The Bloke Whisperer

I set up The Bloke Whisperer in 2013*, ostensibly as way to help me articulate the agony and anguish I was feeling at the time. I was suffering from depression and anxiety. They were tough times but I finally managed to learn some strategies and techniques to help me cope with the difficult situations I was finding myself in. I've worked with numerous clients and helped them to overcome their own personal challenges. I wound activity down as other priorities took place.

However, in light of recent events, I have decided to re-ignite the business, with a very positive intent to help as many people as possible to grapple with their own personal demons. If you or someone you know would like a confidential chat over a coffee then don't hesitate to reach out: here

* I am aware that another business founded in 2016 also uses The Bloke Whisperer name. 

That's cool with me, it is more important to help people rather than get het up about such trivial things. 

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Brighter Days

As I mentioned in a recent post, a friend of mine took his own life just a few weeks ago.

It came as a shock and yet... It most probably shouldn't have. Life is tough for everyone at some stage (and of course the range of problems can be extreme) but the truth is, we should at least be able to reach out. Whether it is to friends or family or professionals. We must reach out...

That's all I wanted to say today. I'll be back soon with more meanderings, vague recollections and daft anecdotes. But in the meantime, remember - Reach out!

Bringing dark thoughts into the bright light

As I have documented elsewhere, most notably here, I have had personal brushes with depression and it even got to the stage where I contemplated taking a final and fatal route.

That has changed, it is off the table now.

The reason is twofold:
1) I have found new strategies to cope with dark days (which still come by the way) and they help to avert tumbling into a whirlpool of morbid self-reflection.
2) A friend of mine recently could not find a way out of his own particular maze and sadly ended up taking his own life. Such a desperately sad loss. But it is a loss that must have a positive legacy and it will...

More to follow.

Harry Crosby Day

HAPPY HARRY CROSBY DAY

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Why I’m not ruling anything in or out...

I suspect that barely a week goes by without the topic of suicide peering over my horizon, whether it is brushing the leaves of the past from the tree of history and coming up against the music or the writing or the art of someone who chose, hopefully after much deliberation that enough was enough. 

Or whether it is simply the seemingly inevitable curve that my life is currently on. The prospect of seeing out the rest of my days surrounded by love, comfort, friends & family battles with the notion that perhaps I should be the one choosing la fecha de fallecimiento.

The stigma of suicide is still that it is a coward’s way out. However, the ever-increasing numbers of suicides suggests that being branded a coward after death counts for little when weighing up the choice to continue to live on in pain or to settle things for good.

People often suggest that there is so much to live for but that isn’t always that apparent to the person gripped by whichever strand of despair they are being slowly suffocated by. Is it really worth carrying on down the road to inevitable collapse, fuelled by alcohol or drugs, crippled by inertia and anxiety? Or is it better to just move on.

And what about the people you leave behind? Isn’t it selfish. I am not so desperate to recognize the fact that if I do decide to just stop this whole dizzy whirl that there will be people who will mourn my passing. A handful of people maybe but they will move on. They will forget the passing and hopefully remember the substance of my life and not the route out of it.

I could of course hang around and see what happens next but you see I have been here before. I made serious plans to take my own life in 2013. But I thought my action was too selfish and I owed it to my family to stay strong. But I know the truth, I am not strong. I am vulnerable and hate the way that makes me look and feel. I decided to stay around for my sons and I also decided to ‘see what happens’. What happened was my marriage collapsed, Brexit & Donald Trump too. Whilst I wouldn’t blame my sense of futility on either of the last two, neither fill my heart with anything other than bitter & twisted anguish. Nor, I must stress, do I blame my ex-wife on the marriage collapsing – that was all down to me.

Sitting at this wooden table and listening to the Lorikeets, Magpies and Myna bickering in the garden, whilst I listen to Joao Gilberto, waiting for the water to boil, everything is calm. I am making plans for the week, looking at possible gigs to go to in January 2018, applying for jobs, wondering if I should stay in Australia or to move on. I’ve got tickets for The Ashes (although that won’t offer much respite). I am looking forward to at least February. But that’s the odd thing you see. I used to look way beyond the next three months. I cannot do that anymore however hard I try.

In closing, I know that I am loved and I love. So, all is not lost.

And even if I decide to stop, nothing is lost. It will just be different.

Ax

Hornsey Lane Bridge

Smoke thick destinations

 

Smoke thick destinations

cradled in the hollow depths

she lay pristine and permanent

gazing at the high up in the sky

wrapped in the warmth of release

a delicate radiance softly absorbed

hushed whispers evaporating

into the diesel inflamed tumult

blue tinge to snow white skin

the early morning view

from the other side of the road

 underneath Suicide Bridge.

Mark Fisher RIP

Sad news from the UK is the passing of Mark Fisher, cultural theorist and inspirational music writer. 

Fisher's influential K-Punk blog was widely admired and wide read. Fisher used a cultural theorist's perspective to examine underground and mainstream music, from his original fascination with Roxy Music and The Jam through to Burial, via Japan and Rufige Kru. He was also a founding member of Warwick University's Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit (with musician and label boss Kode9), and a lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths in London. 

In 2004, Fisher released Ghosts Of My Life, a book that covered a wide range of topics and shared his personale mental health struggles. The book also explored Fisher's ideas on "hauntology," which is a method/theory of understanding the world when culture has lost momentum at the "end of history." 

"Hauntology is a coming to terms with the permanence of our (dis)possession, the inevitability of dyschronia," Fisher wrote in a blog post in 2006. "I repeat, I re-cite: hauntology is the closest thing we have to a movement, a zeitgeist, at the moment (and one of the uncanniest aspects of it is the fact that there seem to be very few lines of explicit influence among the artists involved)."

Fisher followed up in 2009 with Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? Which argued that since 1989 capitalism had portrayed itself as the only valid economic-political system. 

His final book The Weird and the Eerie was published in January 2017. His loss will be keenly felt by many, not least for the that fact that the most recent book he was working on, had a truly mouth watering title Acid Communism. One can only dream...

A fund has been set up to help his wife and son. Please donate if you can.

Mark Fisher Fund