Recently, or rather for as long as I can remember, my life has been defined by an indescribable dread directed at existence itself. It’s a bug under my skin, a horrid physiopsychic pest which I cannot rid myself of. It bites the vulnerable sinews and muscle fibers, crawls underneath the layer of skin which I use to define and project myself.
Most recently I have recognized this pest as the apathy of living today. Dante, back in his time, recognized apathy for what it was, the deadly sin of sloth. We live in a world consumed by sin, that much is common knowledge. Though the form which sloth manifests is far greater than the standard, stereotypical fat bum melted into his seat. Sloth resides in the mind as much as in the body, it corrodes and destroys man from the inside as much as the outside.
There is no room for life, there is no room for the self or of expression, of passion, of enthusiasm. It has all crumbled before the mighty shit-pile which is apathy. Un-caring will undo the world, at least in an anthropocentric sense. I say we should throw ourselves to the bugs, to the foxes and the gulls, yet I betray myself. Despite my best efforts I am instinctually and intrinsically human. Apathy, as strong a force it may be, can never overcome the sheer, egoistic human desire for life. This is from where the pain spawns and festers. The nausea, the intense discomfort and dread of waking up, of existing. The daily struggle of desiring life in a dead world, a world defined by the un-caring of its residents, of the mindless consumption of consummately constructed bytes. The main mode of experience today is consumption. You admire life second hand, third hand, from whichever many hands there are to grasp. But not your own.
Enthusiasm still exists of course, though hardly breathing, its sagging elder body installed into an autistic and schizophrenic iron lung. These conditions are nigh the only elements of which perpetuate enthusiasm anymore. Though still debased by its attachment to consumption, there is still a greater love, a greater magic at play in these relationships.
My most recent remedy to this apathy inspired nausea is the music of John Maus, more specifically his neurotic performances on stage. This is desire, this is engagement, this is experience, this is enthusiasm. Sweat, hurt, anger spawns love, desire, thought- seeing Maus wince and scream reminds me of my own inner world, the internal slithering vipers which beg and beg and beg without relief. Should we all live like Maus? Cry and curse the unnamed industrial god of capital for chaining us to the shackles of society? Is this a call for revolution or merely an embarrassing admittance of the societal control-spectres which haunt me, a cry for someone to swat the bug under my skin? I want to find a way to cry the tears that well on the other side of my eyes, to find a remedy for the pain I feel every aching second alive, the hatred I feel towards my own creed, my own brothers and sisters on this earth for engaging in radical nothingness, inexperience. Apathy is in this sense the direct opposition of solidarity, yet nothing binds us under the collective psychological concentration camp which is capitalism better than apathy.
I have no remedy, I fear I will never be free. I can only do as Maus and scream and scream and scream and hope that the tears one day will follow. Expel the energy which sloth suppresses, and go out and feel the sun on my skin passionately.