Out of the Deep

Why break the habits of a lifetime?

I hope you're all enjoying my attempts to look outward, to drag myself out of a mire, usually of my own making, in the form of my new schedule (he says, barely hanging on to it by his fingernails alone).  I'm one down in a way already, so I'll have to finish and publish my take on three short stories by Kafka on a transposed date, but in falling behind I'm already falling into the bad habit I am so desperate to avoid.  That said, you try and read The Judgement, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony and... No, I'll leave it at that.  Just trying to read them ought to be more than enough for now.

Then again, don't forget that at the heart of this venture is still the same man, misguided at best and bitter at worst, trying to make sense of not only everything around him but also inside his own head.  The title of this blog has become a cornerstone really, and it all started as a throwaway joke (as all the best things do), combining the salutation an old friend would use on the telephone with a kind of forced reaction to the BBC's latest interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, fronted by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is NOT KHAN*.  That's not a spoiler, I'm not even going to apologise.  I mean, could you imagine if Star Wars: The Force Awakens was set in an alternate timeline that split off just after the Battle of Yavin in A New Hope and replaced Lando Calrissian with... BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH?!  I suppose it might be a bit different, I mean, Billy Dee Williams didn't die in 2009... Anyway, the point I'll be getting back to right now is the whole "Mind Palace" concept that Sherlock didn't necessarily invent but brought to a kind of public level.  While I'm hardly an expert (feel free to emphasise any or all of those five words as you see fit in my stead for maximum ironic impact), Cumberbatch's Holmes is certainly symptomatic of Asperger's, or at least high-functioning autistic.  I can't remember the 'official' byline on it, wasn't it something about being sociopathic as well?  Who knows.  

It's this 'Mind Palace' where all of his knowledge is stored, all highly organised deep within his brain.  There's a neat visualisation of this at the end of the third series, after suffering a life threatening gunshot wound, where we see him retreat to his memories both comforting and well... Not.  Also, there's that Doctor bird (technical term) who fancies him, popping up as the voice of reason to walk him through surviving being shot.  I think it's her anyway.  Pretty sure.  It's from this palace that the floating text appears when he looks at things (Egg?  Sitty thing?!?!?), like the scanning from the Metroid Prime trilogy but without having a Chozo Battle Suit Ver. SA1-446B-VM6-P (or should that be Ver. SH1?).  3D map constructions (press Z to bring up the map) and things like phone numbers float about as well.  What happens after he gets shot is arguably more like a dream sequence than anything else, but it's clearly set in the same place.  We're also shown that the baddie of the overall outfit has his own kind of palace, the "Appledore Vaults".  Throughout the series we're treated to scenes of him trotting in and out of archives, picking out files and pictures &c, only to discover that in the end it was all in his head!  Thanks, Dallas.  

Being the friendly local neighbourhood autist (or, at least the one who admits anyway), the comparisons with Sherlock were impossible to avoid.  In the eyes of many, I have all of his social niceties (almost none), yet none of the beguiling intelligence.  Oh, how I am good for nothing!  But thinking about it, there's some traction.  I retain almost everything I learn, and notice more environmental and intellectual stimuli compared to my emotional ability.  True, things are better than they ever have been, but I still lag sometimes significantly.  And often, my memory of places and events is aided by the recollection of bizarre things such as exact weather conditions, seeing someone's collar turned up or what time my watch said compared to somebody else's, you know, something quite odd that ties it all in to a causal timeline.  Sometimes this has been taken advantage of by others, who know that I'll recall events as they happened with no bias.  Everything is up here, somewhere, it's just getting at it that's the problem.

So, finally.  Why an asylum?  An old mad house, a "hospital" for the mentally degenerate.  Many real asylums were truly awful places, the genuinely disadvantaged rubbing shoulders (and perhaps more - yeesh) with the syphilitic, most likely being beaten by staff who would strike out in anger and fear more than anything else (is this helping?); not terribly jolly places at all.  The next step?  Don't roll your eyes too hard: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, yet another seminal and character defining work from Grant Morrison, illustrated by Dave McKean.  Yes, it's Batman.  Yes, it's an illustrated work... But serious stories can also be told with in a visual manner, and just remember that the next time you go and see some cinematographical masterpiece.  The wikipedia page linked there has some interesting comments, about how Morrison believing the further abstraction provided by McKean's art reduces its power, by making it 'unreal', and the success it had with an untypical readership - perhaps I'll write up for the next 'Top Shelf' (although I'll need to finish Kafka first).  I'm going right to the end with this one though.  Batman's journey through Arkham is harrowing enough, interspersed with the story of Amadeus Arkham, the man who turned the family home into a madhouse (and also tried to invoke some crazy dark magic), but by the end (and cutting a long story very very short), our favourite nemesis to all things Bat gives our hero a simple offer as he leaves: "Enjoy yourself out there.  In the Asylum.  Just don't forget -- If it ever gets too tough... There's always a place for you here."

In this case, the Asylum is the outside world: Gotham, crime, daily life, whatever.  Arkham Asylum itself is a little haven, an island where the madness inside is only ever less than or equal to the madness going on outside.  Like... The inside of my head?  Ha ha ha...  We all have to think of something, right?  

In the Asylum, there are many doors, and not all of them are open.  Things like traumas are locked away - abuse, family death, injury.  You know what it's like, you know, when "the mind protects itself" from the memory of great pain.  This is my version, that those things, places, people, those sensations are behind closed doors, some of which do not open.  Some things, like the time I basically became a functional alcoholic are behind doors that open - I can make myself remember if I try, and it brings back a lot that I don't necessarily want - Grant the King a Long Life was an exercise in opening many similar doors, so that I could accept those things and start to move on more positively, that the things inside those rooms could no longer burst their prisons and overwhelm me but be put away in their proper place.  Of course, I consider myself quite mad, in fact, you could say I was "fucking insane" most of the time, and had I lived even a hundred years ago, I probably would have been condemned to one of these "hospitals" myself, no need to kid myself.  I can retreat here though, when it all gets a bit too much outside, and I also need to stop making myself feel guilty about that.  I already push myself to appear as, uh, "typical" as I can, (because being normal is some boring ass shit and I ain't getting involved with that), and sometimes I just need a rest!  Feet up, tea, lock the doors.  Nothing in or out.  Everything will be okay.

Anyway.  I promise to get back to the new timetable of distractions after this.  It's good to get out of the Asylum sometimes too.






* Yes, I'm STILL angry about that.  This must be what "Trukk not Munky" felt like in the mid 90s...