Day 122: Improving

Another day not feeling good. I’ve done a few paragraphs of writing about story structure, but I couldn’t focus on it. Other than that I’ve played Zelda, watched Matt Groening’s new show on Netflix, Disenchantment, and drunk a lot cups of tea. Drank a lot of cups of tea? No. I have drunk.

Trying really hard not to go into self-loathing mode here. It’s so exhausting doing better for a couple of days and then feeling awful again and having no motivation to write and then beating myself up for having no motivation to write and then really not being able to write anything, and all the negative thoughts and sadness and emptiness swirling into a huge storm that rumbles on and on and on.

It’s exhausting enough feeling depressed, this time I’m not going to add to it by hating myself for feeling depressed. I’m just going to feel depressed. And that is OK. And I’ll drink another cup of tea, find some simple words to write here, then watch more Disenchantment and go to bed.

I was thinking a minute ago about how pathetic I am for writing those periodic posts where I pretend to have some wisdom to impart about depression, some insight into it, into how to move past it - the posts that people get in touch to tell me were really meaningful, or illuminating, or that helped them out - and but how it’s all lies, I never learn the lessons, never practice what I preach, I don’t have the strength, I just make the same mistakes in the worn grooves of my wretched brain time and time again.

But that’s not true. That simply is not true. I will not allow myself to listen to whatever voice just said that to me. That negative voice that wants me to believe I'm weak and worthless, to keep me small.

I am improving. I am getting better at dealing with this. I'm not stuck in a loop. I'm climbing out of a deep pit. Gradually, for sure, and the path is not always upwards, but I am climbing. I write a blog post every day. Sometimes I have the energy to write things that excite me, like film reviews, or silly scripts, or discussions of story structure. And some days I only have the energy to do this. But if a couple of posts a week feel worth doing, then that’s still a couple of posts a week more than I was doing 122 days ago. And I’m still posting something on those other days. I’m still coming here and putting a few paragraphs down, which is better than nothing.

In summary then: depression, you're a moron.

Yes, yes, you're part of me, and I accept that, and I'm not going to fight you. But I am going to tell you that you're goddamned wrong.

Come in, sure, if you're standing out there berating me in the cold. Have a blanket. Sit by the fire. If you're sticking around then I'll treat you with love. But don't think I'll listen to that nonsense you're spouting.

I love you, dark parts of me, but that does not mean I have to put up with your shit. So sit there quietly and drink this cocoa, and we'll watch another Disenchantment together before bed. There's a good depression.

Day 121: Choose

I have no energy, mental or emotional, to carry on that story structure thing tonight. Home from work and done in, depressed, empty, low. Tried to write when I got in, fell asleep, crawled to bed and napped, in and out of consciousness, my brain yelling all the ways I’ve failed, every reason I won’t make it, why everything will fall apart. No energy to answer back, no energy to stand outside of the thoughts and let them be, just lying there listening to them, not sleeping, sleeping, not sleeping again.

Finally got up to make tea. Met Jiggs in the kitchen. Chatted about whatever. I put a pan to boil, emptied in handfuls of pasta, chopped onion and red pepper and courgette and garlic, fried them up and added tomato, basil. Quorn pieces for protein. Jiggs went to his room to carry on watching a film. I watched the pasta swirl in the pan. The world dark outside. The kitchen cold.

Hey. I’m not out boozing. Booze was medicine, and it made me feel good, or at least numb, and I’m not numb anymore, or good. Am I good? I’m OK. Am I?

I am. This is life. There’s so much sadness here and so much pain, and now I’m fully here to experience it. It’s harder than when I was boozing, much, much harder - but it’s also more real. To feel this pain and to not turn away from it, to stay on the path, to remain upright, to carry on going: that's the only way that matters. I choose this way. Even on goopy black nights like tonight, I choose this way.

