both chance and accident: and we glimpse the signature of Mercury â in the realm of chance, weâre in the territory of the Trickster.
I felt that life was something I could toss away like a spent cigarette. I could chuck it in the bin like an unwanted sandwich. Life or death seemed almost a question of housework: a bit of a sort-out. Keep it or throw it out? To be or not to be? Trash or treasure? It is the absolute opposite of Dignitas, that serious, real, considered, intelligent, planned, thoughtful dying.
After that first suicidal night, my friends seemed to link up, and made an unofficial rota so that I was never alone for long. I felt I was being parcelled around, from one house to another, or, if I was at home, there was a steady, regular pattern of phone calls. Even my friends who had never met got in touch with each other, swapped phone numbers, linked arms so I was in a silk net of care. It was sweet, touching and necessary. If I hadnât been so ill, I would have been embarrassed to be babysat like this. But I was, so I wasnât.
Christmas was hideous. I spent the day with friends and their kids and I was sky-high all morning. By lunchtime, I was in slippage. I adore children and Iâm not normally irritable, but my nerves were shot to pieces and the childrenâs noise and nonsense were making me want to shriek. The sound of Christmas champagne corks popping, normally one of my favourite sounds in the whole world, made me startle violently. Within half an hour I was lying in bed, my whole spirit aching, trying not to scream.
At my next doctorâs appointment, I told him about the suicide night, but I needed to bring him something funny, too, so I told him about the time when Byron was seriously suicidal. âI should, manya good day, have blown my brains out,â he wrote, âbut for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.â
Some of a doctorâs work, my GP said, is to understand. Something physical â angina, for example â is easy. The psyche is harder and takes a long time. We talked about suicide. Like my friend, my doctor recalled me to my writing. Like my friend, he used the same term: duty.
â What you have is a gift which is also a duty: a gift that demands a heavy price.
My own mind had become unfamiliar territory. My brain, sleeping so lightly for so long, felt like a messenger in flight, travelling light, carrying hand luggage only. I was a volatile insubstance.
Mania is like the high seas, calling the seafarer to set sail; it is an enticing dare to the Odysseus within, who, hearing the siren call and ignoring the whirlpools and rocks, embarks on epics. The siren voices played me, swung me, seduced me; they wove harmonies of beguiling danger, whispered me to whirlpools of suicidal spirals, crafted their sway to lure me on to the rocks. Almost the last time I drove, before I banned myself, I had ignored a T-junction sign and driven recklessly right across the path of an oncoming car: it could have been fatal.
I heard music differently, and it was as if I was not listening outwards towards the music but as if the music were already in me; it was inside my psyche because its origin was in the universal human mind. From there, it could be released by composers of genius, so a song which had pre-existed in silence would be sung out loud for the first time. For music transcribes mind. It is as if composers can light a candle and step over an inner threshold and see by that candlelight visible caves and cathedrals of the human psyche, and can write the notes to describe it. I say visible, yet this is music andtherefore audible. But it felt to me as if music was in itself a profound synaesthesia (only connect); from its sound, music allows you to see. What chimes, rhymes and resonates (be it music, poetry or empathy) is curative; the mind is understood.
I wanted to breathe in the inspired air of Bach. Respiration as
I felt that life was something I could toss away like a spent cigarette. I could chuck it in the bin like an unwanted sandwich. Life or death seemed almost a question of housework: a bit of a sort-out. Keep it or throw it out? To be or not to be? Trash or treasure? It is the absolute opposite of Dignitas, that serious, real, considered, intelligent, planned, thoughtful dying.
After that first suicidal night, my friends seemed to link up, and made an unofficial rota so that I was never alone for long. I felt I was being parcelled around, from one house to another, or, if I was at home, there was a steady, regular pattern of phone calls. Even my friends who had never met got in touch with each other, swapped phone numbers, linked arms so I was in a silk net of care. It was sweet, touching and necessary. If I hadnât been so ill, I would have been embarrassed to be babysat like this. But I was, so I wasnât.
Christmas was hideous. I spent the day with friends and their kids and I was sky-high all morning. By lunchtime, I was in slippage. I adore children and Iâm not normally irritable, but my nerves were shot to pieces and the childrenâs noise and nonsense were making me want to shriek. The sound of Christmas champagne corks popping, normally one of my favourite sounds in the whole world, made me startle violently. Within half an hour I was lying in bed, my whole spirit aching, trying not to scream.
At my next doctorâs appointment, I told him about the suicide night, but I needed to bring him something funny, too, so I told him about the time when Byron was seriously suicidal. âI should, manya good day, have blown my brains out,â he wrote, âbut for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.â
Some of a doctorâs work, my GP said, is to understand. Something physical â angina, for example â is easy. The psyche is harder and takes a long time. We talked about suicide. Like my friend, my doctor recalled me to my writing. Like my friend, he used the same term: duty.
â What you have is a gift which is also a duty: a gift that demands a heavy price.
My own mind had become unfamiliar territory. My brain, sleeping so lightly for so long, felt like a messenger in flight, travelling light, carrying hand luggage only. I was a volatile insubstance.
Mania is like the high seas, calling the seafarer to set sail; it is an enticing dare to the Odysseus within, who, hearing the siren call and ignoring the whirlpools and rocks, embarks on epics. The siren voices played me, swung me, seduced me; they wove harmonies of beguiling danger, whispered me to whirlpools of suicidal spirals, crafted their sway to lure me on to the rocks. Almost the last time I drove, before I banned myself, I had ignored a T-junction sign and driven recklessly right across the path of an oncoming car: it could have been fatal.
I heard music differently, and it was as if I was not listening outwards towards the music but as if the music were already in me; it was inside my psyche because its origin was in the universal human mind. From there, it could be released by composers of genius, so a song which had pre-existed in silence would be sung out loud for the first time. For music transcribes mind. It is as if composers can light a candle and step over an inner threshold and see by that candlelight visible caves and cathedrals of the human psyche, and can write the notes to describe it. I say visible, yet this is music andtherefore audible. But it felt to me as if music was in itself a profound synaesthesia (only connect); from its sound, music allows you to see. What chimes, rhymes and resonates (be it music, poetry or empathy) is curative; the mind is understood.
I wanted to breathe in the inspired air of Bach. Respiration as
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