Depression and its bubble

Recently I’ve noticed that many friends who also suffer from depression actively avoid interaction with depressing art.  They won’t watch depressing films and they are not generally enamoured with the concept of depressing music because they don’t want to feel secondary depression from external sources.   Now, I’m a cautious optimist on most things.  I’ve learned that most of the time ‘Everything will actually be ok’.  Yes there are things I’m furiously pessimistic about but I still feel the current inexorably pulling me towards opportunities and positive changes rather than a perpetual downward spiral.  I put a lot of stock into the fact that I’m a very big fan of art that goes out of its way to express the deepest of negative emotions.  I find these expressions more powerful than most love stories and although I find them intensely sad, as I am supposed to, I also find great strength from exposing myself to these things.  Obviously depression is more than a polarised optimism-pessimism function but it intrigues me that the most pessimistic people continue to deny their exposure to pessimistic influences that they can control because of their ongoing feeling of a lack of control in their lives.

One gloriously sunny Saturday morning in August I woke around 8am and could not get that elusive lie-in I craved so much.  I went downstairs and watched Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, which I’d recorded two months previously.  What a way to start a beautiful day.  You see one man die on screen and another is interviewed before he goes off and ‘commits’ assisted suicide as well.  Apart from urging everyone to watch that documentary because of its unbiased investigation of the status quo vs. an individual’s right to determine the fate of their own lives I would also push people to watch it because it’s terribly life-affirming.  Yes I cried after watching a man die on screen after several minutes of excruciating tension between himself and his wife, but as with all things like this it drummed on my forehead and yelled in my ear ‘Make your life worthwhile! While you can.’ – and that is key.

Most of my depression-afflicted friends do not make that final linkage, and often can’t make that linkage because they will not entertain taking that journey.  I can’t fully understand their condition because whilst I have felt some of those depths before I haven’t sunk as far as they tend to.   I’m lucky enough to end up with beauty from the most depressing of art because I try to emotionally engage with it as deeply as possible, and I have a pre-disposition towards optimism.  I wonder whether the avoidance of depressing films is in itself a negative act because it seems to insulate the depression sufferers current state from other forms of negative feedback.  I’m not sure that insulating yourself from that is healthy.  If comparing your own perceived shortcomings and self-doubt from validation is not possible then how can someone re-calibrate their own perceptions so that they feel worthy?  Medication alone will never address the core processes that set off depressive episodes, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy provides some answers, but more and more interaction with depressed people leads me to believe that they should be twisting the constant measurement of themselves into something that helps to highlight was is beautiful as a direct result of experiencing the very painful.  It’s more subtle and powerful than ‘Cheer up, it could be worse!’ and I wouldn’t advocate jumping in the deep end with the most horrific art possible, but at least explore the fringes and explore why you reject that experience.

Some people would no doubt be offended by that point of view and present me with a ‘How dare you’ approach, but to that I would reply that I don’t think I’m proposing that much.  If a lot of depression is caused by the unwillingness or perceived inability to engage with uncomfortable feelings then why not get to a place where you feel happier interacting with negative events that are nothing to do with you.  If you continue to find yourself unable to make that last linkage and find the glimmer of life-affirmation, and I’m sure a huge number of people won’t, then fine – tone it down.  But at least try and pop that insulating bubble because if you can find that spark of beauty at the end then you will find it is worth so much more than the rest of that journey and will put you on a weird high for days.

Using Amazon to save you money

I had a conversation a few days after New Year which highlighted just how bad last-minute shopping Christmas shopping can be. Two people might have the same budget to spend on Christmas shopping but I can almost guarantee that the one who started thinking about it first will have been able to find better value in both quantity and quality of gifts purchased.

My personal situation is slightly forced upon me with my other half having her birthday in November. This means I really have to start considering birthday and Christmas presents in late September or I’ll blow my load (so to say) inspirationally and monetarily on her birthday, therefore having nothing left for Christmas.

To combat that eventuality I use Amazon’s shopping basket to work for me. Every time I think of something I could buy from there I add it to my Shopping Basket and click ‘Save for later’. Then, so long as I check in every few days and look at my shopping basket I will find that Amazon informs me whether prices have risen or dropped. What seems to happen is that Amazon does a price comparison and beats all the competitor sites such as Play, HMV, CD WOW etc. by a couple of pence at least. Very often that means that Amazon prices can rise massively in a day or two simply because all the competitors have cancelled deals they had on.

