Overthinkers Anonymous

Interior. Church hall. All floorboards and folding chairs. There’s a table to the side with a coffee percolator and some cookies. The room is populated by an assortment of men and women. They are seated and, mostly, look around with blank faces, as if they are trying not to think too hard. Some make awkward small talk that never seems to quite go beyond the murmur of their pleasantries.

A door opens.

A man in a jacket, suspenders and baseball cap enters the hall. He is slightly plump, slightly stately, and seemingly in charge. He waddles, in a strangely authoritative way, to an empty chair and pointedly waits for everyone already seated to settle. He smiles gently and pulls off his jacket, unveiling a name badge that reads: Mike. He stands up, just inside the circle.

Mike:

Hello, hello, and welcome to Overthinkers Anonymous.  I’m Mike and I’ve been clean now for 10 years.

(polite applause)

But, of course, it’s not only about me. It’s about all of us here tonight who care enough not care too deeply; who know the addictive pains of Overthinking; and who just want some change. I know—because I’ve been there—how badly you all just want to follow a single strand of thought to its clear conclusion and not get sidetracked by your unwieldy associative logic. And, together, with some straightforward assistance and basic discipline, I believe all of us here tonight are capable of eventually arriving at a simple means to fight back against our Overthinking.

It’s not an easy journey. There are many temptations and emotions you will have to fight. But we’ll always be here. Ready to help you realize that that thinking is just plain unnecessary. That you can be bigger by being smaller than your mind.

Anyway, its just great to see some familiar faces here tonight. As I said, we’re all on this journey together, and we just gotta have trust that each day we can think about this a little less and be together a little more. Every day you come along, is a day in which you face down your addiction, and say: ‘enough.’

(gesturing magnanimously) 

Of course, its always encouraging to see the new faces as well. I know how hard it is to face up to something as convoluted as Overthinking. And how the thinking itself tries its best to sidetrack you: convince you that it is necessary. Well, I can say, it’s not. It’s harmful and, ultimately, exhausting.

(sitting down)

Would one of you new folk like to begin then?

There is some shuffling and gazing about, accompanied by a sense of expectancy. No one really wants to make the first move.

A blonde man, big, in his mid-twenties, raises his arm. It’s obviously a difficult maneuver. Mike nods at him. He stands up.

Dave:

Hi. My name is Dave.

(a chorus of ‘hi Dave’ from the seated addicts)

And I’ve been addicted to Overthinking since, well, I dunno. Maybe, like when I was a kid. I just remember watching TV sometimes and I’d think about what it meant for ages. Whatever was on, too; whether it was Captain Planet or Wheel of Fortune. I’d spend afternoons just thinking about what species of man or robot or spirit the Captain was; try to figure out the value of fire over earth; and what the hell heart did. I’d waste hours devising tactics for Wheel of Fortune, particularly if I, you know, hypothetically, got to the last round. I was an assortment of consonants and vowels thinking up potential movie titles.

(knowing nods from the group of people)

Mike:

Admission is the first step, Dave. Well done.

(gentle applause)

Dave:

Yeah, I know. I’m trying real hard to face up to it. Just it, and me, nothing peripheral; nothing which will make me Overthink my Overthinking.

Mike:

It’s hard.

Dave:

Almost impossible. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to drive straight on a winding road. But I’ve been working at it the last few days and I believe I can say that I think I’ve been clean now for at least 12 hours.

(cheers from the crowd: ‘you go’ and ‘good onya’ sort of stuff)

Thanks. The problem, I guess, is that I only ‘think’ I’ve been clean. I’ve been trying not to think about that too much. I wish I could ‘know’ and not just ‘think’ something. Maybe, it’s part of the process.

Mike:

A little. Certainty and direction is the challenge with Overthinking.

(sage nods from a few in the crowd, even as they try not to look too ‘sage,’ as if they have thought about this at great length)

Tell us more about your journey, Dave. Perhaps, in recounting what brought you to the problem of Overthinking—its challenge and addiction—we can help you think less.

Dave:

(contemplative silence, trying not to Overthink)

It’s an amazing thing. Overthinking, that is. Like wandering this never-ending trail to some unexpected insight; some random connection; some beautiful accident of thought. I used to indulge in it. Bathe in it. It was my job. I was a PhD student in English lit, you see. I had to Overthink, otherwise I wasn’t really, you know, working. It was this perfect sensation of connectivity.

