Memory Theater by Simon Critchley Read Free Book Online

teach and returned home immediately. Then, one evening during a lecture I was giving in early April, I experienced the most terrifying auditory hallucinations. A cacophony of voices engulfed me and then the furniture in the lecture theater began to elevate. I became convinced that everyone in the room, including myself, was dead. I could smell my own flesh rotting. Terrified and covered in shame, I gathered my things from the office, left the building, and never returned.
    Alone for weeks on end, I started to think that my computer was attacking me and began to keep a careful log of events. I called it electronic harassment (EH). Here is a sample log entry transcribed from the longhand version written in pencil in order to minimize technological contact:
    EH 04/17/08: 7:45 a.m. Steady heart pain at computer. 8:13 a.m. Choking shots to throat at computer from west. Sting shots to genitals same. 9:11 a.m. Seven stab shots to appendix area at computer from west. 9:16 a.m. Sneezing shots to noseat computer from west. Frenzied activity. 10:51 a.m. Seven stab shots to left side above hip at computer from east. 11:18 a.m. Intense, persistent pain attack on right side at computer from north. No pain-free moments all morning. Ache all over. 12:12 p.m. Focus on eyes at computer and in kitchen from west and south respectively. 12:15 p.m. Pulse shots to ear at computer from south. Liquid wax emission. Stab shot to left shoulder at computer from east. Next north. Teamwork. 12:19 p.m. Pulse shots to left kidney. 1:16 p.m. Lingering ache in area of left kidney from persistent deep pain attacks, mainly from east. Unable to read or write or concentrate. My body is Coventry Cathedral under German bombs. A bombsite. Melanie Klein. 3:33 p.m. Focus on eyes and genitals at computer from west. Repeated diarrhea emission. 3:44 p.m. Nuisance itch shots to face at computer from west. Rash on the skin behind my ear. Red boils under the hairline. Diarrhea again. 4:00 p.m. Choking throat shots at computer from west. Also deep stomach pain attack. 6:18 p.m. Stab shots to right kidney from roof terrace. Left side ache on couch from north. 8:58 p.m. Deep chest pain (heart) on couch from east. Assassins. 10:09 p.m. Strong stab shot to left shoulder fromroof terrace from north. 11:35 p.m. Deep pain muscle shots from all directions. Cramps. 12:48 a.m. Brain flashes enter the repertoire. At least a dozen in bed. Profoundly disorientating. Brief bursts of painless sensation in the head, followed by disorientation. 3:48 a.m. Staggering, stumbling, occasionally falling. Toilet. Thirsty. EH log end.

 
    I went to see a psychiatrist with psychoanalytic sympathies on the Upper East Side. Expensive. Platitudinous. Useless. He suggested hospitalization and prescribed antipsychotic drugs. At least I got an extended sick leave from my professorship and stayed at home every day. The only people I talked to were my landlady and her cat, Frances (“For by stroking him I have found out electricity / For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire / For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance …”).
    One insomniac night, during the usual hell of physical pain that I had got used to, I could feel something happening in my head. It felt like the loosening of a blockage, or a shifting of psychological tectonic plates. Sudden elation. The fear disappeared. An overwhelming mania washed over me. The physical pain that accompanied the hallucinations and whichinvaded my body was brusquely transformed. My contracted melancholic ego swelled up like a Montgolfier balloon to fill the universe. I had stopped taking the medicine days before because it just made me more miserable and robbed me of what had become my one comfort: my visions. Now they were an aurora borealis. My body was a buzzing antenna into which radio waves flooded from the entire cosmos. I was the living switchboard of the universe. My skull was a magnetized globe.

 
    Some months earlier , I had