The Black Dog and The Songs That Saved Our Lives

It’s been two weeks since I’ve blogged – for which I really have no excuse save from a short spell of writer’s (bloggers?) block.  In that time (like most times) I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of depression.  Those of you who follow me on Twitter know I talk about it quite a bit, and I’ve received nearly every response from understanding reflections, to heartfelt discussions, to concern, to criticism, and probably the occasional mute (it’s okay to admit it, I’m sure most of us have mute lists, some are bigger than others!)  The internet is simply reflective of the ‘real’ world in this sense, because such a myriad of reactions can occur in real life too when one is depressed: some people are supportive, some disclose their own struggles, some worry, some criticize, and some – essentially – mute you, or sweep you under the rug.  There are people who tend took look away because they don’t want to see certain things.  Can I blame them?  I tend to lock myself away from the world when I don’t want to see it, or feel overwhelmed. 

Which brings us to my typical reaction when I’m depressed: I hide. Nearly two years ago I was in full-on hiding mode (I still am in a sense, it’s part of my nature, but in that time I’ve also traveled quite a bit and made new friends too. Things – life – comes in waves).  Ever the poetic 30-ish-year old teenager, I was hiding in my bedroom: writing, reading, cuddling my cat, and – discovering new worlds in music. I say teenager partly in jest, but another part of me is irked by the fact I feel apologetic in saying so; I think many of us don’t lose that teenage-side, but social mores have constricted us and scripted us into rigid boxes.  Age is more fluid than we are led to believe – and as at times I feel I can relate to all the sexes – I also feel there are many ages within me.  But enough of that – let’s get to the music I discovered. 

From WINK magazine, 2014

There’s nothing like the moment you discover Morrissey and the Smiths.  And I mean really discover: when you start hungrily acquiring all of the albums, and the lyrics start to wrap themselves around your mind and your heart.  For me it was a bit like someone reading my innermost thoughts back to me – and isn’t that what so many of us have always wanted, always searched for?  Can’t someone explain myself to me?  In our saddest, loneliest times – isn’t that precisely what we want?  Finding music that really speaks to you is like falling in love – you long and hope for it to happen in your teens or early twenties, but whatever age it happens – 30, 40, 50, 60 – if it speaks to you emotionally in that moment – it’s indescribably life-changing.  It may even rescue you.  When something grips you with such intensity, even in the darkest times, you can’t help but feel lucky in a sense.

One aspect of Morrissey’s music (and all the writing and interviews I’ve also devoured) that’s astonished me is the way he approaches depression: with a blend of deep understanding (as he lives with it himself), poetic beauty, and humour. I say poetic beauty because his lyrics are undeniably beautiful, even if the topics he often deals with are dark; he elevates the struggle to something heroic (I believe Russell Brand once described this in a similar way).  I also find Morrissey quite humorous – I never understand people who find him a gloomy downer. Well, neither does he: “it’s the people who know of me but don’t listen to me who have that opinion [on people who miss the humour].  I think the audience understands completely. It’s really not that I’m a depressing person. It’s simply that I’m not a bouncing moron.” (2004). 

Russell Brand with Morrissey

Russell Brand introducing Morrissey at Hollywood High (2013)

Morrissey is unique.  He is courageous.  He shared his struggle and views on depression long before the world was comfortable talking about it. Is the world even comfortable talking about it now?  While many movements have been made to talk about mental health, I still believe it is somewhat of a taboo topic.  Judging by a number of articles I’ve read, it is currently deemed ‘acceptable’  (whoever decides these things?) to talk about depression if you are IN recovery or are now what society deems a ‘successful’ person, but if you are still in the midst of it, still struggling – ah… that might be a bit ‘much’ for readers to bear.  Perhaps the media wants to give people hope, which I agree is important, but it also ignores the blistering truth that depression is a lifelong battle for some – maybe for many.  Maybe it’s just that we don’t hear those voices very much.  The way ‘hope’ is packaged can feel suffocatingly contrived and forced. Articles are constantly published to the tune of “Well, I had depression for an awful couple of years, and now I don’t anymore! I’m married with three kids in a two story house with a paid off mortgage. I work a (dreary) middle-management position but run marathons and jet off to all inclusive resorts twice a year, so life is good.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased for those who escape the merciless clutches of depression, but where are the articles about those who still struggle or exist in some kind of alternative realm?  No one is knocking furiously at my door asking me to write an article about the depression I’m currently coping with.  Must it always be neatly tucked away in the past?

