My Favorite Kind of Water

No matter what stage winter is in, the snow it offers becomes slush. Where I was born, the Midwest, slush is something that signals ruin, the mutilation of the pure, freshly fallen snow that we expect to be present all season long. In New York City, gasoline laced snow is something to be expected, and that expectation is met every single winter. Midwesterners are more forgetful, more optimistic, and thus see slush as a disappointment, an injury to our picturesque minds. Despite my Midwestern origin, dirty snow, slush, is always something I’ve looked forward to. My reasoning does not have to do with pessimism, destruction, or some odd pleasure derived from pollution. There’s something about the cold mixing with the heat, the transition of ice into water that seems beautiful. Mix in the exhaust of cars and you have a complete mixture of nature and man. Something not quite manmade, not quite organic, just something left behind and walked through. Slush is splattered across concrete, sprayed across the untouched snow adjacent to it, and paved into paths by tires and boots. It’s a type of water that people become sick of the moment it arrives, that’s dreaded before it even exists. There is something thoroughly beautiful about that. Stained and condemned into something important. At least to me.

The state of being tainted is also captivating. Slush is the leftovers of humans and the sky, haunting by both the artificial and the pure. This circumstance reminds me of the artwork by Sam Kidel entitled Disruptive Muzak (2016). In this work, Kidel presents a collection of phone calls to the different governmental resource offices. Rather than speaking to the workers who pick up his calls, he simply plays ambient music and noise, never responding to their questions and statements. While some workers hang up after a few moments with the Muzak being the only response, others continue to attempt to find someone on the other side of the line. For example: “‘Good afternoon, you’re speaking to Nicola, how can I help?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello there?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello, is anyone there?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello?’/ [music plays]/ ‘If I don’t get a response I’ll need to terminate the call.’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello?’/ [music plays]/ ‘I’m going to terminate the call.’ [music plays]/ HO hangs up” (Sam Kidel). This interaction seemingly between only one person creates an aura both haunting and humanizing. The audio of someone trying to reach out to someone who isn’t there is almost tormenting; exposing the workers, who are often associated with drones or robots, as real people. This feels familiar to the concept of slush. It presents traces of humans in gasoline stained snow. Slush is the revelation that the past always lingers, that the path you are walking right now has already been touched by another. The reminder that despite the fact that you may be alone, another person is out there somewhere. The haunting of Kidel’s Muzak: “‘Hello?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Unless I can speak to somebody I’m going to need to end the call’/ [music plays]/ ‘I’m not able to stay on hold, I can hear background music but not anybody there as well’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Hello?’/ [music plays]/ ‘Unless I can speak to somebody I’m going to end the call’/ [music plays]/ ‘I’m going to end the call I’m not able to hear anyone.’/ [music plays]/ ‘Thank you for calling’/ [music plays]/ ‘Goodbye.’/ [music plays]/ WP hangs up.” Muzak is similar to slush, background music that demonstrates others are out there but does not present anyone to keep you company. No emotion, no message, just remnants of a function. Both liminal. 

Slush only stays stagnant as a concept. When walking through it, it soaks into you, into your shoes and your socks. You must carry it with you. This absorption forces you to be aware of yourself, forces you to recognize the discomfort of living within your body. This is a familiar disquiet as Muzak allows for. Muzak is presented in a state of process, though hardly an epic one. Sitting in an empty office, standing in an empty elevator, waiting for someone to pick up the phone: all bring about an uncomfortable awareness of being, of existing with yourself and the walls around you. This temporary limbo builds an anticipation within you, an excitement or possibly just the needed relief to be somewhere else. The wet cold in your feet makes you grateful for the approaching indoors, wherever and whenever that may be. Feeling trapped in the cold makes you wish for warmth more than hatred for your current state. Boredom and uncertainty are also more than simple exasperation with your condition, they establish a want for something else. 

The blending of the liminal and anticipation create an apocalyptic sense of being. Is there something out there? Someone? The tire paths through the gray snow seem to be evidence that there is. The background music of someone else’s creation seems to be proof that you are not a lone entity. Are these footprints, this hum, enough? Who are you reaching out for? The slush makes me feel lonely, but not alone. Both devastation and peace are maintained by loneliness. Both dread and excitement exist with anticipation. So comes with slush is emotion, complete emotion. I am cold right now, are you there? I am lonely right now, but there is warmth on the horizon.

Depression is the emotional overlap of paralysis and devastation. There is a lack of both contentment and excitement; the state of living simply feels unsatisfying, even burdensome. While physical injury has recognizable and accepted justification for support, sympathy, and validation, depression feels uncalled for and nonsensical. People wait, constantly, for the ability to find what’s lacking, despite the fact that they fear nothing truly is. But the search is insistent. A hopeless wandering in a landfill of material they hope might change them. This pursuit often leads to experiences of indulgence; the hollowness inside of them feels so deep that they cram anything they can to feel something again. It’s reasonable that a person would drift toward experiences associated with pleasure. This reigns especially true for teenagers, who in their transition between childhood and adulthood might feel inclined to undertake actions connected with maturing. While these actions aren’t always purely productive ones, they often seem essential to entertain in order to gain a newer, wiser understanding of the world. Youth is a time of exploration, and when a person feels the need to fix something they feel is lacking, it’s not surprising they would experiment with pleasurable experiences.