 

These notices tell you whether prices rise or fall, these as of 31st Jan 2011

So, whilst this Amazon trick can’t account for special offers such as multi-buys on other sites (3 for 2 etc.) you will still find that it beats everyone else by quite a bit. It certainly saves me a lot of time shopping around because so far I’m yet to find a reputable site beat the Amazon price on anything I’ve shopped for. And I have tried, trust me.

And then here are the price changes on 1st Feb 2011

The joy of this system is that you will find your money goes far further than if you’re left scrambling around the high street on Christmas Eve or even bulk-purchasing online in the fortnight before the big day.

My 10 most underrated rock bands of the 2000s

You know when you just gun for a band to be huge, you want to hear them on the radio, you want to see them on TV, you want them to take over the world? Sometimes nobody or just not enough people ‘get it’ and those groups you love either implode in the wake of label neglect or internal strife. Other bands do take over the world. I have been with Kings of Leon since I read an NME interview in the summer of 2003 and seen them wax and wane ever since. Right now I believe they have lost their way and need to find some joy again, but I’m still glad that they are out there and huge because if more people discover their first two albums and enjoy them it will spread more of the spirit I loved so much.

So, this is a homage to bands that deserved so much more attention than they have received so far, for work that I have adored.

• Hope of the States (2000 to 2006) – 2004’s The Lost Riots is a masterpiece. However this is a band that was doomed early on. James Lawrence, the band’s guitarist, committed suicide just before The Lost Riots was released and although tracks like The Red the White the Black the Blue got a little airplay and generated a fair amount of buzz they never managed to lift themselves into the public consciousness. A real shame in my view because Hope of the States could have been so much more. They split up in 2006 and we all lost a very interesting band.

• The Cooper Temple Clause (1998 to 2007) – More luscious noise and brilliance. But again, hardly any recognition amongst the wider public. The first album, See This Through And Leave, starts off interesting on first listen but subsequent replays lead you to discover that it really is a gem of an album. It was well received by critics and magazines like the NME expended a fair amount of effort to try to expose the band. Sadly, very soon they reverted to talking about hairstyles and shenanigans off the stage. The second album was not received quite as well but there were still moments of rock’n’roll glory such as Promises Promises to keep up the potential. However, when bassist Didz Hammond left to join Dirty Pretty Things it was the start of a long drawn-out death knell for TCTC. They finally split up in 2007 after seeming to be exhausted for months. I really hope they can work together in some new guise one day because they were one of the most interesting bands of the mid-noughties.
  

  Almost like arranged mannequins.

• Eagles of Death Metal (1998 to present) – The real problem here is that everyone keeps expecting Josh ‘Queens of the Stone Age’ Homme to show up and drum for them. Granted he was a founder member and did once-upon-a-time perform with the impressively mustachioed Jesse ‘The Devil’ Hughes, Dave Catching et al, but now they have very much claimed independence from Homme whilst he’s busy cavorting with John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl in Them Crooked Vultures or producing the likes of Arctic Monkeys. This band is all about good old-fashioned rock and roll. Their live shows are energetic, sweaty, ‘sexy’, and above all amazing fun. Every one of their three albums is excellent and whilst various tunes have soundtracked computer games, TV shows and films they have sadly become of those ‘Who is this?’ bands to many people. Their performance at Reading Festival in 2009 was televised by the BBC and I pray that they will have claimed new acolytes. I eagerly await a new album from them and hope they find the success that their life outlook deserves.
  

  The man, the legend - Jesse 'The Devil' Hughes

• The Futureheads (2003 to present) – One of the bands often described as purveyors of ‘new wave, post-punk’ rock in the early noughties they never quite hit the big time despite a large following and some excellent albums. Their eponymous debut was brilliant and attracted a lot of attention but yet again they just never hit the heights their music deserved. Their second album was for me and many others a disappointment, but their third album – This is not the World – was true return to form. I once saw the word ‘riotous’ used on a bus-side advertisement to describe a Jamie Cullum album, if they heard the joyous riffs and hooks of The Futureheads’ third album I suspect their brains would spurt out, liquified, from their ear holes. A proper dancey rock album that leaves you exhilarated and exhausted after hearing it (and of course dancing to it). In an era of identi-pop I fear this band is another that may have missed the boat.
  

