Here’s a good thing – it’s cool and rainy, fantastic after yesterday’s scorching sun. Here’s a bad thing – my mood. If you scroll down past my whining, there are some sublime songs.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
The above gets misquoted a lot, the original is a lot deeper than the misquotes. It fits me very well. Yesterday my psychiatrist kept saying “we will get it right,” and when I looked back at her my eyes felt dead.
Those motivational stigma-busters … it gets better, you’ve got this … what a load of horseshit. It might, I might, but there’s no guarantee. I can see the benefits of a positive leap of faith, but only ‘through a glass darkly’. If I took a leap of faith I’d probably land up with Cotard’s Syndrome.
I think we light beacons against the dark, the way we have since we found fire. And that’s brave and good. Humanity has an immense capacity for bravery and goodness that we frequently forget by paying too much attention to the media and not enough to the realities we can touch. Some days I feel like a peevish crow, a doomsayer or the oracle of Delphi or something.
Now your statues are standing and pouring sweat. They shiver with dread. The black blood drips from the highest rooftops. They have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of my sanctum and drown your spirits in woe. (Oracle of Delphi)
My sense of humour is my saving grace. It isn’t even always gallows humour, although I wouldn’t hesitate to use it at the gallows.
Excuse me while I throw myself a pity party.
Writing here feels like lancing a boil some days. I’ve never had a boil, but if I said ‘squeezing a blocked pore’ you might be grossed out. Instead of writing terribly self indulgent poetry, I write dreadfully self indulgent prose. So adolescent.
Here is some proof that my taste in music isn’t limited to sad boy ballads (although it mostly is):
massive attack – teardrop
moby – why does my heart feel so bad?
charlotte gainsbourg – hey joe (jimi hendrix cover, yes she’s serge’s kid)
vanessa paradis – joe le taxi (johnny depp’s ex at age 14)
mc solaar – nouveau western
ismael lo & marianne faithful – without blame
anam cara – little wing (jimi hendrix cover)
minnie driver – hungry heart (bruce springsteen cover)
tanya donelly & dylan in the movies – lovecats (the cure cover)
belle & sebastian – dear catastrophe waitress
beautiful south – don’t fear the reaper (blue öyster cult cover)
