I was running off my mouth mechanically – spouting out whatever stuff there was in my head, spouting out whatever nonsense stuff there was there that wanted to come out. I was churning it out by rote, churning it out in exactly the same way I always do churn it out. In a mechanical way. Belting out the jolly old bullshit nine to the dozen. ‘Look at me and my mechanical mind!’ I cry out exuberantly, ‘check it out bro – isn’t it great!’
I was enacting the mechanical template, you see. Enacting it good and proper. ‘Look at me enacting all this cool mechanical stuff!’ I yelled, ‘check out how cool this is!’ I was playing a blinder for sure – I hadn’t a single original thought in my head, not even one. ‘Check out my mechanical bullshit’ I scream, ‘it’s so great!’ I was on a euphoric high, you see – you can’t beat being on a euphoric high, can you? Tell me what’s better than being on a euphoric high if you can. I know that you can’t…
My head was firing off in the dumb-ass way it always does. Firing off firing off always firing off. Cylinders pumping away like Billy-O. It starts firing off the bullshit first thing in the morning (or whenever I wake up) and it doesn’t stop again till I eventually pass out at the end of the day. Exhausted and tired by the effort of thinking so many absurd dumbass thoughts. Completely emptied out by it.
‘Whoopie!’ I cried out, ‘I’m so full of bullshit it’s unbelievable! The shyte in my head never stops’. ‘Hey lads’, I shouted out excitedly, ‘check out this bullshit thought that’s just came out of my head!’ My energetic expostulations were starting to be tinged with sadness and melancholy at this stage, however. The melancholy was starting to creep in – you know, the way it does. The way that it always does. That old melancholy, that old familiar melancholy. It’s like a guy who you haven’t seen for a while, isn’t it? Not a friend but just some character or other who you don’t like. Someone you don’t like at all but who keeps turning up all the same. Like a bad penny. ‘Oh it’s you again’, you say to yourself venomously upon spotting him, ‘you dirty old bastard…’
That’s what melancholy is like, isn’t it? You forget about it for a while but then there it is again. He catches your eye and grins at you in that horrible mendacious way of his and you know the party is over. He’s jinxed it for you, just as he always does. You had a good thing going there and now he’s gone and spoilt it. As soon as you see that loathsome grinning face your heart sinks it sinks like a stone. It sinks like a stone tossed casually into a deep dark mineshaft. You never knew that it was possible for a heart to sink so deeply, so fast. Your face turns to stone – you will smile no more. The stony face of yours may crack – given the passing of a sufficiently lengthy period of time – but it’ll never smile, not again. Those days are over.
The party has to go on though. That’s the thing about it, isn’t it? The party always has to go on no matter what, right? The party can’t stop for anyone – not ever. No matter how awful things get. No matter how terribly disturbing it all is. No matter what appalling nightmares may unfold. That’s the glory of the mechanical mind, you see – it doesn’t stop for anyone. You might come down with the old melancholia from time to time, you might feel that the bottom has dropped out of your world, but that’s all par for the course. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.
