This lovely and terrible piece of writing makes me think of my first hit of teenage angst. The delivery mechanism was the Smashing Pumpkins song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", as played on my brother's stereo, of which I was only able to discern the chorus: "Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage".
At the time, it was quite the revelation that you didn't have to be upset at any particular thing. You could actually be upset at *gestures broadly* all of it at once. Though maybe you would not describe your own situation that way.
It definitely has certain vampiric properties! As moral philosophers go I don't know if Billy Corgan ranks as one of the greats; but he certainly had his moments of great lucidity.
Suitably harrowing for Halloween, despite (or perhaps partly due to) being light on certain details. The notion that we all have cages largely of our own making, that we are prisoners of our own minds due to constraints societal and imagined, is trope-y bildungsroman stuff by now. But here, this is an actual embodied cage, the imprisonment not a nightmare from which one would easily wake, and...yeah. Powerful stuff; thanks for writing.
Bloody hell Paul, that's a fantastic piece of writing
Agreed. It's all I imagined but worse.
This lovely and terrible piece of writing makes me think of my first hit of teenage angst. The delivery mechanism was the Smashing Pumpkins song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", as played on my brother's stereo, of which I was only able to discern the chorus: "Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage".
At the time, it was quite the revelation that you didn't have to be upset at any particular thing. You could actually be upset at *gestures broadly* all of it at once. Though maybe you would not describe your own situation that way.
Well, they say that the world is a vampire...
It definitely has certain vampiric properties! As moral philosophers go I don't know if Billy Corgan ranks as one of the greats; but he certainly had his moments of great lucidity.
Suitably harrowing for Halloween, despite (or perhaps partly due to) being light on certain details. The notion that we all have cages largely of our own making, that we are prisoners of our own minds due to constraints societal and imagined, is trope-y bildungsroman stuff by now. But here, this is an actual embodied cage, the imprisonment not a nightmare from which one would easily wake, and...yeah. Powerful stuff; thanks for writing.
I can hear the screams...take care xx
Poignant writing. Dare I say it, but you’ve proven Rilke wrong on self created cages.