  Foil faces. Lovely.

• Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster (1999 to 2010) – ‘psychosis rock’ is Wikipedia’s classification of this force of nature. The fury of the riffing and the madness of the lead singer are awesome in the most literal sense and perfectly complemented by Masters of Reality frontman Chris Goss’s production expertise. Drooling and spitting the lyrics into a mic whilst thrusting along the bar in Sin, or commanding the NME stage at Leeds 2003 they always produce the magic. An alleged penchant for illicit substances seemed to stifle creativity in the years following their second album’s release but now, apparently as reformed characters, 2010’s Blood and Fire is a scintillating return to form. Sadly nobody seems to be listening and they languished with a cult-like following but little more. As of 5th November 2010 they have announced that they are going to split up. I’m not surprised but I am disappointed.
  

  Yeah, they were never going to survive were they.

• Mark Lanegan (1985 to present) – It’s been said a thousand times ‘a voice made from bourbon and cigarettes’. Whatever. This guy has an amazing voice and has been involved in many of America’s seminal rock bands. From backing vocals with Nirvana to his band Screaming Trees, to lead vocals on some Queens of the Stone Age tracks he has found his way into many unforgettable rock moments of the past two decades. Granted, he hasn’t always helped his own career with several reports of chronic drug addiction hampering things but when you focus on the music you find a relatively unknown gem. His solo work is full of ‘soul’ and a thoroughly adult angst which has always bewitched me. Bubblegum is probably my favourite of his solo albums but 2010’s Hawk collaboration with Isobel Campbell has rightly been received as genius. He’s the kind of artist who will never find mainstream success but I dearly wish he could.

• Maxïmo Park (2000 to present) – Melancholy and uplifting all at once. Poetic lyrics and a distinct style embodied by the overly energetic frontman Paul Smith. These guys’ first album was a club success with real sing-along jig-along floor-fillers. Their second and third albums were less successful but at the same time the crowds attending their gigs grew massively. Huge billboard posters advertised their shows but still, where was the radio and television exposure? It’s sad really, even when you think a band is on its way to the top they seem to come across a fabled glass ceiling beyond which they cannot proceed at any cost.
  

  Paul Smith and his trademark on-stage leaping.

• The Strokes (1998 to present) – ‘The Strokes!?’ you say. Well, put it this way – for a band that meant so much to the rock scene all around the world don’t you think they received a tiny fraction of the recognition they deserved in fame and wealth terms? Whilst their old support acts (such as Kings of Leon) go on to rake up the cash wherever they go and fill huge arena tours The Strokes seem unable to enthuse the masses. They have their party anthems in Last Night, 12:51, Juicebox, Reptilia, The Modern Age but they have no Sex on Fire to crack the mainstream. You get Sex on Fire performed by X Factor flops on prime-time TV but I can recall one performance of Last Night in about 2003 on Fame Academy, and that was by a guy who wore military tunics and promptly got voted off for being a prick… Maybe the lack of recognition befits The Strokes’ posturing and too-cool attitude? Either way I can’t wait for their next album but again I doubt it’ll be their key to the treasure chest.
  

  Mmmmmm, gloves...

• Los Campesinos! (2006 to present) – This is a work in progress. Los Campesinos! deserve to be massive. Their lyrics are intelligent and darkly contrast with the catchy hooks of their rhythms. Their regular followers are nutters who suck up every gig as though its a terrible new drug, more addictive than Cake, but only available in mid-sized venues like Koko and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I suspect this group will never really make it big because of the nature of their lyrics – they cut extremely close to the bone on a great many tracks. But at the very least I want to see them continue filling those venues and not fracturing apart under the weight of a public who seem largely indifferent to anything except whining pretty boys.
  

  Why can't all album covers be so fun?

