The Flesh Will Persist (graphite + Digital, 2023)

The Kaleidoscope of Political Depression

Staring vacantly at the clinical white walls of Dr. Cottril’s office, an emptiness blankets itself over everything. Like a damp sheet fresh from the dryer, not dry enough to keep you warm but not wet enough to warrant another tumble. She repeats the question back to me, aware of my obvious dissociation in trying to come up with an adequate response.

“But how does it make you feel” she repeats.

“You seem to complain frequently about the stifling nature of growing up in Canada, but I want to understand what about this country feels so suffocating?”

I take a moment to collect myself. It is almost a cliché of mine at this point to blame all my problems on the neo-liberal, late-stage capitalist, imperial, settler-colonial hegemony of 21st century Canada (a string of buzzwords I frequently strew together to invoke some sort of reaction from anyone who will listen). My parents see these complaints as just my brash undergraduate education rearing its ugly head. My sister sees it as a manner of escaping my own insecurities, blaming my personal mistakes on the larger system. “A nation-wide scapegoat,” she says.

“It feels like we are just set up since the day we are born, to be made so small that we eventually just allow this smallness to swallow us whole” I finally utter. “I mean it makes sense though, Canada is a nation whose entire human history has been near erased by the expansive colonial agenda. The only dominant history that remains is the one constructed by a capitalist narrative. Unlike countries with immortalised history, nations which have a record of their different forms of organisation, Canada erased everything.” Just uttering these words makes my palms begin to sweat.

I am quickly reminded of the fragility of my own discontent. How unlikely it is for things to change. I am reminded that Canada has been this way since its foundation and that the current state of climate breakdown is only the result of this system of inequality.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Dr. Cottril responds calmly. “I want to remind you that these feelings are not unique to you or your positionality. You are certainly not alone in feeling this way. I would say you are describing what is perhaps the consequences of a severe case of political depression”

Political depression? I ask myself. What on earth is political depression? I have never heard these two terms strung together before nor can I image the implications this combination of terms would mean to my psyche.

“As defined by Dr. Ann Cvetkovich, Political Depression is the feeling that systems of political action and critical analysis are no longer functioning to improve society or make us any happier. By examining where your depression and sense of ennui may stem from, it’s possible to create a more precise treatment plan that extends beyond typical medical intervention. Cvetkovich sees the current epidemic of depression not as a strictly chemical reaction in one’s brain, but as a symptom of the larger social and cultural inequalities ravaging the planet like racism, colonialism, homophobia, and capitalism. See, I don’t think your depression is entirely genetic or can be treated solely with talk therapy or medication, what your mind is reacting to is the need for social change.”

I sit with her comment, letting her words wash over me and soak into my past. Political depression: a feeling of helplessness and exhaustion in the face of social subjugation. Immediately, I think of Kant’s theory of the sublime. I think of how small it makes me feel to live in a world so grandiose and flagrant in its corruption and hostility. Yet where the beauty of the sublime should reside, I am instead confronted with fear and a sense of worry about where all this destruction will leave humanity. I find myself completely detached, unable to comprehend how to find art, poetry, or beauty in the outcome of our colonial past and capitalist future.

“How can I treat it? Political Depression?” I utter, eyes locked on the floor.

Dr. Cottril asks when I began to feel this way. Says the origin of these feelings will tell us where the best treatment lies. I respond that it was when I could no longer write. I had grown up with an active imagination, spending endless summer afternoons daydreaming along rocky shorelines, creating stories about magical forest nymphs and other creatures only my mind could conjure up. I remember seeing the world as a vast kaleidoscope, endless in its possibilities and combinations, ready for a new generation to discover all the wonderous symmetries and patterns that could be spun.

It was on these very same shorelines my fantasies came crumbling down. The Kaleidoscope stopped spinning. I remember the west side of White Rock beach, just past the train tracks where the landscape begins to curve, obscuring Salt Spring Island behind its towering trees. For the first time I feel my daydreams be punctured by the low rumble of churning engines and the stench of raw coal.

I spin the colours at random and discover anxiety. These trains which have rumbled my communities’ shorelines, sending ripples across our gentle bay, was killing us. Slowly but surreptitiously. I returned home distraught, crawled into my childhood bed, let the blankets crush me into the nothingness I felt on the inside. I wanted to scream but had no sounds to make. I wanted to cry but masculinity grabbed at my throat. The kaleidoscope became jammed in this pattern, unable to spin again. I tucked it away at the bottom of my junk drawer. Every once and a while, sunlight glimmers through and it shines once more. Coal trains are heavier than they look, harder to remove than a Prime Minister, especially when they come from America.

Why this impacted my writing, I’ll never know. Suddenly the words stopped coming to me. I left my journal under a duvet of dust for 5 years, only opened once again to document why I could no longer write for my future self to bring up in therapy. Like I am doing today.

I tell her this is what capitalism feels like. It’s the jammed kaleidoscope that keeps on shinning. The day you can no longer write. When self-expression becomes commodified, every move we make a form of productivity, all that survives is the dust covered journals of those who suffered before us. We study them. Name them the western cannon. If Ocean Vuong is right, and writing is a political act, I write to survive political depression. To cope with our politics in the hope that someone somewhere will read my words and find comfort in company.

“Then start writing again.” Dr. Cottril responds. “Write for yourself and no one else. Don’t just write about your emotions and feelings, but write stories, fables, tall-tales and fantasies! Revolution begins with a pen and paper. Resistance permeated by bleeding ink.”

Alicia Elliot wrote that her language, her voice, was stolen by both depression and colonialism, but that she doesn’t accept this. She writes as a radical act of self-preservation. Maybe writing in the age of anxiety, climate breakdown, and late-stage capitalism demands revolution of the personal kind. Sanctuary has never been more urgent. Writing becomes liberation in the face of adversity. I leave Dr. Cottril’s office and go to my junk drawer. I smash the kaleidoscope into a million pieces, rebuild something new, something unwritten. I build it to endure, I write us both back into existence.

Sam

kendall is logan's biggest paradox. he hates and loves kendall the most. kendall is his least favorite child and his favorite child. and it's all for the same reason: he recognizes kendall's potential and admires his ambition. as a father, he is proud of that. that's why kendall was the original successor in the first place. but as a narcissist, he can't take it.

kendall's not afraid to make bold moves, and he will step out of line to do so. kendall has huge flops of course but he also has good ideas, and logan can't handle it. he can't handle, for example, that kendall was the one who solved logan's debt problem. he can't handle that vaulter was modernizing the company. he can't handle that kendall came dangerously close to voting him out of his chair.

that's why logan only reconciles with ken after shiv's wedding--when he has the ultimate trump card to force ken's obedience and love. logan is openly affectionate and admiring of kendall only when he knows he has control. he loves kendall this way and wants to be close to him, but he only respects kendall when he fights back. he wants a successor with whom he can do both at once, whom he can love and respect, but he necessarily never can. because he simultaneously despises all weakness and all dissent.

that's why kendall is the number one boy. he puts up the biggest fight but he's also the most vulnerable to logan's influence. he reaches the highest highs and the lowest lows. and that's why this show makes me absolutely unwell.

tl;dr some thoughts/speculation on– the insecurities logan has developed as a billionaire who didn’t come from money, his simultaneous loathing and longing for generational wealth and legacy, the significance of him leaving his first wife for an aristocrat, and how all of that affects his relationship with connor.

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