Okay. I've had a few drinks. I'm calm, calm enough to write the truth. Not that's time to reveal the truth, not that you'll want to know it.

REM have a new album out and it's wonderful. And they've put the breaks in the song numbers in the middle of the songs, so you skip to track two, and it actually skips to the middle of track one. You have to listen to the whole fucking thing. They're revealing the truth. So maybe it's time I did the same. You don't want to, but you need to know.

Why does the writer write? To be famous? That's what some people think, that's what some people do, that's what some people get. Charles Bukowski, you are a case in point. You and your mates from Vesuvio's.

Novella. What is that? Well, it's a site run by a guy called Chris Smith, a forum for new writing. Except none of it's new. As we all know and tire never of saying to ourselves, it's all been said before. And there are contributions on it from a number of people, including Noah Birksted, Chris Dillabough and others.

Apparently.

This is a poem. But kind of a poem essay that masks itself as a story.

The reason that these are the apparent authors of the works on this site, is because appearances are deceiving. They are not the authors of these works. And nor are you in some Foucauldian kind of sense. I am. I, William Brown, not that my name is important, am the author of Chris Dillabough's stories, Chris Smith's poetry. In a previous life I was Fernando Pessoa, or Ricardo Reis, or whoever. I amaze myself by constantly becoming whoever I want to be.

A mate of mine, Andy, said recently that he would love to be someone else. Apart from the evident sadness that someone should be unhappy with the ambiguous presence they have made for themselves, I had to point out that Andy already was the other person that he named. Because to be that other person completely, he would have not to know that he was still Andy. Which means that he is that other person already. In the same way that I am everyone. Especially the authors on Novella. And there will be no end to the authors that I can become.

Who is William Brown? Why does he not want to be famous if he wants to be a writer? Well, he's obviously self-obsessed enough to think that he can tell other people the truth, and in so doing, write solely about himself. And yet he claims more or less the opposite. It is a strange world we live in.

Well, William Brown is not important. It is perhaps of import that he exists, and that he exports his ideas in written format to people, and occasionally in televisual or cinematic format. And not just his ideas, his thoughts, emotions, observations. Stories he has heard. That kind of shit. But he is not important. And so he does not want to be famous. What he wants to be famous are his texts. But he does not want to have to turn his life into a text just because he is famous through the fame acquired through his texts. Do you read what I mean?

Life is beautiful. Its brevity makes it immortal, and this is the whole root of its beauty, that it does not make sense. You look at an object of beauty. It is fucking insane, man. Woperson, whatever. And mancruel sees beauty and wants it, because he doesn't have a fucking clue what it's about. And as soon as he touches beauty, it dies. Listen to Charles Ives whenever you get the chance. He is wonderful.

An object of beauty? What is that? Is something beautiful rendered an object by beauty itself, as if beauty were a greater force than the thing itself, the thing that is beautiful but still tries terribly to be a subject, to subjugate its beauty so that it is seen as an existing thing, rather than as an object that beauty dominates…?

This is why I can never love… Or at least, why I love properly, because I have no desire to touch. Or rather, I have desire, but my desire for beauty, for that which I cannot understand, is suppressed. I am a goddamn fucking martyr. Suppressed consciously, purposefully. I can beat myself up about it, and I like it that way, because I get moments of undifferentiated and undiluted pleasure - moments when I can just watch objects of beauty trying to be subjects.

Objects of desire… What a dumb phrase. Desire gets the better of me. My desire to write and produce, reproduce, create and procreate are all the same and all work best when in front of objects of beauty, it inspires my aspiration to do something while I respire before expiry. And when desire gets the better of me, I have no object of desire. Rather, I am the object of desire. My desire subjugates me, I am forced to adapt, so that I can win the object of my desire. I am no longer a subject. I am the true object of my own desire. It controls me and not the other way round. And so I am constantly shifting according to my desire, which is me. But which is not William Brown. He was lost years ago. I'm someone else now, and soon I'll be someone else still. But never static.

And this is how I see it. I am myopic. But we are nothing. I fight desire to be human, but nothing is our more natural state. We're dead and nothing for way longer than we are alive and human. And so nothing is where I want to be. Remember, nothing is the only thing in life that is free, so to be free of names, codings, desire, everything baby, maybe nothing is where I want to be. Can you read what I mean? Do you want to?

What does it matter who I am? I will be nothing again soon. And that's the beautiful thing. That it's all so brief and all so wonderfully beautiful.

But man perverts that which is beautiful. Can't help it. There's a fight brewing. Innocence is beautiful. It cannot protect itself. It must die. Find something to die for. But never find something to kill for. I'd die for beauty and innocence. And we've perverted this world and we've nowhere left to go. And a lot of us don't like it. A lot of me, perhaps I should say. And one day, soon, we will fight. And it will be horrible.

Lucifer is the bringer of light. Enlightenment is the arrival of Lucifer, the age of reason. In light, we see more clearly. Darkness, nothingness is man's natural state. Lucifer is here, and the forces of darkness, the forces of good are about to fight back. NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE! But thing is, it can't do. Nothing does make sense. Love that and you love it all. Because whilst it makes no sense, it exists. It exists. Exist. Exist. Exist.

God, I want to tell you lot to read, watch, listen, hear everything. Become your own oobermann, be one of the jetzeit. But you'll find out. We are all struck by existence at moments. And that's happiness, before desire gets in the way, makes us human and destroys the beauty of nature. Seeing existence is the only true happiness I know. And I love it.

The Unanswered Question. Forget asking questions about the question. Why are we here? Who knows. But we're looking. And we're trying to tell each other. And that's why I write. Why all of us write. If you want, get or do it for fame, fine. But fame will pass, like you, and you'll forget about finding an answer, and the question will be: why am I famous? Well, to answer honestly, you have to say: because I am so goddamn talented. Or was. Because when you tell people this, your head disappears up your own arse, and they can't hear, don't want to. It's boring. You're communicating why you're different from people, rather than writing about why you're the same.

So William Brown is unimportant. Because he's you, he's everyone. He's not unique. Doesn't want to be. Hates to feel it. Hates to be a subject, hates to be an object. Likes existing, beauty, moments of happiness that last a lifetime. Does he sound familiar? Familial? It doesn't matter. He's happy observing, although he doesn't seem as though he is a lot of the time.

And a lot of us don't like the way things are heading. And when we fight, we'll fight hard. Because it's worth dying for. Beauty, that lot of stuff. You know. And we'll lose, or, even if we win, we'll find a way of fucking everything up. That's the whole thermodynamics of the thing. Can we live with ourselves? Only if we're blind. And a lot of people have been blinded by Lucifer, and others can't see because they are too used to the dark.

But it's all going wrong. There's a crisis, and some existence needs to be preserved. And as Dante said, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. Get stuck in, people. Mancruel is trying to dazzle you and spoil the whole thing. Fight the impossibility. Give it a go. And tell others, otherwise they'll be afraid that no-one else is doing it. And they'll give up.

Can there ever be an

End

?