The Side Effects are Death

The Side Effects are Death
Why can’t I be satisfied
Why can’t I be well?
I’ve taken every pill to calm
the bird that bangs against
the cage bars of my head

I heard there is a medicine
for anyone with breath
I saw it on an ad between
episodes of trash

The side effects are death

There were happy people on the swings
A birthday for a child
Mother was once so depressed
Now she’s stuck with smiles

The side effects are death

What is this bright world we’re in
meant to be at last
Whether it’s happy or sad

The side effects are death
∞∞∞

On the hypochondriac scale from 0 - 10, 0 being healthily attuned to the general goings-on of the body & 10 being bedridden daily with a new symptom, I fall around 6. It’s not debilitating, but it’s definitely a nuisance.

The single most effective antidote to this bodily hyper-vigilance is creating.

It sounds so simple. It is simple. And yet, it is remarkable the lengths I will go to to fix x or y symptom from every angle & avenue possible. It’s as though my memory of the cure is wiped clean with the phantasmagoria of symptom-driven madness.

For me, mainstream medicine is a last resort so I become like a dime-store novel detective - knowing I’ve found the culprit only to be thwarted again. I have itchy eyes - it must be the thimble of milk I had in my coffee. I have a nearly imperceptible post-nasal drip - it’s the bread! My heart beats faster at night - diabetes.

But if I can drag myself off the symptom trail for a half an hour in the morning & find the thread of song & weave until it’s woven, suddenly, it’s as though a ray of sunshine opens above me & purges all pestilence from my being. It’s like Gabriel trumpeting into Mary’s home - “Do not fear. You are favored by the Song. The Song is with you”
& I respond “I am the Song’s servant. Let everything you’ve said happen to me.”

And all is well with me for at least a little while.

I am writing this as my own reminder that making is medicine. Sometimes I wonder if many of the sufferings - physical, emotional & spiritual - that people experience is just the caged bird of creativity banging around in their heads. Maybe if we made more we wouldn’t have to take more. Maybe the medicine that happens to heal us could be a balm for someone else.

Maybe then I’d stop seeing so many ads in magazines, on hotel room tv commercials & along the edge of doctor’s pens for this or that pharmaceutical that solves one problem, but opens the door to an avalanche of worse ones…including death.

It makes sense that creating is linked with existing and that these fears I have are existential. Though it may seem ridiculous to jump from “my eyes are itchy,” to “I’m dying,” I believe that the root of my being disturbed by these innocuous symptoms is an awareness of my physical vulnerability. The deep down knowing that my body is vulnerable. I will die. And what humans have done for ages to achieve some version of immortality has been to make things. Churches, sculptures, paintings, songs. So my existential fears are assuaged for a time by the knowing that the tiniest fragment of myself has been pressed into the fabric of eternity.

So the next time I’m about to banish milk from my fridge, I’ll paint a picture or write a song instead.