There are symptoms of physical sickness, sinus and ear infections for example, that mirror depression. The torpor and low key anguish, and I mean not stabbing anguish but the pervading, enduring ache, are there. What is most curious to me though is the sensation that sounds and voices are very far away. The person three feet away speaks in what is presumed to be a conversational level, and they sound like they’re talking to someone else in the next room. To listen is like eavesdropping from behind the door and finding it so difficult to discern all the words that it becomes wearisome and I’m inclined to quit and move away. Move away and go about my business with something else.

A lecture on depression with a renowned biologist.

An interview with a famous writer.

A documentary on Francis Bacon.

Not the most likely segue, but Bacon has always fascinated me. There is something in his work, quite obvious really, that lays bare the more severe side of the human psyche and having grown up not just adjacent to but IN what could be considered profound violence, I find the images validating in some odd way. They resonate in a very personal way but there is also an odd comfort in knowing that these things exist in other people too. Some people are better at expressing them, but the fact that Bacon does move so many people in one way or another brings me a sense of connectedness. We all have something in us, perhaps similar to obsessing on a scab on a skinned knee, that is at once repulsive and beautiful. There is a nearly sexual charge of peeling it back with a thumbnail, a sweet pain right on the edge of orgasmic, but not quite and of course we are not supposed to liken the two realms. We frighten ourselves sometimes and there are voices in our heads that we fear would have us banished from polite society. What was it that Dylan said, “if my thought dreams, could be seen, they’d probably put my head, in a guillotine. But it’s alright, ma. I’m only bleeding.”

I can’t turn away from a Bacon painting. It can be like staring at your own portrait and thinking, holy shit man, you actually see me? You can actually see me? I can’t hide from you, man. Wow!

This could be an uneasy confession if these thoughts were my sum total, but this is how the world (and I) appear sometimes when waking up and looking in the mirror, or sitting on the train with a hundred strangers. It’s far from the sum total though, and it seems pointless to try to hide it for fear that someone else might see it as the sum, or frankly, see it as utter madness.

Art, and life itself sometimes, can be a sort of exorcism of the larger than life dybbuks that attach themselves to us as we grow from birth to adulthood. I used to think that some people were immune, or that they got some sort of a pass, and they made it from 0 to 20 unscathed. That doesn’t seem to be the case though. Maybe the passage through the birth canal itself, with the head mashed and the neck contorted, is enough of a memory (latent or otherwise) to leave the scars that drive us to therapy or dope later in life. Adolescence, even a relatively uneventful one, will take care of the rest. I only see that now though at this point in my life, that everyone has a twisted neck and a headful of devils. That’s the thing about Bacon though. He became famous because people recognized what they saw on the canvases. It was all very close to home.

But I was talking about ear infections, wasn’t I? Leaving work was a relief yesterday. I no longer had to struggle to make out what anyone was saying. I didn’t have to listen to anyone at all, and hence no response necessary. A conversation at some point today might be nice, or maybe tomorrow. Not now though. I feel 1000 miles away. In the meantime, this is me trying to relieve the pressure in my head (insert smiley face here.)