• British Sea Power (2000 – Present) – If you want a band that is able to conjure up immense oceanic soundscapes, riff-tastic dancing numbers, and melancholic odes to the countryside of Great Britain then look no further. If you don’t want those things then you’re misguided. British Sea Power are regularly compared to Joy Division, Pixies, and Arcade Fire but they really have their own sound and aura that nobody else possesses. I love the range of song titles alone, from Favours in the Beetroot Field, to Oh Larsen B and Pelican you find that you’re taken around the world to examine issues like the collapse of the Antarctic Ice Sheets to Avian Flu. Strange concepts for rock tunes but this is what British Sea Power are all about. They play all kinds of venues but seem to favour quirky ones like the Natural History Museum and the Union Chapel – venues with oodles of character so that it becomes part of the overall experience. Focus is spread to the entire surrounding and not simply concentrated on a few metres of stage.
  

  The sun pours onto British Sea Power fans, Reading 2005.

  This need to make things bigger than themselves extends to interviews they give to the press with one anecdote purporting to involve a map coordinate as the location for said interview, which took the journalist deep into the countryside. One, perhaps immature, cliche the band seems to have abandoned in recent years is having dressed-up groupies dancing around the stage ala Flaming Lips and the fans no longer steal foliage on the way to the venue so that they can wave it ecstatically within. It’s a shame in some ways but surely deeply opposed to the band’s apparent ecological concerns. This is a band that sees nature as precious and sings about it in a way that ties everything to human experiences, it’s a beautiful but melancholic vision. They have not had much recognition in wider circles but they probably don’t sing the right kinds of tunes for that. A Mercury Award nomination is the closest they’ve come to being cracked open for everyone to enjoy which is a shame because they have real issues to talk about and a beautiful way of saying it.

Re-commissioning Top Of The Pops would be brilliant. The gift that gave to upcoming bands cannot be underestimated. For now all they have is Jools Holland which is a great platform, but only for music lovers who already step outside the current pop canon of X Factor winners and Jay-Z or Timbaland-produced ditties. Something that fits pop, rock, hip-hop, rap, and dance together on a prime-time show helps to open up attitudes and fuels musical exploration. The desert that is the modern chart shows how badly needed that is and perhaps a few of my under-rated bands would get what they deserve.

Media that defined my character

Throughout my life there have been certain seminal films, games, books, music that have significantly shaped who I am today both in terms of fantastic or terrifying memory associations and things that have challenged me to examine myself deeply. Things I can easily identify and, in that grand tradition of vicariousness, things that I will force my kids to consume one day. Not because I found them terrifying at the time but because I have drawn a lot of strength from what I have learnt from being exposed to them.

Films:

• Edward Scissorhands
• Batman and Batman Returns
• The Neverending Story
• Krull
• Donnie Darko
• Leon
• Spirited Away
• American Beauty
• Fight Club
• Clerks
• Short Circuit
• The Jungle Book
• Batteries not Included
• ET
• The City of the Lost Children
• Old Boy
• The Witches
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• Time Bandits
• Willow
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• Brazil
• The Lost Boys
• Withnail & I
• The Life of Brian

Music:

• Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
• Libertines – Up The Bracket
• The Strokes – Is This It?
• Blur – Blur and 13
• Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation and The Fat of the Land
• Catatonia – International Velvet
• Radiohead – OK Computer and Hail to the Thief
• Doves – The Last Broadcast
• Laurent Garnier – Unreasonable Behaviour
• Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
• Suede – Dog Man Star and Eponymous
• Graham Coxon – The Sky is too High
• Nirvana – In Utero and Nevermind
• Alice in Chains – Dirt
• Ian Brown – Golden Greats
• The Mamas & The Papas – Eponymous
• Pete Doherty and Wolfman – For Lovers
• Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun, Welcome to Sky Valley, …And the Circus Leaves Town
• Muse – Absolution
• Aphex Twin – Come To Daddy

Games:

• Civilisation I & II
• Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn
• Timesplitters 2
• The Witcher
• Worms 2
• Age of Empires 2

A 'Handyman' from Timesplitters 2

Books:

• J.R.R. Tolkien – Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
• William Golding – Lord of the Flies
• Hunter S. Thompson – The Great Shark Hunt
• George Orwell – 1984 and Down and out in Paris and London
• Knut Hamsun – Hunger
• Victor Hugo – Les Miserables
• Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
• Tolstoy – War & Peace
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Roald Dahl – The Witches and The BFG
• Ladybird Horror Classics – Dracula, The Mummy, and Frankenstein