Day 120: Story Structure Notes #2

So, the hero has answered a call to adventure, travelled to the threshold between the ordinary and magical worlds, and pierced their way through. Maybe they’ve been swallowed by a great creature. Maybe they’ve journeyed across an ocean. Blasted at lightspeed into space. Stowed away on an alien ship. Become trapped in a bathhouse for the spirits. Been bitten by a radioactive spider. Or, like Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings film (I can’t remember if it happens in the book), they’ve simply reached the farthest point from the Shire they’ve ever travelled, and taken another step.

What happens next is what Joseph Campbell terms the Road of Trials. This is the quarter of the circle where the hero moves downwards towards what they want (or what they must get). They face a number of challenges that test their determination and ability to achieve their goal. If the hero is Chihiro from Spirited Away they perform chores in the bath house and learn the adult cycles of work and rest. If the hero is The Dude from The Big Lebowski they set about unravelling the web of intrigue and deceit behind Bunny being kidnapped and, more importantly, their rug being peed on. If the hero is John McClane from Die Hard they fight a whole load of terrorists.

The Road of Trials is where the unnecessary ego-trappings of the hero fall away, or are torn off, bit by bit - the elements that kept them safe and secure, but also stuck, within the ordinary world, and for which they will have no use in the depths to which they are descending, being removed.

The posh urbanite stranded in the jungle loses her makeup bag, her mobile phone, her mink fur coat. The astronauts stranded in space lose their high-tech scanners and engines and life-support gizmos. Luke Skywalker loses his guide in Obi-Wan, and thus his attachment to a parental figure who would keep him mollycoddled and protected. John McClane loses his shoes, his clothes save a primal vest, and, as Dan Harmon notes in his brilliant essays about story structure, eventually even his civilised persona:

“McClaine is advised by a terrorist to whom he earlier showed mercy: "The next time you have a chance to kill someone, don't hesitate." John shoots him several times and thanks his corpse for the advice. The cop has begun to fall away, piece by piece, revealing his inner cowboy.”

It is also during this stage that the hero meets allies, discovers a power within themselves, finds that there is an element of the universe willing to hold them aloft, bear them forwards. They have taken a leap of faith into the unknown, crossing the threshold of adventure, and it is ever true that though there is great danger around every corner, darkness threatening to engulf them, obstacle after obstacle to be overcome, there are also “other forces at work in this world [...] besides the will of evil.” And that, all heroes agree, is an encouraging thought indeed.

The Road of Trials often play out like a succession of mini stories, each with their own call to adventure, crossing of the threshold, movement towards a goal, achievement, and journey back to the status quo (the status quo being here the quarter circle between 3 and 6 o’clock), as the hero trains in their arts, learns valuable lessons, fights towards the dragon’s lair, and in many other ways is prepared by the external world for the moment at the nadir of the circle, the inner sanctum of mystery, the lowest point of the unconscious mind.

For, coming up, is the end of the road...

Day 119: Story Structure Notes #1

Doing some thinking about story structure in that first Bourne film, The Bourne Identity. Want to write something about it, but need to get it straight in my head. Just gonna make some notes here.

Monomyth, then. The hero’s journey. The concept, mostly from Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that all stories are essentially one story, with a structure that comes up time and time again. Stories tell the song of human growth, of the individual self’s journey into the universal, a cosmic unity, and back again.

So the world of the story is a circle, split in two.

Ordinary and magical. Light and dark. Life and death. Order and chaos. Conscious and unconscious. Village and forest. Kansas and Oz. The pastoral, bucolic, peaceful, tranquil calm of the Shire, and the big scary wild world of the rest of Middle Earth.

The hero's journey is the movement from the ordinary into the magical, on a quest to steal fire, slay a dragon, find a treasure, rescue a kidnapped non-gender-specific person - to learn, to grow, to change - and then the movement back up to the ordinary, using whatever pearls or insights were attained to heal the ills that had become ossified within the status quo, and setting a new "normal". 