A work of art that features this type of youthful experimentation is Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film entitled Daisies. The plot involves two young girls journeying through Czechoslovakia, pulling pranks, seducing men, and putting into operation their philosophy of “One should try everything!” (Chytilová 1966). They wish to take advantage of their youth and not take anything seriously. This leads to indulgence in food, sleep, sex, and drinks. The magically realistic world they live in encourages this, illustrating their adventures as beautiful and meaningful. Their gluttony and sloth are not sin within this world, but rebellion, revolution. Throughout the film they repeat the sentiment that they are young, life is long, and they have their whole lives ahead of them. This attitude can be seen as contradictory to their actions; why greed upon food and those around them if they have all of their lives to experience these things? In youth, although the concept of a long life is prevalent, time often seems fleeting. Yes life is long, but no one is always young, and youth gives room for mistakes and flaws more than adulthood seems to. To throw oneself into pleasurable experiences is understandable, even expected, at a young age.

The overlap of depression with the urgent desire to make life as pleasurable as possible creates an often dangerous pursuit. Experimenting with more conventionally mature moments is one thing, but when a person is attempting to fill an emptiness within themselves an experiment can quickly turn into a habit. This is common when it comes to drugs, food, sex, and adrenaline inducing actions. Pleasure transforms into something to consume rather than to experience. It is in the pursuit of eradicating numbness that pleasure becomes a necessity, not a benefit. In the context of Daisies, the girls speak of needing attention and fun. When they do not receive this, they question if they really exist, if anyone else is aware of their being. The instant gratification of attention and adrenaline creates a withdrawal period, much like the crash after a night of binging on cocaine or alcohol. The lack of pleasure becomes deeper than the state of neutrality, it returns the person to that hollowness, that devastation. Pleasure becomes the sole way to feel something, to feel anything. Its absence is a return to hopelessness and uselessness and that landfill that used to surround them. 

In turn, those struggling with depression can start to see their life as either total pleasure or total agony. If it’s one or the other, it’s understandable that they choose to fly close to the sun despite the risk. Excess of the warmth is more tempting than the excess of water to fill one’s lungs. But the pleasure doesn’t last, and the water often breaks their wings after falling from such great heights. The ending of Daisies is not one of bliss. After the girls’ chaotic treatment of a luxurious dining room, they lay on the table, discussing how perfectly happy they are; but the chandelier they once swung on breaks from the ceiling, landing on them; the last images displayed on the screen being monstrous explosions. An excess of pleasure can easily lead to an excess of destruction. This destruction is commonly revealed in other mediums and artworks. A notorious Youtube video entitled “Det Ultimate Selvmord (The Ultimate Suicide)” was posted in 2008, gaining over one million views. It involves a Norwegian teenager demonstrating what he describes as the ultimate suicide. After explaining the series of events he’s about to show he says “To rattle off the different causes of death; poisoning, blood loss, fire injury, gunshot injury, broken neck, injuries from fall, choking, explosion, hypothermia and drowning”. The boy in the video stands on the edge of an ocean cliff with a noose around his neck. After downing a large amount of pills with his father’s alcohol, he proceeds to slit his wrists, douse himself in gasoline and setting himself on fire, shoot himself in the head so that he falls off of the cliff, breaking his neck and setting off an explosive that is meant to spread nails throughout his body and drop him into the water below. This overwhelming agonizing watch is a directed and faked video, performed and written by Lasse Gjertsen whose reasoning is “I made this video so that I didn’t have to do it in real life. Neither should you”. Depression can be so devastatingly paralyzing that an “ultimate” act like the one Gjertson performed can be considered an appropriate ending, a death more exciting than the life it’s concluding. While it can seem appropriate, it’s also not ideal, and thus people tend to steer more towards the pleasure, the escape of drugs and sleep and food and sex. 

The hope in these pleasurable escapes is that they might possibly seep into regular, neutral life, overshadow and smother the depression. While this isn’t the usual outcome, it does explain pleasure’s temptation.

Teenage Depressive Hedonia

The body, before it is a shelter, before it is a home, is a weapon. Our muscles and bones, walking mallets and bats and semi-automatics, walking nuclear annihilation. There is love and there is sweetness, but at our foundation, we are tangible hurt, veins to cut through, skin to be ripped. Bodies are forced vulnerability, confrontation with the other bodies that we can only push against, bruise, and grab onto. The space we take up is inherent ammunition. What we are at our foundation is something to kill and something to die. To use your body as a weapon is simply living in one. The filmic documentary entitled Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, directed by Kier-La Janisse in 2021, speaks on the folk horror phenomenon, conversing with experts, filmmakers, and writers to explore the significance of the subgenre. Much of folk horror involves the human condition, as well as the human body, returning to nature, returning to a natural state of being, returning to a condition where all you have is your body, physically and symbolically. When this twisted pastoral element is conjoined with horror, the natural state of the body becomes weaponized, threatening, and brutally raw. In this subgenre, the body is an associate with a higher power, one with the ability to give and take life. Every body, within the subgenre and outside of it, truly does have this ability; we are weapons from birth, utterly and without mistake. 

