In 2012 the 1895 pastel-on-cardboard version fetched almost $120 million (£75 million) at Sotheby’s in New York (Credit: The Scream 1895/Edvard Munch)
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism
An entry in Munch’s diary, dated 22 January 1892, recorded the inspiration for The Scream: “I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun went down – I felt a gust of melancholy – suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death – as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends went on – I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I felt a vast infinite scream through nature.” -- What is the meaning of The Scream? Alastair Sooke, BBC, 3 March 2016
If you feel exhaustion from the weeks of nonsense, let me give you some perspective.
In my family, I've experienced two members of my family who had mental health issues. Both were older than me, so by age and station I wanted to afford them respect. One in particular had substance abuse issues. The other was my direct caretaker, as I was too young to have a key to our home. This person did the most bizarre things, like eating chips all day on a couch that attracted mice, the ones I could see scurrying under the couch. Asking why they would do that would engender a defensive argument where no cogent points of logic were used, just emotion, irrationality, and hutzpah. My substance abuse relative was my father's nephew, who couldn't live on his own, so when he got back from Vietnam, he retired to his old bedroom and abused alcohol. When he needed money to get more liquor, he would attack my aunt, and my father often had to intervene.
When you deal with individuals who have mental health issues, they exhaust you because you're constantly trying to get to a modicum of normalcy. You exhaust a considerable amount of brain power trying to come up with the argument, the "zinger" that will put the matter to rest, that will "win" an argument with a sociopath. You'd have better luck playing chess with Hannibal Lecter, hoping not to be in his next pâté.
It always comes to a head.
My cousin decided it was a great idea to break a beer bottle over my father's head. My cousin had the sudden, painful reminder (the hard way) that Pop was ranked Middle Weight Golden Gloves in the United States Navy in World War Two. It wasn't pretty.
My caretaker, in an argument with my mom and me, found a wooden mallet in an old toy tool chest I had and tried to hit my mother! I was big enough to put her in a "full Nelson" like I saw on the National Wrestling Federation. My caretaker was fired, and put on a bus to relatives in Washington. My mother gave me a key with the pronouncement "You're GROWN!" The next day, I opened the house to peaceful, and studious solitude.
Everything in this insanity will come to a head. Reality, whether beer bottle, mallet, new pandemic, war, recession, or depression, will have to be confronted. Gaslighting is the tool of an abuser, but it has zero effects on financial markets, or physics.
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." -- James Baldwin
It will be exhausting, like the storm that hit North Carolina Wednesday: a small tornado touched down in Winston-Salem, there was a watch in Greensboro, and torrential rain where I was sitting in Durham. My three friends and I decided to stay inside and have lunch in the cafeteria. It was a wise choice. After the storms: sunlight and clear skies. As the BBC article eludes in bold and quotes, "We all scream." In confronting insanity, this is normal.
There will be a price for confrontation, and always a prize for confrontation.
Push to sunlight, clear skies past the storm, and off-year elections and midterms.
That is the meaning of "The Scream." We all scream, before sunlight, and clearer skies.
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