Memories:

‘Life is the art of drawing without an eraser’

-       John  W Gardner

Sometimes household jobs take the right combination to be achieved.  It takes the right weather conditions, a gap in the day when I’m not having a light sabre battle with my son, or digging the garden with my wife.  I sorted our bookshelves out recently, getting rid of a number of books that I had neither the mental energy nor spiritual inclination to read again.  Out went the two Douglas Coupland books that aren’t as sublime as Girlfriend In A Coma.  See also, the two Chuck Palahniuk books that express the same ideas about the male psyche as Fight Club.

And then there is Guy Garvey.  I generally write this blog whilst listening to downloads of his show from BBC 6Music.  I’ve been a big fan of Elbow for the last ten years.  I’ve seen them live: twice with ex-girlfriends.  The mind twists and tries to accommodate the concept.  He played The Unthanks, whom I’ve adored for a similar period, but saw twice with my ex-girlfriend.  This got me thinking: how to do you separate the things you love; from the people that you don’t?  Which part of the universe do you separate; whilst keeping the soul whole?

There are some things I’ve always loved – I would say The Beatles, but being from Liverpool that’s more a contractual obligation than a matter of taste.  Shakespeare took a while, but I would postulate exposing teenagers to the greatest writer who ever lived is a difficult process.  It takes the breath of life to understand a man who wrote about every aspect of it.  I went off Star Wars for a while - the final straw was a large pile of merchandise that became another excuse for an argument with my ex.  Off to Oxfam it went.  Forgot about it, I did.  Hmm. Yes. 

The charity shops are filled with good intentions.  That and various copies of The Da Vinci Code.  But I do believe it’s possible to separate what you like; from the wreckage of your life.  What causes this process?  Time, I think.  It takes that, a space just to breathe and be you again.  When that song, a film, a TV programme stops making you think there is something in your eye.  When an anniversary becomes just another square on the calendar; or a note on your phone. 

Maybe too, you need the space in your life when that book isn’t there, that song isn’t on the radio, or that TV series gets cancelled.  In that divine, pure, dreamlike space; we feel comfortable enough to be alive, give ourselves permission to take another breath, trust another human hand or simply try again. And again.

But if you love it, it is part of you.  Great art is like that; it catches on the skin like pollen and takes on a new form as part of a human life.  Your life, to be precise.  No-one in history, ever has or ever will look or feel like you again.  That is not just new age bollocks, that is a bittersweet fact of life. Similarly, I think that Breaking The Waves is the greatest film of all time; because I saw it at the 051 Cinema in Liverpool in October 1996.  I think The Crow Road is my favourite Iain Banks novel; because I bought it when it came out in 1993.  My signed copy was lost by a so-called friend of mine. His later novels (let’s say from The Steep Approach To Garbadale onwards) aren’t as good as that.  The fact he died in June 2013 means I’m not going to get rid of any of them.  They are memories, part of my life and they’re not going anywhere. 

If it is about memory (and if you’ve been reading closely enough, you’ll know that I believe it is), then they are fluid, continually evolving things.  You create new ones, every second of every day.  And they link in with the eternal, ever shining ones.  I wouldn’t say Henry V is my favourite Shakespeare play. However, I know myself and my wife saw it at RSC on our first weekend away.  All You Need is Love isn’t my favourite Beatles song.  But we did play it at our wedding.

  

So: reject and gift aid the things that aren’t part of your psyche.  Accept and cherish those that are. 

Gardening:

‘The glory of gardening: head in the sun, heart with nature.  To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul’

-        Alfred Austin

It’s got that reputation, hasn’t it?  It’s something sad, slightly obsessive, middle-aged eccentrics do: like putting ships in bottles, collecting beermats, double bagging old comics or supporting Spurs.  Gardening doesn’t have the best reputation, but it’s slowly moving past baking as something everything right-minded, decent person does.  Which is appropriate really: nothing is ever fast or easy when it comes to gardening.

 

We arrived in Devon to the cold, slate bones of a late 1960’s council house.  The loosely termed ‘garden’; had both paving traced with weeds and plants that were on the verge of going to the big compost bin in the sky.  We started to get the vibe that this would require an almost equal application of both time and money.  Most things do. And yet, it didn’t really fit me yet.  It sorted drifted in and out as my soul rattled in my mind.  There was a sort of division of labour between my wife and I, both her and my stepson did the preparatory work as a mild Devon Winter set in.  I changed beds, hoovered, baked bread.

