Sun 4th December 2011

I've abandoned the PhD. I told Kim last week, and my supervisors before that. I originally postponed it for a few months, but I'm leaving it now, 20,000 or so words in. The problem is that I don't actually want to do the work. I like the social aspects of doing a PhD. I like the conferences. I like the papers and the wine receptions. I like the way that you get a much more interesting version of vague thoughts you have had presented to you. I like the sociability of our Department even though I can't take advantage of it. I like the way it gives me a status and an exemption from that narrow-minded question "What do you do?" Wank, read, chase women, blog? That won't do. But I'm not interested in the work that would keep the benefits rolling in. I've never seen the PhD as a vocational qualification and I don't want to be a university lecturer. I don't want a job, full stop, except perhaps, one entirely on my terms, which wouldn't be a "job". Intellectually, I feel a fraud all the time. "An original contribution to research." Even just typing it makes me laugh. I've never had an original idea in my life. I've nothing to contribute to my field. What is my field? I'll miss my supervisions and the fleeting feeling that I got after them of being inspired with a new direction, determined to overcome my lassitude, before, a few days later, it settles sedimentedly in me again. I like my life at the moment. Me and Kirsty have worked out a good modus vivendi with each other, and the children. I have never wanted, even from teh age of sixteen, to "work" in the way that that word is twisted into making other people rich in lives of regulated misery. I'm aware of my own mortality and

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 61 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

The Comfort of Strangers

23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning

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63 mago
Another Angry Voice
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George Szirtes ditto
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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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