Tag: Depression

Dancing to The Smiths, Morrissey Is the Prophet for the Self-depraved and the Misfits

On By pramoedyasolarisIn Music, Music List (Daftar Musik)Leave a comment
Singer-songwriter Morrissey, of English rock band The Smiths, London, 1984. (Photo by
Chalkie Davies/Getty Images)

Feeling alone, hopeless, and depressed? Need songs that recognize those kind of pain and struggle? Just go to The Smiths. Sing them aloud, cry yourself out. That’s one of the best catharsis that I regularly do to lighten the very burden of existence, being a misfit in the midst of ever evolving modern society, straying too far from the expectations of others that they mindlessly shove up my ass until I reach a point of burnout.

But enough with the whining. Here I’m just going to tell my opinion on why The Smiths is my go to band when I’m feeling low about myself. Well, I just love how Morrissey distinctive baritone voice wallowing in misery blends well with the expressive and often so cheerful guitar play from Johnny Marr. That makes it seem quite contradictory, but not really actually. It’s like you’re dancing your pain away through the self-depraved lyrics and their banger music.

Since I’m no music expert, I would like to talk about the lyrics that Morrissey wrote being so damn relatable. I’m going to list some of my favorite songs from The Smiths:

  1. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

I acknowledge the desperate tone of this song about never having what you want or what you wish to come true. It’s a self-pity song, realizing how terrible and sad your life must look from others point of view, what a bad luck you have.

2. I Know It’s Over

The saddest song from The Smiths in my opinion. It’s like knowing your life is doomed to failure and misery and loneliness. And Morrissey’s vocal definitely capture this sadness and hopelessness. The way I interpret the lyrics is that you just want a normal life like others, but deep down you know that somehow those basic things in life are such luxury that you cannot afford, and yeah love though is natural and real, that is not for you.

3. How Soon Is Now?

My favorite self-depraved song that I would love to sing when doing karaoke. It’s just obvious that the “I” in this song is a very shy person that waits in line to meet someone special, but that someone never arrives. So that person feels lonely and hopeless, because even when that person finally tries to go out and meet people, she just ends up standing in the corner alone and goes home alone. 

There's a club if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die

Well, I sense some anger in it.

4. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

This song is also sad. At the intro you can hear a noise (screams) that sounds like coming from the depth of hell. The lyrics tells about finally being loved by someone but then you woke up and realized it was just a dream. But somehow you’re not really disappointed, because you expect nothing from the beginning. No hope, no harms, just another false alarm.

5. Back to the Old House

Speaks about the feeling of nostalgia that’s bittersweet. You roam about a place where you used to live in your memory, and remember the bad and the goods. And it also reminds you of a crush you used to have that you’ve never got a chance to confess to. Pretty much sums up my life.

6. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Now, this is what I’ve been feeling lately. I just wanna hang out during the night, wherever it is. So I desperately hope someone will take me out, because life at home is so dull and boring and the people at home are not so welcome. I wanna go out and see people living their lives. I play this song while riding my scooter in the night, and that feels just so perfect, because I can’t find a better word to describe it.

7. Panic

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed DJ

It’s just such a banger.

8. Unloveable

Oh...
I know I'm unloveable
You don't have to tell me
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

Oh, message received
Loud and clear

I wear black on the outside
'Cause black is how I feel on the inside
And if I seem a little strange
Well, that's because I am
But I know that you would like me
If only you could see me
If only you could meet me

I don’t have to explain, the lyrics speaks for itself. Because Morissey’s lyrics are simple and straightforward, and sometimes also whimsical and witty.

9. Never Had No One Ever

For those who never have any romantic relationship with anyone, worry not. Morrissey understands us. In this song, our stories are told, we are not alone, we got The Smiths 🙂

10. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

The anti-hero in this particular song complains that he always feels miserable, misunderstood, and disappointed by life. He’s probably asocial and pretend to be nice to people for the sake of politeness, but it’s killing him inside. Yup, that’s our Morrissey, and that’s our anthem, or at least my anthem.

11. Accept Yourself

So much insecurities in this song, it’s when we constantly questioning and doubting ourselves. I’m sure that happens a lot to many of us, especially in this digital era. We can’t resist to not compare our lives with others and then feel low about ourselves.

12. Asleep

The second saddest song of The Smiths in my opinion. It’s like the protagonist here has finally come to terms with life: to surrender. He’s lonely and tired of everything and ready, even gladly, to go.

