Melancholy Mood - Don’t read sad things when you’re sad (or do)
So, the festive break back in St Albans was pretty wonderful all round (though I got too drunk on Christmas Eve, and made a dick out of myself, that only partly ruins the feeling because I can’t remember it so it’s hard to feel that bad).
Anyway, family, friends and loved ones abound back there, it’s just the place that drowns m, so I had to run away.
Anyway, my mood today is entirely worn out.
Worn out by happiness leads, obviously, to a slight downbeat feeling, not least because I bumped into people who are unwell or down in someway (there’s lots of people I love down at the moment, for all those reading this, remember that I love you…all of you…all the time. I consider my happiness secondary to yours, and I offer you all anything I can do for you…just ask, or just approach me with a weepy face and open arms and I’ll give you a hug bigger and warmer than the sun…that’s a promise).
I’m not going to go into other people’s down, but I just want to acknowledge that it’s there, and offer support, particularly before I start self obssessedly whinging myself. Like I say, I think this one is just part of the cycle, life remains a wheel (oh Boethius) and we can’t be up all the time, the troughs and the peaks generally average out if you pay enough attention.
So I came home, to an empty (but uncharacteristically clean and tidy) house, a little down.
The answer of course was to listen to the cheerful music that had been my staple before I came down here. So I did, including the song labelled below, which is actually quite melancholy, but is so outrageously heart burstingly good, that it needs to be name-checked (with a forest on the sea, if you ask me…not that anyone ever does).
Anyway, that ran out so I turned to one of my presents, which was the big uber reissue of the Nick Drake Fruit Tree Vinyl box set.
I’ve got all the albums already, but this is vinyl, in case I ever get round to organising that Chill out DJ afternoon/night thing I want to do.
Anyway, it also includes a booklet, and a DVD. I haven’t watched the DVD yet, but I’m here listening to all his albums (remembering just how gorgeous they all are, devastatingly so.
And then I read the booklet, just snippets and the original preface. Fascinating, lovely discussion of some of the musical techniques that mark out his unique style. Recording notes and a compressed life story.
That boy was melancholy, beautiful and melancholy, and only able to communicate emotion through his music, which includes some of the most haunting and beautiful music I’ve ever heard.
Communication is so important to me, as is music, but I’d be horrified if the only way I could communicate was through music. And then he got too down, real rock solid, black cloud depression. Not just me having a whinge, but full on motionless, stuck staring into space and unable to communicate.
And he couldn’t even perform whilst at his darkest, so he had no outlet.
It’s so hard not to cry, imagining what that’s like. But my own repressions stop me doing that (though I did cry twice during the Doctor Who Christmas special).
Anyway, the point is, not the point in my title, because that’s become swiftly irrelevant.
The point is, that we need to remember how dangerous (and neccesary) sadness is. And how important it is to communicate, anyway you can.
And support, be there for people whenever you are needed, help and love.
When I’m whinging here, it’s partly to just get things out, and it normally does. I’ve come close (debatably all the way) to mental breakdown, not depression, but a loss of contact with the world. And I’ve worked out, so far, how to deal with that (now it’s just the alcoholism to learn to control).
But yeah, I know what darkness is, even if I can’t imagine what it was like for Nick, or anyone else, no matter how well I know them. Communication is often flawed, and the core of someone’s experience is unknowable.
That’s fine, but only as long as you remember that, and make every effort to open up, and let people talk to you when they need it.
That’s something I need to learn, not to interrupt.
But yeah, nothing makes me more mad than when people deny the devastating effect of depression. Acting like it’s some kind of laziness or pretension. The fact is that the mind is the weirdest thing in the world. And it’s where we live.
We put up with our vicissitudes, and we try to get back. And we try to help each other along wherever we can.
I promise to keep on doing that until the day I die. If I don’t, then I’ve failed. If I can’t be there for the people I love then I am nothing.
I’m going to try and remember that.
Sorry for seriousness and strangeness, but I think that’s my mood.
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Now playing: Thom Yorke - [Eraser Remixes #01] Atoms For Peace (Fourtet Remix) [foobar2000 v0.9.4.3]
via FoxyTunes
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