Day 278: Wednesday Review - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Write a film review at 1am after a busy close shift while recovering from a minor depressive breakdown? Oh suuure. Why not?

Presented as a vivaciously visualised collection of short stories set in the Wild West, leaping off the pages of a well-worn book, the Coen brothers' new film is a pleasing tour of rolling prairies and slouching saloon towns - and the strange characters inhabiting these regions - shot through with the pair's idiosyncratic blend of comedy and tragedy.

What we get are six individual tales, introduced via coloured plate illustrations and faded back to pages from the book from which they are ostensibly taken. The tales vary in tone from the ludicrously stylised to the more naturalistic, although all share a loose bond of theme - you might say they explore the fragility and uncertainty and downright weirdness of life here on planet Earth - which, to be sure, is not new territory for the Coens.

Two of the tales are excellent, two are good, and two merely competent. I'll not say which I think are which, to let you make up your own mind.

The Gal Who Got Rattled is the most developed of the bunch, the longest, and forms the film's core. It is the story of a young woman (Zoe Kazan) taking the Oregon Trail, facing the unknown, and finding both help and danger in surprising places. While the other stories are more formally structured, mechanistically sparser yet bolder, like well-told jokes, this is the one in whose world I most wanted to spend more time. The three leads (Kazan, along with Bill Heck and Grainger Hines) are superb, and there is the feeling of much moving beneath the surface of which we only glimpse. It is a sad tale, and a rich one.

Sad also - achingly so - is Meal Ticket, in which Liam Neeson's travelling showman puts on an act with an armless and legless orator who relies wholly upon the showman for support. It is big and bold in theme, and the poor orator is played with profound grace by Harry Melling, who you probably remember best as Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films. He mines this part for rather more pathos.

All Gold Canyon begins with an attention to the natural world that feels almost Terrence Malick-esque, albeit with the vibrancy hiked up to preternatural levels, and follows good old Tom Waits - looking decidedly old, in fact, these days, his grey and haggard face finally having caught up to his voice - playing a prospector panning for gold. The story is a simple one, but I liked its clear message about the glory of nature, and man's fussing place within it.

The opening two pieces, meanwhile - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Near Algodones - have the least depth. The former is a boisterous and gusto-filled jaunt for Coen regular Tim Blake Nelson; the latter a throwaway joke starring James Franco, who nevertheless plays the joke well.

And finally there is Mortal Remains, appropriately the last piece, in which Brendan Gleeson escorts a group of disparate travellers on a stagecoach journey where all is not as it seems. The concept isn't original, but the telling successfully adheres to the trope, hits the right beats, and works to cap off the overall movement of the film.

And that overall movement works, too. The Coens are masters at manifesting their worldview, one that relishes the strange, never fails to find the comedic, and yet refuses to shy away from the tragic - and here they are again firmly situated within that milieu, doing what they do best.

The performances are all full of life. As with Tarantino - of whose work this film in ways reminds me - the parts are so enticing, the dialogue so sumptuous, that it's any actor's dream to get even the smallest role. You have a mix here of top tier character actors, performing specific functions like session musicians, film stars helping sell the flick - your Neesons, your Gleesons, your Francos - and lesser known faces given the more naturalistic parts. All are used exactly as they should be.

The music is great, but you already knew that. The cinematography is vibrant, sweeping, majestic, if at times taking a backseat to the mechanics of the stories. The ones structured more like jokes are stories of event, and the landscapes exist only as stages upon which these events may play out. The more developed pieces, though, enjoy a greater sense of place, and feel more grounded.

In all, then, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a good anthology. Some of the stories are stronger than others, but all essentially work, and swirl and entwine together into a delightful, semi-mystical reminder of how sublimely bizarre life can truly be.

Less urgent than No Country for Old Men, less profound than Inside Llewyn Davis, less outright hilarious than The Big Lebowski, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is nevertheless a joy, the work of two wonderful storytellers having fun telling some wonderful stories. I'm glad I settled in by the campfire to listen.

Day 277: Back on track

OK, time to get myself back on track. I knew when I woke up today that I had spent enough time convalescing, that the worst of the depression was passed, and any more time on my back would cross the line into self-pity and self-indulgence.

But still I lay in bed wallowing. I got trapped in a social media loop on my phone, scrolling and scrolling, bingeing on empty novelty, finding nothing nutritious, repeating the same actions anyway. The equivalent of eating through a sharer bag of Doritos, avoiding pain with repetition, the addictive behaviour bringing up guilt and shame, sadness, helplessness, but burying all that with yet more of the addictive behaviour.

Finally I realised I had to move. I thought about what the most important step was right this moment - out of all my worries and issues, what was most pressing right now?

It was getting out of bed. So I forced all my energy into doing this. Then, once up, I made my bed. I took a shower, put on clothes. I tidied my room. It wasn’t exactly messy, but I did what there was to do, put books back on shelves, lined up shoes and slippers, threw food wrappers away, put my camera in its bag and put the bag where it belonged. I meditated. Went downstairs and made coffee, ate a banana, had cereal. Put clothes to wash. Did some reading about depression - know thine enemy - and did some CBT work - know thyself.

- - -

Often, in the depths of depression, one thought above all others ricochets around my skull. “Is this my fault?” Regardless of what I know about the very real and external causes of depression, when I’m suffering and the pain overwhelms me I can’t seem to shake the constant nagging fear that maybe it’s just me being weak and pathetic, maybe I’m bringing it all upon myself by giving up.

I don’t want to get into too much detail here, but suffice it to say my conclusion, which I have arrived at many times before, and need reiterating for myself now, is this: The entire universe is to blame for depression. Every blade of grass, every atom, you, me, God, all the gods, the whole cosmos, it all swirls together in sometimes beautiful ways, and sometimes ways that lead to immense suffering. Depression is part of this. Don’t worry about why it happened and whether you were at fault. It’s here now. It is real.

And yet victimhood is not the correct response either. The locus for change, the pivot point, is the personal self. Your depression will not improve simply by understanding its etiology, nor by blaming others, nor yet by changing laws, by making society more just - you cannot remove past trauma, re-engineer your genes, prevent troubled childhood experiences from causing skewed schemata in your brain from forming. These things need considering, understanding. But they are not the hill upon which you must fight. That hill is the present moment, and the manifesting of all your problems in it. Avoid negative behaviours, ingrain positive behaviours, and you will slowly change your brain chemistry. This is a fact.

As a general rule, action is better than inaction. Even the smallest, most stupid sounding goals can have profound effects when continued over long periods. Don’t stay in bed. Always shower. Eat a piece of fruit. Walk round the block. Do 20 press-ups. Meditate for five minutes. Write a paragraph a day. Create to-do lists for the day and cross them off one at a time, put yesterday’s unfinished tasks at the top of today’s list. 

Doing things helps.

But while doing things, problems will arise. Here, to help me, is a list of some of my problems, and what I can do about them:

Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) are one of my demons. They arrive suddenly, from nowhere, crashing in. “This is pathetic. You’re worthless. What a waste of time. You're ugly. Repulsive. Stupid. Talentless.”

- What to do: CBT helps here. Catch the thoughts. Notice them. They arise, exist independently for a moment, then I swallow them, digest them, assimilate them, and they are part of me. Note down every time I become aware of one, and it gets easier to catch them in that moment before they dissolve into me. “Aha, that was an ANT. I see you.” That is all that is needed. Make tally charts of every time they arise. For ones with more force do CBT work to challenge them, question their validity. For example: “Do I know with absolute certainty that this blog post is worthless? Can I think of any examples why it is not worthless?” Brought into the light of awareness ANTs tend to shrivel away into nothing.

Rumination is another demon. Related to ANTs, but not quite the same thing. Sometimes it’s an ANT that starts up the ruminative process, but the process itself is the obsessive worrying, round and round, about problems, without coming to any conclusions. Obsessing over why I’m like this, rather than how to fix it. 

- What to do: As soon as I notice myself ruminating it is vital to disrupt the pattern, to get out of that neural network. Concentrate on anything else. If it is necessary then write out everything I’ve been worrying about, put the worries into order of importance, and brainstorm simple plans to tackle the first items on the list. Later worries can be shelved for the moment.

Learned helplessness is something I’m not sure I’ve written about before. It’s a major component of depression, in some models in fact it essentially is depression, the perceived lack of control of situations learned through previous uncontrollable stress and trauma. You can instil learned helplessness in a rat by shocking it or dunking it in water randomly and continuously, until eventually it won’t try to escape even when escape is possible. 

For me learned helplessness manifests as that “woe is me” mentality, overly dramatic, wanting to fling myself on my bed at the first sign of difficulty and tell everyone to leave me here to rot, that it’s too late for me, it’s all hopeless.

- What to do: Again, mindfulness is important. Noticing the thoughts as thus. “This is learned helplessness I’m experiencing right now.” To ask whether past experiences are clouding my current judgement. “Is there actually no way over this obstacle, or do I just feel that way because of learned helplessness?”

(I just felt it then. “There’s no way to finish this blog post. It’s sprawling too far. It's too long. I can’t do it. I need to give up.” So - note it down. Recognise it for what it is. And get back to work.)

Learned helplessness is a system broken through trauma and stress. But the system can be fixed. What was learnt can be unlearnt.

