Signs You Might be a Masochist
It's not about pain - it's about knowing where to put it.
A punch that lands square on your glass-boned cheek. An uppercut that slices your deli-meat jaw. Too much Ginsu, not enough duck on this menu. Too close, too tight, too roiling in the deep slaughter of a chokehold where face and neck are held in the loving embrace of a stranger’s sweaty elbow. Ring that bell and tap the hell out. Lie pitiful and prone as you gaze at the world from your new floor angle.
Ego goes down.
“Mary called me a masochist. Do you think I’m a masochist?”
There is no hesitation in Andrew’s reply.
“Uh… yah!”1
Woof, that stings. Examining the evidence, I guess there is some truth to it. I do regularly put myself through physical and mental trials like some kind of witch in Salem2. Long bike rides, weeks in the freezing desert3 when I could remove myself from misery with the simple turn of a car key, chasing Stupid Arbitrary Goals4. Members of the jury, these are just exhibits A, B, and C. The alphabet ain’t big enough to submit all my masochistic shenanigans.
But I digress. Do I float? Am I under a spell of my own making? Can you bake a natty cake from my urine5?
Witch tests aside, it seems I do have a predilection for enduring self-imposed mental and physical tortures and that COULD be viewed as witchcraft. I’ll cop to that. Hands up, I have no weapon. But you know what? ANYONE who dabbles in the dark art of making art is a masochist, so I’ll take it as a compliment. I will TAKE IT ALL DAY—just you see for how long!
My ego floats like a cork.
Pop right back up. Hoik in a bucket and wipe your panicked brow. Square off for round two. Circle your foe, move your feet, bob your head like a pigeon on fry patrol. Connect with a right and swing wild with a left. Now absorb that gut blow like water accepting a stone thrown from shore. Grapple for scrapple and other assorted nutritious mush on the mat of your making. Now get up. Shake it off.
Ego spits out a broken tooth.
Masochism is just stubbornness hopped up on caffeine. Masochism is just motivation twisted askew. Masochism is a skill and a necessary tool, because you must be a masochist to keep writing, singing, or putting paint to canvas, knowing full well it might never amount to anything. Knowing there will be rejection and the constant fight for artistic air in the sea of humility. Masochism will be your air tank providing oxygen to your lungs. Masochism will embolden you to send stuff out into the void with no guarantee that even one brain will receive the signal. Masochism will find ways to light up your own brain and keep pounding its output into new shapes once the metal of it cools.
It’s insanity, repeated.
Insanity.
Repeated.
To make yourself heard in a deafening world and ignore the blood on your face and the bruise on your heart. To keep getting up, again and again, and again.
Ego wears masochist genes.
The count — you are down for it. Like, really down. Moremoremoremore! It’s what the heart wants. Lying in the swampy sweat of your failure, rolling in ring of your pain, you can’t help yourself. But it can’t end this way. This cannot be the result. It matters not if someone is in your corner, nor if there is a crowd to witness your daily battles. Your bout is loud then quiet, violent then subdued. Roll to your stomach, get to your knees, look to the heavens of hope and scream to the rafters:
“Take your best shot!”
Ego sticks out its chin.
Endure all the slings and arrows and outrageous fortunes and all that guff. The masochist gene will allow you to do the do. To gut it out for what might be a long while. For what might be your whole life without landing a punch in return. This is the cost of doing creative business.
But also know this. Being a creative masochist does not mean you need to suffer for your art—financially, emotionally, mentally, or otherwise. You don’t need to come from a place of pain, you just have to know where to place pain so you can keep getting back in the ring. Because you will keep coming back. You won’t be able to help yourself.
Masochism is a mechanism. A mechanism of survival.
It’s not a serum concocted in a lab, tested on volunteers, and injected into willing artists’ arms upon FDA approval. Nor can it be bought at a dollar store. You either run with it or decide it’s not for you (seriously, being a masochist is not for everyone). Like a kitten emerging from a storm drain, mewling to be fed, pick it up, or don’t—that’s all there is to it.
In this ring you will find that stubborn is a vibe, ego is clunky, uncontrollable, and unregulated, and the only thing guaranteed is pain. But you will recover. So if you want to create, create. Tap into that masochist DNA, get in the arena and come out swinging for the knockout.
Tranquility Base here.
The ego has landed.
This week’s amends…
“Nothing you create is ultimately your own, yet all of it is you. Your imagination, it seems to me, is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence, and is not intrinsic to you, rather it is a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.”
- Nick Cave, answering a Red Hand Files letter.
On Rotation: “Blood of an American” by Bobby Wright
Lyrical animation by Chloe Jackson.
Via Open Culture
Can you find the three bananas in this field of Minions? (click it to see on Instagram)
Via Neatorama
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Thanks, Andrew!
The Year of Living Sagily. This year’s goal (if I succeed) is even dumber.
TIL about Witch Cake, just one of many weird witch tests.
“In cases of mysterious illness or possession, witch-hunters would take a sample of the victim’s urine, mix it with rye-meal and ashes and bake it into a cake. This stomach-turning concoction was then fed to a dog—the “familiars,” or animal helpers, of witches—in the hope that the beast would fall under its spell and reveal the name of the guilty sorcerer.”