TV:

• Blackadder
• Spaced
• Peep Show
• Black Books
• Mr. Bean
• Fawlty Towers
• The X-Files
• Have I Got News For You

 

I do find it interesting thinking about the anchors that have made such a big impact on me. Their fallout has spread out from my very earliest days til now so that I can still feel a pang of fear when I experience something, or remember a beautiful bit of soundtrack, or relive the first time I saw a great reveal in a film like Fight Club. But it goes deeper than just nostalgia. Many of these things have twisted the way I look at the world dramatically. I can see beauty or hope  in the most horrific of scenes or draw from them to remember what I love most in the world. For me these things are sacred because they lay out a sketchy blueprint of what is possible in the world, both for good and for evil.

Umami, taste and emotion.

I saw a piece the other day about the concept of Umami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami). It is Japanese idea concerning a certain combination of flavours working to produce a stronger flavoured whole. The example they used was marmite being spread on bread, under cheese and then toasted. The overall effect was to exagerate the flavour of the cheese. There are other ingredients which, when added to meals, boost the overall flavour. The ones highlighted were worcester sauce, tomato ketchup, and parmesan. They said that the highest form of Umami is expressed through sushi where the flavours are balanced to perfection in order to highlight all the constituent parts.

Yum, sushi!

Somehow this got me thinking about the nature of taste and emotion, how I feel about certain film, music and art. Whether there is an equivalent of Umami in these fields because there are some films that produce an indescribable feeling of contradictions that gives the whole flavour much deeper impact. A life-affirming ennui or hopelessness seems to be the thing that really makes a film impact on me most severely and I can’t always pinpoint why.

Sickert's 'Ennui', from the Tate's Degas, Sickert, Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition in 2006 - which was amazing by the way.

Films like About Schmidt, Donnie Darko, American Beauty, Fight Club, Lost In Translation, Old Boy, Pan’s Labyrinth, In Bruges, The City of the Lost Children, The Motorcycle Diaries, Spirited Away, Clerks, Batteries Not Included (yes, really), Leon, and Ghost In The Shell all bring me this feeling that I love completely but that I find wholly unsettling and disturbing. It is not just in film that it can be found either. The novels of Knut Hamsun, George Orwell, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Victor Hugo all have it. The art of Mark Rothko, Egon Schiele, Walter Sickert, and Vincent Van Gogh all have it. The music of Radiohead, British Sea Power (Man of Aran mainly), UNKLE, The Strokes, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Doves, Queens Of The Stone Age, Libertines, The Strokes, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday all have it at times. What is it that draws all of these together though?

Franz Kafka, does his strange surreal existentialism change the way I think?

For films it seems to be sadness and loss that particularly flick my switches. In literature there are few moments that have moved me so much as Prince Andrei’s death in War & Peace. The death of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables was another emotional one. Crime & Punishment was a terrifying one for me because I could feel it playing with my mind as I read it. I became so involved with Radion Raskolnikov’s plight and mental deterioration that my own mood changed. The starvation of the lead character in Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’ and the Parisian exploits of Orwell in Down & Out make my heart yearn for something whether it’s a mythical and romanticised version of the past or something missing from my own existence and experience. It’s a struggle between these two poles and what balances it all out seems to be love in the middle. It’s hard to find the love in any of Orwell’s books but there is something there, perhaps a love of the poor and downtrodden people of the world. I’m not sure but everything else involves either a woman or God, or both. I’m certainly no Christian but the exhilaration of Jean Valjean’s piety was amazing to me. It invigorated me whilst simultaneously depressing and hurting me. A very strange sensation but one I do revel in when I discover it.

The pious, wandering ex-convict Jean Valjean.

Again and again I go looking for this feeling and it crops up in unexpected places. Certain key changes in a piece of music or a lingering shot of a normal room in a film will trigger it too. Something mathematical and related to the golden ratio I expect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio)? My thinking on this subject is so far only a week old but I will work on it and try to unravel exactly what it is that makes me tick in this respect. Other people must know this particular sensation too, perhaps someone else can help to explain it better than I am?