On Suicide

Many things have been said about suicide in the past couple of days, what with the death of Robin Williams and the fact that he was so beloved and touched and inspired so many people.

But the smartest thing came from my friend Yan, blogger (and songwriter) extraordinaire, and I will quote most all of it because just one part would not be enough:

A famous person committed suicide so of course tumblr and the rest of the internet is going to be filled with patronizing BS about suicide for the next several days.

I mean no disrespect to Robin Williams or to the people paying tribute to him, but please please please for the love of god spare me your saccharine messages about how suicide is never the answer.

This is a very unpopular opinion but I believe that sometimes suicide is the answer and I wish people would respect that choice. Yes, I know there’s mental illness involved and suicidal people are not always thinking clearly, but I can’t stand the way well-meaning people speak condescendingly to people who are suicidal.

Why can’t we just let people go with dignity? Why not accept the fact that sometimes people reach a point where the pain is so great that it completely obliterate all other consideration and there is only one way out? Yes it sucks for those who are left behind. I know because I’ve been left behind a few times. But don’t you think people who are suicidal already know that? That they will be missed? They’re not stupid babies. They are aware of the pain they are going to cause and they probably already feel a tremendous amount of guilt over it. But when your own pain reaches a certain point, that doesn’t matter anymore.

I don’t want to upset people and I’m certainly not advocating suicide, but stop treating people like babies.

I share that opinion. Deeply.

I find it very selfish for people to ''oppose'' suicide, and the same goes for hastags like #endsuicide. Like Yan said, apart from hurting loved ones - who likely will feel pain at other moments in their lives as well - where is the harm in taking your own life? Aren't there enough humans on earth for whatever purposes you had in mind? And what if this particular human felt they had done what they needed to, or all that they could have, or that every single one of their efforts led to no change for the best for anyone/anything? The species can afford one less, all the better if it's someone who doesn't feel like giving Life another try rather than, say, kids who are collateral damage in a shitty war no one will benefit from.

I say #keepsuicidealive. I'm pro choice. All the time.

That being said, R.I.P. Mr. Williams. I re-watched Death To Smoochy tonight, because it's one of his most under-rated films, and part of when he - as an actor - turned to darker roles rather than all-serious or all-comedy. Maybe I'll watch One Hour Photo tomorrow. And try not to kill myself on Thursday.

Fear And Loathing In Montréal

I've told you before of my friend Yan, a brilliant if at times insecure human being. Brilliant because every single one of his thoughts - be they about social issues or cute cats - seem like they were thought out for years, and are usually irrefutable.

But I don't mean 'insecure' in the 'afraid to speak his mind' way - heck no, he'll give complete strangers a piece of his mind if needed - but more in the 'I hope my friends remain friends after what I just said' way. Yet all of his friends are there precisely because we want to hear what he has to say.

That being said, he's changed the name of his blog to Une Haine Incommensurable, a French title, though he'll keep writing in English. Here's the explanation:

Even the title of my blog says a lot about my outlook on social interactions online - ''une haine incommensurable" translates to ''a hate so great it can't be measured." I changed my blog title to that recently because it’s a pretty accurate description of what I feel most of the time.

 Furthermore:

I think the problem is that I'm so overwhelmed by the shittiness of the world that I no longer believe it’s possible to reverse it. I've given up hope. All I see is willful ignorance and smug privilege and a complete refusal to even admit that there might be a problem or two with the way the world runs. And the same stupidity and cruelty demonstrated over and over and over again by countless anonymous dudebros and I just can’t take it anymore. I want all you people to burn. You're not worth saving. 

 And though I don't always see eye-to-eye with him, that is precisely how I feel about where I live (city, province, country, continent, even fucking planet) these days. And for the past year or two, as a matter of fact. The extent to which the world is a decaying, infected, all-kinds-of-wrong hellhole and the people are rotten, puss-filled, lying, twisted cancers makes me sick.

Fear And Loathing indeed.

Relationships

It starts with wisdom about relationships and ends in bittersweetness, as most things do.

My friend Yan's at it again, writing a heartfelt open letter to the void that is human existence. You can't ever go back, get back what you had, because the only constant is change, and you can't unsee what you've seen, unhear what you've heard, unsay what was said, unscrew who was fucked.

There is only, always, moving on. From things, but also from nothings.

Racism

For years (decades?), I rode on my high horse and claimed racism didn't exist here in the same way it does in anglo-saxon countries, perhaps because our latin and celtic genes didn't see ''the other'' as people to be conquered but more with curiosity...

I pointed towards how all the jazz greats called Montréal home during prohibition, depression, and through most of the civil rights movement of the 60s; towards the underground railroad that brought slaves here to be liberated, where they were greeted as humans in need of help, equality and integration; how the first 'coloured' people in villages were its stars (everybody flocked to them and wanted to find out more about them) rather than the misfits.

But maybe that's just because there were less people then - on both sides. And maybe there are too many people to keep a balance of acceptance now. Or maybe the abundance of social media just lets the dumb ones slip through more often, whether it means there are more racist people now or if they're just more vocal, or more exposed.

Point is: I don't know. Anything.

I hear the argument that ''Québec isn't as racist as elsewhere but still is a bit'' a lot more than I used to. Maybe that's true. Again: I don't know.

But it's good to revisit the subject once in a while, assess where it's at, and try to push for the best in everyone.

That being said, my friend Yan had two stories to tell on the matter.

This Dog Looks Like A Cock

From my friend Yan's blog. From two other peoples'. 's. 's.

Ok, fine, so the blogosphere is fucking nuts. 'Cause he looks like a furry pair of them.

Canadian Splendo(u)r

My friend Yan is a musician, smart, cool guy and an idealist.

He writes about comics on his comics blog, but also offers onlookers a ''daily recap'' into his life. Kind of like following Harvey Pekar, daily, without the images.

Not My Day

Your boss tells you on Friday : ''no need to show up in the morning on Monday, 1 PM will suffice. Sleep in.'' Sounds like a great thing, right?

But of course Murphy will take exception to this and fuck it right up, evil scheming invisible bastard that He is.

So I go to bed at 10 PM-ish, I think, which is early as fuck for me. My roommate/little brother Yan got home at 3:30 AM and woke me up – and I couldn’t fall back asleep. At least I got some reading done – Pearl Jam Twenty (the book – while I await the arrival of the Blu-ray in the mail, possibly Friday). I’m at the year 2000 – Binaural.

But the worst part was the subway ride to fucking work: squeezed up, like fucking mushrooms in a can, and getting pushed by all those sweaty animals as they take the longest possible fucking route to the train’s exit, by bumping into 20 people rather than 5. For that kind of fucking swine, the fastest way from Point A to Point B is by Texas via the fucking moon, with a pit stop for coffee.

Murder might have been the case they gave Snoop Dogg, but I was tempted to follow that path as well. As a matter of fact, I was abnormally over-aggressive on the mid-day hour, considering.

The evening’s looming and my energy level’s dropping, my vision is blurring, and I know I’ll have to share another ride with those fucking worker bees in just a hundred minutes or so. I recently saw a phrase online, possibly on Facebook, that read ''You are not stuck in traffic; you ARE traffic''. Well, I’m not. Not at all. The 9-to-5 crowd is not my crowd, unless you mean the people who start drinking at 9 PM and only stop at 5AM to shower and start their day. In which case, that literally is my crowd, the one that comes to my fucking shows, the ones I owe a lot to.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.