It is not the sole gun pointed to the skull of another, the sole knife being held to a throat, that determines violence. The finger that pulls the trigger, puts the blade in motion, is what completes a weapon. Folk horror films make use of this violence toward others, confronting how vulnerable the body is to those around us. The mind is filled with rage and the need to expel that rage; the only way to expel emotion is through the body. This often reveals itself through abuse of another. The film The Wicker Man (1973), directed by Robin Hardy, depicts an entire community sacrificing people in order to ensure their survival through harvest. The burning of another’s flesh, while supposedly in hopes to appease the gods, is what fills the screen in the last moments of this film. A body on fire is hardly sacrifice, rather the desire for catharsis. The community counts on a successful crop, thus they feel the need to put this wish into action, burn their prayer into the body of another. True desire is difficult to keep settled, to keep patient and still. Sacrifice is a way of transforming an ambition into a tangible goal. Humans have found that violence is something that can be lusted after, committed for arousal, done for fun. Snuff films, while not mainstream, are a prevalent form of entertainment. Further than depicted torture, the knowledge that the pain being shown is truly felt is where the appeal is found. Much of history and humanity has been built upon this truth. More accepted than snuff, wars are expected, advertised, and exhibited. While what is shown is a body holding a weapon, it is known that it is not the simple guns and tanks being transported and sold off. Bodies are a profitable weapon just as explosives are. Waging wars on others requires bodies, on both ends of the violence. The bodies, whether soldiers or civilians, are weapons to gain power. A dead body is just as destructive as the one pulling the knife back out of the chest.

It is also about image. Weapons do not have to be tangible, do not have to be held in your hand or clasped around your neck. The image of the crucifixion, of Christ nailed to the cross, can be used as a weapon like a gun to your back. He died for your sins, and thus reparations must be made. The stigmata, reason to be beatified, a reason to be followed. Images have authority, have the ability to manipulate and influence. With the violence of war comes the propaganda. David Shields’ book War Is Beautiful is a collection of The New York Times front page photographs of war, exposing the aesthetics used to appeal for the popular acceptance of destruction and sacrifice. He explains that “Over time I realized that these photos glorified war through an unrelenting parade of beautiful images whose function is to sanctify the accompanying descriptions of battle, destruction, and displacement” (Shields 7). He puts on display the subtypes of glamorization these front page photos can be categorized into: “Father,” “Pietà,” “Beauty,” and “Death” to name a few (Shields 9). These images use the bodies of soldiers, civilians, and loved ones grieving death to illustrate the necessity of sacrificed lives and carnage. A body as propaganda is a body as a weapon. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror depicts this use of the body as indoctrinated. The Wicker Man uses man’s body to represent the image of God, going so far as to build and burn a giant man made of wood to burn their sacrifice in. To use a human body as a lesson, a symbol, a warning, is to use a human body as a weapon.

And war is not just pursued against others. Your body is weaponized against yourself as much as it is others, if not more. Cycles of self-harm, drug use, eating disorders, even the working life, all of it used against ourselves. Our bodies are often products of shame and hatred. When rage is not rage, it is grief, and grief is taken out on ourselves. Weapons are used to control as much as they are to hurt. When humans feel lost, manic, powerless, we will go to great lengths to feel regulated. Curbing your nutritional intake, shrinking yourself to rot, making your body a tangible purpose. The inability to understand your pain, making yourself bleed because you can understand injury. Disguising your struggle with accountability and responsibility with the numbness that comes with drugs. Life is more manageable when you’ll exceed expectations by having a sober week. Fear of wants and dreams crumpled like paper into a job that keeps you distracted. The evidence of our bodys’ blood is proof of the power we hold over it, the proof we can do what we want with it. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror discusses how the folk horror subgenre reveals what can happen, emotionally and physically, when we are alone with our bodies and nature. True control over ourselves is the acceptance that we are our bodies, we are our nature. Power first shows itself through action, which is why a haven or a home are not the immediate responses we have to discovering our bodies. The responsibility that is felt for living is so harsh that holding the gun to our head and choosing whether or not to pull the trigger can be the only way to feel in control. In this case, the weapon is not the gun, but our body, living or dead. There is allure to a limp body; the guilt we might make others feel, the newfound lack of an albatross around our neck, the smothering of the dreams that terrified us.  

A body is an animate object that can be twisted, crushed, broken, and swung. It can squeeze, bludgeon, rip, and bite. Mentally, as much as physically, a body can be used to protect and harm. To live in a body is to live in vulnerability, to have access to pain and harm, to have the ability to pain and harm.

Your Body is a Weapon