Depression has got a bad rap in today's media; it has a carefully constructed image as a negative force that strangles and ties down everything in its wake. It's what we don't want to be and something that no-one in their right mind would ever embrace as a positive force.
Yet some of the most important artists and thinkers of our time and anytime have suffered from serious depression or mental illness.
It seems to be a catalyst for creation and dangerous thought, and when it's coupled with a well directed anger it has a force that a happy banality never could.
For instance, most of the world's political and social problems could be solved from this type of depression cum anger. We need that sudden uprising of anger and aggression to threaten, challenge and foment the permanent agitation necessary to solve everything and anything.
Instead, those that do keep that spirit alive are in the periphery and doesn't it just suit us just fine. Isn't it beautiful that we have a country of happy little banal people rushing about wishing they weren't depressed, doesn't it suit and feed into this horribly excellent period of conservatism.
We get told ‘no don't worry about the bigger things, you're chemically imbalanced. You've got problems; you need to put all your energy into working out your own pointless little qualms and getting to that beautiful and permanent nothingness. Nothing of worry. Nothing of care, nothing of empathy'.
That's what drugs and all these bull shit help lines aim to do, smooth out your life. Make it one long stretch of mediocrity.
We need to wake up and come up from this stupid little drugged out stupor.
Because having a drugged out citizenry suits no-one but the drug companies and solves nothing but how drug company bosses are going to renovate their kitchens. Why be a zombie? Why not use the power of the experience for something amazing?
And that leads onto the fact that the message we should all be told when we are children is that bad things will happen.
We should be taught that the solution to all our problems comes within and that there is literally nothing and no-one that can make us feel better during life's more serious crises.
Yet, what we're taught as children speaks of such a large problem today- the joy of asking for help.
We are constantly told to look for some safety net outside ourselves; we always want people and the world to be there when we need it. For some its important, for some generally in crisis the need to talk to people apart from their loved ones is a vital stepping stone to recovery and understanding. Sometimes you do need a stranger's voice and a mature hand to guide you.
But generally it breeds weakness. Generally it breeds a culture of reliance where like a computer or a car, all of life's problems can be fixed by calling somebody else. What we need to understand is that people need to help themselves.
So why else has depression become so popular?
Because for most little fourteen year old wrist slitters it's an excuse, something again endemic in our society. ‘Oh no I'm not weak and immature, I'm depressed'.
It's beautiful a cure all for all of life's problems, the excuse. The way to get around guilt, responsibility and action.
And doesn't it suit the parents.
Kid playing up?
No he's not a disobedient little shit, he's got ADD, bang some Ritalin in the bastard and turn him into the placid figurine you saw on the box.
Ahhh the beauty of the easy way out.
And also for the concerned parent we all know that to be depressed or different is to be powerless- it's what we don't want to be and something that no-one in their right mind would ever want for their children.
It's better for the child to feel nothing than something horrible. It's better to miss life's most terrible moments that shape you and direct you. It's better to miss the moments that mature you and turn you into a well rounded and amazing person- capable, understanding and excellent.
But as we should know by now this is ridiculous: there are so many amazing individuals who have taken the hard road and the power of the depression and turned it into something inspirational. People such as Lou Reed.
Reed since his ‘Velvet Underground' days has seemed like a perennially fragile figure, always at the brink of collapse with his strung out junkie voice and slow meandering speech. But what power. Listen to that man speak and escape the magnetism of his mind. It's impossible.
He talks about death, life and those little swords of Damocles dangling over our heads and sees the potential in all of them. All is not reconciled and it never will be or should be.