Everyone, now with me… big sigh.

There, are we feeling better? No? Oh, well. Whether we is or we ain’t, here we go again.

For lack of knowing what else to do, I have retreated to my notebook where I jotted down a line that someone else wrote a few centuries ago. As original as I think myself to be, my higher mind knows that everything, more or less, is borrowed, if not outright stolen. So let me steal, imagining that it is even possible to stop me to begin with.

The line is, as follows-

‘Who’s madder? The man who’s mad because he cannot help it, or the man who choses to be mad?’

That madness idea, pervasive throughout at least the few millennia of human writing, still seems so persuasive. Somehow, it still stands as an idea that should be grappled with this evening.

There are societal standards regarding the term, or at least those that claim the term as kin. Madness, insanity, delusion, depravity, so on and so forth, etc.

And it is easy enough to dismiss these sorts of thoughts as out of line and unacceptable. The idea, at least in the modern sense, of being a healthy, well-adjusted human being functioning within what the contemporary society claims as acceptable. And I get it. The idea that there is a standard in which should be strived for, if not totally met. A peace and harmony within mind and body and spirit, and what have you, and how that is meant to function within the larger construct of community and continuity as a concept larger than the individual.

But, I would argue, that any person worth their salt in regard to intellect and empathy, that ever-fickle sliding scale- whatever end or in between that spectrum you might find yourself residing within this evening- there is an omni-present truth that underlies it all. And that truth is a scary one, myself to admit it before any of the rest of you get a chance- that for all the certainty that might be professed by this fellow or female, or otherwise, by any mind mad or affixed to sanity, there is this.

Not a one of us knows, not for sure what it is we are and what it is we are supposed to be doing. And the more someone might be certain of that, I would argue, the more out of touch they are with this thousands-of-year-old collective experience we call the human condition. Even with all these forebearers laying down the tracks that would have allowed us to avoid the pitfalls that they found, the uniqueness of each experience prevents and places prerequisites from ever quite aligning with whatever one of us shaved apes might be encountering in the moment, or the near present moment, so recently passed.

They are guidelines, at best, and the better among them stray away from specifics and cater to the larger, more inexplicable sort of questions that each and every one of us with at least a partially functioning frontal lobe and cardiac system might be confronting, even if that means the total rejection of it.

 Forgive me, please. I am all hopped up on a slight amount of sleep deprivation and intellectual conversation with a dear friend while being elegantly served a mild amount of neurological poison. But hey, what are Mondays for, if not that.

But as I already know, no amount of dulling ever forsakes the questions from their initial occurrence, only limits my ability to better wrestle with them once the flood gates break and they emerge in overwhelming potency through my cerebral being.

Or maybe I’m just talking in circles to avoid getting at anything that might hold a weight worth thinking about.

But madness, right?

That’s what I brought up before, and the choice about it, and I have to admit, my romanticism about one and not the other. Because, believe it or not, and you may have examples that you can draw upon for yourself- that madness as a choice, is nothing but a trend. One that finds itself always reinventing, and refitting itself to abide in whatever times it is that you happen to find yourself residing in. But like with most trends of that superficial nature, the staying power is but a flash in the pan. That choosing a deviation is limited, and arguably, still a conformity of whatever times such thinking might have emerged from. That choosing madness is just the way of fitting in at the forefront. It breaks no molds, not really. And it is a gesture of a confining mentality to stand out just enough to be noticed.

And yet, that other kind. The madness not chosen, the type at least a few of us feel ourselves destined and doomed to- well, that’s the good shit, ain’t it? I suppose I must believe that, though. Or else we wouldn’t be here, trotting around ideas in the long form in an age of instantly gratifying expectations.

You know the place. It’s where us freaks live, and I hate to break it to you, but if you’ve made it this far into the ramble, or have been on these rambles before- a freak you are. And a freak I always hope you will be.

Because it is the outliers that make us what we are. Without them, or, idealistically thinking, without us- how could advancement ever truly occur? Even within your own mind, it is those strange thoughts that lead to places of insight, of creativity, of disillusionment with what has been prescribed, making way from what has never been, or at least what hasn’t been quite like this before.

And any student of history would tell you that a great many of those outliers pay heavily in their lifetimes, but what lives beyond them are the sort of ideas and emotions and empathies that shape this world in regards to how our species sees and feels and believes. Not a madness that seeks reward, but one that exists for no other reason than the caster of it is so certain that it must. Inescapably so. In quest of not worldly rewards, but a pursuit of the madness for what it is, for the obligation to fight not against it, but rather, for it.

This isn’t an endorsement of criminal insanity, the kind that hurts and maims and damages. But rather, this is an advocation for the quest of higher ideals that though none of us, no matter how learned or intuitive we might be- seeks while knowing that a destination may never be met. Not the search for success, but the urge to find more of life than what is granted upon our arrival in this universe. Ideas like pursuing love, one of the most universal and yet tricky emotes and quandaries that any one human might engage in chasing. And it is something always chased, never quite to be grasped. Because even a love in its purest, most dichotomic form, is not so stagnant to be left behind in time as we keep getting marched forward. That love, be it romantic (something of an abstract for your humble narrator), or a deeper familial type (which as a young, single dad, I understand to my core without ever finding the words for it)- that an idea like love is something that is so universally accepted though never quite understood. And any explanation for it varies from circumstance to circumstance, and instance to instance. Yet despite all the changing factors, over lifetimes and ages- we do keep coming back to it. Again and again, and again.

Hell, folks have been writing songs about it for as long as songs have been around, and maybe even longer than that. I cannot say myself, as I wasn’t there.

Might as well wrap this up, whatever it is that this is, with another quote, from the same story, that keeps feeding into my own personal, beloved madness. And so, as follows.

‘Because, as people rightly say, poets are born not made.’

That we are what we are, even if we find ways to crafted a deeper or slightly different self within that- that the poet, the romantic, the dreamer and the madness, it is all within us whether we’d rather it or not. Not to say that we should strive to be more than that which first emerge of our personal singularity, as we should always want to be more or better or the like, each day. But from that instinctive groundwork, from there we must make our stand and do our work. Because whatever natural inclinations might exist, those can just as easily be squandered as something artificial and contrived. Acceptance, sure, that’s a fine enough first step- but it is only a first step if we make our way towards a second, and onward beyond that. It is not enough to just be and stay. You must be, and continue to be. More or better or deeper, each moment and day and year, throughout the whole of your lifetime. The art of our madness is the choice, not the madness itself.

Ready for another quote? If not, too bad.

‘… art does not surpass nature but merely perfects it, so if nature and art, art and nature, are combined, the result will be a perfect poet.’

But anyway, I’m not going to edit this. Next time, I’ll not have beers beforehand. Promise. Maybe.