Self-esteem is yet another issue. A far-reaching and wide-ranging sense that I am not good enough, a sort of shadowy lack of confidence leering behind all things.

- What to do: Small actions help. Make lists of accomplishable tasks, and accomplish them. That builds pride. When the feeling comes on, know that it’s a demon, that action is called for. Do not sit and think about the low self-esteem, do not let rumination start up. It’s addictive and ingrained and feels like the right way forwards. It is not. The way forwards is to recognise the danger and immediately act, rather than ponder. Tidy my desk. Do some press-ups. Read a page of whatever non-fiction book I’m reading, to learn something new. Write mindfully about what the low self-esteem feels like, where in the body it is located, how physiology changes. Accomplish even the smallest thing, push forwards a millimetre rather than stay and be pulled back by the demon.

Full depression. And then there are the deeper symptoms that manifest when those others have shunted me fully into a depressive episode. Anhedonia, grief, psychomotor retardation, restlessness, sleep problems, all the rest. That’s where I’ve been the last few days.

- What to do: When this happens think of it like coming down with a bad case of flu, like breaking my leg. Accept the severity of the situation. Drop all other concerns and focus only on allowing myself the time to get better. Treat myself gently and kindly. Call or message people I trust. Go gingerly, but gracefully. Do not reach for pain-relieving vices that will cause more harm than good. Do not drink or do drugs. Do not eat junk food. Shower, if possible. Take short walks, if possible. Watch things on TV I would have liked as a child, guilty pleasures. Give myself little treats. Expect almost nothing, but try not to run to harmful things either. The dark clouds will pass. The sky will be clear once again.

...That's all a loose list, and there are things I've left off, but it's a good start, to help me get back on my feet. Do the things I need to do, stay active, keep ingraining positive habits and behaviours, and when those specific demons show up, as of course they frequently will, deal with them in the ways that have been proven to work.

I am doing so much better than I once was. Healing is not linear, but, wobbly, in spluttering fits and starts, it happens nonetheless. Upwards!

Day 276: A different realm

Took the day off work today to look after myself. It’s hard calling in sick for mental health reasons, I feel like it’s an excuse, like it doesn’t really count, like I’m making it up because I want a day in bed. But the last few shifts I’ve forced myself in, got on with things, and come home at the end of the day worse off than when I began.

I think there’s a difference between how you should act when you’re trying to keep depression at bay - maintenance and upkeep of your mental health - and how you need to act once the worst happens and you fall off that shelf into the trench of depression. Getting exercise, fresh air, socialising, going to work, making plans, pushing yourself - as with physical health, these are good ways to keep existing health up. But if you broke your leg, or came down with gastroenteritis, no one would tell you the solution was to go out jogging until you felt better. Past a certain point convalescence becomes integral to recovery.

Depression is a different realm, with different rules. It is a holistic experience - not the difference of a symptom, but an entire reality, a mode of being that is not the same as the mode of being when you are well. Everyone has experienced elements of depression in the regular unfolding of their lives - sadness, or grief, anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure), anxiety, rumination, troubled sleep, stress response, psychomotor retardation (the slowing of muscles), concentration problems, difficulty making decisions - but depression itself is a state, a world, containing all these elements but larger than their total, a gestalt, and once you are in it the usual rules don’t apply.

So right now I am going very slowly, asking almost nothing of myself, trying to get better. I am having a rest day, and it’s my day off anyway tomorrow, and I am treating myself kindly, watching simple programmes on Netflix that I might have enjoyed as a child, but also showering, wearing clean clothes, eating a piece or two of fruit, still writing this blog.

I have almost no energy, but the energy I do have I want to spend in the right way.

Day 275: Grimace

Depression still on me. Still feeling crushed by everything. Don’t want to speak to anyone, see anyone, do anything. Want to get in bed and stay there forever. Yuck. I feel yuck. Everything is gross. My mind is silt and sludge in all the synapses. The world feels desolate. Going outside is like putting on a suit of armour over all my wounds, my broken bones, and I can stiffly walk back and forth in the armour, all you’d notice would be my face curled into a slight grimace, but I come home and there’s blood pooling in the folds of metal, I take the plates off and slump to the floor.

I’m watching Star Trek Discovery. Just to have some company. I can’t bear to be around anyone but I don’t want to be alone. The sounds of television are comforting.

I can’t remember why I got like this. Whether it could have been avoided. My mind isn’t working clearly. One thought follows sluggishly behind another, trailing, fizzling into nothing. Living in a shadow realm.

I don’t know. Maybe hyperbole doesn’t help. Feel a pull towards doom laden hyperbole when I’m like this. But maybe I’m just trying to adequately describe the pain inside. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

Brain hurts. Want to be positive but none of the words fit. Clumsy. Defective. Inoperable.

Is there anything in my present circumstance I can get curious about? Well. There’s something that feels… compulsive. I’m compelled to grasp and clench at the pain, even while it burns me. I think that’s rumination, or there’s an element of the ruminative mechanisms at play.

So I guess it’s interesting to note that. I can’t make any sense of it or work my way out of it right now, but it’s interesting to note. That’s something. That’s as mindful as I can be tonight.

Day 274: Ringing

Depression pinning me down. No use pretending otherwise. It's right on top of me. Been home few hours, watching Star Trek Discovery, simultaneously playing my Switch, trying anything to distract myself. Not enjoying Star Trek, it’s just on, some colours, voices, changing situations. Vaguely following the plot, don’t want to pay too much attention. Hurts to pay attention. Depression is like a ringing in my ears. Like the warm attraction that glues particles together in normal functioning of life has been reversed, and every atom repulses every other, gives off faint howl, the accumulation of every atom howling makes a ringing in my ears, and engaging the part of my brain that usually cares, that considers, that loves - this simply intensifies the ringing, until I want to be sick.

So instead put on formulaic television, play arcade racing games, eat food out of brightly wrapped packets. Try to pass another night.

It is exhausting to live like this. But I guess a year ago it was happening for weeks at a time, regularly, and I was drinking and smoking weed to escape. And now it is not so regular, and it lasts for only days, and I’m more aware while it is happening.

Awareness helps. Pain is only an experience, something with specific dimensions, a size and shape, and can be explored like anything else, can be seen and felt. This is a sharp experience, yet a dull experience, jagged and oppressive both. Be curious. Disrupt the negative rumination. Distract myself with loud television if I have to. Be gentle with myself, yet firm. Don’t slide into self-loathing. Let go. Don’t worry. Go through hell and just keep going.

This always passes. The clouds clear and the sun comes out again.

Day 273: Blue skies

Trying to avoid negative rumination, though feel vulnerable to it, “primed” is the term I’d use. Tough to write when I’m like this, because it’s precisely the act of opening the brain up to pondering, to thinking deeply, that initiates the rumination. In fact it’s like the wide open beautiful mulling aspect of the brain that makes writing even possible, but taken and twisted by negativity, poison entering the system, travelling around and around, until everything is tainted.

Trying to disrupt the ruminative process every time I catch it. Force thinking away from that swirling maelstrom, onto anything else. I’ve been literally forcing myself to read shop signs and say the colour of cars in my head and go over the types of coats everyone is wearing, to wrest attention back from rumination. “No, don’t go down into it. Back here. Back here. Back here.” Snapping my fingers at myself, pulling myself away.

At home I’ve been playing OutRun on my Switch, the 1986 arcade classic racer, which is good distraction. Blue Sega skies, luxurious breezy chiptune music, chunky sprite-based worlds rolling by around your bright red Ferrari, and always having to focus on this moment, on the curve of the road, the cars ahead, the timer ticking down. The timer, the cars, the road. Curving road. Cars. Timer. On and on, the sprites spat into existence at your wheels and burning into oblivion just ahead, the acid trip ever-flow, the past gone, the future not arrived, pivoting your car, the chiptunes in your ears, the Sega sky vast above, roaring forwards until the timer runs down, and then one more go, maybe just one more go.

...... 

Music: Lay My Love, by John Cale and Brian Eno. 

Day 272: Implicit

Little thought I want to pursue here, about the role of character in film, which didn't fit into the review yesterday.

Context: I wrote a review of Kathryn Bigelow's film Detroit last night, and I found the film to be adroit in its crafting of event, but less so in its building and development of character.

This got me thinking about how character in film actually works. Unlike novels and longform television, where character reigns supreme, film is more concerned with plot and action. It is a large and bold form, and over the 90-minute runtime of a typical feature there isn't the opportunity to live with and get to know characters the way you can in a book or through a multi-season HBO television production (everyone say "The Wire" with me).

How the filmmaker thus writes and films their characters is more akin to how artists must draw their characters in animation. Think of a Disney or Studio Ghibli film. Think of Simba in the Lion King, or Chihiro in Spirited Away. These characters aren't detailed oil paintings. They're not intricate and exquisitely realised portrayals. They are sketched representations, simplified, with basic lines, shaded in a few colours, so that each cel can be redrawn with minor variations and placed over a static background, put together to give the appearance of depth and movement.

But what the artists choose to draw stands in for everything they do not. The explicit details are skillfully selected to point to an implicit world of richness beneath. The tufts on Simba's head that imply a whole luxurious coat of fur. The curved lines of Chihiro's knees that imply a whole knobbly, juvenile frame teetering on the cusp of adolescence.

