“When you understand that all things are the same, you are on the road to wisdom, and nothing is more fruitless and sour than that.”
“‘We suffer from loss, and are facing it. And we have, in our inchoate way, a yearning to understand what cannot be understood, to accept what is unacceptable, and to acquire some small modicum of wisdom that may guide us.'”
“‘Few of us practise a religion, though we are occasionally and ceremonially observant. The absence of faith is regrettable, for there was considerable solace embedded in the structures and strictures that our forebears practised and in which they believed. […] nothing can replace religious faith. It’s like virginity. Either you have it or you have to do without it. And scepticism and irony are such thin soup …'”
“In the last months I’d sought ethical advice: enlisted Plato, sniffed up a bit of Kant, repaired to the blessed Hume. They scratched their heads furiously, and little flakes of wisdom fell off. Philosophy is the dandruff of hard thinking. I brushed it off. I ggave a shrug of doubt that Descarted would have been proud of …”
“[…] boys like simple answers, and endings. I should have provided one, that’s what people understand and need. Whereas asll I offered is yet another example of the fact that life is a blasted heath of ill-understood obbligations and motives, inadequate actions and reactions, improbable explanations and diagnoses. How do I say this, without examplifying it?”
There was so much in this book that was able to articulate frustrations I have been feeling lately, in particular working where tick boxes and SOPs are needed for EVERYTHING, where people stick to the script even though it seems obvious that it would be BEST to not stick to it at this stage. Yet explaining the why it would be best, as it’s coming out, leads to some people doubling down on their need for the SOP life raft. So much we continue to plough through rubble to clear a path through the next rubble.
Yesterday the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘Song or the Asking’ came into my head. I played it and sobbed my heart out. Clearly I needed it There’s no explanation there, no teaching it, just a feeling. What would we do without the arts? How sick would we be? And yet there is no way to adequately explain how and why we need it, not without someone wanting to strip it down and sell it or create an SOP out of it. Or sharing it in an attempt to connect with someone to be met with blankness, or worse – couldn’t-care-lessness, I will talk about myself now while I share my shiny ‘Time to talk/Be Kind’ bullshit buttons on my socials.
I have become so cynical and unpleasant over the last 12 months or so. I can feel it. I Googled for help – a type of burn-out. Hoping a change of job, new challenges, new environments and working with the complexity that is people, will be the remedy (hopefully a large part of it) to the blatantly meaningless processes I’ve been doing for too long.
Burnout is a phrase that comes up a lot, often thought of as resulting from working too long, high pressure work, not enough sleep etc. But there are different types of burnout. I definitely don’t work too many hours, I have an enviable work-life balance. Burnout can result from being under-challenged as well as overloaded, and that’s certainly the case for me. When I started my job there was a lot of challenge for me – just working as part of a large team, working inter-departmentally, answering the fucking phone! It’s ok that I’m needing a next thing – is my grump really due to this? I think so, it’s been two years too long.
For a while I felt empowered, on the road to wisdom, libido transformed from the sexual energy of youth, the creative drive to reproduce, into a drive to create visual arts, writing. Not a loss of drive but a reining in, more control. The energy was flowing.
Then last year I noticed: I’d stopped singing in the car. An absence of wanting to sing. I though, I’m getting older, perhaps I need more energy for other things. I felt sad about it.
Well, this morning I SANG! I cried and was relieved. A sang because I needed to, the energy as there. The energy I described as passion, the libido described by Jung, it is still there, but it’s fleeting. Without an attachment to knot to, can I keep it? My Magical Other was my anchor. Can the anchor be creation itself?
What I ultimately got from reading Darke Matter was that much of the art that interests me is about death. I’m terrified of death, I think it’s a huge cosmic joke, a terrible mistake that we have this awareness, yet I chose a road to awareness. Now I’m like a rabbit in the grim reaper’s glare. Perhaps I need to scamper off into the verge again. In the face of it we keep to our SOPs because why not?
The number of artists creating about death, they are doing it against the same threat, they’re just able to use it to create. I’m afraid I will use stagnate. Can I join them? Do I have that strength?
Creation is the only way. Perhaps I should ‘be kind’ and concede that this may include SOPs. And moments.
The news isn’t helping. Trump, Musk, Farage – I’m terrified of vomiting but gladly pass me a bucket. Cosmic joke indeed.
Turning 40 this year and I hope it might come with a boost. If my libido is not as free-flowing as it was, I am glad I was able to create something in the short time I was able. Can I use the memory of those times, passion by proxy, to keep going? Remembering feelings without feeling them – that’s imagination, that’s CREATION.
Desire without an object?!- the object can be anything, even the will to create. I have tools, time (hopefully), health, liberty. Can this coming decade be the one where freedom doesn’t come with the burdens of feeling the need to be liked, to feel a certain way, to look a certain way?
Perhaps it’s a combination of the burnout plus bereavement that’s led to this blanket lack of feeling. Tired, under pressure (a lot of it self inflicted – deadlines over spontaneous creation – I’ve become an SOP). I hope my flow returns, that shining light in my chest when finishing a poem or a painting that just clicks my heart strings to let me know:
YES
That’s it.
It’s feels like Cyndi Lauper singing ‘I Drove All Night’
