What we have here is failure to feel.
Surely there's a pill for that?
Note: Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you! The Podcast audio is at the end of the story.🫡
[PHONE RINGING. PICK UP.]
“Hello, you have reached the office of Feel Free™, where you should Feel Free to Feel Free from Feelings. How may I free you of feelings today?”
“Oh, hello, yes, hi. I’m calling about your advertisement in the latest Art Tragics’ Quarterly. The one about your patent-pending Art Feelings Remover? Is that like a soothing balm of some sort, or is there a surgical procedure involved? Your ad is quite vague, derivative of the post-medicine show period, and has no real strong point of view, so I’m a bit confused.”
[PAUSE]
“You’re having too many feelings while in the presence of art?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m calling. It’s quite a debilitating case, really. I mean, I’m not at the ear-cut-off stage, but I’m definitely looking at myself in the mirror and picturing what the bandage would look like. I just… FEEL TOO MUCH!
"I was curious though: what’s the success rate of your procedure or treatment? What is involved exactly? Do you accept bids? Is there a reserve?”
“Whoa, whoa, hold your Whistlejacket there, Champ! I know you’re eager to be rid of the effect of being crippled by and overwhelmed with [WHISPERS] feelings when you lock horns with art, but like any good exploration of artistic expression, there’s a process. We have to put your case up on a wall—so to speak—judge you, and rank you on an arbitrary scale of taste (which you will not be privy to and which will be constantly changing), to determine if you’ve qualified for treatment due to a prodigy-level talent for feeling art.”
“What?”
“Like, for example, if I said: ‘There’s grant money in this,’ does that statement trigger any feelings in you?”
“It makes me feel quite anxious, actually.”
“Excellent! I’ve known folks who are intricately wired for feeling art to vomit on the spot when they hear that. Particularly when I tell them the deadline was yesterday! [laughs]”
“What the…?!”
“Let’s begin.”
“But you haven’t even told me what the treatment involves yet. Is the Art Feelings Remover an unobtrusive undergarment I could wear to galleries or concerts, or is it…?”
“We are beginning! Prospective patient, have you ever experienced sudden and unexplainable anger while looking at a piece of art?”
“Oh, boy, have I! Let me tell you about this one time….”
“And would you describe this anger as full-throated rage or just a mild sort of vexing?”
“Oh, definitely zero to 100% rage in a nano-second situation. It felt like, I dunno, like my mind was a forest of dry ol’ pines and this particular piece of art threw gasoline and a match right in there, and whoosh! Every tree in that forest went up in flames. A rager. No containment zone.”
“Ah, the ol’ ‘Kootenay candle’1 response. Love it!”
“Not sure what that is, but OK. Imagine a bolt of lightning on a dark night, shooting across the sky to strike the fist of its insolence upon the unsuspecting face of a sleeping tree. I was the tree.”
“Wow, you sure are a wordsy one! And you really love trees! I’m just gonna circle “Overly Emotional” and “Vocabulary Flexer” on this intake form. Let’s continue. In that first moment in the same space as this art, tell me, did you feel resentment, fury, and outrage?”
“Yes, yes, and extreme yes. It surprised me actually, how negatively I felt about it. Displeasure flames caught the hem of my muslin curtains and burnt my whole house down, actually.”
“Oh, wait? There’s a house in the forest now?
[PAUSE]
“Let’s just circle ‘Metaphor Mixer’ as a precaution. And did you allow these feelings to pass through you at all, or did you just sit with the feelings and let them burn you right up?
“Oh, I sat.”
“No ‘stop drop and roll’? [BEAT] Hello? Still there? Let me reframe the question in your flowery talk: Did you allow the feelings to pass harmlessly by, or did you submit to the all-encompassing and explosive concussive forces of all the drama and astronomical heat of a collapsing star?”
“Yeah, yeah! That’s it! The star thing! Can you help me?”
“I’m not finished yet. Let me ask you this. Did you happen to pass by any old masters that day? Or works that would be considered Rich Folk Big D Swingers or Big A Art? Like a… Matisse? A Van Gogh, perhaps? Any cheeky Rembrants give you the oily eye?”
“Um… yeah. How did you…?”
“But THEY did not make you mad?”
“No. Quite the opposite actually. When I saw the Van Gogh, it was as though a choir of…”
“That’s enough…”
“Oh, sorry. I have it quite bad, haven’t I?”
“Well, let’s not jump to an early diagnosis, shall we? This ain’t Dr. Google, you know. Not everything is cancer! Now, physically—did your anger manifest itself in any way?”
“Yeah! My brain got really loud. Like it was banging all the pots and pans in my critical kitchen against each other. Every strike was like ‘The audacity!’ BANG ‘The bombasity!’ CLANG ‘How dare!’ KERANG. Seriously, it felt like that piece of art was a very rough sandpaper rubbing right on the muscle of my heart. Oh, how it burned!”
“Wowsers!”
“Yeah, right? It was like my feelings were a battery left too long in a clock. The acid leaked out and right into me, eating away while making me want to spit. I was clenching my fists and stuff, but my face went really red and my friend said I was huffing like a bull.
“No, way.”
“Way. So, can you help me?”
“And did you spit? Was security called?”
“Pardon?”
“You said it made you want to spit. Did you spit at the art? I mean, I know the latest trend is to throw soup, but…”2
“Oh, no. The spitting took the form of words, I guess. I said, ‘I hate this.’ And then I said: “Piece of art. More like piece of crap.”
