determinations

I think that temperature can be a good analogy for depression. Severe depression is like being permanently cold and having no way to warm up. You’re not free and flexible. Over many years, through catering to my own anxiety and depression, I had cultivated a cold world in my mind. Interest begets warmth, but the problem with depression is that you don’t feel interested in anything. But that’s also something that can be cultivated. Through following my interests, I can build refuges in my mind. 

I’ve written before about the 3 crucial conversations I had in 2022. The one I had with the nurse in detox was about how, through catering to my anxiety, through withdrawal and rumination, I had built my anxiety into something all-consuming, like a toxic plant or a monument to terror that requires all my attention. She said, imagine what you could do if you engage in life. You could cultivate a health-giving plant or a monument that celebrates character, spirit, joy, beauty. It’s not just about being physically active — like doing exercise — or being socially active — doing stuff with people — although it is about those things, but there’s a kind of mental activity that is the opposite of rumination and withdrawal. 

NF’s song Mansion is about the dwelling we build for ourselves when we take refuge in fear and doubt. That’s a mystery that really interests me — how, with depression especially, what we fear and loathe becomes a refuge that we seek. We take refuge in the thing that we are taking refuge from. It’s like a recursive function. I think it’s about control. We want to tame and domesticate our fear. We serve it, thinking that we will be rewarded by its subservience when what we actually get is our subservience. 

When I think in general about all the mental vicissitudes I’ve been through in my life, it’s with a sense of regret, even bitterness. If I wasn’t so messed up mentally, I would have been more successful, more normal, happier, nicer to people. I would have been able to make a meaningful, positive contribution to the world. But for some reason, when I think about the actual experience of those struggles — like, thinking about particular battles rather than the whole war — I feel a sense of appreciation that I went through those things. I see some value that I didn’t see at the time. 

reading the waves

Books like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves require a different kind of reading. You have to resist the urge to continually interpret what you’re reading and just let the text talk to you — take it in and see what forms in your mind. 

words @

Places I write:

• This blog - What I write here is very free, informal, experimental. 
• Medium - These are more like proper essays or articles, that I write for an audience. 
• Substack - Here I write about English, literature and literary theory.
• Patreon - This is something new, where I'm going to try to write fiction.

200

Sometimes I feel like what I write has to be profound to matter, but then I was thinking about the value of writing about everyday life and concerns. In 200 years’ time, people are going to be interested in what life was like in 2026, and what seems ordinary and everyday now will then be more interesting than most other kinds of writing. The example of Anne Frank comes to mind. She just wanted to write her own thoughts and reflections relative to the difficult experience she was going through. When she did that, she surely wouldn’t have thought that anyone else would read what she wrote. At most she may have shared some of what she wrote with people she was close to. But look what happened. Her work is timeless, immortal, treasured by millions. 

tfw

when you tune out and realize that you've been listening to an ad for 5 minutes and your song hasn't come on yet

possession

E: do you ever feel it's not coming from you at all?

W: yes, it's as if I just chanced to be in the right place and it chose me. Is that strange?

E: no. I feel that too....when my writing is at its best. 

Sometimes it's not as if you're writing something or you're creating something....it's as if this thing has to be written and it's using you for that purpose. at the same time, you know you're writing it. 

page and screen

I enjoyed the TV show, The Man in the High Castle, so much that I got the book by Philip K Dick. It's a good example of the principle that, to faithfully adapt a book for the screen, you have to change the story in fundamental ways. 

The basic idea is the same. The axis, not the allies, won the second world war, so America is governed by the Reich and the Japanese. There is a subversive text or set of texts that show a world where the allies won. In the TV show, the subversive texts are films, but in the book, it's a book. 

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In a TV series - a text on a screen - the subversive text is a film - a text on a screen - but in the book, it's a book. In a funny way, it's not even a change. It's a direct adaptation. It's faithful to the spirit of the book, not the letter of the book.