The repetition of a well-known song on the radio on Friday afternoon was sufficient to drop me down the deep shaft of misery from which (it feels as though) I have no hope of emerging.
It's not an uncommon song on the generic, ten-a-penny radio station to which I am forced to listen for the duration of my working life - I'd estimate that I hear it at least twice a week; normally causing my body to stiffen, for I have been conditioned thus.
On Friday, though, I knew it was going to be a bad one as soon as I registered the first couple of notes. I swallowed the imminent devastating lyrics whole and assimilated them into my bloodstream.
This song the same blunt instrument which the mental hospital played over and over for nine hours solid, eventually breaking the resistance of my ex-girlfriend and forcing her to cry.
What is it about the repetition of events which causes us, at some unspecified point, to break? Why after eight hours and 59 minutes (say) was she able to withstand its force, but the next cycle caused her to give up? Why, yesterday, did I internalise the song instead of watching it carefully and then directing it away?
The police (in dramatised television at least) know this, picking away at the same weak point until the whole convoluted structure that is the guilty person's facade is demolished.
There is some inherent flaw in all of us - a hairline fracture in the glass which, when exploited, reveals the uncomfortable truth of our mortality and fallibility. In the case of your author, music is one and alcohol is another. I am catapulted down the well by particular songs - music to me is a little death, the shadow of which crosses my frozen face.
Nor can I tolerate alcohol, at least not when I'm in the house on my own. The distraction of other people prevents me drowning in the stuff, but I spiral away into a viscous, terrible misery when alone. Both music and alcohol have in common that they remove the control and regulation of mood from their master, and put it in the hands of some outside stimulus which delights in causing sadness so far off the dial that it is incalculable.
I've been playing the song over and over for the past three hours, doggedly pressing the replay button as its heavy, sorrowful skein comes to an end. I wanted it to empty me, that I might sleep a dreamless, chloroform sleep, but I'm not there yet. The music broke me long ago, yet the blinking, living eye has refused to submit, and watches cynically and without emotion, somewhere beyond the self.
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