Pandemonium Mentis

As of this week, I am 23 years old. I am going to kill myself before I turn 30, so I have 2542 days left to produce a great work of art and become a great artist. I will either die known or unknown. Here’s hoping I die known.

I wish I could be complacent. I wish I could get a job, raise a family, and contribute to society slowly over time; but I can’t do that. I also wish that I could be content to produce art for its own sake, but I can’t do that either—my treacherous pride forbids it. I will either make a name, or I will waste away in an unmarked grave. I will either contribute everything I have all at once, or I will contribute nothing at all.

I’m not a tortured artist mind you—that would require my being an artist. I’m only a wayward sufferer until I manage to produce something beautiful. Once I produce something beautiful, my suffering will become glamorous and romantic, but for now, I remain trapped and alone, accompanied only by the demons swirling about my dejected mind. Their eyes are large and slitted, and their tattered bat-like wings are sharp and lacerate the inside of my skull. They cackle and gnash their crooked teeth, playing games like a motley throng of perfidious hyenas. The noise is unbearable. 

Their favorite game is thwarting my creative efforts. They demand my attention, but creativity distracts me. They pin me down and claw out my eyelids so that I can watch them dance late into the night. It’s difficult to appreciate the hideous splendor of their macabre choreography through the blood streaming down my exposed lidless eyes, but I think that’s just part of the show—immersive theater. 

In my moments of greatest strength, I do manage to paint. Perhaps a few hours reprieve, perhaps a day or two if I’m lucky. But then, without fail, I am dragged back down into Bosch’s third panel for weeks on end. The demons keep me from my sleep and drown me in gin and smoke. 

As I paint the demons seem content to watch me work. We share the same pride as one another, so they remain complacent so long as they’re prominently featured on the canvas—it seems they want a name just as badly as I do. I had intended to create an image of myself, but I suppose we’re alike enough that it makes no difference. They watch my brush scrape to and fro, balanced delicately between my shivering fingers, turning and looping and jumping about like a figure skater on ice. I paint their faces with streaks of red and black, with thin wisps of pure white running the length of their bulging slitted irises. They seem wholly enraptured by my process. Although, I fear that in time they’ll grow restless and return to their old occupations, persecuting me with their marasmic dances. 

I once thought that the only way to escape from them was to produce something beautiful, but I now recognize the futility of that ambition. Beauty is not tantamount to escape—the demons will dance until the bitter end. My ambition now is not peace; it is spite. In 2542 days, I will look the demons in the eyes and say to them, “You have won. You were always going to win and there was nothing I or anyone else could have ever done about it. But you still couldn’t stop me from producing something beautiful. I created beauty in spite of you, and for that, I am satisfied and will resign myself to my bitterness.” Then, as I raise the gun to my mouth they will panic, realizing only then that my death will be their defeat. The demons and I are too much alike. They will perish without the patronage of an audience. They will try to stop me, but it will be too late. Victory comes in death, not beauty. 

I often think that people don’t recognize that beauty is made from ugliness. If an artist possessed beauty they would have no need to produce it. Beauty is made from spite and hate and venom. What ingredient do I have to make beauty if not my burning spite? There is nothing else left in the smoldering wasteland of my wretched soul to work with. The real talent of some artists comes not from their ability to spin yarn from wool but from their ability to spin beauty from virulence. And so I shall spin virulence. 

I often ask myself where I find my inspiration. The unfortunate answer is that I don’t know. I think of little else but my own suffering and imminent demise. I was in Dublin yesterday, waiting for the train back north. I stood on the platform at Connolly station—platform two. I was early and the train wouldn’t arrive for another hour, so the station was dark and quiet.

I looked down. How nice would it be to gently lower myself over the edge and lay my burning unquiet head onto the cold murmuring steel of the rail? An hour would probably be enough time for me to doze off, and then the engine would steadily screech in and crush my brittle skull like an acorn on the pavement—what a wonderful crackling snap it would make. It was a soothing thought to have my warm, pulsing brain strewn thin along the frigid track—I wondered how far it would spread. How much mileage could I get from the contents of my swollen head? I don’t get much mileage out of my mind as it is, so I’d be interested to know. 

