It’s not the most edifying of responses to ‘good’ news, instantly defaulting to hyper-vigilance toward some unknown threat. It doesn’t make for cosy moments of warm reflection, put it that way. This perhaps explains why, despite having been invited to numerous graduation ceremonies over the years, I have never once attended. There’s no chance of luxuriating. Laurels? Resting? Give over! I spent years in the Bardo; a landscape of dense, trauma-related fog where I seemed to astrally travel across vast planes of vaporous film, not via a silver cord but by a thread. It wasn’t until my early thirties that I even began to connect with the present moment. The result being that I have always felt this acute sense of disjointedness; or certainly of feeling like much of life passed me by. I cannot receive ‘good’ news without wondering ‘What now?’ Whatever is around the corner has historically been a threat to my safety. So yeah, I realised my dream of publishing a book, but I immediately began to feel the dry, sulphuric heft of dread seep into my skin. This would go wrong. It was nice now but somewhere, some way and some how soon I’d be paying for this. First it giveth.
As of the time of writing, this is yet to occur. The contract has been signed and my editing team are working on my manuscript. If I try to forcefully banish the nagging thought that ‘Inviting shit equates to shit’, it calcifies. So I let it come and I let it go. The general aura of dread is one of the most unpleasant sensations I’ve known but I take the time to feel it. I have this thing every single night where I momentarily imagine I’ve forgotten to take my meds. If I don’t take my evening dose I am normally then beholden to an inescapable nightmare until the morning. There’s a flash of radiant, red-hot lightning that throbs in my gut. And then I realise, I did take my tablet. The lightning leaves a trail, like a sparkler crisscrossing the cool night air. After a little while it goes. This is what the dread is like now. Its forked tongue pricks at me but then I recalibrate knowing that everything, right now, is fine.
I finished writing last week. I proposed a maximum of 40000 words to the publisher, to be delivered in roughly six months. I saved and closed the document with the word count sitting at just above 60000 after three months of intense writing. I didn’t sigh in an exalted state, there was no relief. I just thought, ‘What now?’ I think in some ways, this is tied to the central concept of the book, which is that Capitalism has wrought its callous and rapid-fire demands upon us for so long, inter-generationally, that we have become conditioned to follow a linear line of progress and achievement (whatever in the hell progress and achievement even means in this context). Of course, what I’m describing is my adaptation to personal trauma. A project is the perfect means of avoidance. However, I imagine a lot of people can relate to what I describe because of their experience of living under the black wings of Neoliberalism.
I recognised that I had gone into mourning. I was grieving this friend I’d lived with so passionately for the last three months. This partner that had given me boundaries and purpose, along with joy and fulfilment. Thinking about the discursive material and how it somehow intertwined, how I felt about it; submitting to the flow of it all, even away from the page, and the nourishment this gave me. It was now gone. I wanted to catch the rhythm of the ever-winding conveyor belt and step right back on. So here I am. Writing. With no great rhyme or reason save for personal enjoyment.
I’m halfway through series 2 of The Bear. The obvious effects of the narrative aside (of a man returned home from years of avoiding his hometown life and family, self-inflicting stress upon himself as the chef of renowned kitchens, to inherit the kitchen of his recently deceased brother), the music…the music in this show has really impacted me. From the gorgeous refrains of Mulatu Astatke’s Ethio-jazz, to classic REM, Steve Earle, a favourite Radiohead track and one of my all time favourite bands, Pearl Jam, the music couldn’t be any more perfect for the feeling of the show. The song that really floored me, that has stayed with me is John Mellencamp’s ‘Check it Out’. Before I discovered the lyrics which align so vividly with what I’d spent months writing about, the accordion hook got right into me. I can’t quite put into words what good television (or any effective art for that matter) does to me. I started this blog off with the conceit that I would be exploring various forms of media and how mental health/illness is represented. I have a list of TV shows that I’ve been meaning to get to. There seems to me, for the last five years at least to have been a gradual increase in the type of television that The Bear falls into. I’m not entirely sure how to qualify ‘type’ other than to say that it is apparent to me that there exists a generation of writers who are creating art which reflects their lived experience of trauma within the Capitalist model. My primary examples are (and I haven’t watched the vast majority of TV series and movies, remember):
Beef
Bojack Horseman
Undone
Fleishman is in Trouble
Ozark
Bloodline
Fleabag
The Bear
Encanto
Coco
Elemental
In The Bear you have a protagonist, Carmen who is estranged from his family, who decides to enact his Counterscript (to use a term from Transactional Analysis). The older brother he idolises refuses to employ him at his kitchen, so Carmen is driven to shove this in his brother’s face by becoming a Michelin-starred chef. When Carmen's brother kills himself, he mysteriously bequeaths his kitchen to his younger sibling. Carmen is returning to a place, and time, that he’d long abandoned - that he’d been banished from. He spends the series reckoning with the spectre of his brother, who, whilst alive, shunned him - but in death, awards him his most esteemed achievement. Carmen is detached to the point of dissociation. He chain-smokes and sleepwalks into calamity. He thrives on the cortisol which he has likely over-produced since childhood. In many ways, the kitchen is the perfect environment for him (not forgetting the structure it grants his chaotic mind). In many other ways, it serves as a kind of device for flagellating himself. This kind of generational, ancestral, familial trauma is what I think unites the list above. The toll that the demands of Capitalism takes on the family; tearing fissures through the hearts and the veins through which their shared blood courses. I once worked with a client who inherited her father’s business when he passed. I think of her a lot when I watch The Bear. It’s interesting to me how materials; fixtures and fittings become infused with spirit when they are passed down. I watched and listened as the pressure to uphold this business tore this client and her remaining family apart. I tried to direct her toward the thought that she and her children were her father’s greatest legacy. Carmen clutches so tightly to The Bear; it is emblematic of his brother’s soul and of his last connection to him. The kitchen provides the perfect backdrop to accentuate the stresses of grief, particularly of inheritance and expectation along with the exacting diktats of Capitalist society. I also think of the nourishment of the food. Of the loss of family and the loss of ritual. With globalisation opposing these family-run ventures, it becomes very easy to root for this business. It’s not just about making money from inside of the Capitalist framework. I mean, it is, but that’s only part of it. And I find this contradiction fascinating. How a money-making asset can take on so many layers of meaning, because like my client’s business, it does take on additional, more symbolic and sacred dimensions. This is a place where a broken family, cast upon the harsh sea of grief, reconvene, to fill up. To be together, just like their patrons. To break bread, together.
Sous, Sydney lost her mother. Pastry chef Marcus visits his ailing mother in hospital every day - sending her messages and notes from Copenhagen (where Carmen sends him to hone his craft).
It will be ten years since my mother died on the 5 December. Perhaps all of this has simply come along at the ‘right’ time. But there’s something about the story of these characters, each so beset with pressure and self-doubt, convening and supporting one another. Messily. With great, great stress and lots of fuck ups along the way. Carmen seeks to strengthen Tina in gifting her his knife. Tina encourages Ebraheim. Sydney tries to embolden Marcus by sharing her knowledge. Every one, despite their own paucity of confidence holds up the other. The family is nourished.
I love you, mum.