Relationship in a nutshell.

Once we’d had two late, but heavy snowfalls, the hard work could begin.  Equipped with a pair of rigger gloves my wife bought me, I was given a job that would require as much mental as physical strength.  There was a plant, left to us by the previous occupants.  The leaves of which, were growing brown. Mmm.  I can, thanks to Mrs McCready; now identify this as a Torbay Palm, genus Cordyline Australis.  We had vague plans to move Cordy into a pot.  However, this would not be as easy as we possibly envisaged it.

For a start, Cordy was well past her past.  In addition, she refused to move.  The best laid plans gang aft aglay in the green, palmy gaze of Cordy.  In addition, she refused to budge.  A hacksaw blade was applied to the trunk, which was relatively easy.  The hard part was digging the roots out of the ground.  I was instantly reminded of the quote by Seamus Heaney about working ‘to move a certain mass… through a certain distance, is to pull your weight and feel exact and equal to it’. However, Heaney was talking about ironing.  Feeling less metaphysical and more Withnailian; I started calling it ‘you fucker’. I called it the worst name I could possibly think of: that of my previous employer. 

This appeared to work admirably.  Dead fingers of black roots were lifted skyward by spade; from the heavy, argillaceous earth.  Or, to put it less eloquently, the fucker was finally loose.  I felt elation that Cordy was finally free.  Conversely, I felt something poisonous and noxious was ripped from my mind.  I had worked on something, both mentally and physically that had no place in my life.  Into the brown bin she went.  Gardening counts as good physical exercise, but it also counts as good mental exercise.  Maybe Cordy was emblematic of something that needed to be ripped from the psyche as much as the soil.  I certainly felt better after it.

This is not to say I’m the only one doing the work. While I’m doing these altruistic, almost Herculaean tasks my wife and stepson are pottering around: planting seeds, weeding, deciding which would be the best bed for planting; amongst a wide range of recently ripped up paving stones.

And, yet: I’m still seeing it as some sort of metaphor for, well everything basically.  Weeds and unwanted plants are things, people, places that need to be removed from your green little universe.  The hard work, the mental and physical effort needs to be applied, to feel alive again. Conversely the hard work pays off: the right plant, in the right place with the right care will; possibly produce results.  Sometimes that can be an immediate payoff, or some kind of delayed gratification. As metaphors go, it’s a pretty organic one; never mind an apposite one.

In short, gardening has re-wired my brain. It’s not put food in my belly yet, but it has certainly given me food for thought. It’s made me at peace with myself for the first time in a long time. It’s also made me look at things I took for granted, left behind or simply forgotten about in a different way.  Like most people, myself and my wife binge watch the odd boxed set.  When my stepson allows us to (current obsession: the Boss Baby series).  The other night, we found ourselves watching an episode of Love Your Garden we hadn’t seen, now the whole series is on Netflix.  For the moment, the fact that we’ve still got four series of current family obsession Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D to get through; wasn’t a major issue. 

So, this is the way I live now.  Separate trolleys in the garden centre, having split the purchases between us. Buying the odd garden magazine; for the bounteous serendipity of free seeds. Paying diligent attention; whilst inwardly groaning when Monty Don (my current guru) tell us ‘Here’s your jobs for the weekend’. Whistling the Gardener’s World theme at odd hours of the day. 

Gardening: you should dig it. 

#ynwa:

‘When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die’

-        Jean Paul Sartre

I have no direct experience of Hillsborough.  I’ll leave that to people who were actually there.  My experience is second-hand, shop-soiled by both where I live and who I am; both as a political and as a human animal.  There are a number of core things I believe in, as a result of what happened 29 years ago.

Firstly, it’s that The Sun is still the great, beating heart of darkness in the English consciousness.  Their headline, The Truth is still the greatest lie ever printed in a British newspaper. They’ve apologised several times, but as we say in Liverpool ‘they can shove it where Paddy shoved his ninepence’.  The Sun made us the enemy.  Thirty years ago, we were alongside other groups like Asians, gays and lesbians.  Now: this metaphorical ‘enemy’ is Muslims, transgender people, anyone with a mental illness.  

I believe Rupert Murdoch would regard this as progress.

