Nothing Compares
I’m on the monthly silent Sunday morning meditation retreat at the Tibetan Buddhist Centre here in Cape Town. I find myself sitting comfortably, maybe too comfortably, as I’ve nodded off more than once. It’s freezing cold, and I’m in my massive black down jacket that saved my life 20 years ago when I bought it in New York City. Those winters were the most brutal that I’ve ever endured. It used to feel like someone was punching me in the face every time I stepped outside.
I’ve been very glum this week. Sinéad O’Connor died, possibly by suicide (though this is not confirmed). The talk around her has been rather irritating (& worse). Everyone wants to separate out her artistry from the messy mental health shit, when really there is no artistry without feeling deeply and feeling deeply, when your mind is also sharp, is a messy, uncomfortable thing, profoundly so.
We worship, idolise, these people… So long as they keep it arty. Whatever you do, don’t get fat and sloppy. Don't age. Never share on social media how desperately lonely you are. In other words, don’t be real.
It’s hard to idolise the shadow in all of us. Those deeply unloved disowned parts of us. The very parts of us that do need to be brought into the light. I’ve seen people say she needed plant medicine. Pretty sure she went there. I’ve read that her religious zeal – anti-pope, then ordained a priest, then reverted to Islam – that it was all symptomatic of bipolar disorder. Here she is being stark raving sane about the terrible trauma inflicted by religion on children:
When I danced at the bus stop outside my high school at age 14, and saw an actual halo around the sun, while belting out the lyrics from Troy:
“I never meant to hurt you
I swear!
(HOW did she get her voice to do that?! To express exactly that feeling? How!)
I didn't mean those things I said"
Sinead's deepest hope that her music would serve as prayer, as spiritual communion, was fully realised.
That was before she ripped up the Pope’s piccie on live TV. Before she was branded unhinged. A mad woman. Ah that handy moniker given to unruly women who refuse to toe the patriarchal line. Throughout history we have been branded mad for speaking truth to power. I have sat in that hot seat more than once, though obviously not on a global stage. Even though I was a catholic schoolgirl and deeply devout to my Mormon faith at the time, somehow I knew in my bones that she was dead right.
The evidence only emerged a decade later. Then even later, her own courage in revealing the terrible abuse she suffered at the hand of her mother as a child. How she survived it, let alone turned it into transcendent art, is nothing short of miraculous. But then again isn't that what our artists do. They process things that crush us. They make them beautiful, spiritual, mystical. They transmute poison into medicine. They are alchemists. And too often the poison kills them.
My generation's idols are dying like flies. Some then, in their wild, gorgeous heyday. This cover of Nirvana's All Apologies has always been a favourite. More and more die by suicide now, in the throes of the unsexy ravages of midlife. Turns out I'm not the only one to notice. Here's a grim headline that speaks volumes: Deaths by suicide and drugs highest amongst Generation X.
How any of us carry on in the face of our collective traumas is a complete mystery to me. But I do know that the magic our artists make, sings on in our hearts and minds.
“But I will rise And I will returnThe Phoenix from the flameI have learnedI will riseAnd you'll see me returnBeing what I am”
Every morning, every breath, a triumph of resilience, in the face of a multitude of horrors, real and imagined, inner and outer. I’m so sick of the moral judgements attached to struggle. Gen Z is pretty cool about celebrating realness with their "come rot with me" trends and debunking the self-destructive toxicity of endlessly trying to prove your worth to yourself and the world.
The need to look right, be right, eat right, do right that adds up to deeply impoverished people pleasing is so inculcated in every moment. Go watch the Barbie movie and listen to Billie Eilish croon “I don’t know how to feel."
Feeling is fucking uncomfortable. But it is quite literally the only thing that AI probably won’t be able to do for us. Our brilliant minds are not the edge we might have mistaken them for. They are more the obstacle and hindrance to our peace.
Whether you’re numbing out or seeking a feeling through booze, sex, shopping, food, exercise, scrolling, work, reading, drugs (prescription or recreational or spiritual) - and let’s pause to note that some of these addictions are more virtuous than others and problematic, in that some we need for our very existence - feeling our feelings, learning to be with our feelings, is kind of the entire point of being embodied as far as I can make out.
Learning that no matter how torrid the feelings, how grueling or lekker or any number of adjectives, no matter the feeling...you can be with it.
What has helped me learn that? Meditation. Shamatha...cultivating equanimity, a calm abiding with whatever may arise. The embodied awareness that absolutely everything arises and falls away.
Sinead had “All Things Pass" tattooed on her neck. Anicca... impermanence.
The problem of suicide is this: While I am relieved for the one who was
suffering so tremendously (where/how they are now,
no one knows, but at least that chapter seems closed for them), living in the aftermath of suicide makes living ever
so much harder. No one knew this better than Sinead, she lost her son to suicide a year ago. Since my brother unalived himself it has been a daily battle to keep on keeping on.
I watched "Life and Times of Michael K" at the
Baxter Theatre recently. A gift from the lovely folks at the Free Film School where I’ve been facilitating screenwriting workshops. I heard
myself echoed back at myself from the puppet on the stage, particularly
when he takes himself off to the mountains to die. It felt word for word
lifted from my mind during my trek in Nepal in November (something I'm yet to write about because I'm still processing). But Michael K, our lovable fool, doesn’t
die. Instead, he satisfies himself with a spoonful of water drawn from
the sabotaged well.
Give yourself permission to just sip at life when you can’t stomach another drop. Feasting all the time loses its charm, leads to indigestion. Just a sip is enough. No matter how burdensome you believe yourself to be. How much of a fool. For aren't we all rather foolish? Your absence is a thing the world never recovers from, because nothing compares to you.
Comments