If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall
walks, sleeps, tigers, ghosts, shows, and subtext
Okay, first of all, y’all are the best. This little newsletter is way over 500 subscribers and the last one had a 62% open rate, which is ludicrously high.
One time, I misread “Wind Beneath My Wings” as “Wino Beneath My Wings”. Ewe are the Wino Beneath My Wings.
Man, I’ll be honest. Yesterday I wasn’t feeling so great. I wish I could tell you all the reasons. They involve the obstacles that presently stand between me and the making of new shows (in a time when shows about depression might really help people) but also include the shortening days, the colder temperatures, the political climate, and oh yeah my propensity toward depression. I never chose depression, of course. It chose me! How flattering to be recruited! First round draft choice! (No, says, depression, 143rd round.)
Then I did the thing that is usually inadvisable in these situations: nap! And THEN I did the thing that IS advisable: took a walk. It’s still the time of year in Minnesota when that is a good idea because it’s not murder degrees out and the leaves are changing color before plunging, dead, to the cold wet ground.
But that whole dead leaves thing is nice! It’s really nice! It’s kind of nice. It’s okay.
And that’s when my mind finally opened up to possibilities for actions that I could take to better my world. The root of the previous bleakness was a sense that I had no agency in my life, that I had to simply wait in stasis while other people figured out the things that would affect me. And when one feels powerless like that, that’s when the ol’ depresh seizes the opportunity to infiltrate. Certainly sitting in my basement office had not been helping matters in this regard.
Nature stirred that up. Wind, the expired leaves, the temperature, the sight of people and dogs and cars and buildings. The jolt of new stimulus got the brain juice circulating around and the mere bump in endorphins from physical action helped a bunch. I started thinking about things I could do to clear the obstacles. I thought about new directions to expand into with my job stuff. It was about thinking. The previous compulsion was so stay home in darkness and not spark anything. It lost, thought won.
Go for walks if you can! The nap was nice, though!
The president, who has COVID now, said that we need to open all the schools and bars and restaurants in part to help people with mental illnesses like depression.
Going to school or out on the town in the midst of an out-of-control pandemic where you might catch something that will kill you is not the wish of any depressed person I know. And I know a lot of depressed people.
It’s like they’re saying you need to experience the joy of animal contact so they’re sending you to Hungry Tiger Park.
Man, I can’t believe Hungry Tiger Park is still in business. At least they’re not offering school field trips anymore. That ended badly. As did this once-cogent point about mental health!
Anthony Davis of the Lakers says LeBron James “sleeps more than anybody I know.”
So that nap I took was a good idea after all. Because now I’m the greatest basketball player of all time. That’s just science.
Actually, I have insomnia so I’m only the second greatest.
Okay then how about television recommendations for the emotionally fragile and downward-trending. Okay.
Ghosts - from BBC, on HBO Max
Young couple inherit a huge British estate only to find it is severely haunted. She can see them, he can’t. Easy premise, easy show, very funny, complete brain rester. One ghost if from someone who died in the 1980s, one’s a caveman, Victorians, Elizabethans, and a whole room of people who died in a plague pit. Comedy! No intricate plot lines, no twists really at all. Just skilled British comic actors doing their thing.
Borgen - from Denmark, on Netflix
Kind of escapist in its own way in that it requires you to keep up with subtitles, which lets you concentrate enough to follow the plot. It’s about the intricacies of Danish politics. Oddly reassuring, really, because the Prime Minister just lives in the same apartment she lived in before she became the PM. Another politician says something racist in a private email and must immediately RESIGN IN DISGRACE. Plus it’s fun to say the word Borgen. That’s just a good word there. Borgen.
Self-promotion! Join me online on October 8th to talk about the book.
It’s sponsored by the sponsor of my show, MakeItOK.org and by Subtext Books, a great indie bookstore from whom you can buy the book.