It’s not the most egregious British newspaper.  I believe that is The Daily Mail, a paper which supported fascism; which both hates women and sexualises teenage girls at the same time.    But The Sun told a lie to sell newspapers.  It insulted a city and trivialised the grief of people to do so.  That is unforgivable.

I lived in Liverpool at the time.  I can remember the public burning of The Sun, the endless funerals, and the second-hand news of who had died and who had survived.  It’s a special city, Liverpool.  It’s like a column of Roman soldiers that closes ranks when one of us is attacked.  I saw this again four years later, when James Bulger was murdered.  I saw it again, ten years later when Ken Bigley was murdered by insurgents in Iraq.

It is still fashionable to insult our grief. Those who do, quite rightly suffer the wrath of our bombast.  Boris Johnson, a man with no principles, accused of us ‘wallowing in our grief’.  Billy Connolly was heckled off stage in London, after wishing that Bigley’s captors ‘would just get on with it’.  Alleged comedian Alan Davies played to a half-empty Liverpool Empire, after saying about Hillsborough ‘It gets on my tits, that shit’ on an Arsenal podcast. It seems that we are still fair game, even in the era of more minutes silence than you can throw a referee’s whistle at; fields of flowers sellotaped to lampposts and the oxymoronic phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’. To paraphrase Orwell: English grief good, Scouse grief bad.

On a side note, every time Liverpool plays Man Utd, Man City or Chelsea they sing songs about Hillsborough.  A minority of Liverpool fans sing songs about the Munich Air Disaster.  You do not fight shite with shite.  There needs to be a cultural change, a spirit of mutual respect.  It’s eleven humans against eleven, not city against city, class against class, death against death.

Ultimately, Hillsborough needs to be seen in the context of other English tragedies.  Five years prior to Hillsborough, Miners at Orgreave were beaten, attacked with dogs, arrested and charged for the mere crime of defending their livelihoods and communities. Again, South Yorkshire Police closed ranks to protect its members.  Last year, we had the fire at Grenfell Tower.  People died, at home, alone in the middle of the night.  I can already see the powers that be, closing ranks, mouthing platitudes and hoping it will all go away.

The over whelming message of Hillsborough, Orgreave and Grenfell is that if you are working class, you can be insulted, belittled, arrested, charged and ultimately killed by the upper classes. Your grief costs less than theirs.  You can be treated with impunity, simply due to the amount of zeroes in your bank account. On the bright side, we have our uses; the English working class.  We provide wealth and labour to the wealthy.  We can create convenient outrage for press barons.  We can be told that voting for Brexit - an act of economic and cultural hari-kari would be a good thing – by failed stockbrockers, insurance salesmen and overgrown public schoolboys.

However – we will not go away quietly, doffing our metaphorical cap. We are not as bovine as we seem.  We can stand together as one class, one group of people, in the face of almost insurmountable forces and odds.  #ynwa is not just a hastag; or even a song.  It should be a belief. 

Justice can be delayed, but not denied. 

Honesty:

‘To believe in something and not to live it; is dishonest’

-        Mahatma Ghandi

‘It felt as if there was something missing’.  The snow fell again and covered the landscape in an unfamiliar blanket of white crystals.  ‘It felt as if there was something missing’.  I looked at my last blog and I realised I wasn’t entirely being honest with you and by extension, myself.  ‘It felt as if there was something missing’.  A chain of events, one approaching a first anniversary led to an unhealthy state of mind. 

A year ago, we suffered a miscarriage.  We were told on the first NHS scan that our child had died, for reasons unknown. I was expecting to become a Dad; this was a welcome, overwhelming surprise.  However, it was loaded and salted with the risk that it might all go wrong.  I felt numb, unable to vocalise or feel it.  I remember some angry tears, but these were brief and unproductive.  I couldn’t really vocalise it, I felt as if Mother Nature had cheated us in some way.

There followed a few weeks of whispering in corners at work and DM’s on social media.  We always knew the awful inevitable process would happen. I watched my wife go through a few days of what was some grotesque parody of labour.  Miscarriage is an unspoken process, people daren’t speak of it. No, not in front of the children. But it’s the worst kind of cosmic joke.  The box we were given (containing a candle, a balloon and a prayer) seemed somehow inadequate.  It’s a lovely gesture, but seems sometimes like a consolation prize in every sense of the word.