Sometimes, in the midst of Overthinking, I’d feel so fucking smart, like I was possessed of something the rest of the world couldn’t possibly comprehend because it was my own stream-of-thought that led me to it: no one else’s. It was empowering. I could see things in the world—connections and shit—that were absolutely beyond most people. I embraced it fully. I practiced it freely. I Overthought whatever I thought about. And then? I'd think about it some more.

It felt right.

(people in the crowd nod in retrospective agreement)

Mike:

It’s not all wonder, though. Is it?

Dave:

No. Not at all. Especially when you put emotion in the mix. Suddenly, you’re not chasing abstract concepts, notions of politics or interpretation, even random notations on reality, but you follow the path of your own thinking back to you. You Overthink yourself and everything to do with you. Suddenly, what had been clear, becomes this muddy thing, where you forget where you start and your emotions begin. And no matter how often you back yourself out of the mix, you end up Overthinking this evacuation.

I Overthink my Overthinking. And it is addictive, because I always think I’ll win: that the outcome I want will materialize in the process; that Overthinking will lead to its own completion of thought. But Overthinking has its own way of ensuring there can never be any such completion. It loops back in on itself, so that what had been decided—what had been thought—finds itself suspect to more Overthinking.

I need it to outthink my Overthinking, and this merely fuels my Overthinking.

(the room is quiet: they’ve all been there)

Mike:

You don’t though. You needn’t think so hard. The mind can be simple. You can be simple.

Dave:

But how?

Mike:

Ignore the tangents. Think that you think that what you think is enough. Force the mind into compromise. Treat to its thought morsels, but give it nothing else. Overthinking can be corrected, if perhaps never entirely eliminated. It is an addiction that can, ultimately, be ignored. It may always be present—a temptation to drag you away from clarity—but the pay-off of not thinking, of being less critical, of letting it go, is a feeling that is worth the lack of thoughtful effort.

Dave:

(silence)

What if I can’t ever be sure? What if I only think that I am clean of my Overthinking? That this thought is only another in the continuities of my Overthinking?

Mike:

Only thinking, is better than Overthinking. I think you’re on your way. 

Everyone, send him your easy support. Just a clap. Let's avoid the complexity of words for now.

(polite applause. Dave sits back down. Mike looks around)

Anyone else?

The Elegiac Similarity of O'Hara, James Blake and Avicii

Frank O’Hara’s poem for Billie Holiday, “The Day Lady Died,” James Blake’s electronic-jazz-pop song, “Retrograde,” and Avicii’s straight-up dance track, “Wake Me Up,” are three works I admire for their well-embedded, although not obvious, elegiac expression. It is a sensation of loss and longing that is carried in all these works through not just their lyrics, but also the form that gives the words both their substance and adds to their underlying meaning. They are more than just the obvious hooks which make us read or listen to them in the first place. The chatty-tone of O’Hara, the cerebral intensity of “Retrograde,” and the rise-and-fall dynamics of “Wake Me Up,” all reach beyond the immediate surface of the work—what we initially apprehend in them—to establish a direct connection with their audience who sense beneath the ostensible direction of the poem or song a larger presence.

Although these works are completely unrelated to one another, the skill of their execution—in their accessibility and artistic resonance—along with the emotional intensity they emit—which in its complicated transmission is equal to, and reflective of, the complicatedness of any emotion—effectively brings these works together. They are possessed of a shared sense of the world as this thing that goes on, even if this momentum is occasionally suspect to being momentarily halted by its unexpected losses, terrors and fading dreams of youth: all emotional moments that, despite the pain and confusion of their presence, also give the daily rush its significance.

(First, the poem)

The Day Lady Died

Frank O’Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                           I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171368)

O’Hara’s poem is striking for the fact that it doesn’t present itself in the ‘normal’ guise of a poem: it doesn’t rhyme; it has no clearly discernable meter or rhythm, beyond the urbane pitter-patter of a man describing his day; and what it seems to be talking about is clearly laid out, from what date and time it is, to the speaker’s shopping list. However, the very absence of usual poetic signs lends the poem its poeticity: a kind of perfectly executed ironic subversion that captures the daily-ness of its events to render its climactic moment, that is the match of any Romantic transcendent realization, all the more poignant.

