piss on it. The money. Or the bagel. Or the dignity. Why does your mind keep circling back to this?
Is that guy still going?
What a hero.
You don′t think you′ll be able to get rid of intrusive thoughts about vesical disemboguement until you get some sleep, a time either very soon or impossibly distant considering you don′t remember when you last slept. Instead, you bite down on your lower jaw and hear a comforting crack accompanied by the tastes of calcium and root, blood and pain and self, swirling around your oral cavity as you keep chewing. Years ago, you read in a book that sharks regrow their lost teeth. 30,000 at least, over the course of a lifetime, though you′ll need far more than that. It is admittedly a distant concern as you type another paragraph, the words you are shedding surely to be replaced in time. Maybe you′ll steal a bagel on the way out. Some possible uses have already made themselves apparent.
A waitress, who apparently just overheard your train of thought about bagel-theft makes her way towards the window.
″Hey, just to give you a heads up: we′re closing in a bit.″
″...busy″
″Sorry sweety, I didn′t catch that.″
″I said I′m busy.″
″Oh, I guess I′ll just work overtime then so you can finish your blog post or something?″
If she has noticed you bleeding from your mouth she′s ignoring it.
″I′m writing a story.″
″Well, I don′t think you′re very good at it to be frank. You don′t seem like you talk to people.″
″Oh, I do it′s just-″
″Not face to face? Always wondered how that works; for people who are so suspicious of everything they are presented with to cling most strongly to faceless textboxes. For all you know I could be every single one of your internet friends.″
″Wow, I really ticked you off, huh?″
″Not particularly, I′m just interested in how you′d respond. People watching, you know?″
″People watching is passive.″
″If you′re a coward.″
There′s no malice to her smile, even though it reminds you of your own, and that might just make it worse. You really get the feeling that this lady is out there pissing on tires while you drink mediocre coffee in dingy cafés.
″Right, so let′s say you saw straight through my meticulously constructed façade and I am super fucking socially incompetent: It wouldn′t matter because I specialize in a form of storytelling beyond human constraints. It requires you to become a shark.″
″Oh Christ, we get screenplay hipsters in here sometimes, but this is a whole new level. Really didn′t expect some greatest-artist-of-my-generation-bit from a girl who′s my age at best.″
You tell her your age.
″Even worse. So tell me then, what′s your problem with stories about people?″
″Okay, right, first of all there′s god-eater tales. Man vs. Nature or society or technology or, well, god or whatever. It′s all the same thing really, some externality to be reined in. especially auto-productive ones, whatever god we decided to build that day and it′s easy. Fighting runaway processes is pretty much all humans ever do. Like with nuclear power: you take something with an intrinsic drive to propel itself into a city scale catastrophe and consume its energy. Feast on its flesh until you′re safe. Most of the time it′s stuff we made ourselves: gods, tech, societies. God eating is like drinking your own saliva. People get unbearably preachy about how revolutionary stories about toppling frameworks are, when the one thing that would be truly unprecedented is a system that doesn′t get eaten eventually. You′ll shit out another one of course, but the unimaginative hacks can worry about that in the sequel. Even Nietzsche managed to kill god, and he didn′t even come close to becoming shark. He became horse. Loathsome creature.″
″You don′t like horses?″
″I meant Nietzsche. Well, it′s not like I don′t like them, they just make me... sad I guess? Deleuze had this whole thing about the horse-nomad assemblage being a singular creature made of two parts, so seeing unbesat horses or those ridden in a more frivolous capacity sort of feels like looking at a broken body lying around without its head. It′s uncomfortable.″
The waitress is holding her stomach and laughing uncontrollably. The question ″What? You don′t like Deleuze?″ only makes it worse.
″...sorry...hahaha... sorry. Very normal answer to someone asking you about horses. Go on″
″Anyways, so in the throes of madness befitting of a horse furry, Nietzsche sees a chariot driver whipping the shit out of his ride, so he jumps in between beast and scourge, hugs the steed and breaks down in tears sobbing ″I understand you″. Some people say he just viscerally related to the animal′s suffering, but no. That was the moment Nietzsche literally became a horse and would therefore never speak a single word again. Only Chad move of his miserable life.″
″Admirable commitment″
She′s still fucking chuckling, but you ignore it.
