Hidden Camera
by
by
Alice Copple-Tošić (Translator)
Curative Psychosis
I think it best to take Živković’s ironic tragi-comedies seriously. This is a serious book of moral philosophy. And it’s not a bad 21st century version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, less the Victorian sentimentality.
It is an unwritten and undiscussed iron law of modern society that anyone who starts a business or enters a career will end up being dominated and crushed by that business or career. There are no exceptions to this rule, which is mitigated neither by the size nor type of the activities involved (including writing as a business), nor by the initial interest or passion which launches it, nor by the intentions one might have to ‘balance’ one’s life.
The business will win by consuming 100% of all the energy, talent, emotion and other resources available. Then it will demand more to ensure its own survival. Family, friends, and whatever other interests one has are all expendable. What starts as ambition eventually becomes compulsion. Even if it dies a commercial death, the business will win by continuing to drain its founder, probably until he or she dies. If the business itself is about death, its triumph will be ironic as well as decisive.
At some point this social law becomes apparent to the one who has committed himself irrevocably to a business or career. The situation is worse than the recognition of a failed marriage since there is no one with whom to share the blame. There is, therefore, an inevitable moment of solitary panic, the response to which is either to rationalise the situation as temporary (which it isn’t) or to confront reality, that is to say, to have a mental breakdown.
The latter is the option chosen by Živković’s protagonist. He has already decided that he cannot continue his life as an undertaker. Early retirement means less money, but at least he will get his life back from a business and a profession he has grown to hate. It is this decision which precipitates what can be characterised as psychotic behaviour in a man who lives for his tropical fish and his music.
The symptoms of what is actually a healthy psychosis start with the (illusory) acceptance to and participation in what turns out to be a cinematic revelation of what he has become, namely a neurotic obsessive, disconnected from the world of the living. This is not a condition he acquired through his profession as undertaker Rather, it is the condition which led him to that profession in the first place. His life, perhaps all our lives, are based on just such neurotic choices. Once made, they simply reinforce the psychological defect and ensure its dominance. Our neuroses become, as it were, embodied and institutionalise themselves as our place in the world.
His breakdown takes the form of an intense paranoia. How could it be otherwise since he has always had a fear of living people? But those watching him, filming him, and harassing him with strange invitations are not other people; they are, of course, himself who is perfectly aware, if only subliminally, of his situation and its causes. It is he who decides the necessity of frenetically rushing from place to place, of eating on the run, of allowing the minor irritants of living to obscure the general condition of his life, of interminable calculations of competitive risk and benefit. But he cannot admit to being his own tormentor. Which of us can?
As with many dreams, his delusions are cryptically instructive. To be more explicit might cause cataleptic shut-down. Meaning must therefore be teased out of events. What look like traps are clues. He isn’t forced to take these clues but he does. His sub-conscious instinct insists. A lady in purple, a sort of Dante’s Beatrice, appears and disappears. Why? To entice? To comfort? To guide? In any case as a sort of Jungian anima which is actually part of himself. She helps him dig out those things that are most deeply buried, those archaic reasons which provoked his arrival to his current state. This is why he feels paranoid. He is being watched, assessed, judged... by himself. This is the rationality of his psychosis. Nothing could be more frightening.
Starting from the good look at himself on film, progressing to the ‘book’ of his life, and on to experience the ‘death’ of pre-birth, he regresses himself to a purely physical state, an animal in a zoo. Throughout his inner journey, he is propelled by the persistent frightening memory of the image of himself, so different, so alien from his self-image. Among other animals his pretensions and affectations become useless. An animal does not have rational abilities. It can only wait and respond instinctively to events. Clues are, therefore, meaningless and stop altogether.
In this primitive state, he is led into the underworld. It is here that he starts to take charge, to lead by the light of his real self. As he emerges from the underworld with the help of the purple Beatrice, he starts losing bits of his past, starting with his watch which has been broken. He is baptised in a hot shower and is restored. As are his clothes which had been cleaned and pressed, his shoes shined, and, miraculously, his watch works again. It remains for him then to learn, or to un-learn, how to see. Not as an observer, but as a participant. In doing so he crosses a boundary into a world he hasn’t known about that has been operating in parallel to his own isolated world.
After a complex celebratory meal in a church, including a balletic floorshow, he steps forth into the darkness, into what could be a cemetery. He sees his purple Beatrice literally melt in front of him, as she does so becoming progressively younger until she is an infant who simply turns into rivulets of water. Just outside the gates of the cemetery, he finds his funeral parlour, for which he no longer feels disgust. His feelings now are for the sensitivities of his customers.
His psychotic episode is now over and it has been productive. He will continue in his business, but for different reasons than those he started with. He will also write a book that connects that business to eternity: “I hoped that it wouldn’t be difficult to write about love and death. They are my world, after all. Besides, the obstacle that had stood in my way long ago no longer existed. I now had an excellent title.” Sometimes the title is all you need.
