If you feel like you're going insane

Returning to art when everything is terrible

Despair by Samuel Lovett Waldo

My first university course was “Introduction to Literature” and it changed my life. I never read that much as a kid, and later on when I developed an appetite for books it was always non-fiction. Books on climate change, physics, self development, history, futurism, technology and sex. I thought that if I was reading I should be learning something and never did I consider that literature would teach you just as much about life as these non-fiction books did.

We started the literature course with Northrup Frye:

“So, you may ask, what is the use of studying the world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance. In the imagination our own beliefs are also only possibilities, but we can also see the possibilities in the beliefs of others. Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them as also possibilities. It's possible to go to the other extreme, to be a dilettante so bemused by possibilities that one has no convictions or power to act at all. But such people are much less common than bigots, and in our world much less dangerous.” -Northrup Frye

This lit a small but sharp fire in me.

Literature was important because it is the language of imagination. It is the language of identity. The only reality is the one that is imagined.

There is no morally wrong literature. The world of imagination just exists.

It was through these points that Frye made, I realized just how starved I was for story. Did I really need to read another book on the state of the world, psychology or mindfulness? Was the next book really going to hack me into oblivion? Cure me? Finally give me a one liner that changes my life permanently? Maybe for the first time, I needed to read literature, poetry, myth and to watch how they explore the journey of a fallen hero, just how do they carry-on? What do dragons and witches actually represent? How do the wounded and fallen persevere? How does one escape their fate? Is there even such thing? Everything of life is contained within these novels, these novels are just as good, if not better, to learn about yourself and others through.

Frye explained that “you don’t read Macbeth to learn about the history of Scotland. You read it watch a man lose his soul while gaining a kingdom.”

This put it into perspective for me. You read literature to learn about humanity. And in a world where maybe it feels like humanity is being lost, literature can potentially bring you back to something that feels like both home and a mystery, tangled within one another.

Reading Kafka for class.

Slowly the class unfolded into the purpose and belovedness of literature. Of course we focused on the technicalities of it, we discussed intertextuality, different focalizations, narratology, etc. But really the class was exposing the life and truth that was woven into each book.

Decipher me, the text and form say.
Unravel this meaning.
Interpret me.
Piece it together.

Personally, through each book I read, I wondered why more people in the arena of self-development were not reading literature? How could I be in my mid 30’s and just getting into this now? I know, I’m embarrassed.

“I didn’t realize,” was a phrase that came up in my head quite a bit. I didn’t realize how important literature was and how protective we should be of it. Literature, an extension of the imagination and ultimately, a technology we create, gives hope, meaning, explanation and wonder to our lives.

Literature is essential to humanity.

“Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them as also possibilities.”

I think about this often. In a world where we are increasingly seeing intolerance and hatred for the Other. Because of this, I feel the Great Despair a lot. I can’t turn it off. I’m not sure I want to. While I learn about this part of myself, the reality is despair can fuck your life, mentality and perspective on things. It’s like a younger sibling of depression.

The state of the world, the connection we have to each other, the connection we have to ourselves, feels constantly fractured and every year it feels like things are becoming less and less desirable, more political and more polarized. Less sacred, less beautiful and more sterile and more digital.

I have one small answer that won’t fix everything, but maybe for an afternoon it will alleviate something for you.

Turn to art. Turn to story. And do so in community. I know, groundbreaking. But the simplest things that can slip through our fingers. The simplest things still need our love, devotion and attention. What we tend to grows.

Go to a gallery with a friend, take a small pad of paper and write down the things that move you, notice the feelings that arise, when you get inspired, when you feel confused or bewildered. This is not just for your brain, this is embodiment work! You’re noticing how the art is moving you! You are less in your brain and more in full body. You are using art to get into your body.

Read a fictional book and learn marginalia. Start writing what the book is teaching you, how you relate to the characters, what other books is it citing, is it drawing upon the bible what cultures or myths are imprinted in it? By doing this you are forming a relationship to the art you’re consuming. You are now somehow part of the puzzle.

Literature you should read this summer if not for you for the fucking world:

Piranesi - Susanna Clark
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Lilith’s Brood - Octavia Butler
Circe - Madeline Miller
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

Go to the cinema. See something you wouldn’t have seen before. Dress up or don’t. But get out of the four corners of your house. Get off your phone and out into the world. Discuss what you watched with someone.

Listen to classical music, scores, music without lyrics for a change.

Listen to full albums. Sit down and play an album front to back. Bring people over and sit on the floor and discuss each song as it passes. Make a night where people bring 2-3 of there favourite songs and discuss what they mean to you.

Albums I recommend listening to front to back, best when you’re lying on the living room carpet with candles with others:

Bookends - Simon and Garfunkel
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming - M83
Doolittle - The Pixies
Definitely Maybe - Oasis
melanchole - salvia palth
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
Heard It In A Past Life - Maggie Rogers
The Theory of Everything - Jóhann Jóhannsson

Recommend art to other people. Reach out to artists and tell them how much you love their work, share it with your friends. Buy! Art! Subscribe to people. Pay people for their words if you have the space and love for them.

My despair says “the world is dying,” and maybe it’s being a bit dramatic, but let’s say that were true.

Let’s say the earth is dying.
Let’s say the sacred, the necessary, the honest is dying.
Let’s say my despair is connected to part of my intuition, and something bad is happening culturally right now.

“See and create art,” another voice inside of me says.

“Do something about it.”
“Don’t die with it.”
“Make the best with your time.”

And here we are. At the end of this post. The moment when you click to another tab, another app, and the days I spent writing this disappear and slip through the codes of these crystal screens.

Your phone lights up and an app beckons you with a headline. Maybe Trump fucked the universe again, maybe your friend sent you the greatest “how to” hack, maybe someone is following up because you never text anyone back anymore and all of a sudden you’re scrolling, the short form content is hitting the back of your brain stem, and just like that, we are lost in digitality.

Remember literature. Remember art. Remember it for your heart and soul. Sometime soon that might be all thats left.

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In gratitude and Frye we trust,

Kb xx