It does not have any full stops and in reading, one is forced to scan quickly through this series of its day-to-day events strung together seemingly only by conjunctions. When the last stanza is reached, the peculiarity of the phrasing of the last line—‘and everyone and I’—forces a closer observation. Just like the speaker, the reader has similarly ‘stopped’ and the full impact of being breathless in a memory of a great singer is given a forceful clarity in the reader’s imagination. They sense the importance of this moment among the detritus of the day-to-day of living.

For the speaker to be caught suddenly in this memory in amidst his daily chores says much for the elegiac expression which is O’Hara’s intention. We may not exist in the incomprehensible sphere of someone like Billie Holiday’s fame—how can they relate to the task of simply going grocery shopping?—but the strength of her talent, primarily the memory of it in this poem, is capable of taking us out of the mundane of going to the bank, or buying a magazine, maybe cigarettes. In this everyday, the ethereal presence of Holiday sneaks in. The tasks, so blasé before, are suddenly imbued with a sense of escape; the poem’s rush a means of evasion. Grief, accompanied by a quiet wonder, finds their way in, even as the time and movement of just getting around both threaten and heighten the intensity of these feeling. The speaker may nearly fall asleep ‘with quandariness’—an ideal state of confusion in this poem—but the smallest cue like sweating as a result of performing these tasks brings back the memory of sweating in a nightclub, slightly drunk, surrounded by other people, and there she is singing with Mal Waldron. O’Hara’s balanced poem, then, shows that even in the drive of the ordinary, which can seem so obvious and straightforward, there remains an occasionally invasive sense of loss. It needn’t consume the mind however, as one can still draw on the wondrous moments of the great singer—grieve her talent that can drag us away from the sterility of just being. In moments of grief and the mundane of life, there is still the vitality of memory to make sense of everything again.

“Retrograde” is the first song in recent memory that not only describes the terror of falling in love, but actually evokes that feeling in musical form.” – Edward Sharp-Paul (http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/features/37881/The-Top-50-Songs-of-2013?page=5)

I quote my friend here because he nails, brilliantly, exactly what makes James Blake’s song so great. It is a different sort of elegy, as rather than retrospectively looking back on or celebrating a life, it describes, as Eddy notes, falling in love. Of course, this would usually mean it is nothing like an elegy. However, its ‘terror’—evident in the drive of the synth, almost like an implacable electronic motor, and the hauntingly climbing wail that sounds in the background near its conclusion—is an attempt to match the intensity of feeling that defines both death and falling in love: a sudden disappearance of the world as it was known and as it never will be again; it is the evacuation of rationality for pure emotion, memory and promise.

To excuse one more poetry reference, the sound that rushes the listener, and seemingly the singer, before “Retrograde” hits its epiphanic moment—‘suddenly, I’m hit’—brings to mind these lines from the German Modernist poet, Rilke, and his masterpiece, The Duino Elegies: ‘Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ | hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me | suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed | in that overwhelming existence.” The poem, in part an elegy for the loss of imagination in the material world and the abject fear of this imagination nonetheless, invokes the same sense of wonder, fear and eventual acceptance that Blake’s song inspires. It is a moment of heightened isolation—‘and your friends are gone | and your friends won’t come’—given perspective by the presence of an other—‘we’re alone now.’ The contemplative humming it opens on, at first alone, then echoing against the clapping and the first line of the song that soars into being, builds and builds into the chorus that takes an electronic turn and gives the song a spectral sense of unity. Around the singer, the world has fallen away—much as it does when there is a sudden, unexpected loss—and this is terrifying, but he is faced by another person, similarly experiencing this almost brutal emotion, and who in being the cause of this transformation, of this sudden terror, is the subject of the elegy: a celebration of her presence against the backdrop of complete and utter change leading into uncertainty. The humming fades out, isolated again, and there is no other verse: the world goes on, the intensity of the music and emotion fade into familiarity, awaiting its return as memory in the day-to-day. Left behind is a sense of love’s gain via recognition of its intense, strange associative loss and complication.

Avicii’s song, ‘Wake Me Up,” is pure plastic: all hook, melody and dance-club dynamic. Yet, even against the backdrop I have here of postmodern poetry and avant-garde jazz-pop, I find it still has its place; that beneath its glitz and place in the cultural space of a club, it is sounding a speculative final call to the abandonment of youth.

