***** to ******
dispatches from depression #7
i didnt write last month coz i haven’t wanted to do or publish anything that isn't about palestine but i couldnt find the words so i stayed quiet which honestly i will always be an advocate for. more of us being quiet more often. and then this month i almost didn’t write again lol for the same reason plus some others but nkenna called me after i last minute cancelled a plan with her and kind of coaxed me into remembering the fun of refusing perfectionism psychosis and also that people are paying me real bri ish pounds for this shit and so thanks to her and also to those of you investing in this one newsletter a month if ur lucky authored by a sad slug but aren’t we all sad slugs now? isn’t that the squelch of sad slug summer approaching
i can’t blame depression for my inability to create because despite it all i dont think i’m depressed this time though cute how enough years in the psychiatry machine kind of decimates your ability to ever feel like u truly have enough ownership of your interior world to know for sure what tf is going on with you. am i less depressed or is everyone else more depressed? has the bar for what is considered personal wellness now fallen so low that depressed is the new normal? How will depression manifest once we are all awake? it’s fucked up but also true that in moments of widespread communal catastrophe i feel less alone, less alien in my mourning, and so yes, less depressed. and even if i am depressed, ive decided (yes! decided!) to become the type of depressive who dissociates via excessive pleasure & frivolity from now on so watch out
loss of interest in things that previously brought you joy is understood as a classic symptom of depression but if i dont want to listen to beyonce while she’s draped in the american flag is that depression or is enough fucking enough. is it depression to turn cold when i see the image, not because its unheard of for a billionaire to appease the state but because it’s particularly bland in its aesthetic and messaging. i haven’t slept for 4 days which for me points more to a manic episode but i am not manic either i am here on a flight to the homeland (lesbos) to play a show, a little tired but not 96-hours-awake tired
while keeping me company on the phone during my 4th night awake, Ashley says it sounds like i’ve turned into a sim. do sims get depressed? do they have ibs? (genuine questions, i’m not that type of nerd). but after retiring the morphed into a sim hypothesis and assessing the data, we settle on the theory that i have unlocked a new level of grief. since seeing the tent massacre footage from rafah, i have not slept. a new sensation, dissociated but painful at the same time, inside, a muted heartbeat, a drum of grief. and whenever my body relaxes enough to feel like it might finally let go, the drum beats louder promising to keep me awake. an awakeness that feels like a fact or is it a memory. not just my awakeness or my memory or my fact but that of all that has been awoken, within and around.
on the 24th of april, two horses ran free through the city of london covered in blood and never will i find a more appropriate use of “mood”. they are huge military horses, belonging to the household cavalry regiment who “guard the monarch at buckingham palace and act as the sovereign's mounted escort on state occasions… as well as being the public face of the british army both at home and abroad.” needless to say i was disappointed to find out the blood belonged to the horses themselves. most of the attention was on the white horse, turned red, but the black horse was actually injured worse, was bleeding more. it was just harder to see.
the official line is that they got “spooked by building works” during a rehearsal for some bullshit royal event and set off, unseating their riders and galloping frantically into oncoming traffic. and as humans love to project meaning and motive onto non-human animals with abandon, let me join in. i say they were ready for freedom. i say it was revolt, refusal. that horses, known for their deep sentience and huge success in healing humans through equestrian therapy probably don’t want to be the face of a genocidal war machine? eyewitnesses said they saw the police crying as they cleared the pools of blood from the street after they were captured. the horses have made a full recovery. in my mind they are still running.
a few weeks later I see some of the corniest shit I have ever seen on the gram. a bunch of Very Stylish micro celebrities i used to follow posted photos from the buckingham palace gardens where they were attending some kind of royal party celebrating black and brown creatives or some shit i honestly don’t know i had to stop reading the caption when i got to “the empire strikes back!!” because what nonsense is that actually referencing (I’m not that kind of nerd either) but also WHY ARE YOU SEEKING VALIDATION FROM THE MONARCHY BRO?? we all wanted daddy to love us but i promise you this isn’t the way the truth OR the light my love. i have friends who have woken up every single day since october 7th and organised for the revolution meanwhile some of us can’t decline ONE content opportunity? can’t say no thank you to a party held in the empire’s garden? in thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis economy? i am………… disheartened.
meanwhile, in brooklyn earlier this month, caitie and i saw the aurora borealis. we met a couple years ago at jacqui & kira’s love ceremony on a swedish archipelago. i liked her shoes, she liked my 69 tattoo. since then this fat-assed white girl’s dulcet syracuse tones and very particular cat mom voice have soundtracked some of the greatest transitions and griefs of my life so far. her generosity and wry wisdom a constant buoy. a reminder that you never know what goodies are in store. you never know.