So the hero starts at the top of the circle, in the ordinary world, comfortable yet aware (perhaps only dimly) that things are a little off. Luke Skywalker bored on the farm on Tatooine. Neo a miserable office worker and twilight hacker, isolated and restless. Bilbo Baggins fat and lazy at Bag End. Harry Potter living in the cupboard in Privet Drive, being, let's be honest, criminally abused by the Dursleys.

Then comes the herald, and the call to adventure. A wind blowing in from lands unknown. A note. A treasure map. A dead body. A wizard organising an unexpected party. In Star Wars it’s the message for Obi-Wan hidden within the droid, and Obi-Wan’s desire for Luke to accompany him to Alderaan. In Harry Potter it’s the letters from no one. For Neo the herald is the white rabbit tattoo, leading him to Trinity, and Morpheus, and the promise that his whole life has been a lie, and that that lie can end, and he can awaken to the truth, if he just has the guts to swallow the red pill. Whatever form the call to adventure takes, it’s a signifier that change is coming. All that was congealed and rigid and routine in the hero’s life is about to get liquefied, shaken up, turned on its head.

There can be a step around here that Campbell calls the refusal of the call. This is Luke saying to Obi-Wan that Obi-Wan must be crazy, Luke has to go home and tidy his room, play with that little T-16 model he’s got, finish his chores. He’s scared, and he doesn’t feel ready to become an adult just yet, now it comes to it.

This is also Neo coming back in off the ledge outside his office, letting the agents take him into custody. Bilbo waking up after the party to say, hang about, dwarves? Gold? I must have been mad. I’ll go and do the washing up and forget about that nonsense. It’s the wobble, the fear, the uncertainty of the task.

Generally the hero gets over this moment, or else the adventure comes to get the hero instead. The Empire burning Luke’s homestead. Gandalf hurrying Bilbo away to meet the Dwarves, without even his pocket handkerchief. Hagrid busting down the door to the hut on the Scottish island when Uncle Vernon refuses the call on Harry’s behalf.

Then comes the crossing of the threshold. This is the point at which the hero pierces, or is thrust through, the boundary between the ordinary and magical realms. The point his adventure truly begins. Sometimes there’s a threshold guardian blocking the door. A squadron of stormtroopers amassing in the hangar in Mos Eisley to stop the Millenium Falcon from blasting off. The physical barrier of Platform 9 ¾. Sometimes there’s a crucifixion or death into the underworld. A night-sea journey. A trip into the belly of the whale. Star Wars has both those last two as well, because George Lucas really leaned on Campbell’s words to help him turn his gibberish drafts into a workable screenplay.

But the point is that crossing realms is not easy, it takes either an immense force of will on the part of the hero, or a violent move on the part of the chaos world reaching up and grabbing the hero, pulling them down.

If there’s a flight or night journey across the threshold it can be magical and weightless and serene, though, if the hero is confident and ready. The broomstick ride in Kiki’s Delivery Service, the Hogwart’s Express rocketing through the dusk. Or it can be trippy and vomit-inducing and painful, like Neo’s existentially revolting awakening into the goopy mech-spider hell of the Real.

But however it happens, the hero must break out of the routine of the world within which they have been thus far living, and into a deeper, wider world of symbols, archetypes, shifting forms. Survival in this strange land will involve a number of trials...

[Part Two]

Day 118: The worst kind of shame

Naomi walks in, catches it on my screen. I pull the cursor across the expanse of pixels, 1080 down, 1920 across - why do they make screens so large these days, so revealingly large? - I drag the cursor at breakneck speed, grapple for the minimise button, but it is too late. Naomi has seen.

I reach forwards and turn the power to the monitor off. The illicit pixels flash in neon for one final moment, then fall to darkness. The darkness of a pit inside me.

My heart is thumping.

Naomi stands in the doorway there, lit from behind, her slippers frozen to the thick carpet in front of the door.

"Well," she says.

I pull a smile at her wide as the grave.

"You've started up again," she says. It isn't a question.

"I-" I begin.

