Glass Heart Mythology
(Acrylic on Board)
The entire painting, of which this is a detail, is about 5"x3”. Photographing it is a nightmare.
Death and Chemistry
From a dream in which the voice of Death asked me to explain why the symbol of death could be used for the symbol of chemistry. My reply was that death is the most profound change of all.
(Digital)
If the dream ended there, I could pretend it was profound. But, I then asked a room full of dream strangers if they had ever read Promethea.
Which I think proves I'm a scholar to my core, because I don’t make a statement without citing my sources. Even when I'm dreaming.
On Dark Humor (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Small Town Murder)
I've had a tiring couple of weeks. I'm recovering by compulsively listening to episodes Small Town Murder that I've been jealously hoarding, like a true-crime murder dragon.
(Digital)
I usually listen to STM constantly: when I have to do the dishes, walk the dog, fix my yard, drive anywhere, draw shit, and be a person in general. As the hosts, James and Jimmie say: the show is exactly what it sounds like: A show about murders in small towns. There are just shy of 600 episodes. Which means I've listened to a shit-ton of stories about brutal fucking murders.
I like the stories because I like crime shows (someday I'll write an essay about how humanities PhD candidates are all, ALL, obsessed with Criminal Minds and another about how I think historians, and not cops, should be detectives), but what I love about STM as a whole is that it's funny. Never cute funny, rarely clever funny. Dark, deeply human funny. The kind of funny that can only happen when people look at horror and think, "holy fuck, is this what being human is?" For example, it's through STM that I've learned that almost all people, when encountering a body in any goddamn context (the woods, a ditch, next to a dumpster; whole or in pieces) 1. First assume it's a mannequin and then 2. Feel compelled to test that theory, to their psychological detriment.
I've found more therapeutic worth through listening to STM than I have in most therapy settings. I was introduced to the show very shortly after my dad died, and for a very long time, it was the only thing that could make me laugh. Or even feel like a person. Some days, all of reality was an ocean I was drowning in and James and Jimmie cracking dildo jokes and singing songs about a killer with a dead robin in his pocket were my only lifeline. That sounds like hyperbole. It isn't.
I recently had to take one of those ridiculous institutional psych tests where they claim they're going to tell you your top personality traits. They're all bullshit, of course (except for the Five Factor Model, which actually has good consistency across studies, but I digress...). For some reason, businesses and schools just can't stop paying for them.
My top trait was humor. Which I was pretty excited about, ignoring all my knowledge about validity in favor of my ego (and also ignoring the fact that this thing had nothing to say about the quality of my humor). But then the assessment went on to say this trait might actually just make me an asshole, since I can't take anything seriously.
Which, okay. That's uncalled for.
But true.
A therapist once asked me, in reference to a person who had hurt me, "Do you ever want to kill them?" He asked it very, very seriously. With the steepled fingers, deep gaze, everything.
I was crying so hard I was gagging, but I responded, speaking fast and garbled, so the words melted together at the edges: "No, what would be the point? Unless I had a time machine and could go back and murder them in their crib or as a kid but what if I got stuck then and I had to live life as an adult on the run in the 80s ohmygod the blue eyeshadow and the giant bangs and I'd have to go to the mall all the time and learn to rollerskate and pretend to like Whiiiite Snaaaake..." before the rib-quaking sobs drowned out my words. The therapist nodded and said, quietly, "I think I see how you've survived any suffering in your life...."
I can't say for sure if that sentence was spoken in admiration or pity, but I choose to believe the former. Because the delivery was a little sloppy, but the content was gold.
I've heard people call dark humor a defense mechanism. I think those people just aren't funny. If you're even reasonably funny, everything has the possibility of becoming a joke, depending on how you roll it around in your mind. A funny person likes to know how things, people, and reality work and how language itself and the stories built out of that language reveal or lie about all of the above. Then they either juxtapose or align those findings and present them to others.
Very funny people are often deeply insightful. Everyone's tastes are different, of course, but I think your taste is wrong if you prefer, say, the comedian with the puppets over George Carlin. And maybe you've never read Terry Pratchett, but let me assure you: that man knew some secret shit.
