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[24 Nov 2008|04:34pm] |
I, Michelle Ingrid Williams, am a full believer in seasonal depression. Seasonal affective disorder is the actual, psychological term for it, I think, and I'm sure if you were reading this in the first place, you've stopped by now. Don't worry; I probably would have stopped too. But I'm not going to sit here and ramble on about seasonal affective disorder. Supposedly, this is an actual psychological disorder, is in the DSM IV and all that, whether we believe in it or not. I think we all feel a little blue in January, anyway. There's not much too look too forward to besides the brutal cold, faces red with windburn, and total darkness by 6:00pm. Not to metion dry skin, the complete inability to warm up whether you have two blankets over your lap or seven, and perpetually frozen toes.
But I digress. My conditions are not listed in the DSM IV. If I talked to a psychiatrist about me, he or she would have me committed immediately and idefinitely. My friends, I am talking to you about art depression. For me, there are three categories of this affliction. I bring to you:
The Unoffical Handbook of Art Depression
Version M.I.W.
1. Book Depression: I am a self-professed book nerd. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, I always have a book close at hand. I even keep a book in my purse at all times. On my way to the corner store with no possibility of being gone for more than five minutes? The purse on my shoulder is that much heavier because there's a book stored in there. At the moment, for example, I have The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe lost deep in the black hole that is my shoulder bag. A novel or collection of stories is to me as Linus' blanket is to him. It's my security. I am a lover of classic novels that most of us are required to read in high school and college-- books that people hate because there are words sprinkled inside that may now be obselete, novels that are shunned because they can be analyzed more ways than we could possibly imagine. I've just about every great classic I can get my hands on more than once. My copies are tattered, the pages are permanently creased from being dog-eared so many times. I've read these stories too many times to count. It's not because they leave me feeling unfulfilled; it's quite the contrary. No matter how may times I read Little Women, I'll never be okay with Beth's death. I will cry every time (whether they're big, fat tears or crocodile droplets has nothing to do with their relevance) and I'll never understand. I'll never get over it, and I know that. I also know that Louisa May Alcott was a genius in her own right, and if I had a chance to change one of my favorite characters in literature's life, would I? Not a chance. When I get to the last page of a final chapter of a book, or when I see the period at the end of the last word of a novel's epilogue, I find myself staring into space for a moment. I feel lost. And I don't start reading another book until a few days later, when my reflection phase has been exhausted and I can devote my full attention to someone else's story. I want to live vicariously through the narrator of The Grapes of Wrath, not while I'm still mourning Beth's ufortunate fate.
2. Music Depression: Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah". Kings of Leon's "Cold Desert". Ingrid Michealson's "Mosquito". MoZella's "Light Years Away". The Beatles' "Hey Jude", A Fine Frenzy's "Almost Lover", Augustana's "Boston", Duffy's "Warwick Avenue", John Mayer's "Gravity", Missy Higgins' "Where I Stood", Jessie Baylin's "Contradicting Words", Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees". I have a disease, one that draws me like a magnet toward songs that, for whatever reason, center around a person's misery. I'm not a pessimist by any means, but sometimes, I need something with a little more meaning and more of a central core than the songs that Dora and Diego sing. A lot of the music that keeps me stunned is based around something lost-- lost lovers, lost feelings, loss of self or sense or reality, truth, center, balance, faith. It's fascinating to me how much we all rely on things and don't realize it, not in the least, until it's seemingly gone... like my spare car key, for example, or all our socks that enter the dryer but never come out. Really, though, those things are tangible, they're replaceable. My spare key will turn up. I can buy pack after pack of socks if need be. But there are some things that we can't recreate. There's that feeling you get when you're on a first date with a guy you met that turns out to be ten times better than you expected. You can't recreate your best friend's laughter or the way her eyes light up when she talks about her new apartment that she just redecorated. Even if you got the exact recipe from your favorite Thai place three blocks down, the dish wouldn't taste the same if you tried to make it yourself, and there's no recreating your daughter's prideful smile when she hands you a fistful of wildflowers that she picked herself. For me, that's how I feel when I listen to some of these songs. They can't be replaced. They can be remade, sure, by another artist with another arrangement. I can listen to each of them over and over again, but I can guarantee the feeling I get will be the same, but varying between songs. The relistening is where the music depression comes in. They leave me stunned, breathless, and remembering that there are many more emotions that any of us could be able to name or describe. And when it comes to the beauty of music and the depression that inevitably comes along with some of it, I'm never satiated. I can't get enough of feeling lost and left hanging after a great song. Go ahead, call me masochistic.
3. Movie Depression: Right off the bat, this one makes me feel entirely ridiculous. I act for a living. I know the ins and outs, the rights and lefts, and everything in between when it comes to the movie business. It's writers, directors, producers, it's lighting and casting and costume and makeup, and everyone, even the goffers, have Very Important Jobs. And when it comes to us, the faces that you see on a movie screen, believe me... it's not as romanticized, glamorous and frivolous as people think. It's hard work, it's exhausting, and it's draining, both physically and mentally. A lot goes into portraying someone else, and if you don't put your entire heart and soul and all the effort you can muster up into your work, it's shit. If it was as easy as it seems (as easy as it hopefully is to believe, if only for 90 minutes, that we're a different person entirely) the world would be nothing but a huge stage, literally, and everyone would be someone new every day... but I'm getting off-topic here. Even though I know what's going on behind the cameras, I still get intrigued when I see the end result of a brilliant movie. I get lost in the characters' stories, just like I do when I read a great book, and I can't help but wondering what it's like to live in, say, Carrie Bradshaw's shoes and planning a wedding to Mr. Big. Scenarios usually fill my mind on the way home from the theater-- I can't lie. Then, there are the characters you relate to, the ones who go through the motions of certain situations that you yourself have been through. Those protagonists are the kind you can relate to, the people that you wish were actual people so they can let you know what to do in a particular instance or situation. And yet again, there are the movies that leave you still for a few minutes afterward.
To summarize, my friends, it all comes full circle, and like any good book, great song, or fantastic film, it's all worth it. I don't know about you guys, but I'm half-tempted to do whatever it is I have to do to get my hands on a copy of the DSM-IV, just so I can pencil in art depression, the sister condition to seasonal affective disorder. What do you say? Am I officially certifiable yet?
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