Confessions of a tortured soul*

Devil, Thomas Theodor Heine

When I look at the joy and delight in my daughter’s face, as she bounds around the living room like a small elephant, galloping around the house, giggling endlessly, calling me ‘daddichka’, my heart simultaneously melts and breaks.

A question bounces around in my head: what on earth have I done?

Why on earth did we bring a child into this world? Into such a cruel, nasty world? 

Confessions, revelations and yet, perhaps, nothing new:

This and my previous blog from 2009-present, in no particular order: existentialist crises…fatherhood…fatherhood in an age of anxiety…wistful peregrinations…tales of sordid shenanigans and flirting with barmaids and waitresses…students and their antics…teaching…travelling…love and romance…philosophy…reading…reading…more reading…quotations…bugbears and pet hates…Ways of Escape…the future…optimism v pessimism…sports…gambling…investing…weddings…buying flats…heartbreak…anguish…angst…technology…being a Luddite…medical experiments…experiences with quacks in far-flung places…sleeplessness…physical and mental discomfort…war…upheaval…rootlessness…where is home…where are we going…

From Stefan Zweig, in The World of Yesterday, published in 1942:

‘The greatest curse brought down on us by technology is that it prevents us from escaping the present even for a brief time. Previous generations could retreat into solitude and seclusion when disaster struck; it was our fate to be aware of everything catastrophic happening anywhere in the world at the hour and the second when it happened.’

That was then and this is now. 

Solitude, Alfred Kubin

And:

‘We think of war now and then, but in much the same way as one sometimes thinks of death – a possibility but probably far away.’

He was writing this in the 1930s, as the signs of war in Europe became more and more ominous. 

Images of war in art and literature have a romantic allure to them, viewed from afar, with the passing not only of distance but time. They can, anyway. Think of the characters in Erich Maria Remarque books drinking calvados at seedy Parisian bars in the wee hours of the night, in the midst of war. Think of the glorified romanticism of the heroes in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and how noble and dignified it was to die for a cause you so wholeheartedly believed in. Think of the angst and existential pontifications of the characters in Jean Paul Sartre’s Road to Freedom trilogy, with war impending in the 1930s. Why do my examples all come from the 1930s? I’m honestly not sure, they’re merely the first that come to mind.

Destruction from afar hits us in Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, tragedy and helplessness stare back at us as we gaze at it in the faces of the soon-to-be-executed prisoners in Francisco Goya’s The Third of May. We can also settle our eyes on the tragic, solemn and forlorn face of the doomed, about-to-be-beheaded 15-year-old Queen of England in Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.

The Past (Forgotten and Sunken), Alfred Kubin

Inchoate confessions and ruminations

A friend once commented on how much she liked my use of ‘inchoate’. So I consciously try to use as much as I can, probably too much. 

Some stream of consciousness things on my mind, and I’m afraid there’s quite a lot.

Gently paraphrasing or borrowing from Orwell in Animal Farm here: Every sleepless night is bad, but some sleepless nights are more bad than others.

The Sleep, Alfred Kubin

The nights exacerbate the thoughts. In the night, they’re agonising. The next day…later that same day, they’re kinder and less harrowing but still fraught with lingering tension.

When you have a dreadful headache, you think, ‘this is the worst headache of my life!’ When you’re ill with the flu or Covid, you think, ‘I’ve never felt this rough in my life!’ When you’re facing a bout of extreme anxiety, you think, ‘god, this is unbearable I can’t take it anymore, when will it ever end?!’ (or will it?) When you’re dealing with utter heartbreak, you think, ‘will I ever get over this and feel happy again?’

Then you recover or feel a bit calmer and you think, okay that wasn’t so bad. Until the next bout comes around.

Yet another rereading, of a writer I go back to again and again, especially in times of angst. From Mortality, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir as he faced terminal cancer and knew the end was in sight, referring to the physical pain:

‘But mercifully, too, I now can’t summon the memory of how I felt during those lacerating days and nights.’

That’s human nature, and a valuable survival mechanism. The physical and mental pain, once mercifully forgotten, we can move onto better things. We tend to forget how menacing it once was.

Later, when he was called brave for his stoicism in his battle:

‘Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can’t run away from.’