I continued to stay silent. Not a tear.  I slipped into default male stoicism.  My main concern was looking after my wife and stepson, being a grafter.  Dead, but alive at the same time.  I gave them space to vocalise their feelings, but I didn’t give myself that privilege.  I continued to work in a job I hated.  I overate, which has always been a problem for me.  Always will be.  Food is fuel, but at the same time, stuffing your mouth is a way of stopping yourself from screaming.  The dayjob continued.  Hey ho, get up every four days and feel exhausted every other four.

My wife needed more support and I applied for a career break.  My employer was amenable to this, but the actual process would take three months.  I mused this over for a good four days.  I then decided to resign and become my wife’s full time carer. My emotions about leaving; were the proverbial mixed ones.  Sad to be leaving some nice people (and some annoyances in human form), but happy to be leaving something that was slowly killing me.

A few months later, I saw the local coffee shop was looking for staff.  This was New Year weekend and I felt it was time for a new start.  I loved the time and space that being a carer gave me, but at the same time: lazy and unproductive.   The nagging voice of conscience was nudging and interrupting my happiness.  I got the job, but it was more about mopping floors and cleaning toilets than it was about making coffee.  I felt I was learning, but I also felt I hadn’t been given a fair shot at the actual joyous process of a flat white or a cappuccino.  It would take time, I reassured myself as I came home every night with unsold bread, cakes and paninis. Free food is free food, after all.

My employer emailed for a meeting the day before Valentine’s Day.  This caused the creeping realisation about what was inevitably about to happen.  I handed my wife her presents, whilst at the same time being poked in the psyche by my own fear. The following day, I walked into my employer’s office.  Handed in my shirt, apron and name badge (which wasn’t mine). I would be charged for these, had I not.  I was asked to work my final shift.  I refused, caught the next bus.  The whole process had taken a little over twenty minutes. 

And then the snow came.  Twice, we were snowed in.  We put candles in a box and watched an orange splurge work it’s way across the weather map.  We listened to local radio and developed a drinking game; which involved us cheering and taking a slug of tea or coffee when we heard a local school was closed.  We watched both series of Agent Carter. And at the back of my mind, that insistent buzzing again.  I could feel myself, slipping and sliding down the icy path towards depression.  The two events, recent instances of loss and the unique unfairness of each one began to fall into place.  The fact that I hadn’t vocalised either, began to bubble.  And the last ingredient: It felt as if there was something missing.

I put a block on all of this.  I had an honest conversation with my wife and the pus came out of the wound.  She was quite right, as she was on a great many things: I hadn’t been honest with myself.  I need to vocalise my feelings.  Becoming honest with myself in words rather than in print.

Honesty is a much underrated human value.  It’s the first strand in the DNA of love and friendship.  I needed to vocalise what I was feeling; to process two very different kinds of loss.  One, takes up much more in terms of memory than the other.  Together, they were lethal to me.  I could have gone down the slippery slope, again.  I could have piled on the weight, again.  I could have been swinging between happiness and sadness, again.  Had I not been honest with myself.

In the end, it’s all about space.  We lose things, from objects to people; all throughout our lives.  We all need something to fill that black, aching void.  I needed words, a sentence to fill the hole. 

Friends:

‘I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod: my shadow does that much better’

-      Plutarch

I make friends easily.  This probably explains why I have so little of them.  Leaving aside the honourable exception of my wife; I wouldn’t say I had a ‘best friend’, in the traditional sense.  Then again, what is a traditional sense, these days?  I reckon it is a combination of both personal and technological revolution that has brought this about.

I know my type, when it comes to friendship.  At school, I gravitated towards the geeky types, those who worshipped Tom Baker, slightly more than Kenny Dalglish.  These days, that wouldn’t be seen as out of the ordinary.  Low level geekery is almost a precondition of being a member of the human race.  I would postulate here, that geekery is a just a mild form of being an erudite human being.  I could count on the fingers of one stump; the fascinating conversations I’ve heard about books and art I’ve had with my workmates.

Of course, you grow up and get married, move away, lose touch.  This, alongside cancelling magazines subscriptions and choosing the cheapest supermarket; is the sad payoff for being a responsible, respectable, fully-functioning (sometimes) adult.  The people, who are with you, aren’t always going to be with you.  The geeks I associated with in primary school, I haven’t seen for over twenty years.  Sometimes, you move one way and The World moves the other.  I have no reason, inclination or desire to see them again.

