Come Clap Thy Hands

I'm closing the Asylum down for a little while.  I like to think it's for repairs, just like the Cathedral and the north side of the nave roof.  Yes, imagine that, a whole load of scaffold up around my head; whole wings lay in ruins, hardly any of the lights work and various doors either won't open or close depending on where they are and who's behind them.

I'm tired, I suppose.  I know I'm upset about the end of the year as well, before anyone points it out for me, especially as it feels particularly abrupt this year - just so many things have happened: Filming 9 Lessons and Carols alongside the usual packed Christmas timetable, audio recordings in January, Come and Sing, the termly concerts with their own highs and lows (Less than half the Cathedral full on a Friday night?  Thoughtless errors in the Durufle Requiem?!), this year's CD followed swiftly by the broadcast... It's been a packed schedule.  Maybe you as audience may scoff at this - perhaps you are part of a choir that does this every year so it's in your stride?  Maybe you have a full time job and demanding home life?  Or maybe you have no idea why this sounds like a lot?  Who knows.  I know that as we reached and somehow survived this last hurrah... I just feel knackered.  I'm worn through and burnt out really; not so much burning the candle at both ends as throwing the whole candle into the fire.  

So, like I say, the place is going to close for a little bit.  If anybody catches me publishing anything before the 6th of September then, then... I don't know, some arbitrary measure of punishment ought to be involved.  Seven weeks ought to be good enough.  Did you know there's a difference between saying something doesn't matter and saying something isn't important?  Amazing.  But I digress.  I used to write about how much it upset me that I didn't fit in: Humanity is still essentially a herd animal - social but ultimately stupid and dangerous in large numbers.  After a modicum of success I once again feel pretty much the same, so I guess this is my get out post for now though - there's just so much bullshit I've decided that the best option now is to down tools and shut the doors - there are battles here that I will never win, ever, and trying to fight on terms other than my own is destroying what's left of me.  Sometimes I feel like the monomaniacal Ahab, hell-bent on his own destruction... Although having thought about who or what my own white whale would be, and what sort of short-sighted offence might be taken, I should say no more on it.

I wonder whether I have left bridges unburnt merely for the sake of it?  I've never felt so inadequate in all my life, said I, before processing up for Evensong... But that's for another time, I suppose.  Frankly, I feel more and more that I have been treated increasingly as a commodity: enough is enough.  That my opinions are increasingly invalid; that my decisions are easy to overturn, or are simply incorrect in the first place; that I am at others' convenience, and that alone; that I may be cancelled, and cancelled on; that simply, it does not matter.  Good for answering your questions, but not much else.  Maybe if I tear enough down, tear it all down, maybe I can build something better.  Yes!  Build a better asylum, build a better mousetrap, build a better me.  Such lofty aspirations.  

There are some good things to come out of all this dread though, in a way.  I now look after a tiny little doglet person, a Golden Retriever puppy of gradually increasing age,size and appetite.  Odds are that nobody would ever have thought I'd be a dog person, in fact probably not any kind of animal at all person but there we go - a change really is as good as a rest.  In a way, he acts like a little Emotional Support Animal, what with me being "on the spectrum" and all (before any of you clever dicks out there say it first), and that I have had no more fun this year so far than chasing this tiny dog around the house and garden, and taking him out and gradually introducing him to the world at large.  He may not strictly be my dog... But when I have custody of him he is my responsibility, and what I say goes.  I've taken to carrying the treat pouch around with me now, to encourage him to behave better (especially at road sides), which garnered me the strange but (probably deserved) compliment that I was "like a proper daddy", which filled me with an as yet unknown sense of pride.

I suppose I'm angry as well.  Maybe it's all misplaced, or totally unwarranted or even unjustified, but that's neither here nor there.  I really need to get my life in order for a really quite substantial change (no, I'm not moving away... But I can't help but think perhaps I missed an opportunity, but actually I do have promises to keep after all), and relieving myself of any guilt of having not posted anything is as much a part of it as anything else.  I am in a time of change, as always at the end of an academic year, and as old totems finally crumble from sheer age I don't really know how to replace them - I am unsure and feel almost totally alone.

None of this rage will matter next year though, as I will finally have a job and money and maybe even some status to go along with them.  Maybe people will finally like me!  I crack myself up... Ah, once upon a time, while I still thought that killing myself was a valid and morally reasonable option, I joked about how I would take so long writing a suicide note that would encompass all my feelings of being wronged and why I ought to leave this mortal plane that I would become too engrossed in the actual note itself, inadvertently saving my own life.  It was at that moment, I knew it was a writer's life for me!  All laughter aside though, wouldn't it be boring if I died?  I can't stand being bored myself, and I'm sure plenty of people would be even more bored if it wasn't for me, so I'll be sticking around for a while.  Anyway, I'd have nothing to complain about!  Even at the gallows, one's sense of humour is still important.

I'll leave you with a real joke for now; I think Rorschach said it best...

"I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor.  Says he's depressed.  Life seems harsh, and cruel.  Says he feels all alone in threatening world.  Doctor says: "Treatment is simple.  The great clown - Pagliacci - is in town.  Go see him.  That should pick you up."  Man bursts into tears.  "But doctor..." he says "I am Pagliacci."

Good joke.  Everybody laugh.  Roll on snare drum.  Curtains." 

Come then, and clap thy hands.