In the 1980’s, I can imagine much of the general population responded somewhat rigidly towards topics like mental health.  I was too young to remember.  But Mozza’s audience must have appreciated it like nothing else in the world. Even now, some 30 years later – in the midst of slugging through yawn-provoking motivational quotes (some are downright insulting), auto-tuned songs that say nothing to me about my life, and ridiculous commercials where people dance in banks – how refreshing is it to discover someone like Morrissey?  Nothing is as groundbreaking as authenticity.  True art touches the soul.  

How Soon Is Now? (Live, 1986)

I Know It's Over (Live, 1986)

ON DEPRESSION:

I’ve always respected how openly Morrissey discusses depression in interviews.  It hurts, because I know he suffers too, but another part of it makes me feel so much less alone.  I’ve collected some quotes here that have really spoken to me on the subject:

“I am depressed most of the time. And when you’re depressed it is so enveloping that it actually does control your life, you cannot overcome it, and you can’t take advice. People trying to cheer you up become infuriating and almost insulting. It’s all a part of that “pull-yourself-together” approach isn’t it? Depression is very, very powerful. You can’t simply go to a nightclub and have a quick Miller draft light, or whatever you call it, and come out of it.”  (Details, 1992).

SPIN: Isn’t unhappiness, to some degree, a matter of choice?

MORRISSEY: I think choice has a great deal to do with it. I can’t explain it more than that. It may be unconscious choice. I think it’s a result of somehow being traumatized along the way and you suddenly decide upon what’s best for you, i.e., staying away.

…

I think I’m always depressed.  And I don’t say that in search of a guffaw, but I think I am always depressed.

SPIN: Do you ever have that sense of being encased, like the boy in the bubble, so that all experience is not direct, but filtered somehow?

MORRISSEY: Yes, I do. I feel that I can have a million conversations, but nobody actually sees me, or speaks to me directly, and tells me something that’s actually valuable to me. But life is… difficult.

“Morrissey says he’s always suffered from serious depression, “which is something that isn’t allowed to be said,” he adds; he continues to feel that it plays a key role in all of his work”  (SPIN, 1992).

“I don’t believe you can be an intelligent, artistic person and avoid depression.” (2004)

This section of Autobiography hurts to read, and shows the emotional place Morrissey was in before the Smiths was formed:

“…At the hour of the Smiths’ birth I had felt at the physical and emotional end of life. I had lost the ability to communicate and had been claimed by emotional oblivion. I had no doubt that my life was ending, as much as I had no notion at all that it was just beginning.  Nothing fortified me, and simple loneliness all but destroyed me, yet I felt swamped by the belief that life must mean something – otherwise why was it there? Why was anything anything? I had become a stretcher-case to my family, yet this made it easier for me to put them aside at those moments when the wretched either die or go mad. The water was now too muddy, and, being nowhere in view, I am not even known enough to be disliked. The wits had diminished, and I am sexually disinterested in either the male or the feel-male – yet I make this claim on knowing almost nothing about either. Horror lurked beneath horror, and I could only tolerate an afternoon if I took a triple amount of the stated dose of valium prescribed by my GP (who would soon take his own life). Life became a strange hallucination, and I would talk myself through each day as one would nurse a dying friend. The diminishment could go no further, and the face can only be slapped so many times before the slaps cannot be felt. I became too despondent for anyone to cope with, and only my mother would talk to me in understanding tones. Yet there comes the point where the suicidalist must shut it down if only in order to save face, otherwise you accidentally become a nightclub act minus the actual nightclub. This, then, was my true nature as the Smiths began: the corpse swinging wildly at the microphone was every bit as complicated as the narrow circumstances under which he had lived, devoid of the knack of thigh-slapping laughter.” (Autobiography, p. 201-202)

“For me it didn’t ever get better. I’ve had it for many, many years, and I refer to it as the black dog. And it doesn’t go away. And it’s usually the very first thing when you wake up... There is no cure, and I think it’s part of being a sensitive, open human.”

