“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”
That’s the opening paragraph to The Depressed Person, one of the most memorable (for me, at least) stories in David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I’d have to read the whole thing again in order to accurately weave its narrative into a review of Ben Stopfel’s new song Spotless Mind, which I’m not going to do, and which may be unnecessary for our purposes; that being: the mind always comes with spots (its macules or papules or purulent pseudocysts, emotionally speaking, of course). (But I’d recommend reading both the story and novel nonetheless.)
Ignore the Charlie Kaufman film for now — although, now that I’m writing this, perhaps Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is more appropriate. Regardless, the conclusions are similar: spots exist, whether one wants them to exist or not. (In the film, negative experiences are erased, presumably allowing the one with the spotless mind to once again be “happy,” whatever that means; of course, it fails because “minds” and “spots” are inseparable, indistinguishable.)
It is as Ben sings: “It gets better, then it doesn’t, then you die, and then there’s nothing.” A gloomy prospect, indeed, but this is just what happens, and little can be gained by ignoring this fact. (But Lord knows how hard people try to ignore it: with religions, with fairy tales, with myths and legends, with ludicrous cosmic conspiracies.) Sitting in this existential dread, welcoming it in, acknowledging it, accepting it, is necessary for the next process: moving on, and, not just that, but continuing on: looking the ugly nihilistic monster right in its non-existent eyes and saying “Yes, although my mind is pocked with spots, as every mind is, I will fight against it. Why am I obstinate in this regard? Because there’s no reason I shouldn’t be.”
• • •
To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