I love this song. Alone out of all these works, it gets an unrestrained physical and visceral reaction from me. I like to bop to music, mouth the words occasionally, and sporadically play an air guitar/head bang when a big moment arrives, but this is one of the few songs that I actually find myself dancing to. And it is obvious that people love to dance to this song, or at least literally ‘wake up’ to it. Its surface is all promise and glitter: a challenge to face up to the day; to go get amongst it.  But what are we really dancing for when its watery, synth hook kicks in? Why does it feel so right with this song in particular? Its pretty much laid out in the lyrics. It is a final grasp for the joy, the ‘dream,’ of being young: a place where you don’t hold the whole world—you only ‘have two hands’—but, dammit, if you’re not going to make an effort to see it and not be afraid in this, yes, clichéd adventure. It is a youth that stands for complete freedom: an illusion. And if it is, indeed, a dream, we’d rather be caught up in its beautiful sense of being lost and not knowing when the end is coming, even as the song, in its strangely low key way, signals an end or perpetually awaiting climax. Just ‘wake me up’ when I’m ready: when ‘love’ is, finally, ‘the prize.’

“Wake Me Up” contains within it the elegiac excitement of growing up, which necessarily means leaving behind the dream: those last vestiges of irresponsibility. As such, it is a celebration tempered by the inevitability of time. The music itself, always slightly fading in and out of being entirely present—listen to the acoustic guitar disappear into the background at the beginning—is circular, returning over and again to the key hook which itself is tinged with a sense of finality, with a weird last waltz sort of rhythm. In one of its final moment, this very hook materializes without bass, then finally rises and rises as if grasping at the song’s promise of the dream one last time.  It is an elegy to youth that is possessed of a wry acceptance of its eventual passing. That is, if it hasn’t already faded away. Of course the singer doesn’t know he is ‘lost’: he is still in the dream, even as it is sliding further into the past with one last forceful and defiant dance.

All three works are heavily populated—by the proper names in O’Hara, the ‘you’ or girl in “Retrograde,” and the collective celebration and universal feeling of youth in “Wake Me Up” (even the density of its production)—but ultimately all the works identify themselves by their isolation. It is a sense of longing in the face of the various losses the poem and songs are essentially about. One may ride the jolts of living and wonder at its difficulties, but in the sensual intensity of their performances that embrace loss as a matter of life’s complexities, these pieces show that a moment is only a moment: a dream to come breathlessly out of when you’re suddenly hit and realize you’ve been lost in its emotion.

Introductions

Hi, my name is Larry and I’m from Somewhere, Wisconsin. I’m a mirage manufacturer and am generally responsible for all those things you thought you saw. Mostly it’s just sand and heat vapor. Can do a lot of things with sand and heat vapor. A lot of lizards.

You can call me Shazza, but my name is Ian. Or was it Shannon? Maybe Horatio-Martin Gomez? No, that’s not right. Um. I think my name is Marianne. But, then, it could be Ophelia. Anyway, as I said, just call me The Truth. I specialise in the procurement and establishment of white lies. We want to make everyone feel better about themselves. You can find me and my office in Frankston. Or was it Salt Lake City?

Hello, I am Arnold. My day-to-day is mostly concerned with being a planet in my hometown, Cambelltown. I like to sit around and slowly orbit. Sometimes, other people just come up to me and, like, walk around me. It’s a grouse gig.

Hi. Paul. I fill in for Atlas when Atlas needs to shrug. When I’m not there he’ll just shrug anyway. When Atlas shrugs there are earthquakes. It’s an important job.

This is That. That this is That is this that is. That then finds this, though this isn’t That but that. This That is also that.

I am Jill from the Riversdale. I am the lady who pretends to be Colonel Sanders at your local and Audrey Hepburn at the international. A white moustache is an excellent tool in the performance trade. Also, I serve as the final warning before the digestion of fried scallops. Chicken? Fucking excellent. Especially when served with the stars seen out a grease misted car window.

Hello, you can call me Gertrude. I’m from Hawthorn. Maybe Vegas? Or Paris? Maybe Paris in Vegas? I am, essentially, everyone’s ex called Stacy or Bruce.

You may refer to me as The Prodigy Arthur. My job is to be the drunken French boat when the bar’s anchor has slipped and we start drifting towards the Peninsulas. I ain’t a great helmsmen, but hell if fun isn’t had by all when I pull out the Genie and no one gets a wish, yet we all feel touched.

