Art by Seher One. Suggested listening (repeat) by Phosphorescent - "Ride On"
. . .
"I started writing this book back when I was still crazy. I had at the time at least five or six characters that
interacted in a promising way. But
slowly the medicines took hold. They started locking the doors at night and one by
one each character slipped away into the darkness.
Eventually even Dragon stopped coming round. I remember crying in the shower thinking I would never truly be happy again without him, without our adventures. I wrote for a while but it was all rubbish and sadness; like a documentary of Technicolor dripping out of Oz, like the Great Nothing, pulling your dreams and wishes into a vacuum, a dark cave with growling teeth and murderous wolf eyes, nothing like the noble animal known to the night sky and myself alike. (Tree spirits cock their funny head and the universe rotates with a little rattle and gentle understanding). So I stopped writing, because it was depressing but mostly because I felt like I had nothing to write about. How do you write a play with only one character? Moreover, how do you write a character that is so far from a pigeonhole-able definition of an individual while at the same time so far from anything considered normal. So I stopped writing.
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| Art by Seher One |
Eventually even Dragon stopped coming round. I remember crying in the shower thinking I would never truly be happy again without him, without our adventures. I wrote for a while but it was all rubbish and sadness; like a documentary of Technicolor dripping out of Oz, like the Great Nothing, pulling your dreams and wishes into a vacuum, a dark cave with growling teeth and murderous wolf eyes, nothing like the noble animal known to the night sky and myself alike. (Tree spirits cock their funny head and the universe rotates with a little rattle and gentle understanding). So I stopped writing, because it was depressing but mostly because I felt like I had nothing to write about. How do you write a play with only one character? Moreover, how do you write a character that is so far from a pigeonhole-able definition of an individual while at the same time so far from anything considered normal. So I stopped writing.
(1) Then I got the
bright idea I would start from the destination, start from here, and then
spiral out and back to square one. I
would document the deconstruction of this strange subject, this poster child
for ‘better living through chemistry.’
But of course, this dismantling of the house would most inevitably include
a termination, sooner or later, and money, cold hard wonderful terrible money,
has and will always be a life determinant.
In my mind, the undoing would end me up somewhere in New Mexico, and if it turned out anything like the detailed photograph in my mind, I would be living in a tiny shipping container compound. Living, writing, and just being myself – weird in an endearing indie movie kind of way. It would probably just be myself and a pack or murder of some special animal.
In my mind, the undoing would end me up somewhere in New Mexico, and if it turned out anything like the detailed photograph in my mind, I would be living in a tiny shipping container compound. Living, writing, and just being myself – weird in an endearing indie movie kind of way. It would probably just be myself and a pack or murder of some special animal.
(2) I once trained a
murder of crows to come when I whistled a song. My territory of influence was
the grounds of a university in Northern Virginia and my pinnacle of power was
the top of the parking deck on the Northeast corner of campus. I say all of
this as if it no longer is. I can still
go and get the older crows to come, the ones which find my tea-kettle whistle
siren song familiar. People do not
always believe me, and then they come, and they still do not believe me. Of course I give them snacks. Proximity
has always determined these bell-drooling morsels to be of the Starbucks
variety - old-fashioned donuts, butter croissants, and other non-expanding-inside-the-tummies-of-avian café baked goods.
(3) I was feeding fish off a dock next to the seafood restaurant
where my family dined yesterday evening in the Eastern Shore when the world and I fell apart. My mother reminded me I used to be the one
who preached about feeding animals improper food: I was feeding the fish off
the dock pieces of French fries and hushpuppies, and exclaiming about their
size and the number in their school. She
reminded me of what I had told her about the exotic animals and the zoos. For a breath, the passion I used to feel
about these things pumped through my body. I breathed out and returned from
this flash of nearly forgotten intensity to the mild apathy and unengaged
entertainment that consumed the present moment. Everything stopped.
The sky started to rip open and the smiling clown on the horizon started to deflate and melt into the glowing mirror of the tranquil bay. His laughter turned into distortion, his seams unravelling and suit opening to reveal he was nothing but a hoax held up by undead rats, from a tormented dimension, with dark dull eyes, scattering into invisible holes in the water’s surface. That is when the intolerable feelings of guilt, and anger, and sadness, and nothingness fill up every cell and start to pull you down under. The light from the surface leaves so quickly.
I want to go back, but I am afraid. It used to feel as if I was lost, adrift out at sea sometimes.
The sky started to rip open and the smiling clown on the horizon started to deflate and melt into the glowing mirror of the tranquil bay. His laughter turned into distortion, his seams unravelling and suit opening to reveal he was nothing but a hoax held up by undead rats, from a tormented dimension, with dark dull eyes, scattering into invisible holes in the water’s surface. That is when the intolerable feelings of guilt, and anger, and sadness, and nothingness fill up every cell and start to pull you down under. The light from the surface leaves so quickly.
I want to go back, but I am afraid. It used to feel as if I was lost, adrift out at sea sometimes.
(4) The problem with
my proposition for following the demolition of my objective functionality is
logistical - both financial and consequential.
The consequences of my free-fall would leave me without a source of
funds. Ha, I misused the word. Anyhow.