″Yes. End of tangent. Alright, so god-eating is effortless. The next stage are man-eater tales where you consume not a concept but a human being. These are the interpersonal conflicts and romance and all that. I don′t like ″man versus man″ because there are two sides to eating. Double articulation as always. There′s the destroying and the digesting but hacks only ever address the former. Consumption can completely lack antagonism; you just incorporate someone′s essence. There′s learning to it. Eat your idols! This one′s a bit more difficult because people for the most part don′t want to be eaten. They build gods to tell them that they must not consume each other. Figurative cannibalism still causes prion disease; literal thought germs, and so it requires a certain pain tolerance to eat and be eaten regardless.″
″I′ll give you that: Very few of the nutjobs who come here have ever accused me of having a narrative vore fetish so, uh, props on the novelty?″
″Literally who doesn′t these days? It′s always vore, horses or piss, but let me get to the last type...″
You flash a bloody and disjointed grin.
″Teeth-eater tales. You see: Man-eater tales are somewhat respectable, you have to at least stray a little from the beaten path to become a cannibal. It′s difficult and frowned upon and you can die, but it′s nothing compared to teeth eater tales. Eating teeth is impossible. You run out of things to chew with. It′s not just digesting yourself but digesting your own digestion mechanism. The ouroboros even is an insufficient metaphor because it is cucked enough by geometry to start at its tail instead of at the head, as is the way of the Dontivore. To fully eat your teeth, you need to grow new ones for the task as you go, through a power you are not supposed to have. Acquiring food is why people first formed tribes after all and living off of your own being; become a radical singularity is therefore the equivalent of cutting a power line: Essentially self-harm in the post-Lain lobster-clutch of meat-digital-superposition, as we all well know. Or rather it is hyper-self-harm, disturbing the function of the panhuman cluster-organism we are part of. You have become a cancer and you will be destroyed.″
Pouring the last bit of coffee down your throat, you create an interactional space in which the pause might linger, tough, as you should have been able to anticipate by now, she doesn′t allow for it.
″...That′s it? See; this is why you need to talk to people. Don′t get me wrong, the whole edgy self-devouring auteur stick is cute and all, but waxing philosophical about the threat you pose to society is a good sign that you′re sat pretty fucking comfy. You don′t get away with this shit otherwise. Like, the world breaks people down, so you′ll totally show them by... what? Doing it yourself? Sounds like a psyop tbh and that′s not even speaking of the structural problems...″
″And what would those be?″
″Remember how I said I wouldn′t be pulling overtime? Get out, I′ll join you in a bit.″
You hadn′t noticed the rain outside despite its intensity. Getting home will be a pain, but for now you′re safe under the considerately existing overhang offering protection from the elements. In the parking lot a guy in a baseball cap is still pissing against a tire. It could be a different guy for all you know, but you don′t think it is. Your mind could be playing tricks on you, but you feel certain that if you went over there to check, he would turn out real regardless of whether he was before. Since you wouldn′t know how to deal with that, you stay still and listen to the water′s erratic beat. It′s safer. You taste... Dentin. There are more holes in your jaw than you have room for and distinctly more than you recall making yourself. The idea unsettles. It unnerves. She really does have you on the back foot.