"-Fuck that," she says. "After everything you promised me. After all the tears. All the apologies. I can't believe I listened to you. I can't believe I listened when you said you'd changed."

I want to reach out to her, touch her cheek.

"It was only this one time," I say.

"Oh fuck off, Dan. How often have I heard that from you? I'm such a goddamned idiot. And with the card for the joint account, I suppose?"

"There was a special offer."

"I'll bet there was. Christ, look at you. Red faced. Panting. Glassy eyed. How long have you been at it? All afternoon?

"Not that long."

Naomi just looks at me. Looks and looks.

"You told me never again," she finally says.

"I'm weak," I reply. "I don't have the strength that others have. I was doing so well. But then this month they released the Battle for Azeroth expansion. The reviews have all been saying it takes the game back to the core of what World of Warcr-"

"-DO NOT USE THAT NAME IN MY HOUSE! I TOLD YOU NEVER TO USE THAT NAME. I'M PACKING MY THINGS. I'M STAYING AT CHRISTINA'S TONIGHT. DON'T TRY TO CALL ME. WE'RE THROUGH."

I watch her go. I hear her in the bedroom. Then the stairs, the door, the engine of the car. I sit a while longer, and then I turn the monitor back on again.

Day 117: Moonlight cocktails

Grey glooming expanse of sky. City rising to meet it. The benign thrum of traffic at the junction down the hill. Telephone wires rattling in the wind. Burglar alarm on red brick blinking into the night. The soft-padding prowl of tabby cat, slinking into shadows between car and drive.

The sky alive, a sheet of rain moving in from the east. Moving in, the sky throbbing in thickness, then it is over us, the raindrops cool against the warmth of evening, the droplets pattering onto the patio furniture, the Velux windows, the old outhouse's roof's waiting slate. The grass wet. The door stood open. A fly aglow in the kitchen's light.

Housemates drinking moonlight cocktails, infusions of blackberry and apple and ginger and mint. Smashing Pumpkins from a phone's tinny speakers. Crusted tea towel hung over the chair.

Feel these moments. Catch them as they disintegrate. Paint them softly into the mind.

Day 116: Mirror

There are children playing in the mirror pool in the centre of Bradford. The fountains shoot high into the air and the sun is low and the families wait with pushchairs while the children run into the water shrieking. One little girl in purple shalwar kameez wanders serenely, golden sunlight in her hair, and the shallowness of the pool and the reflections on the surface give the impression that she is walking on water.

I am with my mother and uncle, we are going to the galleries, exploring the old mills, wandering round the ostentatious Victorian brick buildings lining the streets. We view the Hockney exhibition, rascally and bright and vivacious. We eat carrot cake in the bookshop cafe in the old wool exchange; sit looking out over the balcony discussing Corinthian capitals and gerrymandering and Trump. All conversations lead to Trump, inevitably. My uncle buys a book about the apostles. I buy No Logo by Naomi Klein.

We spy opportunities for photographs on the backstreets, but the sky is grey and the lighting flat; then we move away and the sun comes out and the shadows leap. We climb a cobbled hill and my mum says her head is "bleugh", she's not taken her medication, we feel selfish and tell her to go at her own pace, everything is OK. We walk past white girls gossiping on red bricks walls, unemployed white men gobbing on the floor, Asian kids playing with tennis balls in the shade. A group of Asian lads come up to us to ask how we're doing, to shake our hands, to wish us a happy Eid. We had planned to find a good spot for curry but Mum needs her medication and I'm beat from work and so we turn instead for home.

Winding in through the suburbs of High Green and Grenoside and Hillsborough I see the Hallamshire rising out of the trees on the hill in the distance, and I feel that bittersweet sadness of returning home. Work first thing tomorrow. Saying goodbyes to family. Darkness drawing in. But no escaping into whisky glasses or spliff smoke; stand instead inside the sadness, let the lonely wolf of my heart howl.

Another day down. Tick it off. Find strength in this, and carry on.