INSOMNIA BOY
INSOMNIA BOY
I was watching Exorcist III the other night. That’s not the confession, mind you. But there was some fantastic dialogue in there, mainly the line that says “I’ve been doing children’s confessions for years. I’ve developed a taste for boiled sweets, listening to them for hours.”
This is not, of course, to say that the Exorcist III is a bad film. It’s just not particularly good. No, my confession is bigger than that. As I sat slumped in an insomniac daze in front of my computer at 1.00am I had my moment of revelation, my moment of clarity in the fog of exhaustion.
I suffer from a series of medical conditions that have shaped my life. Mental illness has plagued my family for years. There’s nothing glamourous about that : in fact mental illness is the worst type there is – there are no visible symptoms, either of the illness or the cure, only behavourial ones. You can’t operate on it (bar trepanning, which would’ve worked if you hadn’t stopped me), nor can you cure it. You can only treat it, the invisible enemy, the unseen demon.
My particular demons are dysthmia, and hypermania. Dysthmia, which I can’t even spell, is a semi-permanent form of depression, sometimes it last for years, sometimes for lifetimes. It’s like NSU, it’s a Non-Specific form of depression that is a long-running, low-level form of depression, like a slow release capsule, instead of one almighty depressive blowout, slowly releases over a period of years a sense of depression, feelings of pointlessness and a constant state of exhaustion causing highly erratic sleeping hours. This week alone bedtimes have veered between 11pm and 5am, getting no less than 4 hours sleep a night, no more than 7. And its driving me nuts – I just wish I had an off switch, or a timer, like an alarm clock, or a video recorder.
Hypermania is the other form, which is manifest here, and in everything I do. It’s a sense of hyperactivity caused by dysthmia, an attempt to work one’s way through depression through activity, to assign meaning to ones life through doing things. To say I did this, I did that, I achieved things, I made a difference. Thom Yorke has it. Spike Milligan had it. And whilst you can function perfectly normally whilst under its influence, one starts to feel that you don’t belong to yourself, that your body and your soul is only on loan from someone else, and that it can be taken back at any time. You are only a passenger in your own life.
I do things that I feel are of worth in order to justify devouring the earths resources greedily. I feel that I have to acquit myself to whomever is judging me, by saying “But, But, But, I did this and that….”. Maybe I made the world a better place. Maybe not. I don’t know.
ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS
And this where I came in. My body holds me hostage : my sense of drive, my sense of having to do things, results in my body often being pushed far beyond the natural limits. Whilst I plead with my psyche to switch down, shut off, have a break, come on, gimme some rest, my synapses buzz and burr in furious defiance. No, No, No, they plead. This is a scientific experiment, the mind can rule the body, we will be conscious forever. Awake forever.
A sentence that none of us can imagine. An ever increasing penalty of restlessness, or fractured reasoning, impaired judgement, and a lifetime doomed to always crashing any heavy machinery you might want to use.
My time is ghettoised by time fascists. I’m convinced I live on a 26 hour clock, whilst the rest of the world slumbers on a 24 hour clock, and I’m trying to shoehorn my life into their narrow lanes.
There’s always so much to do. Always so much to see. Always one more book to read, one more film to watch, always something more to absorb, note, follow. We live in a time of hyperinformation. Where there is too much information – too much is said, and not enough of it is worth listening to. Everyone can become an expert on anything in an instant, after a quick Google, and there’s no way of disseminating the facts from the fiction. It all looks the same on the web. Besides which, if you really think that those Nigerian Princes are emailing you then you really are a fool.
THE GREAT THINGS UNDONE
I still haven’t finished my great novel. I still haven’t managed to bed Drew Barrymore (though come to think it, have you seen the films she’s made recently? Donnie Darko is the only one worth watching, how great talent squanders itself on poor decisions), hell, I can’t even master a drum kit let alone the rest of the world, so there’s always things I need to do and learn. After all, if people in the Matrix can upload Kung-Fu in a matter of seconds, then that’s the power I need. Instead the Superpower I have rages from being Mr. Furious to being Insomnia Boy. I wouldn’t pass the entrance exam at Hero High, that’s for sure.
Instead I might set up a branch of the Legion Of Substitute Heroes :The Alphabeticiser who can instantly order record collections? Baby, that’s me. Need someone who is furious at how so near, yet so far, from paradise the human race is, this fury born out of a love so strong for the human race that not even a nuclear reactor can contain it? Baby, that’s me.
Here I am, in the top 50,000,000 richest people on the earth, the top 0.5 percent of the world, furious, angry, and often overdrawn, wondering How Did This Happen? Where is this going? I’ve no right to be unhappy : I live in a world of material comfort, and yet… and yet….
There’s something at the heart of capitalism that does not spiritually satisfy : for all our technological advances, our capabilities, our endless leisure options, there’s nothing yet that can make us happy, nothing that can make us satisfied. Nothing that makes us realise how lucky we are, and what mankind should do next to survive the impending financial and ecological disasters facing us. That’s what we should look for next – a solution, because if we don’t we’ll find that he who laughs last is he who is the last one left. And nature always laughs last.
© copyright Mark Reed, 1991-2004 except where indicated