13. This Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

It’s easy to disregard what others’ going through and maybe laugh at it. But when we’re finally in their shoes, we realize it was no joke at all. And what we used to consider funny is actually awful. I think it is what this song is about.

Those are my favorite songs from The Smiths because they hit so close to home. Morrissey somehow can describe my struggle and ennui through his whiny lyrics, and I admire him for that. Life is unfair, and we have to accept it. Some people are luckier than us, some are more miserable. Some people get the privilege of living a normal and common life, to be one of the people. But misfits like me, we hide in our shelter, too afraid to step outside because last time we do we got beaten so bad. And we can only crave what it feels like to live the way most people do, and then we feel bad about ourselves and drowning in self-pity. And Morrissey understands us dearly.

Acceptance and Survival

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At the end of the day I realize I’m not bound for normalcy. The haunting bad childhood, the constant chaos in the hell I’ve been living in, the paranoia and nightmares it creates, resulting in trust issues, low self-esteem, and sometimes subtle borderline tendency. With these demons bearing down on me, I struggle to make a heavenly way towards the finale. It takes a pure soul, bred in the same hell as mine, to yank myself out of the darkness.

But does such soul exist? So far there’s no print of evidence that one can grow up into an angel when fire thrown around its home and evil rooted in its gene. Even if it does exist, will it take the risk to dive into the fire and pull me out of this gravity? I doubt it.

Perhaps it’s best to maintain my state of being despite knowing my body is immersed in sins. Better get along with the demons and wear a mask as an armor to protect myself when I walk the earth, as I make my way by hiding my true face behind a mere facade. Participating in the game of survival for the slightest form of joy. A passive and secretive admiration towards man made exquisite opus-es.

Why I Need Philosophy

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Lying against the ceiling, wondering, contemplating, searching for meaning. My void’s filled with anxiety, my soul feels hollow and empty, grasping for clarity. Drawn into the vortex of confusion, accompanied by the desperate need of a vision. Stumbled and fumbled, crawling and creeping.

That is what usually happens when I lose touch with the almighty, abandoning spirituality. When I distract myself from the heavy burden of comprehending philosophy. Switching Tarkovsky with a lighthearted comedy. Maybe this dull brain of mine is indeed wired differently, easily slipped and succumbed into anything broody.

Turning away from the blatantly unbearable contradictions that makes life seemingly absurd has done me no good. Existentialism is not a tool for me to appear bright, edgy and cool. It’s a necessity to keep paddling, swimming, driving through this rocky luck determined for me. I may as well embraced this bittersweet destiny. Holding onto it tightly.

It’s time to gather up my scattered faith. Stop ruminating all things done and said. Let the numbness melt away. Start over with a brand new day. Save my life once again. Wild Strawberries, Taste of Cherry, Through A Glass Darkly, keeping me sane.

Winter Light (1963): Depression and God’s Silence

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Dark was the night, only the sound of the frogs and nightingales were broadcasted through the cold air after the rain washed away my town. Rain, lightning, and thunder had put everyone else to sleep. I found myself still awake, snuggling under my thick blanket, trying to protect my skin from the chilly atmosphere. Consumed by loneliness, seized by doubts, gripped by fear, smothered by anxiety. In moments like that I was hoping for a calling, patiently waiting for something to ring. Yet, there was only silence. All my senses witnessed was mere muteness which only highlighted the absence as it became more transparent, though my primitive instinct was not ready to surrender.

Of course I’m not the only one who ever feels that way. Ingmar Bergman had brilliantly summed up this kind of struggle in Winter Light. At the beginning we saw a communion with all its ritual. Then after that communion had ended a couple of husband and wife came to meet the pastor. The wife spoke to the pastor on behalf of her husband, since the husband seemed resistant to talk about his problem. The husband, Jonas, had been depressed. He was overwhelmed by the news about the Chinese with their hatred and seemingly inevitable atom bombs in the future. Jonas refused to talk by being quiet so his wife suggested that he should come back later alone to talk about his problem more freely. The pastor, Tomas, waited for quite a while before Jonas came back. When he did the pastor told Jonas about his own insecurities and battle with God’s silence.