Every exhaustive detail is not required, because the details presented are the telling ones - they point to much more than they actually state. And in some ways this approach can be more powerful than one offering a surfeit of detail, because if you get the telling details right then the audience fills in the blanks with their imagination, and engaging an audience's imagination means lighting up whole neural networks of association and memory - letting the brain's immeasurable complexity do the heavy lifting for you.

This is how filmmakers must sketch character in their productions. For their role is to draw not the physical shape of a character, but the emotional shape, and how that changes over time. Without the luxury of many chapters or television seasons to hone their work, they must be talented artists of the human soul - must offer snatches of dialogue, visualise the most vital moments, that get to the core of who their made-up characters are. They must show us the details that take us all the way in, underneath the skin, to the beating fictional heart we want to feel within.

......

Music: 2025, by Squarehead.

Day 271: Wednesday Reviews - Detroit

Detroit is director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal's latest collaboration, following The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, and paints a simmering portrayal of racial prejudice and injustice during the Detroit riots of 1967. As with the duo's previous films, it is a taut and thrilling picture, imbued with tension, if perhaps flawed in its building of character.

While the riot is covered from its inception following a police raid on an unlicensed drinking establishment in a black neighbourhood, with historical news footage blended effectively with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's own shaky-cam shots, the film centres upon one key event, the Algiers Motel incident, during which a contingent of police and national guard descended upon a motel while investigating sniper fire in the area, and ended up beating, torturing, and in three cases murdering the young, predominantly black guests found within. Three white officers, along with one black security guard, were later charged over the incident, although none were ever found guilty.

Bigelow treats this event as a microcosm of the wider situation. Her film bubbles slowly towards the siege, keeps the heat up for a rolling boil across the episode, and cools gradually off as the fallout is explored - the lack of justice, the damage done to the families of the victims, and the wounds carried by those who survived. She clearly sees parallels with current instances of police brutality and inner city inequality, and she crafts her film as a didactic indictment against such issues.

In many ways she is successful.

The film is visceral and urgent, shot through with danger, dwelling uncomfortably on pain, and through the motel scenes it is difficult to watch, powerfully so - although perhaps the shaky-cam work puts it a little closer to the feel of modern action thrillers, and their reliance on style over substance, than the material deserves.

The cast are strong. John Boyega is standout as the black security guard among white officers. the film posits that he had nothing to do with the violence, and was instead caught impossibly between sides in the riot - attempting to mollify white police who held all the power while drawing as little attention upon himself as possible, urging black people in the crosshairs to keep their calm, to not answer back, to "survive the night". Distrusted by the cops, accused by his peers of being an Uncle Tom, Boyega plays the character as clear-headed yet conflicted, calm yet scared shitless, and his is the best performance of the film.

Yet the character has no active role in the film. His part makes sense as an observer distanced enough from the trauma to function as the audience's eyes and ears - the fly on the wall - but from a plotting point of view, regardless of how the real event unfolded, there is a narrative vacuum. You want Boyega to be the protagonist, and yet he is not integral; the story would play out the same were he present or not.

More essential to the plot is Larry Reed (another excellent turn, by Algee Smith), singer with up and coming soul group the Dramatics, who is caught up, along with his friend Fred (Jacob Latimore) in the horror when the two seek refuge in the motel to escape the looting.

But where Boyega's character is believable, the two boys are less so, feeling more like placeholders or stereotypes than real people. Larry dreams of fame and making it to the big time with his band, and the friends attempt to chat up girls by the pool, and for me it is all too broad, it lacks specificity and idiosyncrasy, and in these crucial moments when we should be identifying with the characters before tragedy strikes I was instead left feeling distanced.

Likewise with another victim, the ex-serviceman played by Anthony Mackie, and the three white officers, who, although played adroitly by Will Poulter (recently seen in Charlie Brooker's Bandersnatch), Ben O'Toole and Jack Reynor, nonetheless fail to transcend the cliches of the racist movie cop that we have seen so very many times before. The image of O'Toole's sweating, leering face, as he lifts a girl's skirt with the barrel of his shotgun, is one that could have been taken from a thousand films of the past few decades. Grotesque, but unoriginal.

While writing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy famously complained to his editor that his protagonist's obstinate nature was threatening the structure of his novel, fighting against his own will as creator. That is not a problem from which you sense Bigelow suffering. What befalls the characters in Detroit is horrific, yet you never inhabit enough of their inner worlds for their sorrows to become fully real. Shocking and compelling, in the moments of tension, but never quite real.

Detroit is a tough watch, and worth it, but ultimately, for me at least, not as vital as it could have been.

Day 270: Rumination

I was not in a good way yesterday. Not at all. But I spent today before work researching and reading, and I've got a better handle on an aspect of my suffering that has until now eluded me.

That aspect is something called rumination. It's something that I knew bits about already, but I had never looked into it in detail, and now I see that it has affected my life for such a long time.

Rumination is when you continuously and obsessively think about the same upsetting or negative thoughts, swirling on in your head, spiralling down, unable to stop, but also unable to reach any useful conclusions. It is a key component of depression. A bout of rumination is a good predictor of the onset of a depressive episode.

People tend to ruminate, according to Healthline, if they have a history of emotional or physical trauma, or if they’re facing ongoing stressors that can’t be controlled. And people with certain personality traits are more at risk of rumination - traits including “perfectionism, neuroticism, and an excessive focus on one’s relationships with others.”

Which, like, Hello.

So rumination is obsessing over something, usually something negative. But then that thought pulls in a whole bunch of other thoughts, because of the way memory and association works, the neural networks we create, once you’re trapped in negative thinking you find yourself remembering all the other times in your life that corresponded to this negativity, and it becomes all the harder to pull yourself out.

Ung, I’m struggling writing this, you know. A bout of rumination, which is what I was going through yesterday - it’s what I always go through in my depressive episodes - makes me feel so wiped out the day after. It’s like all the synapses of your brain squeezing tight, it’s like your face being pressed against some horrific cosmic grindstone, and it goes on and on and nothing gets solved.

Well it really fucked me up yesterday. And today I couldn’t get up. I’ve had so many mornings like this, the feeling of being run over by a tank, of having a brain totally wrung dry and twisted in knots and just utterly fatigued - looking back it’s always after periods of rumination - which before I just thought of as “being depressed”, it wasn’t something I’d separated out as distinct from the rest of the symptoms.

But while it is inextricably linked to depression, is a key pillar of depression, it isn’t the same as the anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure - or the grief, or the psychomotor retardation - the slowing down of all your muscles.

Rumination is its own thing, that nevertheless goes with those other things to make up the vague larger thing we call depression.

So, what is it? It’s the pathological dysfunction of the problem solving mechanisms of the brain. It is going over a thought without completing the thought, without solving it, without finding closure and solace.

If you have a lot of trauma and stress in your life then you will think about these things, how to solve them. But thinking about trauma and stress makes you traumatised and stressed. It engages your stress response system, floods you with cortisol, tightens muscles, increases heart rate. You get anxious. Thinking becomes narrow, as happens in stress response, to focus you on fleeing danger.

And all of this makes it harder to solve whatever problem you are thinking about. It’s like PTSD - you don’t process thoughts, they stay in your brain, stay current, continue making you traumatised and stressed. And that interferes even more with your problem solving ability, and that makes you more stressed, and on.

It’s self-perpetuating, because when you think about trauma and stress your thinking becomes more inflexible, and when your thinking is inflexible you can’t see a way out of your trauma and stress, and that makes you more traumatised and stressed, and that makes your thinking more inflexible…

……

I can’t write this now. My brain fucking hurts. I can actually feel it trying to start up into a ruminative state, I can feel the gears grinding, feel it searching for all the instances that correspond with the negativity (“this writing is crap. All your writing is crap. Remember the other day when your writing was crap. And a few days before that. And BLAH BLAH BLAH.”

And it really hurts. My poor brain is exhausted - stress is exhausting, the release of cortisol, the high alert, the jangling nerves.

But it’s so important to do what I’m doing now. Because here’s how you combat rumination, according to everything I’ve read:

1) You disrupt the negative thinking. Focus on anything else. Get out of the loop. Play a nice game. Read a passage from a favourite book. Colour something in. Watch a TV show. Do a crossword. Something you personally find enjoyable, and something that takes your full attention, because otherwise your thoughts will wander back.

2) Go back when you’re calmer and write out the problems you were ruminating about, be specific, break the problems into all their component pieces, look at which parts you can do something about, and make realistic plans to tackle them, and for the things you can’t change downgrade them from problems to worries, set a date in the future to check in on them and see if anything has changed and if you now have the ability to affect them, and until then, forget about worrying.

So right now, in the danger zone for rumination, it’s imperative that I disrupt those negative thoughts every chance I get.

So I’m sorry, this blog post is loose as all hell, and probably makes no sense, but it is me fighting back. I can’t stop and plan it out and rewrite it, because it’s taking all my focus to simply pull myself away from the whole sticky addictive pathways of negative thought that are trying to swirl up and overwhelm me.

But it’s real progress. My brain feels like mashed potato, but it's good understanding why it feels this way, and that there are very real and practical steps I can take to work on making this better in the future.