I think it best to take Živković’s ironic tragi-comedies seriously. This is a serious book of moral philosophy. And it’s not a bad 21st century version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, less the Victorian sentimentality.
It is an unwritten and undiscussed iron law of modern society that anyone who starts a business or enters a career will end up being dominated and crushed by that business or career. There are no exceptions to this rule, which is mitigated neither by the size nor type of the activities involved (including writing as a business), nor by the initial interest or passion which launches it, nor by the intentions one might have to ‘balance’ one’s life.
The business will win by consuming 100% of all the energy, talent, emotion and other resources available. Then it will demand more to ensure its own survival. Family, friends, and whatever other interests one has are all expendable. What starts as ambition eventually becomes compulsion. Even if it dies a commercial death, the business will win by continuing to drain its founder, probably until he or she dies. If the business itself is about death, its triumph will be ironic as well as decisive.
At some point this social law becomes apparent to the one who has committed himself irrevocably to a business or career. The situation is worse than the recognition of a failed marriage since there is no one with whom to share the blame. There is, therefore, an inevitable moment of solitary panic, the response to which is either to rationalise the situation as temporary (which it isn’t) or to confront reality, that is to say, to have a mental breakdown.
The latter is the option chosen by Živković’s protagonist. He has already decided that he cannot continue his life as an undertaker. Early retirement means less money, but at least he will get his life back from a business and a profession he has grown to hate. It is this decision which precipitates what can be characterised as psychotic behaviour in a man who lives for his tropical fish and his music.
The symptoms of what is actually a healthy psychosis start with the (illusory) acceptance to and participation in what turns out to be a cinematic revelation of what he has become, namely a neurotic obsessive, disconnected from the world of the living. This is not a condition he acquired through his profession as undertaker Rather, it is the condition which led him to that profession in the first place. His life, perhaps all our lives, are based on just such neurotic choices. Once made, they simply reinforce the psychological defect and ensure its dominance. Our neuroses become, as it were, embodied and institutionalise themselves as our place in the world.
His breakdown takes the form of an intense paranoia. How could it be otherwise since he has always had a fear of living people? But those watching him, filming him, and harassing him with strange invitations are not other people; they are, of course, himself who is perfectly aware, if only subliminally, of his situation and its causes. It is he who decides the necessity of frenetically rushing from place to place, of eating on the run, of allowing the minor irritants of living to obscure the general condition of his life, of interminable calculations of competitive risk and benefit. But he cannot admit to being his own tormentor. Which of us can?
As with many dreams, his delusions are cryptically instructive. To be more explicit might cause cataleptic shut-down. Meaning must therefore be teased out of events. What look like traps are clues. He isn’t forced to take these clues but he does. His sub-conscious instinct insists. A lady in purple, a sort of Dante’s Beatrice, appears and disappears. Why? To entice? To comfort? To guide? In any case as a sort of Jungian anima which is actually part of himself. She helps him dig out those things that are most deeply buried, those archaic reasons which provoked his arrival to his current state. This is why he feels paranoid. He is being watched, assessed, judged... by himself. This is the rationality of his psychosis. Nothing could be more frightening.
Starting from the good look at himself on film, progressing to the ‘book’ of his life, and on to experience the ‘death’ of pre-birth, he regresses himself to a purely physical state, an animal in a zoo. Throughout his inner journey, he is propelled by the persistent frightening memory of the image of himself, so different, so alien from his self-image. Among other animals his pretensions and affectations become useless. An animal does not have rational abilities. It can only wait and respond instinctively to events. Clues are, therefore, meaningless and stop altogether.
In this primitive state, he is led into the underworld. It is here that he starts to take charge, to lead by the light of his real self. As he emerges from the underworld with the help of the purple Beatrice, he starts losing bits of his past, starting with his watch which has been broken. He is baptised in a hot shower and is restored. As are his clothes which had been cleaned and pressed, his shoes shined, and, miraculously, his watch works again. It remains for him then to learn, or to un-learn, how to see. Not as an observer, but as a participant. In doing so he crosses a boundary into a world he hasn’t known about that has been operating in parallel to his own isolated world.
After a complex celebratory meal in a church, including a balletic floorshow, he steps forth into the darkness, into what could be a cemetery. He sees his purple Beatrice literally melt in front of him, as she does so becoming progressively younger until she is an infant who simply turns into rivulets of water. Just outside the gates of the cemetery, he finds his funeral parlour, for which he no longer feels disgust. His feelings now are for the sensitivities of his customers.
His psychotic episode is now over and it has been productive. He will continue in his business, but for different reasons than those he started with. He will also write a book that connects that business to eternity: “I hoped that it wouldn’t be difficult to write about love and death. They are my world, after all. Besides, the obstacle that had stood in my way long ago no longer existed. I now had an excellent title.” Sometimes the title is all you need.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ May 21, 2019
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