“I don’t [take medication] but I’ve been through everything, it’s pointless. It’s a frame of mind, a state of mind, it’s circumstantial.” (Larry King, 2015)

Morrissey talks about depression on Larry King

ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD:

Is there love in modern life?  I won’t carry on about the deplorable state of the world; the fact that Donald Trump is constantly appearing on the covers of countless magazines is proof enough we’re on the brink of hell. There are atrocities everywhere. Conversation lacks depth.  Certainly much of the world is focused on the unpoetic side of life: possessions, cars, jobs. I’ve languished through entire insipid dinner conversations on mortgage rates and how much people make per hour. North American society, in particular, is greedily focused on being constantly overfed. But what feeds our souls?  In a sense, many of us are unfortunately encouraged to subdue, or even deny our own sensitivity. Do we turn inwards? 

“I think about everything too much… I have this chattering voice, this chattering mind, and it just doesn’t stop. And nothing can make it stop.”

“I’m a sensitive little thing, and I’m very interested in poetry and the poetic side of life, and so obviously it’s hard in modern life because there’s no poetry in modern life. There’s nothing very nice about modern life. It’s very difficult, so yes, I feel pangs very easily.” (Larry King, 2015)

“I was enormously influenced by film as a child, and I made the assumption at a very early age that whatever you see in feature film is what will eventually happen when you grow up. When I became a teenager it was strikingly obvious that feature films – especially Hollywood films – were the biggest lie of all. And still are. This, coupled with the realisation when I was around ten or eleven, that abattoirs existed, was too much for me and I slipped from being quite a noisy and yappy child into an intense and withdrawn thirteen-year-old. Further on, the direct result of this was the inevitable antidepressants. If you can’t shoulder the burden of living in a society which is less than civilized then you don’t quite fit into the community and too much is going on in your head. When I was fifteen I was under no illusion that life was a terrible thing. My view has never changed. I think this is why we all love to sleep – because it is the only way we can get away from life. Well, of course, there is another way…” (Hot Press, 2009)

  

What is your most important inspiration when you write songs?

“These days it’s unashamedly my own emotional position, which I now admit to being quite odd. When you’re 23 you have poetic license to be searching and confused and obsessed with suicide and greatness in equal measure. But I am now 48 and can no longer be said to be developing a philosophy of life. Things, by now, are supposed to be quite settled. For me, they aren’t. I’m still trying to make sense of a world that makes none. As far as romance is concerned, my life has always been absurd, so it’s only by the power of song that I attempt to keep body and soul together.” (TTY, 2007).

Life Is A Pigsty (Live 2006)

ON LONELINESS

Existence can be very isolating; often a sense of detachment can claw and gnaw at us. At many times, having people around can even make it worse (I find this, anyway). It can feel very unique and specific to you, when you’re enduring it, but another part of you wonders if many people feel similarly. Loneliness can be all-encompassing, and some days we end up talking ourselves through just to get by. 

“We’re all lonely, but I’d rather be lonely by myself than with a long list of duties and obligations. I think that’s why people kill themselves, really. Or at least that’s why they think, ‘Thank heaven for death.’” (The Guardian, 2010)

[On his worst habit]: “Avoiding people. I avoid people I actually like. I suppose that’s a phobia, but it’s also a habit.” (1984)

“I don’t think loneliness or a sense of isolation is restricted to youth. For some people, unfortunately, it lasts their entire lives. They remain alone, or they remain very reflective, looking inwards. So I don’t ever feel that I was initially simply writing for 13-year-olds. I also don’t think once you’re beyond 21 that everything magically falls into place. I don’t think that’s true.” (SPIN, 1992).