Just got to go gently, avoid the swamps of rumination, and make gradual plans face all the problems in my life. Easy.

Day 269: Grinding

Been napping. Mind is grinding too tight, can't get words out. Work was fine, but got back and couldn't get words out. Edited photos. Watched Always Sunny. Ate food housemate brought me. Napped.

My problems are not writing related but mental health related. I need to address my problems. Don't know how. Need therapy but can't afford therapy. Maybe I could, and I'm just using it as an excuse. Paying £50 a week would take everything I've been saving and more, but maybe income-dependent would be cheaper, and I could make it work if I stuck to the tightest budget.

It's so hard going on like I've been going. I'm ill all the time. It's always in the background, and comes out and knocks me down once or twice a week.

I am doing better than a year ago. But only because I'm forcing myself to get more done, despite the pain. I'm in as much pain.

Mental health is the hardest. This is not something I would wish on anyone.

Back to bed now. Might watch another Always Sunny to drift off to. At least I can enjoy comedy. Can't watch comedy when I'm at my lowest, can't derive pleasure from anything. I'm not at my lowest, not nearly. And I haven't been down that far in a long time. Maybe things are improving, just incredibly slowly.

Yes. Let's go with that.

Day 268: Alleviate

Wiped out today. Recovering, watching shows, playing games, doing some gentle reading, writing bits and bobs. Wanted to have an organised and productive day, making strides forward, but clear when I woke up that that wasn’t happening. But that’s OK. Rest is important. Self-care is important.

Mmm. That’s disingenuous. Self-care is important, but I wasn’t really caring for myself today. Spent a lot of it feeling stressed and anxious, unmotivated, angry at myself for not doing more. All this research into depression has brought up a lot of stuff, all the stuff I haven’t dealt with, the sense that although I’ve gradually forced myself to face a few of my issues over the last year there is still an ocean filled with monsters moving below my conscious awareness. Thinking about depression has made me acknowledge the size and depth of this ocean, and now I feel like a tiny creature bobbing on the surface, alone, doomed to be swallowed at any moment.

Shit. I do not feel good at all. I feel like screaming, tearing out my hair. I feel really bad. That’s what I’ve been doing today, medicating against this pain exactly like I was talking about yesterday. Watching YouTube, scrolling down social media, distracting myself, eating junk food. All things to alleviate pain in the present, while doing nothing to work through the stress and trauma that cause the pain in the long term.

And, more, I’m aware of this, and so feel guilty and ashamed about it. Maybe that’s important to realise. The guilt and shame do not help. They make it worse. Yes, taking paracetamol isn’t going to heal a broken leg. And if you keep walking on the leg wrong then you’ll prevent it from healing at all. But some nights you need that paracetamol regardless.

And, yes, I’m not going to overcome my depression by playing videogames and eating takeaway pizza. But I am getting better at doing the things to heal myself, and though it’s a slow process I am making progress. But some nights it’s just about surviving the night.

Yes, there’s always a risk that you’ll develop a reliance on pain relievers and thus never face the problems that cause the pain. But I don’t want that. I want to get better. I want to change. But when the pain is too great that stops being possible.

Going to try to end the night being kinder to myself, then. Get to bed, get some sleep, in work for 8am tomorrow.

...... 

Music: Brand - New - Life, by Young Marble Giants.

Day 267: Shrapnel

Feeling frayed today. Overstimulated, overwhelmed, low. Pressing on though.

Here's some stuff I've been looking into while researching about depression. Want to write a big thing. Not sure when, or how, but certainly feeling the impulse, feeling a lot of swirling things I want to get down and lash together into a cogent whole, both for myself, and because it's stuff I really don't think we've got a handle on as a society. What depression is, why it arises, what can be done about it. That kind of thing.

Anyway, I've been looking into the ways in which psychic pain is similar to actual physical pain. It turns out it's pretty fucking similar. Substance P, a neurotransmitter associated with inflammation and the perception of pain, is released during the experience of psychic pain just as it is when you bash your leg. The same areas of the brain, the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, light up when you experience social rejection or look at a picture of a lost partner as when you stub your toe.

Essentially it looks like - and I'm just chatting today, so I'm not going to link my references, or worry being too precise, or about plagiarising - but it looks like as we evolved it was easier to streamline the perception of pain, whether emotional or physical, through one neural system - like it was easier to send urine and semen down one pipe than to evolve two separate ones. Actually, no, don't let's think about physical and emotional pain as being like urine and semen. Just... no.

Anyway. Here's another thing. Give people suffering emotional pain a course of paracetamol, and at the end of the course their brains will have activated less in those regions I mentioned than for people to whom you prescribed a placebo.

You can alleviate emotional pain with paracetamol.

That's wild. No wonder damaged people become heroin addicts, alcoholics, stoners, heavy porn users, phone scrollers, whatever. No wonder basically every time you look at the life of an addict you find a history of trauma.

These are people in pain, and they are gravitating towards things that take that pain away. And addictive substances and behaviours do do that - they do stop things that hurt from hurting. If your life is filled with emotional pain, if you've been abused, if the world damaged you, then the suffering you feel isn't in your imagination, it isn't wishy-washy, indistinct, made-up. It's as real as physical pain.

We pretty much all agree as a society that analgesics, palliatives, painkillers are appropriate to some levels of pain. You wouldn't tell someone whose leg had been chewed off by a combine harvester, or who had been hit by shrapnel fire in a war, that they should suck it up, get on with it, pull themselves together. The extent of that pain, we recognise, may be insurmountable - it will lay them out flat, and giving them some morphine while we fix the wound is no bad thing. The pain has done its job of alerting the patient to injury, and then the skilled doctor takes over, the pain is no longer necessary, and we dope the patient up while they recover. As humans we are more acutely aware of the suffering of pain, but we are also better at finding substances to assuage pain, and that seems to be the cosmic deal. Fine.

But and so what about someone who has suffered childhood abuse and parental neglect and now lives rough on the streets? All those traumas, those major life stressors, cause colossal psychic pain - which is felt in exactly the same way as physical pain. And yet when that person medicates with heroin we turn away in disgust, we judge, we say that they are weak and dirty and stupid.

You'd do the same. You'd fucking do the same. Yes, heroin, and cocaine, and weed, and spice, and booze, end up causing even more medium and long term pain than they assuage in the short term. But let me tell you, human beings do not orient themselves towards medium and long term happiness, not without immense structure and education and planning. We are driven to seek short term happiness. All the functioning of our cells, our lizard brains, our mammalian brains on top of that, these all instinctively push us to worry about now - and it's only the last and least integrated, most recently evolved top layer of human brain that modulates behaviour towards the longer term - and this only at the best of times, fighting a battle against deeper aspects of ourselves. But when you're in pain those deeper aspects are on high alert, they bypass the later human intellect, scramble to do something right now.

So I don't know. We need to be way more wise and sensible and compassionate about emotional pain. Someone with their guts hanging out will scream for all the morphine you can give them. An abused kid on the street will reach for the needle. Same difference.

Yes, the needle doesn't heal the underlying wound, and eventually it makes everything worse - just as taking paracetamol every day for a laceration that continually reopens and bleeds anew will only end up damaging the liver.

But the answer, as a society, is not at all what we are currently doing. What we are doing is wrong - practically as well as morally - it does not help. We are not viewing stupidity on our streets, but tragedy. When we see people in indescribable pain we shouldn't judge them for taking whatever is available to get through the next moment, and minute and day. And we should work at understanding more about how their wounds were caused, and what might heal them.

Because what we're doing now isn't working. It's a long fucking way from working.

Day 266: Dutch cinema

Well, bugger. Been out all day with my mum and uncle, left just enough time to set up the sofa bed in the front room of my mum's house and hunker down to write a blog post, probably the most poetic and erudite I'd ever have written, and then instead I stayed up with my uncle discussing the structure of the brain and the political dangers facing our society and 90s Dutch cinema and the vastness of the universe and the nature of being and how rad the first two Alien movies were, and now it's stupidly late and I've got work at 9 tomorrow and my mind is taut and sizzling and going soft at the edges.

Not that I'd change any of it, of course, and, man, those first two Alien films really were the best, the first transcending the horror genre to be a work of cinematic art, the second basically the apotheosis of schlocky b-movie sci-fi (They mostly come at night... Mostly)... but Christ, do I gots to sleep absolutely right this second.

I'm on till 5 tomorrow, then home to very probably nap, then I'll get back to serious writing.

Peace, love, sleep tight, don't let the xenomorphs bite. x

...... 

Music: Tibetan Pop Stars, by Hop Along. Fuzzy noise rock with a rasping, wailing female vocal and just the barest hint of emo sensibility. Wait, have I done another song by these guys? I like these guys, so what the hell. It's all good.

Day 265: Red alert

Been deep down the word mines, working on a longer piece about depression, which, in truth, I'm very much enjoying. Elucidating and therapeutic, although exhausting. Here's the rough draft of a bit of it...

When animals run into dangerous events they have a number of automatic responses that come into effect to cope with these events. These responses are about preventing, mitigating, and recovering from harm. The extent each of these is possible depends on the severity of the event. If you see a hazard on the ground then you may instinctively leap to avoid it, and thus prevent any harm whatsoever. But if you see the hazard too late then your instinct will instead be to put your hands out, which will hopefully mitigate damage to your head, your most vital asset, but at the cost of damage to your wrists, your arms, the skin on the palms of your hands.

