For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

on the cusp of death who decide to turn to faith at the last
minute; or of those who turn into corpses before their turn.
The patron-saint of comatose children, of Alzheimer’s patients,
of people buried beneath the rubble, resigned to death,
surrounded by those already dead. The music segues seamlessly
into ‘Computer Forms’ by The Shadow Ring. Glockenspiel
and aggressively out-of-tune guitar – a voice asking,
‘what will they write about when all the buttons have been
pressed?...’ and you answer, in your bedroom, aimed at the
back of the head of your sleeping partner, in a whisper, [...]
(Those desperate hours (though they may only be one or
half or a few minutes)
in the abyssal stretches
of the night, lying
there, racing over
and over the same
worried groundlessness
in your
head – a sightless,
senseless probing
of your fears,
ailments, aspira-
tions, forgotten
errands (perhaps
from years ago
or hence), lost
purposes – all
lashed together
into a huge fuckoff
ball you struggle
with in your arms
like a bald cuckoo you’re forced to parent. ‘What will I
[...]?’, you mouth to the ceiling. ‘How will I ever [...]?’, you
think, tracing over and over the idea of a face in the pattern
on the curtain or in the artex’ed wall. There is nothing for
it, no solution to be found to your endless problems. And
beside you, sleeping soundly, your partner is elsewhere;
they can’t comfort you. In the morning you’ll have to leave,
abandon this life. It was never going to work. – You return
to the bundle of insolubles – converging now into one vast,
fleshy orb – and you SWALLOW IT, tears welling. You feel
it move slowly, with difficulty, down the alimentary canal.)