Edvard Munch, and how art and nature helps me cope with BPD
I’ve spent a long while deciding whether to talk about my mental health diagnoses in any depth. After all, it’s my business. I can choose to keep it to myself. And in a way, I’d still like to, but after sending this newsletter out, I know I’ve forfeited that option. The thing is, I don’t want to talk about my mental health, but I don’t seem to want to talk about anything else, either.
I was tentatively diagnosed by a mental health professional with Borderline Personality Disorder last year. I take slight offense at the idea of there being anything known as a “personality disorder” in this life, but perhaps that’s a topic for another time. I’ve wondered for a while whether having a diagnosis changes anything at all, and the answer for me at least is, no, not at all. I still feel the same. I am still the same person. However, what it does do for me is give me a reason—and sometimes that’s all I need. Not an explanation, but a possible cause for my pain, and an understanding that some of the intense, unbearable things I’m feeling are symptoms, not flaws or truths.
Edvard Munch was inspired to paint what he felt in his soul rather than simply what he saw by a fellow artist—this led him to explore the complicated world inside himself. I’m not that interested in The Scream, however. I’ve been looking at Munch’s painting The Sun. In this I see almost uncontainable joy, a feeling so strong it almost tips over into fear, all brought on by seeing a sunset. They say he likely had the disorder himself. Makes sense to me.
That’s the thing about BPD. The strong emotions swing both ways. You live tiptoeing around the void, but you’re also occasionally blessed with blinding, life-changing sunlight.
(Thanks in advance if you feel like reaching out to me but honestly, I just wanted to write this and I don’t have the energy to have conversations about BPD or my health right now. I’m doing well, and I am going on a short holiday next week. I appreciate your concern, but honestly: All is good.)
The Sun – Edvard Munch
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The unspoken unease of lingering in public houses during a time of financial crisis.
It’s become second nature to me to think about my local pub as a place to go when my own house has become stale of inspiration. However, I am going less. Like everyone else in the country, I have higher bills to pay, and sadly this means a lower budget for random pints on a rainy Tuesday. I read today that Great Britain has the highest gas bills in the entire world. What a proud moment for my nation.
A pint of cask costs around £4.70 where I live, give or take any drink-it-dry offers or cheaper prices in clubs I’m not a regular in. If I stay for the afternoon with my notebook with just one pint, because my budget for that day was a fiver on random spends, I’ve started to feel something I never used to experience: guilt. It’s self-imposed—nobody at the pub is willing me to buy more. But I know, as a patron and a bar owner, that it costs so much more to keep a pub open right now. That I am potentially (although, sadly, not usually, given how quiet pubs are these days) taking up space a more voracious spender could be using. And that while this didn’t used to matter—all were welcome—it’s become so much more of a pertinent issue.
In Ruby Tandoh’s latest piece for Vittles Restaurants as Living Rooms, she discusses the use of chain restaurants as places to exist, and her own experience of a local MacDonald’s reminded me of this piece from 2016 which I come back to a lot: McDonald’s: you can sneer, but it’s the glue that holds communities together, by Chris Arnade, a writer who covers addiction and poverty in America. When we have no public spaces to utilise, when our homes aren’t the ideal space for us in that moment, we turn to what we have. And what we have is MacDonald’s. Pret A Manger, Wetherspoons.
Yes, Wetherspoons. I’m a former employee and I fucking hate that guy. But I can’t deny that Wetherspoons offer something most pubs do not—anonymity. A strange USP, when pubs in their best incarnations are places of warm, personal hospitality. But it’s this detachment from life, this formation of a pub-as-liminal-space that makes a Wetherspoons pub so welcoming to many. Ruby Tandoh mentions a friend in her Vittles essay, who talks about not having to “perform gratitude”. About using up space, sitting for a while with amenities and warmth and quiet, without guilt. I can understand this. There are no spaces in our urban areas where we can sit in comfort. Hostile architecture has seen to that. If we want to do anything in a town centre other than move forward and consume, we need to pay for the privilege. Wetherspoons are loved—almost definitely so—by many for their low prices and unpretentiousness (however the one on Blackpool seafront has gleaming Chesterfields, a fake library and poetry on the walls). But I don’t think it’s just the low prices people like. It’s the fact they don’t feel they will be judged for paying them.
What judgement is this? The same shame I feel when I don’t stay for another pint? It’s internalised, my friends. Your friendly local publican is only asking you how you are because they want to know. They’re taking your empty glass because they’re about to put the glasswash on, not to passive-aggressively point out that you’ve finished. If there is any one place you are not being judged, it is your local pub. And if you are,
it’s only by Ken, and he drinks Tetleys and got abducted by aliens on Scammonden Dam.