Listen, Jonas. I’m going to be frank with you. You know my wife died four years ago. I loved her. My life was over. I’m not afraid to die, and there was no reason for me to hang on. But I did. Not for my own sake, but to be of some use. I had great dreams once. I was going to make my mark on the world. The sort of ideas you have when you’re young. I knew nothing of evil or cruelty. When I was ordained, I was as innocent as a baby. Then everything happened at once. I was a seaman’s pastor in Lisbon during the Spanish Civil War. I refused to see what was going on. I refused to accept reality. My God and I resided in an organized world where everything made sense. You see, I’m no good as a clergyman. I put my faith in an improbable and private image of a fatherly god. One who loved mankind, of course, but me most of all. Do you see, Jonas, what a monstrous mistake I made? An ignorant, spoiled and anxious wretch makes a rotten clergyman. Picture my prayers to an echo-god who gave benign answers and reassuring blessings. Every time I confronted God with the realities I witnessed… he turned into something ugly and revolting. A spider God, a monster. So I sought to shield Him from life, clutching my image of Him to myself in the dark.

Perhaps Tomas did that so that Jonas would find him relevant and relatable. But instead, his words backfired. It didn’t help, it only validated the purposelessness of life. And for those who are not ready to accept the reality that life is vacant of any meaning and purpose, it becomes so unendurable and hopeless that to end it is the way to be free of it. Jonas took his own life using a rifle, his pregnant wife was left alone with his three children. Although to think that God and evil, cruelty, violence, hatred exist simultaneously is even more horrid for me. It’s as if God chooses to be silence and ignorant of all our sufferings. Does He really intent to leave our prayers unanswered to test us? A being with so much compassion and mercy let his creatures hurt each other, destroying the planet, are too devastating. But still, despite the absurd, I can’t kill God within me.

But at the end of the movie, Bergman invited us to reflect and sympathize with Jesus Christ. That his pain was not only physical, but he was also tormented by his own doubts during the last moment of his life. He asked God why He had forsaken him. Even Jesus once felt the silence of God, he thought his heavenly father had abandoned him.

Beyond the story of faith and doubt, this movie also narrated the pain of an unrequited love. Marta was in love with Tomas but he hadn’t moved on from his wife. The day his wife died, he died also inside. It was painful to watch Marta threw herself along with her vulnerability at Tomas when he found her repugnant. She tried her best not too seem needy but still came off as clingy. Marta’s love and affection for Tomas were rejected stone cold.

About Music

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Brian Wilson said God talked to him through music. I have to agree even though I’m not a musician. I’m just a person who appreciate music and feel deeply about them. I feel that music can be magical and transcendence, like it takes me travel beyond space and time, and I just zone out, I suddenly experience a serial wave of emotions when I listen to heavenly music, and out of the blue I become a complete human being, flooded by feelings, finding a way to connect with the rest of the universe, and guided by God Himself to appreciate one moment of enchantment.

So often in my life, music, along with films, help me through difficult times. When it feels like I’m done with life, I accidently discover new music that touches my heart and soul. I often become hopeless and get overwhelmed with life. I have nobody around and it feels like the world is ending and I’m at the end of a tunnel facing a dead end. And I have difficulties processing my emotions, I just feel numb, I am not happy and it seems like deep down I’m suffocating but I can’t cry. But then there’s always a song that can perfectly capture how I feel inside. Knowing the artist can express my messed up emotion perfectly I no longer feel alone. I’m so happy and grateful that the power that holds the universe keep lasting shows me beautiful songs and music.

My world is covered in darkness
My sun is gloomy
A black hole with its singularity
But whenever I hear the stream of those melodies
I see you in colors
A glimpse of light flickers
Unveiling its luster
A new dawn has risen
For me to start over
Under your undying spirit and guidance

Taste of Cherry

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This particular piece of writing was inspired by the masterpiece film Taste of Cherry (1997) directed by Abbas Kiarostami as art in its great form and the nature itself, for it’s the beauty of nature that I hold on to while surviving this life no matter how unbearable and depressing it is, and the key is to appreciate the details.

If it's not for your beauty
My body would've been home to maggots
If it's not for the way you move following where the wind blows
I am weightless
If it's not for the blues, beneath and above
And the green around
I'll be six feet under the ground
If it's not for the brisk smile of the children and the elders
Blood is shed
If it's not for the electricity in the neurons
The journey thorugh memories
My heart will freeze
If it's not for Vivaldi's four seasons
All my senses will be numb
If it's not for the sheer joy of laughter
My lungs explode
If it's not for the art and poetry describing how you look
My goal is descending
If it's not for the wonders of tomorrow
While time stands still and so are you
I am no longer

Melancholia (2011) Berbicara Depresi Melalui Visual

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Dari judulnya kita dapat menduga bahwa film ini berbicara tentang depresi, melancholia dulunya digunakan untuk menyebut depresi. Kini, istilah melancholia merujuk pada jenis depresi tingkat lanjut di mana seseorang mengalami anhedonia, yakni kehilangan motivasi dan ketertarikan terhadap hal-hal yang biasanya ia lakukan. Selain itu seseorang dengan melancholia  akan tetap merasa sedih, putus asa, dan dihantui rasa bersalah meskipun hal-hal baik terjadi dalam hidupnya.