Life is chaotic, fraught with danger, and your being - your body, including your brain - has no way of knowing what is coming next. But through millennia of trial and error a number of heuristic systems have evolved that make decent guesses when forced to act, because guesses are better than nothing. Thrusting your hands out as you fall might give you blood poisoning and end up killing you, where a little bump to the head would have damaged you less - but your body and brain don't know this, in the split-second of registering the danger and type of threat, and over a lifetime, for each member of each species, thrusting your arms out is generally better than not.

All of which is to say: an awful lot of what we do in life occurs below the level of conscious thought, and runs off relatively simple rules that we apply to a vague and complex and ever-shifting reality.

So it is with depression. Every aspect of this debilitating and much misunderstood disease can be explained by reference to an animal's natural responses to events of major stress and trauma, and to the ways in which these responses can become tangled and counterproductive - to the point of extreme distress - when deployed against the psychologically rich and confusing worlds that humans, with their pre-frontal cortices, inhabit.

Think of the underlying systems of depression as like a sci-fi show where the captain of a spaceship orders all power to be diverted to shields and weapons, because dangerous alien craft are attacking, and it's life and death. But these aliens are new and advanced, data on their tactics are not in the computer's database, and they attack in ways that the shields are powerless to stop, and they cannot be hurt by the weapons the ship possesses.

The aliens attack, dart away, attack again, vanish into the darkness of space. They may strike again at any moment. Meanwhile the ship is still in red alert - the danger hasn't subsided, so the protocols are still active, yet they do nothing to help when the attacks do come. But the captain has no other ideas. And all the while resources are being burned powering the shields and weapons, the crew are pulling triple shifts with no sleep, everyone is keyed up, no messages are getting back to the fleet, no one is free to plot courses or play on the holodeck or cook meals or think of the wider mission. The ship just spins, it limps onward, it drifts.

... Anyway, gotta stop there, brain is fried, it's 2am, I'm done. I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying yet, but I'm enjoying figuring it out.

......

Music: Streethawk 1, by Destroyer.

Day 264: Wednesday Reviews - Roma

Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film, financed by and streaming to Netflix, is a wonder. An ode to women struggling grandly against the quotidian and occasionally tragic, Cuarón mines his childhood growing up in the Colonia Roma district of Mexico City in the 1970s to deliver a stunning portrait of Cleo, a Mixteco Mesoamerican housekeeper living in the home of an upper-class white Mexican family, cooking their meals, washing their clothes, mopping up the stains of dog shit daily from their drive.

The pace is leisurely, measured, yet unyielding. A freight train coming on five miles an hour, stopping for nothing. Cuarón frames his characters mostly in mid and long shots, situating them within their environments - including the house, used for filming, across the street from Cuarón’s childhood home, decorated in his family’s own furniture - and these spaces are brought exquisitely to life in stately camera pans and long holds, which, though almost lethargic at times, are tightly controlled, building a sense of inhabited places.

Within this sluggish, ethereal world, filmed in gorgeous monochrome, we gradually get to know Cleo and the family for whom she works. The family, perhaps excepting the mostly absent father, all care for, even love, Cleo, and yet Cuarón doesn’t absolve them of blame for their culpability in her suffering. Cleo may laugh along with the jokes on the small television set the family watch in the evenings, but she must clear plates as she laughs, prepare the teas, continue on with her ceaseless chores. The mother, overall a gentle and thoughtful employer, is not above chastising Cleo when her own problems become too great, using Cleo as an emotional punching bag, taking out her anger at her failing marriage on the encumbered help. 

Cleo is well-treated, but the line between family and employee is clear, if mostly implicit. In a telling scene, the family, with Cleo, visit friends in a holiday retreat. The walls of the villa are decorated with the heads of dead dogs, pets of the owners, stuffed and mounted on the walls. Cleo stands a long time taking in these silent heads, pondering her own existence. Will she one day be mounted in a cabinet so that her family may remember her fondly when her loyal service is complete?

The film unfolds gently, in this manner, even as cracks begin to form, and tragedies surface. The story is set against the backdrop of Mexico’s larger upheaval, centering on the Corpus Christi massacre of 1971, with the violence that has been inexorably brewing in the country eventually, and literally, bursting into the suburban idyll in which the family reside. In this way Cuarón cleverly ties the personal and the political, the familial and the national, making the dual woes of Cleo and the family’s mother feel as inevitable as the greater shifting of the world.

And yet there is grace and strength to be found within the heartache, and even room for those class barriers that separate Cleo to, if not break down, at least strain. Boundaries are never as fixed as we first think, and the lives that Cuarón presents are complicated, ambiguous, and the family members are rich characters, struggling with their own very real concerns.

But the film belongs to Cleo, and is vivified by a powerful, naturalistic performance by first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio, bringing to the role a sense of restrained, stubborn calm and Ivan-Denisovich-like courage in the face of toil.

The image of a jet plane overhead subtly marks the opening, midpoint, and closing of the film, with the character of a martial arts trainer lecturing to a crowd at the midpoint that you should not expect of him miracles like "levitation, or lifting a jet" - his greatest feat is simply being able to balance on one leg with his eyes closed, a skill that the assembled masses attempt, and fail - all with the exception of Cleo, who is watching, unnoticed, from the sidelines.

The meaning is clear. Greatness is often marked, although rarely noted, not by the actions of the powerful and the famous, the high flyers, but by the millions down here on the ground, wrestling with, and enduring, countenancing - transforming - the secret suffering of daily existence. The many who labour on, quietly, at their lot in life. 

Cleo is one such saint. The woman to whom the film is dedicated - Cuarón’s own childhood nanny, “Libo” - is perhaps another.

Roma is an eloquent and essential piece of cinema. I highly recommend it.

Day 263: Dredging

Tired. Dammit I’m tired. Ill again. I can’t shake this illness. It lessens. It comes back worse than before.

Wrecked at work today, shivering, stretched thin. Emailing in the office, staff talking to me, What? What are they saying? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. Go bother someone else. There is no one else, I’m in charge? Well I don’t know. OK. Fine. I’m coming. I’ll fix it. Forcing body up from sepulchral slumber, creaking, groaning, out into the pub.

Somehow the shift passes. I do the jobs I wanted to get done. Colour code the keg lines. Email breweries. Print sheets to arrange craft room by order of line checks.

Come home. Sit in back of taxi, not wanting driver to say one word. Reading Brexit debacle on my phone, no energy to figure it out. Head swimming. Shoulders aching. Taxi gliding through the blackness of the night.

Blood from stone, today. Dredging words one at a time up from the deep. Each sentence an aeon to write.

I’m getting in bed. Meditate for five minutes first, always meditate for five minutes, feel the field of awareness with all thoughts and ego conceptions snaking round and round. Feel field holding snaking, field larger, always empty, always silent, reposeful living space within which thoughts, frustrations, pains, come and go.

Then drink my glass of cold tap water, climb in bed, let go failures of the day and rest up to try again tomorrow. In baby steps keep journeying onwards, day after day after day.

...... 

Music: Indian Summer, by Beat Happening. 

Day 262: Yoghurt pot

No. No. I don’t wanna. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing a post today. I’m too tired. I can’t form words.

Apart from these. These are words. But I can’t form any good words. That’s the problem. I’m too tired to manipulate my writing to make it appear good, make myself appear talented, and I don’t want to have to write this and to show how untalented I am. Even those sentences there, I was trying to manipulate my words by saying I was too tired to manipulate my words - all as a way of attempting to impress you.

Why does that matter? Why do I give a shit about impressing you? I mean, you’re an idiot. Come on, you are. Look at you. That top does nothing for you. And you can never explain socialism succinctly when children ask you about it. And you keep writing whomever when you mean whoever. It’s the subjective case. Idiot.

I’m doing it again. Trying to impress you by pretending to insult you. I can’t escape myself. What a nightmare.

Anyway, these are words. Once you stop worrying about writing good words, which, let’s be honest, you can’t make happen, it actually becomes a lot easier to write. I’m tired, sure, I’m wrung out, but I can put words on the page. Irksome. Turquoise. Forget-me-not. Salubrious. Entwined. Fish finger. They’re all words. Easy.

Here’s the blog. I come here and open my brain and let the words inside spill onto the page. Some days they form into miniature essays or self-help guides or stories. Sometimes they fizzle and squelch limply into pools of nothing.

And what you have to do is love it all. Just love it all. Enjoy the process itself of manifesting your lifeforce into scratchy marks on a screen. Say yes to every word. I’m already good at the editing side of things, I know I can concentrate for long periods on perfecting something that already exists - it’s the creation side that can make me feel stunted and frustrated, that opens me up to self-criticism and depression slinking in.

Well not today, suckers. Just going to be happy writing nonsense, and wing it off with peace in my heart. Catacombs. Bonanza. Flim-flam. Yoghurt pot.

That’s the task, and I’ve succeeded once again, put words on the page. They may not be perfect, but they're perfectly cromulent - and that’s good enough for me.

I’m outtie. Peace.

...... 

