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

Or the admission that I’ve sleepwalked before. Only
ever doing banal, habitual stuff like fixing myself a jam sandwich
or pissing into a wastepaper basket. Though once, I did
apparently complete a particularly intricate Airfix kit. Transfers,
paint and all. I remember the model was part of a subrange
of model kits from pre- and a-human scenarios – in response
to the demands of those children who had no interest
in war machines, cars, architecture – humanity. Mine was a
pterodactyl, though I distinctly remember a nebula, a deep-sea
cephalopod, and a cross-section of an astral spider’s egg-sac as
other possible projects from the range. Complicated stuff like
that. ‘The Ninth World’, the range was called.
Or that I might then quietly think of the case of the
woman in LA who, one cool Spring night, murdered her entire
family. Slid out from under the covers, padded into the bathroom,
retrieved the blade from the Gillette razor, returned to
the bedroom, slit her husbands throat, went next-door to the
daughter’s soft room and did for her – then drove some fifty
kilometres to her parent’s home – in her pyjamas and slippers
– let herself in, PADDED up the stairs, and ended them where
they slept. Drove home, crept upstairs, took a piss and went
back to bed. BESIDE THE HUSBAND’S CORPSE. She’d been
asleep throughout. And was subsequently acquitted in court.
Or I say, in response to this and so much more: Christ!
That can’t be right.
[...]