Maybe: it’s technology that sent us down this solipsistic path.  I was a late developer when it came to social media.  Friends Reunited (ask your stepdad) was more my thing.  The latter caused several embarrassing interactions.  One geeky friend from secondary school got in touch with me.  I had to think of the connection that we had.  It was illegally copying ZX Spectrum games.  I looked at his profile.  It was him, sitting on a manky duvet, in his underpants, raising a bottle of whisky.

Ah, yesterday leave me alone. 

Twitter was my thing for a while, and then I moved into Facebook.  I needed assurance from my wife that it wasn’t the wild, scary place I thought it was.  Both have been incredibly beneficial for me.  Of course, I met her on Twitter.  But I’ve received advice from a brilliant Australian writer, swapped Panini stickers with a local newsreader.  My best friend, I would say: is someone I met on Twitter. In a traditional sense, I don’t physically see her that often.  We ‘tweet up’ every now and again.  That is the kind of parameters social media puts on friendships.  Conversely, when things have been bad personally, when the tsunami of shite that one human suffers in one lifetime becomes too much; we’ve both turned up in a dry, clean, warm blue boat.

Up in Liverpool, I have several friends.  And for that reason (and several others), we don’t see each other that much.  All of these are former work colleagues.  We exchange Christmas cards and birthday cards, the odd text message.  Most attended our wedding.  This is friendship at the true, modern level.  A piano playing the same key; rather than the full blown sympathy of what a ‘traditional friendship’ is.  I am sure, if I can make the time on a visit up North, wearing my big coat, I’ll see them again. 

At the same time, there two friends (in the loosest sense possibly) who are currently persona non grata.  I’ve known one nigh on thirty years, attended gigs with him, almost moved in with him at one point.  We’ve had more than a few share of arguments too.  Both him and his wife, seem to have cut me loose.  No contact for three years, plus the modern sigil of disinterest – the unfollow.  I have a fair idea why this is. At the same time, I don’t fucking care.  I feel certain I will become a character in her next novel.  Again I don’t fucking care.  I have a certain allergic reaction to people taking me for a bellend.  Some friendships aren’t worth either the mental and physical earache. 

So, here I am.  Typing away on a Spring morning in Devon, where the unseasonal  snow is melting.  I’m happy, in love, content, my mind is running and humming quite nicely on a new software update.  I’m not entirely friendless.  My wife’s friends and family have become my friends.  They offer the important things in life.  Support, hospitality, laughter, rock buns, babysitting.  Of course, I am being flippant.  I also know, that if I needed their support or friendship they would be there. 

Ultimately, friendship means different things to different people.  It’s like looking at a work of art and interpreting it one way, then the next person interprets it another.  No truth is cardinal.  That way, leads to chaos, unhappiness and a general, lingering sense of unsatisfaction.  Much like buying an Everton season ticket.

No-one is entirely friendless.  Conversely, apart from love; nothing is forever.  Friendship: it’s a tricky business. 

Depression:

‘I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time.  Still does’

-        Henry Rollins

My middle name is Martin.  My eyes are blue.  I have a scar on my left leg, a mole on my stomach and the toenail on my right foot has been removed.  I also have depression. 

I don’t know when I could mark the beginning of this, the actual wick of the fuse.  I had a very good childhood, more or less.  I wasn’t indulged, but I had everything I asked for.  I was an intelligent kid at school, but didn’t really put in the work for the exams; until much later in life when I had both perspective and wisdom.  That’s when you really appreciate Shakespeare and still can’t get your head around Jane Austen.   

I was told at school that being a writer ‘would be a very difficult career option’ and I would be better ‘training as a lorry driver like your Dad; would be much easier’.  I ignored this advice and slowly, carved out a modest career as a journalist, then a writer and performer, then a teacher, then dead end jobs to pay the rent. 

If I think of anything, it was the need to be loved that brought it on.  I didn’t have my first serious relationship till I was in my late twenties. I ran from that as it began to get serious.  In a space of about three years, I had four, possibly five serious/semi-serious relationships with people who were uniquely unsuited with me; always ended by them.  Still, at least the sex was regular.

In addition, my ‘best friend’, slowly, by stealth, ceased contact with me.  This concluded with her sending me a long, rambling email of my failings as a human being and saying she didn’t want to see me again.

It’s very easy to mistake love or friendship for something else.  It’s a trick of the light, to let someone get close and watch them fade away; when you really need them in proper sunlight.  I felt let down by these people and I think that fuelled the fire that was already burning within me.  The fire that never really goes out.    But at the end of the day, I have that Catholic work ethic.  ‘By the sweat of thy brow, shalt thou break bread’.  That sort of shit.

