It is also about why neither the mind nor the emotions can grasp anything that is both itself and something else; and how this leads to boredom, anxiety, sadness, discontent, the self-disgust of the vanquished, a complete inability to feel or talk about or create anything meaningful, or really beautiful, and the creation of a collapsing virtual world that more closely resembles a terrifying schizophrenia-induced nightmare.

We’re going to look at what—the horror of work, dread love affairs, gut-impotence, tongue-tied micro-catastrophes, world-detonating inflows of genius, self-shattering laughter, silent docked she-connections, the intelligence of walls, the wrinkles of a loved uncle, blizzards in the moonlight, anarchic moonwalks through the interzone and friendly festivals of death have in common—why—we do have the broken families, repressive institutions, boring philosophy, miserable history and omnipornographic teeveemedia we feel we could probably do without and why we don’t have the utopian island-states, underwater improvised-theatre domes of baize and burnished glass, river-spanning trampolines, exquisite furniture handcrafted in factory-cum-cathedrals, warm and liquid freedom sloshing around our ankles, tame zebras trotting through the garden and superbly tailored raiment that we feel, somehow, we should have—and how—to face the tender enormity of the unknown, find a decent fella, instantly overcome all worry, connect up all human knowledge with a transdimensional shoelace, seize never-to-be-repeated moments by their little balls, summon a berserk of glory from the bellymind, impersonate a tree so well that birds land on you, experience the centre of the universe together during apocalyptic intercourse (or apocalyptic gardening), blowtorch the system and find your way out of a me-shaped prison—back into the big room.