A Hunger for Melancholy
I was the kid in art class who, when he couldn’t draw anything that looked like what he was trying to draw, scribbled over it with a frenzied gusto and declared it art.
I create brain rot. Since a way very far long time ago. I resist convention because it wants to enslave me. I prefer a different kind of shackle. Language as an alien virus is so clichéd as to be the new grammar. Metaphor is dead. Simile is the same as it ever was—also dead. Dead, dead, dead. Pretty as can be dead. Poetry is not dead, never was, never will be, but it was never what they thought, anyway. What, after all that, is a sacred hunger? Food as poison. Taboo buds on our tongues. Who is responsible for the game-ification of the cycle of birth and death? What was never born cannot be re-born, because it, too, was already dead. Dead before it ever hit the ground. Here, have this little piece of honeycomb. Suck the sweet goo from the waxy catacomb, which insinuates between your teeth.
Religion is good for poetry, but deadly to the soul. Pleasure must be measured properly before consuming. Binge and purge as sacred oxymoronic ritual redundancy department.
That was the overture.
I am an old. I have to keep reminding myself. I took some nude photos of myself last week, but fret not, for they were as tame as they could be. I wasn’t interested in seeing, or showing, my junk. Just my trunk, limbs, and covered face. I was making art. I was imitating art. What I thought art might be, it was not.
My first mistake was using color film. (I thought it was black and white.) My second mistake was deciding to do it at all. My third mistake was terrible lighting. My skin was jaundiced yellow. My belly flab, well, let’s just stop right there. Ai Wei Wei took nudes of himself. Lots of famous artists have also done this. Being neither famous, nor an artist, I was admittedly brave for undertaking this minorly embarrassing experiment. Apologies to the film lab technicians. I trust they’ve seen worse, but still, I feel this wasn’t a fair thing for me to subject them to. All the evidence has been erased, but like a vampire’s reflection, it lingers in the m-word of memory. Call me the undertaker. At least he keeps his clothes on.
Malaga!
My depression is at its worst as summer ends and fall begins. Just before my September birthday. And it sneaks up on me every time. Not the birthday. The visit from the Black Dog. What a stupid metaphor. Dogs that haven’t been abused as pups are about as friendly an animal that walks the earth as a friendly animal can be. Don’t let my bad grammar distract you. I do it on purpose. I just celebrated my 67th 13th birthday. By celebrate, I meant to say I noticed it passing. A year ago, I would have been able to laugh with my grandkids about turning six-seven, but they’re moved on to dronkies to the mids.
I was the kid in art class who, when he couldn’t draw anything that looked like what he was trying to draw, scribbled over it with a frenzied gusto and declared it art. That’s what these words are doing. I missed surrealism because I was unalive at the time, but I am glad that fascism is back so we can do more of it. The best jokes are the ones that always have to be explained. The best jokes are always the ones that have to be explained.
Here’s a brilliant opportunity that I am sorry we are all missing: Trump is Ubu Roi! Why is there not a major production of Ubu Roi being staged at The Kennedy Center? I want to see an Ubu-Roi Opera with a literal burning dumpster center stage. I want this to happen so bad I’m writing music for it. I thought I wanted to go back on stage to “tell my incredible story,” but this is such a better idea for all of us. Please, please, please, someone manifest this miracle for me.
I am sorta kinda confident that my Fall depression is not related to my birthday. I don’t recall birthdays as a child at all. I don’t remember birthday celebrations for myself or any of my siblings, but I also don’t remember wanting to, or missing, celebrate. I’m not now and never have been ages. I observe number to body associations as they progress but this is a mere curiosity of culture that I don’t relate to. And of course I’ve wondered if late summer was when “it” might have happened. But I’m past needing to understand the timing of my cycles. It’s enough to simply ride their waves.
