Not Being Able To Create Art They Will Not Understand Art

I think one of the things that will take a long time after this whole pandemic is to regain my trust in people. It broke severely during lockdown and is not repaired.

As someone who is at risk and in the vulnerable category for COVID, the whole 'freedom' debate to not have a vaccination or not wear a mask or protect others is basically saying 'I don't care if you live or die, I'm gonna do what I want, and screw you'. It's blatant as if they said 'go away and die' to my face. Major lack of respect to me and it is incredibly rude. You bet I take it personally.

Their freedom is my demise, yet weirdly they get all upset and play victim when I don't respect their decision that their 'freedom' - such major life-changing actions like wearing a mask indoors in public spaces or a vaccination, such onerous tasks *eyeroll* - basically stops mine (and might stop my life, let alone freedom!), and makes me have to shield and avoid people like that cos they are most likely carriers. 

They cry about free speech and 'MAH FREEDUMB' but what about MY freedom to not get COVID-19 and be seriously ill or worse? Apparently that's not worth shit. Apparently they think it's some Darwinism in action, and cull the herd and screw science or caring.

This one goes out to Jeb fiftypoundnote and anyone here who missed clubbing or bars or festivals or any social culture. I heard this song listening to a friend's podcast (the Lloydbrary, very much recommended) that I had delayed listening to since the start of the year....very good podcast and I admit I got very tearful at this song.

Why? I dunno, I have been clubbing a few times since it opened up last August but it's not the same. As I said on the blog post, I have a lot of trauma re: the pandemic that is just sitting there, and I need to try and process that somehow. Is it mild PTSD? I lost a lot during the pandemic, friends, a peer group, my business, my freedom, and sometimes almost my sanity, and it's proper that it bubbles up sometimes. It would be strange if it didn't.

And there was a feeling that during the pandemic from some that this was frivolous, that the desire to connect on the dancefloor and socially was some minor thing, that it's just a bunch of drunk people and who cares? That hurt, cos my community is on the dancefloor, my church the club, my religion is disco and that's far from silly, I am deadly serious on that, even when joking about it. My spiritual outlet is music, and dancing is part of that, it's people who forgot where the rituals and smells and bells came from that are the problem.

Also quite often these people were cishet white ppl who didn't get how minorities need these spaces, ones they take for granted. I felt real grief about losing these spaces during the lockdown.

Here is the longer (and better) mix with fan footage which makes it more poignant somehow:

This is a sort of cross-post from Radio Clash but not really, since I am writing more personally and indepth here. Podcasting and the like is about sharing but there is a limit — I go much deeper here and I like the fact that it's only a few people. I feel rather exposed sometimes over at the podcast/blog and choose my words very careful especially about certain subjects. 

I've become a little bolder in some (John when he pisses me off) but less in others. I don't need the concern trolls if I mention the S-word...my situation is a little like Joe Tracini, Joe Pasquale's son, although he feels the need to put those things out there to stop him doing anything, in my world it's less direct and thankfully less active and less mentally collapsible. I also don't have BPD, but I recognise some similarities, it does dovetail with depression.

I am really glad he is fighting that taboo, I was so angry when Hamish died how many people just blanked me...(and he had schizophrenia, which isn't an 'excuse' but a reason, but I still got tumbleweed talking about his suicide) but as well as no reaction, overreacting people make it worse and make us just suffer in silence. 

It's weird they think they are helping, but they really aren't.

It's just a thought that's there always, and has been for nearly a decade — and was whispers before that back to my teens — and I'm still here. The problem being if you mention it — and I have to a few close people they freak the fuck out (weirdly an ex? friend had a bigger problem with it and he actually has had several actual attempts? WTF?) and don't get that thoughts do not equal planning, and it's an idle thought that gets rejected, so nothing I think as serious. It's just my depression chatting shit.

It still pops up though, like an unwanted notification from time to time, a bit like that scene from American Werewolf In London. Comical, really.

But the reason I don't go vastly public with any of this is that exact overreaction which means even though I talk about mental health online I cannot talk about this without the dreaded panicky 'You must go take some drugs and get therapy' line, which is basically saying to me 'I can't cope with this subject so here is a dragged and dropped solution to make myself feel better'. It's not actually listening to me.

Sadly it's like 3+ years to even see anyone even with our apparently 'better' health system, and I really don't want to spend that time in the interim making the drug companies rich. I will if it gets bad, but it'd have to get very bad to subject myself to that kind of treatment. Do they even know how SSRIs work yet? It does seem like using a sledgehammer on a peanut.

I currently control it through my art/creative outlets and through sleeping, riding those ups and downs like an expert surfer, looking for the tides in the distance, feeling the wind, recognising the signs before it gets bad. It's exhausting sometimes but I am sceptical of the main 'solutions' — it seems the best thing for me is to make peace with it, and bargain with your brain rather than smack it over the head with drugs or talking therapies. I have had some bad experiences with doctors and how they handle my anxiety and stress, re: my old job, so this isn't some idle concern.