Three other lonely souls were waiting alongside me. A man was passed out on the bench. A woman was pacing up and down the platform restlessly. Another woman tried to use the lavatory but it was being cleaned. I found it odd that I could stand so silent and calm while an endless barrage of ear-splitting thoughts swarmed through my head like angry bees to a damaged hive. My thoughts were so loud it was a wonder no one could hear them. I half expect the sleeping man to jolt awake at my deafening impulse to descend the platform—yet he dozed on undisturbed. He looked tired but at peace. I envied him.

The pacing woman appeared anxious; she was biting her nails. I suppose she missed the afternoon train and needed to get north as soon as possible. I expect she didn’t have time to die that day. How nice that must be; I have all the time in the world to die, but I’m too apathetic. 

The woman who tried the lavatory sat tensely on the bench opposite the sleeping man. Her legs were crossed, and she was hunched over, tapping her foot rapidly against the ground as she waited for the custodial staff to finish cleaning. It’s such an awful sensation when one’s body makes demands that are impossible to accommodate. Unheeded demands of the body produce an abrasive discomfort that makes the world go red until the demand is satisfied. This woman’s body needed to relieve itself, but her mind held her fast. Eventually, if things went on long enough, her mind would become powerless, and her body would relieve itself of its own accord, draining refuse or piss down the bench and onto the ground. One day my body will do the same thing to me. I don’t know when or where, but eventually, it will thrust itself into the abyss, disregarding the feeble reservations of my mind and embracing the sweet release of death. Hopefully, this will occur only after I have established myself as an artist, but I make no promises to myself, and until that day comes I can see only red.

The station grew crowded. Faceless droves of people shifted about, looking first at the timetable, then down the track. Old men checked their watches and women clutched their shopping. Occasional puffs of cigarette smoke jetted upward from within the mass and hung suspended in the stale air. It reminded me of the industrial skylines of my home country, where scattered billowing smokestacks produced heavy blankets of thick haze that blurred the passing faces of strangers, drowning out their identities and their health. How I often long to fill my lungs with that filth again. I only managed to suck down two drags from my cigarette before the train arrived. I stamped it out. Sparks scattered across the ground and quickly faded, leaving a thin streak of ash like the first mark of a charcoal sketch. I supposed that worthless stain of ash would make as good a self-portrait as any. 

Two hours later I was back in Belfast. It was early, perhaps one or two o’clock in the morning. The pubs had just finished clearing out the last of my kind—the drunks, the punks, and the would-be artists. The last stragglers were still stumbling back to their respective boroughs as I roamed aimlessly through the hazy streets. I’m sure none of them would remember how they got home.

I was exhausted when I finally reached my flat. I turned the key, and the latch gave way. I stripped off my coat and collapsed onto the bed. Say what you will about the disordered clutter of my mind, I will never be reproached for having an untidy room; it was clean and quiet. I don’t know why I keep it so clean, I certainly don’t have to. Perhaps I am exercising what little control I have left to make up for the intemperate chaos of my inner world. Or perhaps I’m making a vain attempt to appear stable and healthy as a matter of self-deception. Perhaps yet I shouldn’t read into it at all and just be grateful for my one good habit. 

All the way home I thought of nothing but sleep, but the moment my head hit the pillow, my eyes snapped open, and the demons commenced their dance. I don’t know why I ever hoped for rest. Hope is a taxing endeavor, and I can never spare the energy for it. So instead I painted. Nothing good came of it, of course, but at least it occupied my time until my body grew too tired for my mind to have any say in the matter. I burned cigarette ash into the canvas, drawing the shape of a feeble head hunched under the swarming scarlet black vermin. 

This morning, I burned the painting altogether. Perhaps the next one will be the one.