Death as Saviour, Max Klinger

Questions I want to know the answer to, even though I’ve read endless books about them (probably). Or rather, questions that I wouldn’t know the answer to if/when my daughter asks:

Why is there is so much anger and vitriol in the world? Will it ever end? Why are people homophobic? Why are people so philosophically and politically inconsistent? Why don’t people listen more? Why do so many people fall prey to the most basic of cognitive biases? (Why, even though I’ve mentioned this a few times, do I keep putting off a long-promised post about cognitive biases?) Why aren’t people more tolerant and respectful? Why are people so bad at communicating? Why don’t more people read? Why don’t more people read from a wider range of sources? Why don’t people want to see, hear and feel what the other side thinks? Why aren’t people more empathetic? Why do so many lack self-awareness? Why is there so much inequality in the world? Why do people wage war? Why don’t people put more trust in science? Why do people accept everything they see on social media? Why do people believe the things they do? Why can’t people see through the bullshit? Why are some people not curious? Why do people get bored? Why do people believe? What do people believe? How do people believe? Why are people afraid of death? What happens to us when we die? What is the purpose of our existence? Does life have any meaning? Should it? Are we all going to turn into transhumanists? Is ‘real life’ going to disappear and send us all to the metaverse? Why do people not care about the planet? Why do people mistreat animals? Why is everything so confusing? Why do we overcomplicate things? Why can’t some people sleep?

If there any actual answers… some would intrigue, some would infuriate, some would perplex….

Perhaps animals are doing it right. From an Aeon article, 'Human exceptionalism is a danger to all, human and nonhuman':

'We all lack the capacity for rational reflection early in life, some of us lose this capacity later in life, and some of us never develop this capacity at all. Meanwhile, many nonhuman animals have the capacity for memory, emotion, self-awareness, social awareness, communication, instrumental reasoning and more.'

The Horror, Alfred Kubin

A better question that I hope my daughter can help answer one day: will the world ever be a happier place, free of conflict, bloodshed, torture, ill will, anger, fear, mistrust. Will humanity survive the 21st century?

And one day, well after I’ve departed from this earth, if/when my daughter reads these words, she’ll say, much as she does right now, ‘silly daddy, you are being stupid!’ and then she’ll hopefully say ‘my goodness, my old man really was a crank, if only he were alive to see what a splendidly charming world we live in, where peace and happiness reign!’

Alas.

‘Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in the human situation.’ Ways of Escape, Graham Greene

I’ve never been religious. But when I was in high school and I dabbled with going to church – mainly because of a girl I liked, I must confess – I used to feel that I was doing my body and soul some good just by dint of being there. That would give me no comfort or solace now, but I do find it soothing, secularly speaking, to hear singing or chanting in a grandiloquent church, and there is something mystical, even for a non-believer, in the smell of incense and the way the light filters and the smoke mingles in the streaming rays. 

a Sunday morning visit to a service in Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia, 2008

Writing, religion, art: just three forms of therapy. There are more.

When I’m in need of calm and a soothing of my soul these days – again, secularly speaking – I find art to be a comforting presence. And in Vienna, I’m spoiled for choice.

All of the pictures you see here come from my recent visit to the Leopold Museum, from an exhibition of Alfred Kubin’s works entitled Confessions of a Tortured Soul. For a couple of hours at least, my mind wandered in a positively introspective direction, and I felt relief, temporarily, from the inner and outer turmoil, mental and physical.

Every Night a Dream Visits Us, Alfred Kubin

There are a lot of emotions I’m spilling out here, as I’m wont to do. I briefly hesitate in sharing this quotation from Zweig, but it feels apropos:

As Rainer Maria Rilke told Zweig: ‘People who spout their emotions like blood exhaust me, and so I can take Russians only in very small doses, like a liqueur.’

And finally, I dare not suggest that what I am writing here, right now, is ‘good’, but all the same:

‘Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head -- even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.’ (Malcolm Gladwell)

At the very least, thank you for reading some of what’s inside my head. And I hope your head is a better place to be.

Death and Life, Gustav Klimt

*Alfred Kubin, Confessions of a Tortured Soul, is at the Leopold Museum, Vienna until 24 July 2022. For more click here. And for the full digital exhibition, click here.