she drags me out the house because word on the street is that the aurora borealis can be seen over brooklyn. we run around half in half out of our shoes searching the sky. caitie spots it first, a kind of egg-shaped disc of magenta, then electric blue, then ice white, on a loop above the j train on broadway. we stand hand in hand for an hour, watching in awe the rhythmic pulsing of this strange guest. and if you’re thinking that sounds like a unique colourway for the northern lights, that’s because it turns out what we were seeing were actually the lights from bjork’s show under the kosciuszko bridge reflecting off the clouds.
later that week caitie came home from work pinky faced and sobbing. two old beautiful trees in the neighbourhood had been cut down to make way for something. i held her while she cried for them and for us and ranted in that nyc-induced-psychosis-oracle kind of way when there’s a crack in the glass, and the honesty floods in, usually in a kitchen. once she’s done graphically describing a world with no trees i lean in and whisper, at least we saw the northern lights.
back to the doomscroll. this time, the carousel of “notes” on the gram. i personally can’t engage with this update because i am too old for new features but i am grateful to those who have been using it as another signifier of solidarity with currently genocided people and i am unfortunately not too old to be a voyeur. i flick through the gloomy digicarnival of flags until i reach a status that makes me feel something. it says, quite simply, ‘death to israel’ and i take a real deep inhale exhale on that one and it feels good. to say the things we are not allowed to but that are right and fair. to keep tugging together at the curtain of lies that have obfuscated life and joy and truth our whole goddamn lives.
it is not shocking, uncouth, uncivilised to wish death on a maniacal regime enacting ethnic cleansing on black and brown bodies, on black and brown babies, a vampiric force that relies on our perceived powerlessness on our holy gentleness on the assumption that we can’t or wont fight back to continue its evil. bad luck. palestine is freeing us, guiding us, showing us that everything except love is a lie. death to israel means death to imperialism, death to colonisation, death to capitalism, death to white supremacy, death to all mechanisms of suppression and psychic warfare that do nothing for us, that are stripping everything of what feels good and meaningful to be alive from us. system death to avenge the death of martyrs. system death to avoid soul death. or, it’s time to compost zionism like someone gentler than me might say. it’s been time
as i have written before, my relationship with hope is tenuous which is ok because most of the time i do not experience it as a requirement for liberation and care work. i can trundle along in that direction kind of regardless. i feel i have to try and trick myself into feeling hopeful but what comes easier is love. i believe in love because i have felt it. and i am motivated towards us all feeling it, again and again. bell hooks says love and abuse cannot coexist and i believe her but that doesn’t mean we can’t love our abusers. and love them we do. what is life under capitalism if not that. capitalism is the opposite of love, it does not want us to feel true love, because then we’ll know there’s more. that we don’t have to cling to loving it, taking its scraps. because when love is real it lasts forever. it moves when you move. even when it ends, it lives on like a fucking song. i hope one day we all get to hear it
Palestinian freedom fighter Walid Daqqah was imprisoned in 1986 as a result of his work with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. he stayed incarcerated until his death last month, on april 7th. that’s 37 years. during his time held captive, he created and wrote extensively, including letters to his wife Sanaa Salameh. i leave you with a quote from one of those letters:
I will admit now, in my 20th year in prison, that I don't feel hatred, nor do I feel beset by the indifference and brutishness of prison life. I will admit that I become childishly happy for the simplest things. A word of praise or encouragement overjoys me. I will admit that my heart quickens at the sight of a rose on TV, or a natural vista, like the sea. I will admit that despite everything I'm happy. There are no joys of life that I miss, except for two scenes, of children and laborers. The sight of children drifting in from all parts of the village in the morning, heading to school. And the sight of labourers in the early hours of morning, trickling in from all streets and corners during a cold, foggy winter morning, trodding towards the town center, all set to make the trip to work. I will admit now that it would not have been possible for me to feel these feelings, that it would not have been possible for all this love to remain with me, if I had not had the love of my mother Farida, and of my wife Sana'a, and of my brother Hosni. If I had not had the support of my parents, and felt encircled by loved ones and friends.
I will admit now that I'm still human, clutching my love as if it were an ember. That with this love in hand I will remain resilient. And that I will love you. For love is my humble victory over my jailer.
p.s. i’m hearing about more “protests” by the far right in london and i just think it’s important we revisit this:
and then this:
I know the feeling of feeling too overwhelmed and inadequate to write a newsletter in the face of this genocide. I’m in the same place. But you breathe life into us whenever you write, my darling. Thank you for your generosity.
And also yeah death 2 all of it 🤪