But that's just how I handle it — and others it works for them. That's why it's so complex, because there isn't just one way — and weirdly all the talking therapies stop working after a while, 10-15 years — which without going all woo suggests to me that there is kind of a social brain or human mycellular brain network that adapts? It is very strange why those 70's and 80's techniques don't work anymore, and the clock is ticking on NLP and CBT* the like.

You see I already shared something I've never shared online, hinted at maybe, and publicly too! Yet anybody flagging this will result in this getting denied and I will just make the blog private again btw. Trust works both ways.

Part of my wariness of re-engaging here was the fact if I did so, it must be like before, but before there were some who abused that and trod on it. Vulnerability online in 2022 is harder, because of the drive-by nature of some comments (you should see some of the shit I get via Twitter and on the Radio Clash blog — and Reddit, completely green ink, but thankfully they make themselves known and then you can block them for a quieter life, and it does get quieter cos it seems to be a few trolls).

But that was an earlier version of that — the Alpha Geeks and Bear Mafia who spoke as one, like some Bear Borg and played power games and never saw nuance in others. A bear in a china shop. Don't be that bear.

 
*what Cock and Ball Torture? Computer Based Training? Tee hee.

Indeed, where are we, as Bowie once put it. 

The answer is, I don't know. 

Not being dramatic, but as someone who next month is probably going to have my official status as self-employed pulled by the DWP (our benefits agency that helped me go onto the enterprise scheme I am on that started just before the pandemic) — or indeed forced to 'look for work' that I don't know is there when I'd rather do my art work...that uncertainty is almost a taste at this point. 

It's fine, with the pandemic and everything I have decided not to freak out and have been saving like crazy over the last few years, storing art materials, and accepting that me and the DWP will have to part ways at some point. 

Not being an artist and going back to the hell that was three years on the dole is not an option (after my mother's inheritance ran out, I was forced to move from my old flat in with John and sign on; it's soul destroying and social genocide basically, they try and make you ill or make you angry so they can sanction you. It's very Orwellian). 

I've tried the other things, trying to get jobs in ALDI and Waitrose and in my former industry — some close calls, but it was all for naught and just made me quite ill with stress and depression. I, Daniel Blake is pretty much a documentary — one of the bad things is you can NEVER show weakness. If you do they seize on it. It's brutal.

Cue Doctor Who quote, but that's appropriate as I feel like a series about to be cancelled (the first time). Lockdown in London is not going well — whereas some of you are probably feeling lonely, I can cope with isolation, I am really prepared for that. A champion self-isolator in fact, could self-isolate for the Olympics, I have worked at home for months before and been three years unemployed. So I can cope with this new world...sort of.

What I wasn't prepared for is the forced socialisation of being a mouse in a cage with another mouse. Tiny flat, small shared garden...it's not good. Also having my dreams and hopes smashed by COVID-19 — see the previous post about my art 'career' in happier times. My business is pretty much stopped, I can't do the exhibitions I planned, it feels like the Universe is laughing at my vain attempt to pull myself out of the pit of despair of longterm unemployed and into something brighter. It is fucked, basically.

Some people from my past are probably enjoying that fact and holding Schadenfreude Parties in celebration. I realised a sizeable chunk of the BML/LJ bears were sadly NOT my friends over the last decade or so, more of a frienemy/enemy situation, acquaintances who didn't really care  — talking of the people who are not on my friendlist and some are even blocked on all platforms (you know who you are). It's my fault partly - so desperate to belong to a group of people, I let a lot of bad shit and salty behaviour slide. I don't put up with toxic people anymore, rather be alone than accept that co-dependent mess.

Hence why I don't post here much, bad memories. This is a common theme recently, there are some surprises at those during this crisis who have come forward, people who I'd not been close to but will in future. But some who are unsurprisingly bad at being a friend who were also on my mentally questionable list — usually the middle class people have devolved into 'Let Them Eat NHS Claps' privilege and moralising, to those who have ghosted me even in a pandemic where I am at risk...oh yes, I am fairly high-risk of this virus too as a asthmatic. Every cough — and us asthmatics get loads of those —  is Good Cough/Bad Cough panic games.

It's like this virus has held a lens up to all my friendships and relationship and I'm not sure I like most of what I see. *sigh* Karma will get them in the end, those bitter selfish people always do themselves an injury...why I try — and usually fail nowadays — to not be a bitter queen. Not a good place to be but anger is all I've got left.

So yes, still doing the art — only thing that's keeping me sane although I don't see the point atm. Going through the motions, because no future to that work, can't sell it, can't make a business, and the emotions I see on the page are starkly depressing and the darkness is neither appealing nor commercially sensible — but the latter doesn't matter anyway. My career has crashed and burned. Thanks COVID-19! Wish it was happier news...at least I survive, but sometimes I wonder if that is a cruel joke, like the whole galaxy could go supernova and I'd somehow still be here, a Sisyphus toy of the gods.

Psychodelidisco (Disco Psycheness) - Full 3 Hour Journey by Fingertrouble on Mixcloud