Earth Is The Loneliest Planet (Live, 2015)

ON THERAPY AND ANTIDEPRESSANTS

Lifesavers for some, but it’s hard not to be discouraged when they don’t work for you. Sometimes the right interesting drug can help, other times you might find a therapist that speaks to you in some way, but in all honesty there are times when these avenues are dead ends, or do not turn out to be all you had hoped.  Paying $200 an hour for someone to remind you to go to bed at the right time or scribble in a workbook can feel tedious and disenchanting. Being pummelled with CBT, DBT, Freudian psychoanalysis, or Jungian archetypes doesn’t necessarily result in one skipping off with deliriously carefree airs to yoga class or speed dating sessions. And trying medications can be very hit and miss.  Morrissey, in interviews and lyrics, gives a simultaneously aching yet refreshingly truthful take on his frustrating experience of navigating the mental health system.

Have you ever considered therapy?

“I tried it several times and found it no use whatsoever. The problems that I’ve had are more ingrained than mere medication or analysis can cure. It’s just me, my personality. Not a curious medical imbalance. I felt I could take some magical pill and be cured but its not the case. The thing I’ve been fighting is this thing here before you.” (Q Magazine, 1994)

Have you ever tried Prozac?

“I know little about Prozac. I’ve tried it of course. We all have. But it just didn’t work for me. So there’s no appeal in something that doesn’t work.” (Q Magazine, 1995).

What’s your attitude to psychoanalysis? Did you see a therapist in LA?

“Nooo, not at all. Well, I did before I left, because I was leaving for LA. And they said, of course, ‘Please don’t do it.’ I don’t see anyone now. I think we’re all a mess. And it will all end eventually so there’s not really any point wasting money on therapists. What is there to talk about? You’re unhappy? Who’s happy?”  (Mojo, 2006).  

Something Is Squeezing My Skull (Live, 2009)

ON SUICIDE

Perhaps the most taboo mental health topic of all.  Growing up I was told suicide was ‘a selfish way out,’ so when I was a teenager and certain thoughts came to me, I felt there was nowhere I could go. In my life, through the years, I’ve heard every misguided, insulting, and utterly judgemental view flung unflinchingly towards suicide and suicidal people: it’s ‘selfish,’ a ‘sin,’ or ‘a coward’s way out.’ Yet last year, in an interview with Larry King, the media flew into a predictably frenzied uproar when Morrissey described suicide in a different light: as ‘admirable.’ Perhaps speaking of suicide in such a way doesn’t appeal to everyone, but as a society we are so drenched in seeing it as “wrong,” which is a tremendously damaging point of view.  Yes, suicide can often be prevented, and we should always, always do our best to reach out and support those who are suffering, but…at some point, we ought to allow people to have autonomy over their own lives. 

“It [suicide] crosses everybody’s mind. Everybody thinks about it. Even people who mistakenly assume that they’re happy. They think of just disappearing and having enough and many people do. Just taking control and saying ‘no more, no more of this silliness.’ And it’s admirable.” (Larry King, 2015).

What did Kurt Cobain’s suicide mean to you?

“I felt sad and I felt envious. He had the courage to do it. I admire people who self-destruct and that’s not a new comment for me. They are taking control. They’re refusing to continue with unhappiness, which shows tremendous self-will. It must be very frightening to sit down and look at your watch and think, ‘In 30 minutes I will not be here.’ Thinking, ‘I’m going to go on that strange journey.’ Modern life is very pressurizing. We’re all on the verge of hysteria. There are people around who’ll shoot your head off because you forgot to indicate.” (Q Magazine, 1995).