″Sorry to keep you waiting. Let′s just grant that things are more worthwhile the more difficult they are, which is bullshit for the record, in favor of which I state most things, and also that you have chosen the path of maximum resistance, which is equally bullshit; there′s still a question of the audience.″
″What of it? There are few more virulent psyops than the idea of art being for an audience. It isn′t, shouldn′t be, and if you make it for one you′re a hack.″
″You don′t actually believe that. You don′t think that the group you picture when hearing the term ″audience″ is deserving of art; some imagined mass of mindless consumers, but you do think that art is for you. Maybe you even think that you make yourself worthy of it through creation you consider difficult. Art is for artists, but not just for the specific artist who made it.″
″Fine, art oligarchy then.″
″Alright, in that case we need to ask how a work is consumed. Teeth eater tales only register as teeth eater tales to the audience if what you digest within yourself is something they share. A literary suicide pact. The self-devouring of a creator completely unrelatable to their audience will actually be man-eater tale to those exposed to it, specifically one in which you feed yourself to them; crawling excitedly into their gaping maw. There′s an off-putting sort of appeal to both, but you can′t appreciate the nuance because it would require you to consider the perspective of a person who isn′t you.″
″I′m not a solipsist. I have read cursed tomes which failed to harm me. I have been naturally immune to some thought germs and the same is assumably true for everyone. Specificity is not a failing.″
″Perhaps, but it′s not a virtue either. There′s the lack of real connections again: the problem with anonymity. Just like I could very easily be every single one of your internet friends, you are also incapable of ever establishing a real connection between me and my work. If I were to create something that digests a person you just so happen to relate to, then though this egocentrism you′d presume that the author is also digesting themselves. That′s not the necessarily the case though. I might be dismantling someone I know or someone I invented. The idea of a teeth eater tale which is read as a man eater tale works in reverse; people can deliver devastating hooks, taking out teeth by the fistful, without harming themselves at all.″
″That′s not the same. You can tell, there′s a texture.″
″You don′t know that. You want to convince yourself that it′s the case because you want to convince yourself that effort matters, but it doesn′t. Not even to you. If the greatest artist of all time spent their entire life on a work and then completely erased it you wouldn′t be able to appreciate it if they didn′t show it to you beforehand. The effort is irrelevant. You may appreciate the story, the ephemerality of it, but telling that story doesn′t actually necessitate that it truly happened. Telling it takes no effort at all. Similarly, all that matters to you is that art digs into you and wrenches something out. You like to imagine that the artist had to put the same in but that too is a story you don′t need any supporting reality for.″
″So what? Ignorance is bliss? What a novel fucking take.″
″Not at all. I′m pointing out that you′re willfully ignorant, but it doesn′t seem particularly blissful. I′m saying that the relationship between an artist and their work is irrelevant to your experience of it, but that you should strive to understand it anyways in order to repay them. It′s rude to be punched in the face and not retaliate. It′s an insult, makes one feel like they didn′t hit hard enough. People eating each other way more efficient than your petulant lip-biting. Feeding prechewed personality parts to each other like a bunch of fucking birds. That is the sort of god or society or whatever that I want to build at least.″
″You seem pretty confident that no one actually devours themselves or that no one′s gonna have a bite of your god for that matter. Is that part of the universal insight one acquires serving coffee?″
″You′d be surprised, but I don′t have to be confident in either of those. I′m saying that it doesn′t matter one way or another. Most people probably take some scars away from anything they do, but those aren′t the same scars or the same number of them as are inflicted on the audience. It′s always a mixture of teeth eating and man eating. A balanced diet. People are pretty similar, so digesting yourself is usually a good place to start, and most art is essentially a conversation with some version of yourself, but everyday movements might also punch a stranger in the jaw if you simply aren′t paying attention. So what if my god isn′t permanent? Neither am I. But it seems really fucking stupid to digest so much if you′re not gonna use the energy for anything constructive. I don′t want to be an auto-devouring singularity. I want to get rid of shit. We are just as much what we take in as what we decide not to keep. That′s how you become efficient. That′s what the trading blows is for. Have you ever considered that Nietzsche might have become horse because the horse by itself is an incomplete being? It′s literally the only final act of the recluse that makes sense. The acknowledgement that being a singularity sort of sucks. He was wielding all of the homoerotic symbology in his frail philosopher body to make a statement to the insufficiency of the self. Sometimes you just fucking need someone to ride you.″
″Sure, I′m not gonna argue with you on what our boy Friedrich did or did not get up to in the precious moments of unadulterated twink horse furry depravity when he wasn′t burdening humanity with his writings. There′s disproportionally more philosophical insight to be mined from that. Obviously. Anyways, wanna piss on a tire?″
″You′re a weird fucking goblin, you know that, right?″
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