Whenever I complain to my friend, Kathleen, about not liking a piece of art, she will reply by reminding me that we both like “to feel warm and fuzzy inside”. My reason for reading a book, watching a film or listening to a piece of music is to be left, on the other side, with a little more hope than I began with.
Now, when it comes to art, Kathleen has a little more edge than me. We will read a poem together and afterwards, she will comment that the poet’s metaphorical analysis of grief didn’t feel authentic, while I will say, “ah but it rhymed”. I will overlook any literary limpness at the mere suggestion of trees communicating with one another, or the wonder of bees and Fibonacci sequence.
[ Brigid O’Dea: My attempt to describe an acute migraine attackOpens in new window ]
After years of attempting to curate an edge when it comes to the world of art, I have learnt to admit to myself that I am the type of person who likes a poem about an orange, or a pun about the sea waving to the shore. I want my art to create a world that is governed by a force for good.
Now this is all well and good. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to read about nice sons and good mums, or seeking out worlds where the characters know that no matter how far they run, they will always find a home to return to. But what lies on the flip side of this preference is a persistent frustration at the value placed on pain in art.
‘There are times I regret having kids. They’re adults, and it’s now that I’m regretting it, which seems strange’
Cillian Murphy: ‘You had the Kerry babies, the moving statues, no abortion, no divorce. It was like the dark ages’
The Dublin couple who built their house in a week
John Creedon: ‘I was always being sent away, not because they didn’t love me, but because they couldn’t cope’
Why is the pain narrative so popular?
Sometimes when you spend a lot of time complaining about something – particularly something that bears little material impact to your well-being, instead of becoming an old biddy grumbling away to yourself, you have to (excuse the therapy speak) look inwards.
What’s my problem with pain?
Six years ago, when I was experiencing a bout of migraine so severe that I was left house-bound for a number of months, I pleaded with my neurologist to reveal why my migraine had become so severe.
We become disembodied, because to stay present in the feeling, is simply too sore. It takes courage to stay soft in the face of pain
“We could spend all day dissecting it”, he told me, “and you will probably drive yourself mad in the process, and waste the energy that you could be using to recover. Sometimes, pain is just random.”
And I guess that’s it.
I live in a body in which there is often no value to the pain I experience. It does not serve to uncover some deeper truth. It’s just a glitch in the system.
My experience would have me believe that if pain is akin to a black hole, an enigmatic force will pull, tug, expand and contract our being, warping time and everything else within it, it is also simply a slice of bread; beige and rather dull. Pain is a mundane thing.
And rather than broadening my horizon, it restricts it.
I have witnessed a shift, of recent, from the pain narrative to the narrative of quiet contentment. Think of films such as Perfect Days, Paterson and the novels of Rónán Hession. “Far from being a paean to open space,” Donald Clarke writes of Perfect Days in this paper, “it is a tribute to the quietly fulfilling quotidian”. These are humble, mindful works would seem to beg the question, is the inverse of pain contentment?
Moreover, is contentment by necessity a quiet emotion?
Perhaps so. Still, I can’t help feeling that I want more. Where is the loud fizzing happiness? The bubbling joy and gurgling laughter? There is a moment in Perfect Days, where a woman using a public toilet laughs with bafflement as the transparent glass of the toilet walls turn opaque upon entry. It’s a moment of pure innocent and tender giddiness. And it was this moment that willed me to stand from me seat, punch a fist in the air and shout: “Yes! This is it. This is art capturing life.” (or at least this is what I did in my head). But as they say, through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
And perhaps abundant joy feels hollow without pain in the sidecar.
Often, when we do decide to share painful events, we become cerebral. To protect ourselves, we forego the heart of feelings, and call upon the mind of thoughts. We become disembodied, because to stay present in the feeling, is simply too sore. It takes courage to stay soft in the face of pain.
The most vulnerable moments in life, are often not in revealing the fragments of a broken heart, but the eagerness of an open one.