DAFT MONDAY - It might be stating the obvious, but an absence of joie de vivre is common to every depressive. Their smiles are forced, their laughter flat, their every action rendered sluggish by a lack of spontaneity. This torpor is only exacerbated by the prescibed drugs with which their sensibilities are further deadened.
The medical industry, of course, attributes depression to a combination of circumstance and chemical imbalance. We can dismiss the first of these, I think: certain circumstances would make anyone unhappy. It's fat-headed in the extreme to isolate a logical response and refer to it as an illness. By the same token pharmaceutical companies might one day make further fortunes manufacturing remedies for anger, jealousy or lust. These are aspects of the human condition: to artificially nullify them is a dangerous denial of nature. I'm equally unconvinced by the theory of chemical imbalance which merely resigns the 'sufferer' to the inevitability of unhappiness and dependence on medication.
In conceiving Daft Monday, I was curious as to whether Drumfeld's depressives, by assuming different characters, could liberate themselves from identities largely defined by the expectation of misery. After weeks of research within my sister Christine's support group, I conceived the notion of a 'Daft Parade' around Drumfeld in which the participants abandon themselves to the spirit of spontaneity. It occurred to me that within weeks, similar outbreaks of good natured nuttiness would erupt around the civilised world causing the medical conglomerates to drastically rethink their approach to a condition that would henceforth be referred to as 'Sadness'. As is so often the case, however, a grand scheme was undermined by pettiness. Some of the parade's invited participants, thrown into a panic by the prospect of a step beyond the mundane, consulted their doctors who, predictably, advised them against taking part. On the day, only a handful of people actually appeared making for an anti-climactic stroll around Drumfeld.
Subsequent to the event, Christine was contacted by her superiors within the mental health department and cautioned against my future involvement with Drumfeld's depressives. Apparently one of the parade's participants, referring to the 'humiliation' to which he'd been subjected, had lapsed into a near catatonic state. This individual, I should say, had failed to embrace the spirit of the day, constantly complaining about the poor turn-out and snarling at passers by. Eventually reduced to tears of rage, he attempted to punch me before hailing a passing taxi and going home. In scapegoating Hamilton Coe, the medical authorities failed to question his own bad attitude or examine the entrenched attitudes that had rendered him so sensitive to ridicule.
Scenes from Daft Monday.
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