(5) The medicines kept
the doors and windows locked. The amorphous character inside the locked house
moped about but did her work enough to pass unnoticed by the drones and sentinels.
Over the next number of months I cried
in the shower and while driving in my car; the characters stopped knocking and
trying to get in- these different sides of myself were not welcome anymore.
Back then, there were five to six characters at least. There was so much color and life. Even if it was filled with so much pain and beauty as well at least it was filled with something real.
Back then, there were five to six characters at least. There was so much color and life. Even if it was filled with so much pain and beauty as well at least it was filled with something real.
Over time I forgot what those characters looked and sounded
like. I would get flashes and sound
bites but nothing came in more than a faded memory, the ones which you aren’t sure
whether they are your own or something you watched on TV.
(6) I do not watch TV. We own one.
It is a nice large flat screen, but it’s not hooked up to the ‘TV.’ There’s a cable nearby I saw when I set up
the entertainment system a year ago when we moved in but I’ve never plugged it
in to try it. What is Mozart, that one specific
symphony, to that lad in the Clockwork Orange, post-forced movie viewing, is to
TV to me. I hear Kanye West’s voice
singing that it is a perfect day to jump out a window: self-defenestration. The idea came to me as a child. I hate TV in theory because it defines, promotes,
and viciously perpetuates all of the horribleness of popular culture. I am not saying however, that TV does not
have a number of awesome shows in the mix.
I am talking overall that it is horrible.
When I watch some shows on TV I have terrible nightmares for months. Yet, in general, my dreams are the same as they have always been, so they, my characters, could not have completely left. My nights are still filled with low-level anxiety and general consternation.
(When the medicines started locking them out at night the characters learned how to creep into the walls and press into the windows.)
When I watch some shows on TV I have terrible nightmares for months. Yet, in general, my dreams are the same as they have always been, so they, my characters, could not have completely left. My nights are still filled with low-level anxiety and general consternation.
(When the medicines started locking them out at night the characters learned how to creep into the walls and press into the windows.)
(8) Alas, my father
once told me that poetry was not any good if no one but the poet understood
it. As I take similar liberties here, I
shall provide annotation:
(9) A few weeks ago I was driving when I caught a sound bite from heard someone on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU 88.5. They were talking about a mental
illness described in the 1800s, ‘Drapetomania,’ which caused black slaves to
flee captivity. The idea seems so ridiculous in retrospect. The truth of reality seemed obvious.
I started to think about the debatable
validity of modern mental illness. Bipolar disorder, depression, generalized anxiety,
ADD/ADHD. Perhaps the truth of reality is right in front of us but some of us
are too close to see it for what it is.
If your mind is not already there
then come with me a moment and imagine the modern world as it is to some. Step back, two steps away from the universe, where
I often am, orbiting. Can you see how
the modern world may seem to certain individuals? People, who are intelligent
but divergent in their mental activity; inclined to create new patterns, excited
by possibility and growth; bound to the well-being of humanity as if by their
flesh to the beating of the collective human heart.
Now imagine a world in their eyes, a landscape of beauty and wonder but also of human predation, futile routine and endless greed, where as a citizen of the first world nearly every detail in the logistics of your day translates to the suffering of others, countless others. Where the blue and clouds above are tearing open, a void spreading in the sky, a cacophony in the universe, where in the middle a fire burns of meaningless destruction, fueled by the sins of humankind.
Now imagine a world in their eyes, a landscape of beauty and wonder but also of human predation, futile routine and endless greed, where as a citizen of the first world nearly every detail in the logistics of your day translates to the suffering of others, countless others. Where the blue and clouds above are tearing open, a void spreading in the sky, a cacophony in the universe, where in the middle a fire burns of meaningless destruction, fueled by the sins of humankind.
What if you were a child, of the
aforementioned kind, were expected to live in this world? Not just persist, but
participate. Learn how to be deaf to the harsh sound of reality. Even if you
choose to pursue a noble path you still wake every morning knowing millions of
your brothers and sisters are suffering, and that you just sleeping
in your bed, somehow contributed to it.
Even with numbness and blinders, how do you carry this weight and dissonance?
Would this modern world and life you are expected to live not seem then like some kind of forced captivity? Would you not want to flee?
Would this modern world and life you are expected to live not seem then like some kind of forced captivity? Would you not want to flee?
(10) Consider the possibility that what we
collectively call mental illnesses of the modern world, are nothing more than present-day
Drapetomanias. Perhaps we are not all sick
- perhaps we are simply practicing different techniques in the ancient art of
running away.
. . .
___________________________________________
Numbered Annotations:
If you are someone who more easily follows a conversation when it has clear segues and linear explanations, I invite you to use the numbered annotations provided while reading the following piece.
(1) (à strategies
for writing a book à)
(2) (à murder of
crows à)
(4) (à issue with going offà)
(5) (à meanwhile, trying to remember how it used
to beà)
(6) (à TV to reality à)
(7) (deleted)
(8) (à helping hands…à)
(9) (à an explanation of this written piece, leading to the actual point to
be madeà)
(10) (à ergo: à)