Music: Blow Roland Blow, by Joanne Gordon and Roland Alphonso. 

Day 261: Cherry

When I was a kid we’d have this iced bun cake for dessert sometimes. Do you know the kind I mean? It came in a round plastic container, a ring of bread buns with icing on top, surrounding one central bun, which, on top of the icing, was decorated with a single glacé cherry.

Now, this central bun with the cherry on top was the best bun, demonstrably, and my sister and I would fight furiously over it. Some days I would successfully and honourably make my appeal to the Court of Parents that, as I had cleared the dinner plates and brought in the dessert, I had earned the cherry bun. Some days my sister would do something conniving and manipulative to secure the cherry bun for herself. Now and again my father would take the cherry bun, to avoid arguments, and because he was biggest. Once, my mother tried to claim that she was entitled to the cherry bun, as she had spent all day cooking and serving the meal we’d just eaten, and had in fact been the one to traipse all through the supermarket on a rainy afternoon and pick up the iced bun cake in the first place. The rest of us summarily dismissed this claim as “rubbish” and “boring”.

Anyway, more than reminiscing about lacklustre dessert in Yorkshire in the nineties, I want to talk about happiness.

Because, as far as I can tell, there are two types of happiness. There is the happiness of gaining, and the happiness of doing. The gaining happiness, which you feel when you succeed, when you win, when you get a reward, is like the bun with the cherry on top. It’s the happiness of a notification pinging your phone to tell you that your recent Instagram post has new likes. The happiness of taking home a glamorous new outfit from town. The happiness of someone you find attractive paying you a compliment. Mmm. Succulent red cherry.

It’s a good feeling, this, and one intrinsically tied into our existence. We use this feeling to reinforce behaviours that offer the maximum potential for staying alive and securing the survival of our offspring and thus our species - eating, socialising, sex, novelty, competition.

But it’s only the cherry on top of life. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. Cherries can’t fill up a life. There aren’t enough of them. Orient yourself based solely on chasing cherries and you’re setting yourself up for terrible failure and sadness. You either don’t get the cherries, in which case everything was for naught, or you do, and that becomes your baseline, and next time you need a larger cherry, a brighter cherry, more cherries, to relight that pleasure of gaining.

Desire cannot be satiated. As creatures in the world we want. It is part of who we are. If you get what you want then next day you want more. Every day of your life you will want. Accept this. Extinguishing desire isn’t happiness, it is anhedonia, depression.

But there is another kind of happiness, the happiness of doing. This is the rest of the iced bun. You get it when there’s a cherry, but you get it without the cherry, as well. It’s the happiness of being absorbed in a process - designing tattoos, streamlining workflow in the office, writing a blog. It is the happiness of concentration, of flow, of trying at something, before the feedback that tells you whether or not you were successful.

And it is the happiness of awareness. Not just of doing but of being. The doing of being alive, which your body is doing all the time, and can be rested within in meditation, in simply paying attention to this moment now.

There’s always going to be a child inside you that grasps for a cherry, that grins when it gets it, sulks when it does not, frowns when it is gone. This rollercoaster of pleasure and pain is one we all must ride, as Ronan Keating so astutely observed.

But just remember the other type of happiness, as well. Simply by being alive we all get this gift of an iced bun every day. So find something on which you want to concentrate, and concentrate. Be it designing clothes, running a business, raising a family, sitting cross-legged in a park listening to the wide river of life flowing on.

Enjoy the cherries, when they come your way, but set yourself up so that you appreciate the bun with or without the cherry. Learn to ground your focus in that, and you'll see the cherry for what it is - a nice addition, but not the whole of the story, not even nearly.

...... 

Music: That's That, by Cass McCombs. 

Day 260: Sloshing

I had a hell of a good day yesterday. Let me tell you, I smashed it. I wrote a to-do list when I got up. Of course, that’s not new. I write to-do lists continuously. But what was new yesterday was that I actually did the to-dos. The whole list. Every item. Well, apart from the dusting. But no one does the dusting. That’s just one of those joke lines you put on the end of to-do lists, like “win the lottery”, or “cure world hunger.” Unfeasible, you know?

But I did everything else. And I worked assiduously on my blog post, got it written and posted up by 6pm. And then I had an evening to myself. And what an evening! I can’t remember the last time I felt so free, so light. The sensation of having completed my chores, put in a hard day’s graft down the word mines, and then emerging knowing that the remaining hours of the day were all mine, well-earned, to do with as I pleased. My heart swelled with joy, I don’t mind saying.

What I did was, I bought fish and chips. I never normally buy fish and chips. I’m just not a fish and chips guy. It’s not where my mind goes. But it did last night. I just felt like it.

So I went round my local chippy, got myself a piece of fish, large chips, and then into Sainsbury’s and picked up a cream slice for dessert.

Oh, it was delightful. I got in, put my slippers on, and lounged back in front of the new series of Always Sunny, my fish and chips open in my lap. I ate, I watched, I laughed. I laughed out loud, by myself, for the first time in forever. And then I finished the evening watching and making notes about the film I’m going to use for next week’s Wednesday Review - I actually did more work, just to get a headstart, to be productive because I wanted to be.

I’m telling you, it was a charmed, magical evening. Normally I leave things till the last minute. Always I leave things till the last minute. I always procrastinate, and worry, and sit with this base level of shame sloshing about inside my stomach soaking the bottom of everything, tainting everything.

But last night. Last night was different. It was like taking a trip into a parallel universe where I was somebody who did the things that were sensible, at a time that was sensible, somebody who lived the way normal people live, somebody who didn’t completely hate himself.

It was weird. To be honest it made me uncomfortable. I’m not sure I liked it. So I spent today miserable at work and then I came home and procrastinated all night, and now it’s 2am and once again I have to throw out whatever meaningless words I have in my head up onto the blog - something about fish and chips, it looks like, and it’s so weak, and unstructured, and if only I’d planned more, if only I’d not put off my responsibilities, maybe this would be better.

… Ahh, there it is. The familiar sloshing shame. Back and forth, back and forth, lulling me to sleep. Lie down in the shame. Get comfortable. It’s where you belong.

Hmm. But yesterday was interesting. Weird, sure, but interesting. Maybe I’ll try more days like it in the future.

We’ll see.

...... 

Music: Big Time Sensuality, by Björk. 

Day 259: Dried fruit

If you suffer from self-doubt and crippling perfectionism then this post is for you. Have you ever tried to do a thing and found yourself thinking that there’s no point trying because you won’t be any good at it? Because you won’t be the best?

Maybe you dream of creating portraits of celebrities out of bits of dried fruit. I don’t know. It’s your dream. I’m not judging.

But maybe you lie awake at night beset by worries about all the incredible dried fruit celebrity portrait artists out there, all the groundbreaking work being done in the field of dried fruit celebrity portraiture, and how you will never measure up. You look at your own efforts sitting on easels across the room, the leathery apricot swirls in the wonky shape of James Dean’s coiffured profile, the banana chips overlaid into an approximation of a wounded Kurt Cobain, and you despise it all. It makes you sick. None of it is good enough. None of it works. You might as well just give up and crawl back under that rock out of which you had the sheer temerity to poke your stupid ugly head. Dreams of being a dried fruit celebrity portrait artist indeed! As if you could ever achieve such a hallowed goal. What tosh!

Well, I’m here to tell you that all that is crap. That whole mindset is damaging and painful and illusory. It is but a boundary guardian of your own mind, warning you off from exploring the exciting territory of the unknown, telling you to stay safe in your dull little village.

Stride out, and slay that guardian. Slay it with truth and reason. Bring your fear out into the open and shine the light of awareness upon it.

You don’t have to be the best at what you do. You don’t even have to be good. Many people are not. By definition basically nobody is the best. And there’s plenty of room for people in your chosen pursuit of all skill levels. There’s a whole hierarchy. A whole ecosystem. You’ll find your place.

You could be a professional dried fruit celebrity portrait artist, sure, but you could also live a full and worthwhile life as an amateur dried fruit celebrity portrait artist, earning money a different route. Or you could be a dried fruit celebrity portrait teacher, guiding young hopefuls through their first steps creating dried fruit celebrity portraits of their own. You’d be great at helping your students avoid the common pitfalls, having fallen foul of most of them yourself. Or you could be a dried fruit celebrity portrait reviewer, working for a broadsheet newspaper, or running your own blog, critiquing the dried fruit celebrity portraits of others. What about a dried fruit celebrity portrait TV show presenter? A businesswoman selling dried fruit celebrity portrait supplies? An inventor who designs a new tool that streamlines the whole process of creating dried fruit celebrity portrait art? Or simply someone out on the street selling their dried fruit celebrity portrait art for pennies to passersby?

Would it be worth it, even then? With no money, and no fame, and no esteem, would you still feel compelled to glue dried fruit onto canvases into the shape of Audrey Hepburn smoking a cigarette in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

If not, then you didn’t actually want to do this thing, and the universe has kindly shown you this, and you can go gladly and look for something else to occupy your brief moments on this meaningless rock. Easy.

But if it would still be worth it, then go do it. 

Just go do it.

After years of hard work you might become the best, which could be nice - or being the best could be horrendous and stressful and anxiety-inducing and laced with constant suffering, as most things in life end up being. Or you could be not-the-best, and probably still have a life laced with constant suffering.