The good news is that I love the cooling of the air, the shortening of the days, the approach of Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and even christmas. I said before that the only thing that Ethel ever did good for me was to send me to a therapist. But she and ole Woodcock also always managed to make xmas fun. We were poor enough to eat gummint powdered eggs and number 10 size cans of stringy chicken sinews, but they somehow always managed to put a lot of presents under that disturbed plastic monstrosity we called a re-usable tree. I may be mico-managing my dusty noggin in retrospect to accommodate an accumulated theory, but I don’t remember them being particularly angry or violent during holiday season.
For a couple years, we kids were also encouraged to buy each other presents. The only reason I remember this is that I bought a present for Karl one time that I wanted for myself. I was never close to Karl (didn’t like at all), whom we used to refer to as Prince Valiant, but then later it was “the white sheep,” so I’m blank as to why exactly it was my obligation to gift him something. My most vivid memory of interacting with Karl was being surprised at how strong he was that time he was banging my head into the wall. I was a scrapper myself, and I was used to being able to physically hurt my friends more than they hurt me, but I remember most the feeling of helpless frustration that he could overpower me more than any sensation of head against wall.
Despite his not deserving it, that same year I gave Karl a book which I bought based solely on it’s title, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” I was young enough that I had no inkling of what the book was about, nor even what the title meant, but when I saw the title in the bookstore it was love at first sight. For I am a melancholy child, and I believe I have been since birth. I think Melancholy may be my Rosebud. One time, my tongue got frozen stuck on the metal bracket of my sled as I slowed to a stop at the bottom of the hill.
I’m at an age where two things are happening. I am wistfully regretting the many times I hurt you. I hope you’re reading this now, because I’m sorry.
And I am awkwardly forgetting words. Yesterday I ordered a burrito, “I’d like a regular carnitas burrito with pinto beans and a spinach tortilla.” The tortilla is a plain ole wheat burrito with some green dye, but it tastes better than the brown ones. The person at the counter said, “what kind of burrito?” and I was stumped. I couldn’t find the word ‘carnitas’ even though I had just spoken it seconds ago. It was a lumbersome moment. That means ‘cumbrous.’ I create brain rot because I have been fed too much of it, albeit slurping it up.
I don’t know that Melancholy can be shared, which is an idiotic thing to say. I suppose I ought to find and read that book, but I’m not sure I want Melancholy explained to me.
When I was around 10yo someone asked me what name I would choose for myself if I hadn’t been told that I am Eric. I mused not and simply said, “Ed.”
I think I like being Eric, which also means, “Eat Rice, I Can’t” but it feels like a foreign name. The word just seems not of me. It’s a fine name, as they go and come. Eric the Red. Eric the vampire. Eric the character of a horror graphic novel, cum TV series.
Wine is the most Melancholy of beverages, which is why I like it so much. I had a Sensei once whose Sensei used to like to drink red wine. This information comforted me.
I regret not having the discipline to become proficient with any kind of musical instrument. I took clarinet lessons as a kid, and I enjoyed it when our dog would sit beside me howling along with “Home on the Range.” I tried guitar as a teen, but it didn’t take. I took voice lessons but they didn’t took. I bought an electric laptop piano when I was into heroin, but sold it the next day. Finally, when I was way too old to do it, I took cello lessons, and I stuck with that for five years. I loved it, even though it was hard and frustrating, and I never got good. But I loved it, and I still love the cello. It’s the most Melancholy of instruments, and the closest to the human voice. Of all my regrets, quitting cello lessons is the greatest, but I had my reasons, or so I told myself. Now I just want to erase all those attempts with noise.
BTW, this is not free association. I began writing with a... point... an intention. Everything here is me struggling to get to the point. I feel like I need to create an expectation before I can say what I want to say, which is this: everything I do, every thing I create, is a manifestation of Melancholy. That's it. I'm that shallow. Call me easy.
Here's my latest zine...
And a song that I made that is not noisy...
This song is a work in progress, part of a larger work in progress, part of my story, part of me. I don't ever want to grow up.