Melancholia dalam film ini merupakan nama sebuah planet yang akan menabrak bumi dan saat itu terjadi tentunya bumi akan hancur. Jadi, bisa dibilang ini film berjenis fiksi ilmiah atau bahkan fantasi. Cerita berpusat pada dua orang wanita, kakak beradik, Justine dan Claire. Kirsten Dunst berperan sebagai sang adik, Justine, sementara Charlotte Gainsbourg berperan sebagau sang kakak, Claire.

Unsur melancholia dalam film ini melekat pada tokoh utama, Justine. Meskipun Justine baru saja naik jabatan dan ia pada akhirnya dapat menikah dengan orang yang dicintainya dengan pesta pernikahan yang megah, ia tetap merasakan kesedihan mendalam yang tak terungkapkan. Terlepas dari itu, Justine seakan-akan menyambut kedatangan planet bernama melancholia ini. Ada suatu adegan di mana Justine berbaring telanjang di bawah sinar yang terpantul dari planet ini. Di sisi lain, Claire mengalami rasa cemas yang hebat dikarenakan kedatangan planet ini. Dari situ saya menyimpulkan bahwa Lars von Trier tidak hanya ingin menunjukkan seperti apa depresi namun juga seperti apa gangguan kecemasan. Seringkali kedua kondisi ini, depresi dan gangguan kecemasan, muncul secara bersamaan dan menjadi sebuah siklus. Di film ini depresi menjelma dalam diri Justine, sedangkan gangguan kecemasan menjelma dalam diri Claire.

Musik karya Richard Wagner yang berjudul Tristan und Isolde menjadi musik tema dan digunakan secara berulang-ulang dalam film ini. Alunan musik Wagner ini sendiri sangat depresif, dan Lars von Trier memadukannya dengan potongan-potongan adegan yang di-slow motion.

Slow motion film ini tidak main-main, penonton harus bersabar, adegan yang di-slow motion tidak dimaksudkan untuk menceritakan suatu kejadian, namun lebih ke menggambarkan depresi secara metaforis melalui visual. Sebagai orang dengan depresi, saya dapat menghayati adegan-adegan ini dan bahkan sangat menghargai gagasan von Trier untuk membuatnya. Karena memang pada saat parah-parahnya, itulah yang saya rasakan, melakukan suatu hal sepele saja rasanya sangat berat. Saking beratnya, rasanya seperti inersia menggelayuti tubuh saya, mirip dengan beberapa adegan pada film ini yang gerakannya teramat lambat.

Bagi saya ini menjadi salah satu film yang dapat menggambarkan depresi dengan cara yang artistik namun realistis, tidak membutuhkan banyak bumbu drama ataupun klise yang terkadang justru menyudutkan orang dengan depresi. Dari apa yang saya baca, katanya nama Justine terinspirasi dari novel karangan Marquis de Sade dan Lars von Trier mendasarkan karakter ini pada dirinya sendiri. Nilai yang saya berikan untuk film ini adalah 9.5/10.

What am I?

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Like a bird losing its feathers
A phoenix drown in its own ashes
A moving corpse, infected
Howling to the call of demons
Dancing through the raging flames
Enlightened mind, inflicted

Under the silver umbrella
Keeping the shadows underneath
All rays reflected
A stranded Cinderella
Once a belle, now losing her teeth
Merely deluded

Dreaming to fly up above the sky
As stones sink in the water
Days are lacking surprise
Flares and smokes drifting high
As feet glide on the butter
Dead at nights unable to rise

Tangled up in her lies
Reality deceives her eyes
A dead end with two turns

One's high the other's low
One's wild the other's tired
Rumbling voices and echoes
Visions and terrors wired

I am forever

How Much I Owe Cinema

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It used to be books. At the corner of a library, lied there on the bookshelves, veiled adventures. How printed lines on papers, bundled in a dusty and ragged cover, sometimes with a smell of ammonia, took me places. My first love was books.