Kurt Cobain in 1994

You’ve talked about suicide several times. For you, it’s an act of bravery…

“I think the recurring phrase is that it’s the ‘coward’s way out.’ But I think it’s the strongest decision that any individual can possibly make, as obviously it’s very frightening. I don’t like the term “commit suicide” because it sounds like robbery or something rude or naughty. But I admire people who take their own lives. I don’t find fighting wars very brave, or being in the army. To me, that’s remarkably stupid.” (1987)

There is also a moving account of suicide in List of the Lost (p. 52-54):

“Harri slumped to the floor heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, striving to conclude the day with a certain patience and wisdom. He shall travel this path without the strength to cope with anything else, no longer likely to explode from this intensity, yet ready to fuse the physical with the spiritual and to accept that the next moment will be unlike any other. Life had become much too burdensome, and the repulsive vision of his mother’s cashed-in body and soul all alone under soil caused a brittle left-to-right cluster headache each time its flash-photography image tasered his brain. Here was a point of control whereby you are your own witness, and all that happens is made by you and does not need further clarification. Let the minutes spin as a tankard of vodka is clouded by a heavy overjolt of brown and white powder, both of which submerge like falling snow and whisper, I’m the right friend for you…”

Asleep (Live, 2014)

Len Brown, who lost his brother to suicide and has interviewed Morrissey many times, describes Asleep as “an astonishing track that deals with suicide in a poetic and understanding way. As someone bereaved by suicide, still one of the great unspoken taboos in British Christian society, I’ll always admire Morrissey for even attempting to tackle such a difficult subject, let alone succeeding so sensitively.” (Meetings With Morrissey, 2010)

Yes I am Blind (Live, 2015)

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (Live, 2007)

Even though this was a heavy topic, it’s been meaningful to me to write this and compile these quotes. I’ve spent a lot of years wanting to feel understood. Looking back, even people who haven’t turned their backs on me with immediate discomfort at the word "depression," (for which I’m immensely thankful) have mostly been unable to get through to me. Many people didn’t like that I felt no desire to reform my thoughts in an attempt to understand or embrace the many aspects of life that have never appealed to me. Maybe part of me clings to my dissatisfaction, my opinions, and I’ve at times been criticized for seeming too bleak (as if something can be done about this with a snap of the fingers).  One thing I do know is I have sought out help during my worst throes of depression: barely being able to leave bed, for instance.  However, if I suddenly woke up ecstatically beaming about the state of the world (in the state it's currently in) – well – it wouldn’t be me.  The greatest sense of contentment I can envision is being allowed to be myself.  We shouldn’t feel frightened to be ourselves, but many of us do.  Isn’t it through art that we unleash our pain? Isn’t that how we connect across our loneliness? Why plaster artificial smiles on our faces in the moments when we are dissatisfied or sad – doesn’t this hurt more?

Authenticity is a breath of fresh air.  Of course I’d love to be ‘happy,’ but in some sense I can’t tell if that’s a simple human emotion, or an abstract philosophical construct, or something that is crudely marketed to us in modern society.  Some people misguidedly describe it as a near-static state one must aspire to in order to have an ideal life, which leaves most of us feeling hopelessly inadequate and incomplete; I feel overwhelmingly lucky if I achieve fleeting moments of happiness. Yet again, I’m rambling.  What I’m trying to say is that the gift of feeling understood, while simultaneously clutching onto one’s uniqueness, especially when one self-identifies as an outsider, is more meaningful than anything.

A lot of people ask me why I queue so long for Morrissey concerts. Of course it’s mainly because I like to be in the front row, if possible, or at least the second row.  There is another wonderful aspect to queuing and that’s getting to meet people (it may surprise you that I am actually typing this, considering my insatiable drive to avoid people).  However, I truly enjoy these interactions. We share our stories while we wait.  Many of us have dragged ourselves through unendurable states of depression, anxiety, and/or varying states of suicidality and have finally felt heard, or understood, through Morrissey’s art. He has exposed his soul, his pain, and his humour through music, through his poetry.  Turning sickness into popular song, there flows a mutual catharsis between artist and audience.  I hope that Morrissey feels the warmth radiating from us onto the stage; I think he does… And leading up to those spectacular moments, many of us waiting outside in line, in the queue, we nod when we speak, because somehow we "get" each other, and we know why Moz means so much to us.  For many of us, no one else has ever been able to reach us the same way.