I came out of teaching, more by other people’s choices than mine: let’s put it that way.  I was in a perfect teaching job; I said something that someone didn’t agree with.  I went part time and finally left, missing the maelstrom of madness and infidelity that closed the place permanently.  Which is a shame really, I’d like to have seen that.  I trained to be a counsellor.  I was very good at it.  I had a nice placement, where they appreciated me and me asked me to stay on after I graduated.  Which is roughly at the point I was working my redundancy in the day job.

Ah, The Day Job.  Putting bets on for a living.  When that ended, I needed a job.  That Catholic work ethic again.  I was in a relationship with a woman who had three kids. Of course, I needed to feed them/take her out. I took a series of low-paid/mind-numbing jobs to support this process.  Which neatly dovetailed with the slow, gradual fade-out of that relationship.  Something had to be done, to fill that gaping hole, that almost suicidal need to be loved.  I engineered a relationship with an old school friend. 

If there was one event, one last splash of petrol that fuelled the smouldering embers of the blues, it was her.

Ah Her.  Irrational, needy, spiritual Her.  Who asked me to move in and get married, when I didn’t really want to.  Who got into an argument with the neighbour, who then sent The Police to our door.  The pressure was racking up at work.  One slip of the mind.  It was inevitable, like falling on ice.  I was diagnosed with ‘mild depression’. I took time off work, which led to more arguments and spending money that I didn’t really have.  The visit from De Bizzies made this more of a ‘severe’ thing.  I contemplated suicide, but there was no Clarence to save me.  My Doctor prescribed Fluoxetine. 

If you’ve not taken it, beware.  For me, it put my emotions on a low level.  A sort of slow, deadening of the soul.  Sometimes, this forced its way to opposite ends of a dull spectrum.  Factor in the constant feeling of being sick and a complete disinterest in sex.  Which is a bit of killer when you’re engaged to someone you don’t really fancy in the first place. 

That relationship ended.  The event that preceded that was me deciding to come off anti-depressants.   I think sometimes, that person used it as a chemical cosh.  A method of controlling me.  Sometimes, I think I needed it.  This person then bothered me for six months – phone calls, emails, letters.  The full range of lunacy.  I lived in a nice flat, in a boho area.  I did The Boho Dance – galleries, films with subtitles, plays.  I could have, quite easily got into a relationship with anyone out of a selection of people.  But as soon as I felt them getting close, I closed, bolted and nailed the door. 

Of course, the happy ending to this is I met by wife.  I often feel we have lived a lifetime in a few years together, but I love her and my stepson very much.  I still have depression, but I understand the root cause of it now.  I felt myself slipping into it recently, as I lasted a mere four weeks as a Barista before I was dismissed during the probationary period.  I could feel the wheels of the car of my mind whining.  And I decided: ‘this shit isn’t happening’.  I decided to embrace, the blue-eyed man in the mirror as a functioning depressive.

What does it feel like?  Everyone’s experience is different.  Depression is like a Magic Eye Picture; different people both see and feel different things.  For me, it’s sort of reality turning off, withdrawing from people and losing interest in things I love.  You sort of feel like the spare piece of Lego, that never really quite fits.  These periods can last for minutes, hours, days.  But knowing it, recognising your triggers makes it easier, lessens the pain ever so slightly. 

You know that old phrase about ‘Recognise the devil within you and conquer it’?  That’s depression. 

And in a sense, I’m sort of drawn to it.  It’s here, in the music I listen to: From The Smiths cobblestoned misery, via the bitter humour of John Grant’s organismic self, through the bucolic sadness of Nick Drake, arriving at the anger and pride of Kendrick Lamar.  My depression comes down the iPod, through the ears and into the soul.  So fucking what? 

In a sense, there is openness about depression we have never had.  At the same time, there is the dismissive/pretentious/insensitive reporting of it in the newspapers.  It’s far too easy to crack a joke about it on a panel show. So, if you recognise this article as a mirror of yourself, say hello.  If you know someone who has depression, talk to them as a human being.  Not someone who has recently escaped from the local unicorn sanctuary. 

My favourite food is chicken, my favourite book is 1984, my favourite painting is Guernica and I have depression.  I accept all of this as part of my soul.