But what matters is that you find something that you yourself believe to be a meaningful use of your time, whatever that means to you - something that lights and continuously reignites that candle sitting at the centre of your soul - thrilling you to be a part of it, whether you’re the world’s number one ranked seed or a lost and forgotten nobody.

Find that thing, and do it, and do it, and do it, and you’ll never be a nobody to yourself. 

The world and everyone else in it will be happy to figure out where you slot into the hierarchy. You won’t have time to worry about all that. You’ll be busy.

...... 

Music: Now, Now, by St. Vincent. 

Day 258: Storms of tarantulas

I've finished reading the Welcome to Night Vale novel that Mike bought me for Christmas. It was bags of fun. The same dark humour as the podcast, the same twisted flights of imagination, the same rich world.

It did have one essential problem however, which was that the strength of the podcast is in sketching individual vignettes that don't have to maintain much consistency between one episode and the next, whereas a novel is all about consistency.

Night Vale the podcast is about moments of X-Files/Twin Peaks/Lovecraftian parody - evil cults within the town's boy scouts divisions, shimmering sentient forests out in the desert, portals to netherworlds opening in the air above the all-night diner - and each moment is pushed to a horrific conclusion, and then the status quo reset in time for the next episode. As such, listeners can dip in and out with ease, with the added explanation that "time works strangely in Night Vale", which papers over any number of cracks in overarching narrative.

But a novel set in such a world does not have this luxury. It must lash all the vignettes, all the disparate and oftentimes contradictory ghost stories together into one coherent whole, and tell a story from the point of view of protagonists living in this place.

That is inherently tricky. The novel succeeds, just about, but it's hard to identify with characters for whom daily life is so disjointed and hallucinatory. Storms of tarantulas one morning, predatory packs of rabid librarians the next (run!).

Or, rather, in order to make you identify with the characters, which does happen, the authors end up shrinking their wild world, making it more consistent, yet also somehow smaller, less amusing, than how it exists in episodic form.

It all reminds me of this videogame based on The Simpsons my friend used to have on his PlayStation. The whole of Springfield was explorable in the game, you could go anywhere, see anything. But Springfield isn't a real place. It is elastic, its streets and locales stretch and shrink based on the requirements of each storyline, each joke. Docklands, shopping malls, zoos, waterparks, hydroelectric dams - they come and go as they're needed.

To map out, to tie down, actual street plans, to turn off from the end of the Simpsons' road, to go to Moe's Tavern, and then Bart and Lisa's school, and then Comic Book Guy's shop, it all starts to feel squashed, uninspired, wrong.

Springfield isn't a real town, it's a possibility space, a canvas blank enough for many disparate strokes of paint to be splashed upon it.

Night Vale is the same. The novel was fun, and the writers' skills at presenting existentially repulsive yet utterly hilarious tableaux comes through often. But the inherent strengths of the novel as a medium - character and consistency - are not the ideal fit for the Night Vale project.

But still, it was very readable, very funny, and at times quite touching. If you're a fan of the podcast, it takes a little away from the show, but gives much back as well. And if you're not a fan, then get listening!

......

Music: Jerusalem, by Dan Bern. Some classic "weather" from an early episode of Night Vale. Nasally, rasping, wry acoustic fare. Good stuff.

Day 257: Wednesday Reviews - The Bourne Legacy

0115 and I’m full of cold, exhausted from work, but I have to write something about The Bourne Legacy. Commitments. Gotta keep those commitments.

The steady decline of the Bourne franchise continues unabated with this fourth installment, which sees Matt Damon’s eponymous hero replaced by similarly hench yet likeable stud Jeremy Renner, for a two-hour parade around worn motifs and action thriller tropes.

The motivations are clear, yet surface deep. After Bourne’s antics in previous films, the shadowy organisations from which he has been running decide to shut down their programmes, killing off their operatives and covering their tracks. Renner’s Aaron Cross is one such operative, who survives the assassination attempt, and must then… well, run away. It’s as simple as that, really.

Unlike Bourne, Cross is pharmacologically enhanced, and needs his little green and blue pills every day to keep his senses preternaturally honed. Thus he must not just disappear, but go find a new supply, which brings him back within reach of the agencies hunting him. And then there’s a scientist, Dr Marta Shearing, played by Rachel Weisz, who has been studying the effects of the drugs on the operatives, and she also survives the clean up operation, and is then thrown together with Cross, and the two of them sneak into facilities, run away from local police, escape hit men on motorbikes, and do all that stuff that heroes and audience-surrogate characters do together.

The moments of action are well filmed, and there’s nothing egregious about any of it, the actors, which group also includes Ed Norton as the get-stuff-done mission commander for the agency, all put in strong performances, the set pieces are thrilling, and the directorial style by series writer Tony Gilroy, toning down the shaky cam excesses of Paul Greengrass’s work on Bournes 2 and 3, retains the urgency while providing more clarity - but the series is pretty much in the weeds by now.

Gone is that brilliant hero’s journey from the original, which essentially found a way to externalise tension between the yearnings of the inner self and the pressures of the outer other into a kickass spy thriller - that’s been forgotten, as has the grounded action, the relatable protagonist, and in its place is a moderately successful but generic action film.

The pacing is off as well. Individual scenes work well, but the flow of the overall narrative doesn’t feel right. It’s an hour into the two-hour film before Cross and Shearing link up and Ed Norton’s team begin hunting them - and it’s 1h15m before we have the requirements of Cross vis-a-vis his daily drug dosage explained to us. That should be baked into the script far earlier, its repercussions explored through the unfolding narrative - as it is the drug dependence only exists to provide motivation for visiting one locale, and then an anticipated scene where Cross gets dizzy and loses focus and has flashbacks to his time as a recruit, right as, in the present moment, Shearing needs him most. Its tangential, and easily resolved, and thus provides little peril or opportunity to burrow to the core of Cross’s character.

And then it’s not until the film’s climax when a counter asset, a test subject for a new programme even more advanced than the one from which Cross has escaped, which agency bosses assumed was still in the planning phase, is called into play. This trope of the antagonistic asset worked in the first film, when played matter-of-factly by Clive Owen. He was the shadow-self archetype, the dark brother, and he provided a great sense of mounting pressure and approaching conflict as the noose tightened around Bourne. By this film the concept is dog-tired and dull, a cliche shorn of its original vitality.

And that’s the general feeling of the film. It’s not bad, but it’s empty of whatever spark initially lit the franchise. Jeremy Renner does as well as can be expected, though he’s never given room for Cross to become much more than the soldier at the peak of fitness he is when we first see him.

The final chase scene is fun. Everything rumbles to a sufficiently satisfying conclusion. But it’s a far cry from the heights of the original. Better than 2016’s execrable Jason Bourne, though. At least you can say that about it.

And now I really am done with left-wing spy films championing individualism in the face of state control. Think I'm going to watch Roma next week, and hopefully won't leave it so late. I can but hope.

...... 

Music: He War, by Cat Power.

Day 256: Nodding

Brain rebelling tonight. Doesn’t want to have to come here. Doesn’t want to do chores. Naughty brain.

Nodding off at my desk after getting home, had to crawl to bed, set alarm for an hour, then been snoozing for another two hours since then. Drifting in and out of strange dreams, opening eyes to alien bedroom. Are these my things? Is this my life? Which one was the dream?

Need to be up early to watch a film before work so I can write a Wednesday review. Will probably end up doing the post after getting in from work. Then a 2-10 or something on Thursday, then a day off. Day off to be up early, to write, to meditate, to walk, to eat satsumas. Day I want to live.

Snoozy. Gots to go. Bubyee.

……

Music: Palabras de Papel, by Nelson Poblete. Heard this on Welcome to Night Vale. Love it.

Day 255: Axes

Home from staff party, for 11pm, sober. A good feeling. It was tough peeling myself away while the others were just loosening up, letting go of individual anxieties and pre-party nerves and starting to have a good time. But those days are behind me. I clung on for far too many years, but now, happily, I’m out of all that.

We went axe throwing. Apparently this is a thing people do. I did not want to go axe throwing. I do not like tests of strength, of masculinity, in front of people, I end up doing stupid things to undermine the status quo, acting camp, mocking the organisers, instead of picking a Viking name like "Tormund Windhelm", which everyone else did, saying my name was "Jeremy", and acting as un-Viking as possible - basically being a twat, because I don't know what to do around authority and it makes me feel self-conscious and out of place.

But whatever. I was considering making excuses and staying in for the evening, but I forced myself to go, and I'm glad I did. It was something new, and in fairness there was no pressure, we were all rubbish, and it was only a bit of a laugh.

Got some writing done earlier in the day, then Mike came round to watch The Wire. We were on the episode with the East-Side/West-Side basketball game, with Prop Joe, so I knew we had to watch to the end of The Cost, with Kima in the car with Orlando, the hoppers switching the road signs round, the garbled radio reports… If you’ve seen it, you know. Mike has now seen it. What a final scene to that episode. What a show.

But that took all of the afternoon, and then the staff do, and now here we are. The writing I did earlier might be good for something later, but I’ve got no words flowing now. Feel tired, a bit low actually… I never feel good after staff parties, not unless I drink enough to make me confident and gregarious. I don’t do well in large groups, I feel myself shrinking, not knowing how to act, getting quieter and more introspective, going inside my head - and either I drink until I knock that part of me unconscious, or I come home feeling lonely and out of place.

