I think back to a time when I used to feed off the refuse of good. I was in love with the liminal space between despair and death. Relief found in pain. I still don’t truly understand that love.
These days I still like a minor chord. Although it probably doesn’t translate in my writing, my taste tends to include a lot of brooding tones, dark words and things generally categorised by many as ‘depressing’. Not to me. I don’t think I’d still dwell on such things if it took me to these places. What I do like about the raw and shadowed is its potential to encapsulate a vivid human trait. That, and to emphasise things of beauty. There is something shockingly beautiful about seeing the golden light on gum leaves when storm clouds pervade all else. Or the reflection of light on drenched black asphalt. The dark is necessary to see the light at times.
Over the past week my frame of mind and many of the thoughts that come to me have been consumed by the sadness and loneliness felt by the towns at the end of my train line. I have often wondered whether places are flavoured by the people that habituate them, or whether an area and its history flavours the people that reside within its space.
I remember walking up a mountain in Germany in the Heidelberg valley. My brother and I had just explored the ruins of some ancient monastery and took a path further into the beech woods to find a huge old amphitheatre built under our fave evil dictator, Mr. Hitler. The stone structure had a cold feel to it and I really don’t think that I was feeling this just as a response to my knowledge of its prior use. I later discovered that it had been an ancient pagan gathering place and had been chosen by the man because he warmed to this kinda stuff.
A couple of weeks ago two sixteen year old girls climbed up a tree nearby and hung themselves in a united endeavour. The media has blamed the emo culture, but of course there is so so much more behind this event than just talking death and listening to music expressing typical teenage angst. Suicide is frequently looked upon as a potential solution for people of this age. From the best of my knowledge it has for quite some time now. When I was sixteen it was grunge that ran through our veins and was used to express this state of being. The culture is a means to expressing a shared dissatisfaction with life as it is.
I presume that it’s a combination of a shared mindset and the nature of a place’s history, weaved in as one big stuffed-up tapestry, that brushes off onto the human spirit. Nevertheless, there is something very wrong and it has got to me.
There’s something tragic about knowing you are falling and knowing there is nothing you can do to break that fall. You’re already on your way down. The full force of your body will hit the cement beneath you. Your hands instinctively rise but you are beyond the point where their action will lever you back to perpendicularity. Within that moment you foresee the trauma that your slip of foot will give rise to. I wonder if facing death is like this.