I suspect that this is why funny people find healing when they encounter very sharp, very dark humor, and those same people find absolutely nothing satisfactory about therapy: Funny people are observant. And therapists are highly-credentialed, well-poised liars.
Mental health professionals, if they're not of the Nurse Ratched typology, have a cultivated, open-faced earnestness that is baffling and antithetical to the actual experience of being a human. They're also wildly unfunny. How can anyone who's thought even a little bit about existence not think it's funny? It makes it seem like they haven't been willing or able to endure looking directly into the issue long enough.
Talking to a therapist is often like talking to a particularly bland youth pastor. They're always trying very, very hard to seem like they're listening, but without judgement. Which is extremely nerve-wracking. Because there's no such thing as a judgement-free brain; ergo: they're lying.
They're trying to radiate acceptance, but what comes across is a synthetic niceness that plunges over the edge of the uncanny valley with such force that it's not comforting, it's alarming. Because that's just not how normal humans act.
People who have had a bad enough time to have a black sense of humor and posess an IQ higher than your standard-issue service dog are pretty tuned in to what constitutes normal behavior. And what appears to be normal behavior but is actually a monster in a banality suit.
For example, my loud, drunk neighbor is just loud; he's not a monster. The guy with the huge collection of terracotta figurines of babies in the trunk of one of his many cars and the single hobby of arguing with everyone he meets is, similarly, odd, but not a threat. But the quiet ones? Who smile nicely? Use clean language? Don't come to the block party but wave politely as they drive through slowly? If those motherfuckers turned out to have a sound-proofed, glass torture cage in their basement with weird gerbil feeding and watering tubes for humans, I would not be even remotely surprised.
I have sorted all of my neighbors into their threat levels. Because 1. I listen to STM constantly: I've learned shit about neighbors, 2. You can never be too careful, 3. I watched Silence of the Lambs when I was far too impressionable, 4. Mindhunter exists in multiple formats (including as Silence of the Lambs), and 5. I'm a White, middle-class, middle-aged, female-shaped human, meaning my true-crime media consumption is fucking high.
Of the neighbors, I have placed the least offensive, least funny ones at the top of the "might be 21st century Rader" pile. For one thing, a sense of anxious but actually harmless tension is necessary for humor to work, and for another, it's very difficult to be funny when you're trying to blend into a complex environment.
Average folks fumble that shit all the time, which makes them extremely noticeable. They make social mistakes and missteps. Blending in flawlessly is what actual predators do. They sit still, hide their true nature, and assess.
Which is also, incidentally, exactly what therapists do. That's their literal job: Sit still, hide their true nature, and assess. Predators and mental health professionals even assess the same things: weakness, vulnerability, wounding. The only difference is that predators use this knowledge to hunt and therapists use it to heal.
And since intention isn't actually a visible trait, these disparate groups look pretty goddamn identical from the outside.
Obviously, I don't think therapists are prone to evil. Like most people, they're more prone to ineptitude, a tendency exacerbated by a lack of humor. A sense of dark humor, in particular, is like a natural sense of affective balance. It steadies the mind in any situation. I do, however, think there's something... suspicious about people who are very into psychology and using it on other people.
STM's James and Jimmie always say that you don't want the guy who actually wants to coach little league getting anywhere near kids. You also probably don't want anyone who's really serious about getting their fingers into the brains of suffering people anywhere fucking near them.
Do I think two dudes who didn't go to college and currently spend their time making jokes about murderers should be cited regarding who should and shouldn't be a therapist? Actually: hell yeah, I do. Because their work has helped me more than 99% of therapists I've encountered. Should they be the pillars of my mental well-being? I mean, probably not. Are they, though? A little bit, yeah.
On the 21st centry Rader threat scale, they rate extremely low. They're much too funny, they're fairly offensive, and I know damn well they have no interest in the job or me as a person. I find that comforting.
So, if you'll excuse me, I need to stop writing and get back to listening to a story about an idiot who thought they could get away with murder. Maybe this one will try to burn the bodies in a fire pit or blow them up in barrels. Maybe the mayor will show up to solve the crime. Maybe Jimmie will talk about how much he loves Dolly Parton or James will explain, again and in detail, why he thinks hunting clowns should be legal....
I feel better already.
(Ink on Paper; original design I made for STM, which you can buy on many different products from their website)