I don’t know, I’m just tired, annoyed because this writing isn't working. Sometimes you can feel the music, sometimes you cannot. Right now I cannot. The sentences will not flow. My thoughts are bland, uninspired.

Ahh well. I’m here. Checking in. Another day ticked off. Sometimes that’s the best you can do. Going now to meditate, brush my teeth, get to bed at a semi-respectable time. Tomorrow is another day.

......

Music: Kismet Kill, by Haley Bonar.

Day 254: Petals

Life is suffering, but sometimes you get to have coffee. That’s my mentality today. I’m tired, sluggish, my brain doesn’t want to grind up into high gear.

There are fibrous strands and bright curls of clementine peel, pips from an apple, on a plate balanced on the books piled on my PC unit. The managers’ WhatsApp group on my phone is silenced for eight hours. My coffee is steaming. I’m solving a cryptic crossword.

Looking at a cryptic crossword.

Not much solving going on.

“Plant that’s yellow, say, with an orange head [7]”.

I tab to Google and type in “yellow plants”. I’d have thought the clue was pointing to a plant, and the yellow is part of the solution, maybe the “say” means it sounds like yellow, with the “o” from orange at the end, or the beginning, or something. I don’t know. But I tab to Google and type “yellow plants” anyway. Why not?

My brain won’t get out of the slow lane.

But then I’m looking down the names of yellow plants on a website that Google has presented to me, and next to the names are little photos of flowers. And I’m looking at the photos of the yellow flowers, and I feel a feeling.

A genuine feeling.

I feel… gladness. I look at the flowers and I feel glad. I feel my heart swelling. The delicate flowers, the lush, swaying petals, brushing against one another, so frail, so intricate, blooming across the land. Through the meadows. Peeking from between tumbled gaps in dry-stone walls. Reaching above shrubs layering the forest floors. Our world is filled with flowers.

And in that one rushing moment I feel a warmth, a connection to nature, a joy at the kinship we share with all living things.

What is happening to me? Who am I becoming? Quick, pass me the booze, call my dealer, blast the PlayStation. Go buy me a sharer bag of spicy Doritos and an extra large Mars Bar. I’m fading away. Who is this impostor replacing me?

Flowers. Jesus Christ. I’ve been sober too long. I’m actually starting to appreciate reality for what it is, starting to see the intrinsic beauty in life without the need to artificially heighten the experience through chemicals and simulation.

How terrifying.

At least I’m still addicted to coffee. You can claw my coffee mug out of my cold, dead hands.

......

Music: Don't Falter, by Mint Royale, with Lauren Laverne. Did you know Lauren Laverne used to be in a pop-punk band? I didn't. Here she is singing with the late 90s/early 00s electronic outfit Mint Royale, after her own band's breakup. Sounds like walking down a tranquil London street away from the bustle of the main roads, with the sun shining and hope in your heart. Sweet.

Day 253: Swing and miss

An addendum to yesterday's post, in which I said that inspiration is like a deer in the woods. If you are quiet, and patient, and still, sometimes the deer wanders up, graces you with its presence. But sometimes it does not. And whatever you’re working on you have to just work anyway, regardless, and accept that it will be as it will be. Most times the work isn’t inspired, it’s dull and pedestrian and uninteresting, but you have to accept it anyway, and move on.

But this is difficult. It really is, and especially at first, when you lack experience. It’s tough to be someone who has the acumen to discern quality in a particular field - which you presumably do, if you’re enthusiastic enough to try your hand in that field, be it cupcake baking, dollhouse cabinet building, poetry writing - you presumably love cupcakes, let’s say, and know a good cupcake when you taste it - and it is tough, at first, to sense that the cupcakes you yourself are baking are objectively not good cupcakes.

Allow me to jump analogies, from deer to sports. Because you can lie there, in bed, after a hard day baking, covered in flour and frosting and sloshed egg white, and think about the tray of bland, unrisen muffins cooling on the side downstairs, and you can feel really bad about yourself. 

You can imagine yourself as a sportsperson, a batter, maybe, trying out for a team; these cupcakes you've been baking are your big opportunity to prove yourself, and you imagine the coach watching from the sidelines, clipboard in hand, and here you are on the field striking out.

Even if sometimes you swing and connect. Even if you’ve hit the occasional home run. Mostly you’re missing. Your hitting average must be depressingly low. No team would hire you. Maybe you just don’t have what it takes.

But this the wrong way to think about it.

You’re not at try-outs here. You’re not in the game winning final minute.

This is just one of many practice sessions on a dreary Tuesday afternoon in the rain. You have to do it, and a million more like it, before you’ll even know how good you are. Romanticised assumptions tell you that people with hidden beautiful gifts get noticed, and have to only display those innate gifts, and they win fame, attention, call-ups to world cup teams, positions on next year’s Bake Off.

But the truth is that it’s all a lot of work. For everyone, regardless of talent. And most of the work involves failing, and learning, and adjusting, and failing again, over and over and over. Batters spend all day every day swinging at balls. Not to prove their talent. Just to practise. To dedicate themselves. Have you got any idea how many footballs Beckham would bend in from outside the box in ceaseless training sessions, ingraining the muscle memory, honing the movements? How many of those do you think went in? Not all of them. Not nearly.

How many free kicks did Beckham score, in actual matches, out of the total number he took? Some of them.

And what’s more, art is not sport. The primary drive is not competition. There aren’t rigid rules within which precise skills may be tested. Art is more exploratory, imprecise, curative, playful. You are not aiming to best others, but to share with them. Whether you share through words, fabrics, musical scales, or cupcakes, you’re dedicating yourself to an act of communion.

So when you’re next lying in bed, sugar and dough beneath your fingernails, feeling the day has been for naught, remember that this is the job. Your cupcakes will sag. You’ll strike out. Why not give yourself a decade or two, and then see if that’s still the case. And if it is, but you still enjoy what you do, then who the hell cares?

We’re all only going to die.

So get down to the oven, to the pitch, to the page, and do your work, whether you hit or miss or fall. There is nothing more for it.

...... 

Music: This Is the Day, by the The. An upbeat new wave classic, imbued with optimism, but with a hint of melancholy twisting through the core. Gently profound. Lovely.

Day 252: Deer

Here's something about creativity that I should know, and yet am continuously learning: it cannot be forced. Creativity is a deer in the woods, picking gingerly through the thicket, and yelling at it will only scare it away. Telling it when to turn up is an exercise in futility. Anger and frustration only drive it deeper into the bush.

The best you can do is create a large and tranquil space within yourself, put out food, ensure there is running water, and then wait. Maybe the deer will be along. Maybe it won't.

If the deer does arrive then you can only be relaxed, let it do its thing, and accept that it is going to leave whenever it wants. Maybe you need it to stay for a full day, but it wanders off after half an hour, and does not return.

This is the nature of the deer.

You're not hunting it. You're not capturing it. You simply want it to come and sit with you. The energy and beauty that the deer bestows upon you only works when the deer is free. Creativity cannot be made to happen.

But of course this doesn't mean you have to wait to be productive. Oh no. The deer might well come and go as it pleases, an animal spirit beholden to no mortal laws, but you, if you are serious about creativity, have to make commitments.

Whether you're painting, writing, sewing baby jumpers, or baking meringues, you have to be able to work whether or not the deer of creativity, of inspiration, deigns to grace you with its presence.

How do you go about this?

There are many tricks. Bum on seat, that's always vital. Get to where you need to work, and put yourself in position. You have to be in that woodland glade, ready, or there's zero chance of meeting the deer.

Schedule your time. Turn off your phone, disable Wi-Fi on your laptop, create a block of time that is for this activity only. Don't leave until the time is over. If two hours feels impossible, do twenty minutes. Do ten minutes. Do sixty seconds. Building a routine of sixty-second blocks, a number of times a day, for a number of months - and sticking to it - you might be shocked by what happens. And you may well find after forcing yourself down to the glade that you've become lost in the sunlight and birdsong, you've met a few deer, and your alarm has long since sounded and fallen silent. Ingraining the habit of getting going is a powerful thing indeed.

Picture where you want to be in the future, say, winning the local meringue baking contest, and try to spend every day moving closer rather than further away from that goal. Go to bed closer than you were when you woke up. Even if only by an inch.

Go for a walk every day. Eat a satsuma. Get enough sleep. Try the Morning Pages. Three sides of free-writing every day, no excuses. They work.

There are many tricks. For me, though, the hardest one to learn has been this:

Get over yourself.

Just get the hell over yourself. Because the truth is that most of what you create, when you sit at your desk, stand at your easel, lean over your stove, will be rubbish. It will be not good. Most of the time the deer will not turn up, there will be drizzle falling, and you'll come home cold and damp.

This is the nature of the deer. This is the nature of the work. This is the nature of life.

Fight it all you want, but it won't change. So best get the hell over yourself, and get on with making things anyway.

You simply cannot put energy into getting that damned deer to do a damned thing. So forget about it, and put your energy into all the rest. There is much to do.

......

Music: Sister Cities, by Hop Along.