“Huh. Isn’t that interesting? You go from being so eloquent and descriptive now, but on the day you went straight to crap. This is really excellent.”
[FAINT SOUND OF PEN SCRIBBLING]
“So you know what I’m going through?”
“Oh, no, not in the slightest. I don’t feel anything when I look at art. A regular ‘don’t give two hoots’ ornamental owl, that’s me. I literally take my own medicine.”
“You don’t feel anything?”
“What about music?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have similar feelings about music? A disproportionately intense response to certain songs?”
“Oh, don’t get me started! There are songs that when I hear them I just… it’s as though I’m stuck in concrete. It plugs into my brain via my ears and I am… lost. Completely. Utterly unmoored.”
“Gotcha. Circling ‘Space Cadet’—that’s not as bad as it sounds!”
“…I mean, there are things I cannot say in life, there are emotions I cannot express. But some songs, seriously—it’s like they say everything I want to with a clarity that makes me weep.”
“So it’s as though they become a conduit for your own expression at that moment?”
“Exactly.”
“Also gonna circle ‘Bit of a Crier’ if that’s cool?”
“Sure. I guess. My neck also gets tight. And my chest. Oh, and the sound sort of oozes and seeps into the very flesh of me. When I close my eyes, I see this blue swirling effect, like oil on the surface of water, and it’s like a manifestation of the surface skin of my pain and longing and it just floors me. Leaves me destroyed. It’s… I can only describe it as a complete soul saturation that permeates every part of my core and being and very…
“And do you hit repeat when you get to the end of that song?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah. Of course. Multiple times. You don’t get off the rollercoaster when you’re having the best ride of your life, do you!?”
“A rollercoaster?”
“Yeah. The fear is the fun is the feels. Oh… wait….”
“Ok. Last thing. Have you ever read a book that you just couldn’t stop reading even though it was really doing your head in?”
“Ha! Now that you mention it, there was this one book, quite recently, where like…. Hmm…it was as though each line was pulling my heart along this corridor of understanding that led straight to a kill floor of ‘slay me, slay me right here’. I was on the subway reading it and I mean, wow. The look on my face must’ve been just one of complete horror.
“With every line I read, a darker shade of pure blackness formed in my head, and the more my face would freeze into this mask of sheer discomfort. I didn’t know words could get so dark, that sentences could be so…. violent. My eyebrows knit furiously into a sweater of terror. Line after line of thrilling dread, stomping my teeth in, blacking my eyes, breaking my ribs with consummate ease.”
“This sounds awful.”
“Oh, on the contrary. It was absolutely and staggeringly thrilling to read. I mean, I was stunned into gaping mouth silence on the A-train and the sheer malevolence of some of those chapters was breathtaking. I was being emotionally slaughtered in the presence of greatness and with every page turn, I begged to be slain again and again and again.
“Good lord! This is dire! You need serious help!”
[PAUSE]
“Actually, this talk has been really helpful. Thank you. Just describing all these things, I think I’d hate to lose that feeling. I don’t think your treatment is for me. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
“But I haven’t even…”
“It’s just I don’t feel…”
“That’s it! That’s the spirit! It’s already working!”
“Ugh. Ok. Well, what sort of feedback have you had on the treatment?”
“Actually, satisfied customers—well, we assume they’re satisfied, the treatment tends to remove all kinds of feelings—report being left with what we call a ‘Meh-Sense Essence’. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it kinda vibe. Instead of screaming ‘I hate this!’ when they see art, they might shrug and say, ‘I don’t see what the fuss is all about.’ Once you’re cured of feelings, on a one-to-ten emotional scale you’ll always register as a solid five. No hate, no love, no nothing, just general indifference.”
“Yeah, see. That right there. I don’t think I want that. I think I always want to be affected in some way by art. Floored by it. I want to cry at the movies and dance in my kitchen. I want to be left gobsmacked by the soaring dialog of a playwright or struck dumb by the acting of an absolute icon. I want to feel slapped in the face and held tightly by the embrace of creativity concurrently. And yes. I want to get angry. I want to rage on the street about the rude insolence of art. And I want to do that forever.
“I just don’t feel that your treatment is for me.”
“Excellent! I’ll put that down as a satisfied customer testimonial on the website, but I’ll end it after that fourth word there.”
“What?
“You just said, flat out “I just don’t feel.” That there is book jacket gold, my friend! But quick sidebar: Would you by any chance be interested in participating in our Overthinkers clinical trial? We’re working on a vaccine right now, and having spoken to you for several minutes, I think you’d be an excellent candidate for it. The hope is to one day create a full course of Dead Inside serums for…”
[CLICK]
“Hello? Ugh. Feelers. So dramatic!”
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
To get the backstory of this post, watch this👇
This week’s amends…
“Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods. They must be allowed to do bad work. They must be allowed to get in a mess. They must be allowed to have dud experiments. They must also be allowed to have periods where they repeat themselves in a rather aimless, fruitless way before they can pick up and go on.“- David Sylvester, art critic, 1967
I’ve been trying to find where this is from. There was a short snippet of a video on an Instagram feed and it gave no detail. I’d love to watch the whole thing, but now I can’t even find the Instagram link.
On Rotation: “Rain or Shine” by Young Fathers
Fastest stopwatch for sure.
Via Kottke
Let your talent shine! (Not sure if the talent is singing or writing/making compelling Real Estate listing videos). Behold!
Via Garbage Day