G’day, I’m his Coy Mistress. My place of rest is over there. I don’t really have a job—too coy, you see. I do enjoy finding Rubies in the Ganges, though, and I am certainly partial to wishfully thinking about having more time just so you can longingly stare at my breasts for at least 200 years. One day, I think I would like to own an am’rous bird of prey.

Hello, Prendergast. I am a butler to poets. I am from wherever they dwell. I don’t get paid much and no one really understands my value. I mostly clean their toilets. However, I like to think that I am the muse—the flash of inspiration before every word—even though it is more likely that I am only the angel readying the vessel for their duende moment. I am an angel who cleans toilets while singing about the imminent presence of death. Some have called me annoying. Others just fire me.

My name is David. I am a PhD student. I am a Dick, or maybe a dick. 

The Mind Will as the Mind Wants

Usually, my mind and I are in accord.

We converse with rare candour and wit. We share secrets and tips-of-the-trade. We observe together. We think together. We share the implications of each other’s decisions.

We like to pretend we know something about the other but really we already know everything about the other because we are each other and we giggle because it’s nice to be known by another even if that is you.

We listen to Johnny Cash and have a good time. We listen to Testament and, in union, we turn it off and remove the CD from our lives.

We watch Breaking Bad and suspect that Walt is actually a junkie which could explain everything. We watch The Wire and feel haughty. We watch The Sopranos and feel bada bing.

We watch Two Broke Girls and feel little except some minor titillation when the short one takes a series of bouncy, rapid steps. We don’t think it’s very funny. We’ve discussed its existential merits at great lengths: would it be funny if funny was not a thing? If not, what would it be? In the manner of the falling tree, what is the sound of someone laughing at Two Broke Girls if there is no one around to hear it?

We tackle the stream-of-consciousness as a two-man team, wrestling the phenomenal world as it bears down on us into a workable, less terrifying entity.

We know each other in and out, and it feels just about right.

Recently, however, we have come to something of an impasse. Well, really, he’s being a total tool: a stubborn bastard who refuses to cooperate and kicks up a storm as soon as I try to redirect his thinking. And when he throws a hissy fit, I throw a hissy fit, and it’s really not too becoming for either of us.

We’ve been staring at each other from opposite corners of my brain for a little while now. He wants to focus on one thing incessantly, in all its insane permutations—OCD jerk—and I would dearly like to think about getting back to work and thinking up more Candy Crush tactics to avoid getting back to that very work.

I want to go back to the days where we would wax eloquent about private matters. We would talk in quiet and easy contemplation and come to some sort of notion of what to do together. No one would need to know the process of our thought. Nothing would carry through to the personality.

But by being so darn difficult, everything internal becomes external. My mind has stepped outside its little realm to engage my personality and the two don’t particularly like each other and, appropriately, just don’t get along. Increasingly, my mind has been getting the upper hand.

Meanwhile, my personality is this scattered, scared thing now, rightfully intimidated by my mind. I console it as best I can with beer.

It seems now that we’re apparently only going to be able to resolve this one way: by embarrassing each other by writing about it. Because as I write this, he is writing it too, and, thus, we both look like self-obsessed idiots. My personality, embodied formally in this through the stylistically repetitive use of the collective pronoun ‘we,’ is smugly, albeit warily, sitting to the side, unknowing that he is being made fun of too.

We just can’t leave him out. He is we too. Unfortunately, in the process of thinking, he is the last step: merely the visible actions of thought. It’s hard for him to have a say, really.

Peculiarly, we reach a quiet moment of agreement here in putting this down.

 

But, before I know it, he’ll be off scratching around in another memory, tugging together his own uncomfortable suppositions, and taunting my personality, leaving me with this odd dispersal of my self in writing that cannot decide it if is my personality, my mind, or me.

I’ll try to bring him back to that nice place where we agree with each other and see eye to eye, but, as always, he’ll see me coming and perform the usual evasive manoeuvres. Currently he is acting out like a hormonal teenager and reason is just about the last thing he really wants to deal with, let alone conversing with the apparent authority figure in our relationship: me, who may also be him, which makes the whole thing deliriously complex.
 

Anyway, I just wish he'd be a bit more pleasant to my personality.

Perhaps, if I ignore him for a while? Although, in ignoring him, aren’t I enabling him? Then, I’m still writing about him.

Touché, mind.