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I really liked this post on Insta by Beak Brewery—a transparent look at how they brew their IPAs, why they have changed the way they brew them, and what that means.
Some venues in Manchester’s Gay Village have long been accused of racism (well, as long as I’ve been going out), this past week more allegations have been made against bar owners and door staff. This piece from Vice in August last year and this Tweet thread from last weekend are your starting points to learn about this if you’ve not already heard about it.
Tom and I play cards and drink pints in our local pub about two or three times a week. We go because it’s a comfortable place to be, and because it’s nice to feel remembered and familiar somewhere—and also at the moment because the lure of a proper fire is irresistible. We also go to The New Inn because often, the conversations you get drawn into take you by surprise.
Now, our local has something of a reputation for having certain regulars who repeat jingoistic balls from certain newspapers verbatim, but walk away and you’ll find people worth speaking to. Like the man in khaki and combat boots, with his shiny antifash badges from the 1970s, always rolling a tab, ready for the class war when it comes. Or the fella with Bedlington terriers and a fantastic selection of metal tees—we got chatting when it turned out that, yes, he was actually wearing a Sólstafir shirt. There’s the guys who teach us how to play dominoes, and the guy who drinks red wine and likes to talk about films. These are some of the people I know in passing at the pub. Pubmates.
But today’s newsletter isn’t about them. It’s about Tom—another Tom—and Phil, two men I’ve seen in the pub for more than a decade, but never chatted to before.
The pub was quiet, except for one man, revving himself up about immigration and benefits. He had many opinions, loud ones, formed from facts he’d only half-remembered. My Tom could tell I was about to get involved and gently nipped my arm. It means—it’s not worth it. It means—this man is not worth ruining your pint over. Across the bar, a man in his 70s bides his time while his pint settles. The politician asks nobody in particular whether they think a well-known local businessman ever had any handouts. When nobody in particular answers, he agrees with himself that this is because he set up his business through sheer hard work, adding that he never took any handouts. The man across the bar clears his throat.
“Have you asked him about that?” he asks.
“Asked who?”
“[businessman’s name]. Have you asked ‘im? Whether he had any help setting up?”
Without waiting for an answer he took his pint back to the lounge, and we followed him. I wanted to know what he knew about this businessman.
Our quiet afternoon pint became an hour-long discussion about the distance between people’s understanding of what working class means, and what it is. We spoke about benefits—”I’ve been on ‘em. He ‘as (pointing at other Tom, who tells us he’s in his 80s.) There’s no shame in it. It’s what they’re there fuh.” We spoke about the retirement age and the state pension—issues close to their lives, but they were incredibly sympathetic to our generation too, who probably won’t even get to retire. Then we talked about the strikes. We talked about how frustrating it is to hear people wilfully misunderstand the point of strike action and unionisation. To hear people side with the Tories against the rights of their friends, neighbours, fellow workers—themselves.
Tom and Phil left for their teas, and we made a move too. On the way home I waved my arms like the two-pint revolutionary I am, telling my Tom how important it is to have common spaces for people to freely share ideas, to congregate—and the more that these places, like pubs, are restricted, taken away, closed down; the more the hospitality industry is left to wheeze on without support, the more suspicious I get.
Use your local pub. Drink there, enjoy it. But also, if it so moves you, use it for action too. Even if that action is only sewing the seeds of an idea. Even if it’s just showing somebody else that they are not alone in their thoughts. Pubs are powerful. What’s more—they are ours.
The TT Races have made a miniseries called Between the Hedges and I am loving it so far. Even if you don’t care about racing, the excitement of some of the riders still is just… It’s really sweet.
MORE Rachel Hendry, in the form of her newsletter J’adore Le Plonk. This week: Bacchus. Sexy? She thinks so.
A very good interview about poetry with poet Kevin P. Gilday. ”…poetry is so obsessed with keeping that door shut…it likes to be this insular little community where everyone feels very special about what they’re doing.”
Funnily enough, Diageo announced this week that Guinness is the UK’s biggest selling beer (h/t Roger Protz.) If the figures can be independently verified, I wouldn’t be surprised—they’ve got the marketing, the consistency and the weight behind them to squash competition. What did surprise me, however, was the weirdly common response (on Twitter) to this news of “but I never see anyone drinking it!” Lies. Saying you’ve never seen anyone buy a Guinness at the pub is like saying you’ve never seen a Labrador. Have you never been to a wake? The social club with your granda? A bog-standard pub? Out drinking with me?