But then the internet era was sneaking up until it eventually ended the dark ages of limited information. A renaissance of the data sharing and mining. The reign of internet gave birth to unlimited access towards sea of knowledge. Also, my hometown’s public library took three years to be fully renovated. So, during that hiatus, my lack of adventures forced me to deal with harsh reality – rejection and alienation by society.

Growing up, it was rather difficult for people to understand me. I was way over my head. Raised in a dysfunctional family, bullied at school. Literally it was war zone, both at school and at home. My fondness of books stem from a very early childhood. No one made me read book. I simply grew reading so much books as soon as I could read. It gave some kind of utopia in my head, to escape the cruelty I witnessed at home, watching my parents arguing all the time. Not just utopia, it gave inexplicable euphoria as well as if I was in a manic state. Fueled with boiling energy, couldn’t wait to tell other people all the adventures I went through. As it turned out, nobody really cared. I was boring, nobody wanted to listen to me blabbing about some fictional stories I read in the book, let alone non-fictional ones. I sort of evolved into this weirdo, an annoying know-it-all kid. Although, I must admit, I was very naïve back then. Some people hated me for that, the rest of them just didn’t get it. How I could be so excited about those very impractical things in life. I guess I just have some delight towards impracticality. I’m always drawn into abstract concepts and ideas, trying to read between the lines, succumbed into ceaseless existential contemplation.

When book was temporarily out of the game, I made a quest, in search of another treasure. My sister introduced me to movies, blockbuster movies. Usually, when I got home from school, I’ll just turn on my PC and watched the movies I rented. I was really in the zone when I was watching movies. Movies blew another life into my lifeless reality. To me, movies were almost like books. It opened an escape door for me, to another world, less hurtful than the real world I was living in.

I got crazy about movies. Like a junkie, every time I finished a movie, I got impatient for another. Like a thirst wanderer on a dessert, movie was my oasis. So, I watched more and more movies. Looking for recommendation on the magazines and internet. What I really loved about the young girl I was who knew barely anything about cinema was that I had no filter. I’d watch every single movie in sight. Unlike now, I have certain attraction to particular movies and being quite cynical about the others.

Actually I’ve lost count on how many times movies saved my life. I think that from what I’ve found on my old journals, my depression started when I was very young. Although it was in my early 20s that I got diagnosed and medicated by the professional. Since then, it was always an on and off relationship with my inner demons. Books gave me shelter, enough to carry on.

The highlight of my depression was probably at my third year of college. When I felt the most alienated and detached. I couldn’t even tell what was real and what was not. It felt like a never-ending nightmare, even when I was awake, the nightmares continued to unfold. It was pretty much felt like I was living in a mere simulation, or that I was trapped inside my own body and lost control of it. I started hallucinating, hearing voices, like someone else took over my conscious. Everything seemed to be in black and white, I was on drugs that made me feel weak and drowsy all the time. In those darkest hours, cinema was the only thing by my side. Nobody could ever understand me, but cinema could represent my inner battles, my turmoil and angst very articulately.

All of sudden, I felt less lonely. It was when I started to discover classic foreign cinema that I began to accept reality as it was. I surrendered to the idea that perhaps life holds no meaning at all, and that’s alright, that’s alright. Through the depth of Bergman’s characters’ contemplation, the poetic visual of Tarkovsky, the morally awakening irony of Kieslowski, the bleak hurtful reality of Kiarostami and so many others, I realize that the only meaning that life has is the meaning that we give into it. We can’t control life, all the sufferings and the tragedies are beyond our power. But we may choose how we’ll give meaning to it. I understand that life is not just about me, but also about the very nature of human being, the inescapable parallels of our experiences, as the human race – humanity. For the first time, I no longer pushed myself too hard in fulfilling other people’s expectation of me. My life doesn’t have to be spectacular for me to give meaning to it. Every experience and feeling is valid for the owner. I started to make peace with my depression, trying to live with it. I stopped taking my meds without consulting with my psychiatrist. I didn’t like how the drugs temporarily put down my senses. I swapped amitriptyline with cinema. So far, it works for me.

Most people think that I get my pessimism from watching too many movies. Well, they’re wrong. My pessimism and depression had long existed before I even knew the world of cinema. And it’s the spirit of the cinema that gives me strength to carry on. It’s cinema that opens my eyes. Cinema introduces me to great art works in the history of human civilization, whether it’s literature, music, science, philosophy, history, or all those people who contributed in shaping our world today. It’s cinema that has saved my life multiple times. When no hope is insight, cinema sends me lights. I owe my years to cinema, I owe my life to cinema.