Tuesday 5 September 2017

#241 What it feels like to feel things

Getting feeling back is like... when the instruments come in behind a voice. It reinforces everything without altering the lyrics at all. The length of the song, the audience, the stadium, even the musician. None of it changes. It all stays exactly the same except from nowhere, out of the blackness come a collection of supporting sounds, each one reaching a part of the listener that has evolved over millions of years to hear it.

It's why nothing matters. It's also why people drive themselves crazy taking whatever route they possibly can, or wallowing helplessly in aimless desperation until the feeling comes back. Some think there's something they can do. Their minds race off in the pursuit of it. Maybe for most of their lives. It's the only surefire way never to get there because there is back where they started. But there's no reverse gear. Doing nothing starts to get unbearable. The mind cannot cope with the possibility that there's nothing it can do and so it races. For however long.

Those who aren't there, can't stand to hear the destination talked about because not being there is so unbearable and getting there is so impossible that they have to distract themselves. Their distractions take them through one experience after another... pleasure, stress, pleasure, stress... until if they're lucky, one day something changes and some light starts to shine through. Over years, more specks can now and then penetrate the cloud cover. Still so seldom and impossible to catch. Just gradually more and more coming through. So gradually.

Then it dawns on you that you don't need anything more than what you have. You're still caught in circles and always will be but at least now you can feel it.

13 comments

Fizzfan said...

Yep, were all hamsters, just some people's wheels are more clunky than others.
I think it's harder the more you have to self motivate.
I saw a really odd doc about a guy who'd escaped from North Korea. He'd suffered catastrophic emotional abuse and physical torture. Even watched his family hanged.
He travels the world giving speeches about it all, but at the end of the doc he said if he could he'd go back?
He finds the Western way of life harder than the abject poverty and gruelling dictated routine he was used to being forced into. In a way, he didn't have to think, he just had to do.

Profound Familiarity said...

That is certainly a surprising conclusion for him to have reached.

Running on empty said...

Dan this is a brilliant post. Did it all come out of your head? Or inspired by something?

It's v strange, but I was starting a post about addiction, since Guy Sebastian's new song came out. Won't be finishing it for a long while, but I might link to this post.

Running on empty said...

"Yep, were all hamsters, just some people's wheels are more clunky than others."

Time you got a book out, Fizzy.

Fizzfan said...

I have a title but if I stop running to fill the pages in my wheel will wobble and clog the other cogs up ;)

Profound Familiarity said...

Can you fill the pages while you run? Things like train journeys can be good times to write.

Fizzfan said...

One of my oft said excuses for not doing things or completing things is (but it's actually a reason) "I got distracted".
I really have to be in the zone to write and that requires NO distractions. A whole book must take an enormous investment of both time and focus. I'm not sure if I'm really capable of it but I would like to try, but then again, if I was, I would be, so I'd do it, wouldn't I?

Potential's a funny thing......
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yNKoH84ioz0#

Profound Familiarity said...

I'm sure I wrote a long response to this but can't see it. I wrote it on Gmail. I wrote about how I wrote my book.

Liked the video. "Find the 95 habits of totally effective tosspots you don't want to talk to in the first place" :)

Profound Familiarity said...

Bless you Cathy. I'm experiencing a spell of happiness at the moment. It's lasted about five days so far. Usually when I feel this way, it's gone within the week. It's quite rare. Happens once every few months. I think it was maybe the change in weather and just not much going on at the moment to bother me.

Profound Familiarity said...

I'll be interested to see the addiction post. That kind of topic can polarise people so you might get some interesting comments.

Fizzfan said...

Ain't that the truth :)

Good job with writing a whole book. If you've got the creative stamina to do that, that's a massive achievement.
Did you try to publish?
From what I've seen on your blogs, you've definitely got the imagination and skills to write brilliantly engaging stuff, so I'm sure it was very good.
Whatever happened or will happen, they say it's the journey that matters more than the destination anyway.
Yours certainly seems to be interesting on a daily basis:)

Profound Familiarity said...

I'd been writing in my diary each day since 1995. Wrote things like minutes, letters and articles at work a lot. Started blogging in 2013 so by the time I started the book in 2014, I'd had some practice. It took three years but probably only about 150/200 hours or something in total. That's just an off-hand guess. If you divide that up, it's nothing. It's like an hour every two or three days.

I've sent it to, I think, 22 agents and counting. I said to Cath I might try and get it edited although will probably wait until I'm settled in a new job first.

Running on empty said...

They are all glued to hurricane Irma at present.