Depression, Capitalism & Love

FUN✰POV
13 min readJul 31, 2021

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The following is week in review for documentation (7/24–31) In the form of a therapy session which I imagined. I’m currently waiting for my therapist, Barbara, to get back on Medicaid. She resubmitted her application this week and said it could take “up to 90 days” so I might start looking around for another therapist this week. Because it will help to send these sessions to myself for documentation purposes.

(For this session I used the @Otter.Ai App for 30 minutes of talk time, and therefore it will equal ~15–20 minutes of read time.)

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Therapist: Hello friend. So how was your week this week?

Patient: Oh, it was pretty busy here in KBP Maine. I was talking with two different recruiters on the phone, which I was telling them about my interest in customer service representation, helping companies and their users come closer together and have a more enjoyable productive experience. And somehow it turned into a conversation about sales and recruitment for jobs, which was also not remote, but in the office, three days a week doing a 90 day training program. And with this company being global, I would need to think about a location to be long term, which got me thinking again about New York City.

Because if I had to choose a city. That would be up there because it would allow me to be on the streets. Every day, going to work, going to lunch, going home from work, where I could also be filming in POV. And recording podcasts/ blogs, recording poems/ songs, stories. Art of all kinds, so that I could live the dream of being a part time, artist, writer, filmmaker, musician, doing that until I could be supporting myself full time as an artist, with multiple revenue streams. So now, I’m also thinking about the purpose of life. Being love families coming first, and how to end my loneliness to stop being single, which is sort of delusional, to be single for this long, five years now.

I’m 34 years old. And these jobs, wanting to be in real life, and moving around, Ideally, meeting people, talking with people that would allow me to settle in a city. I have multiple different resumes for business, creative marketing, customer service, even waiting tables. I have a resume for. So, it makes me think about New York. And then also, teaming up forming a partnership with someone. And there are. There’s one person that I formed a deep connection with a New York City. And there’s another person. I formed a deep relationship with over the quarantine, where I’ve made hundreds of love songs love letters to this person. And she is currently traveling the world. And then another person who I’m in contact with in Europe.

And these people I stay in contact with every day or week or month or two. So the idea is of love and having a ceremony to celebrate and look into the future together, creating a family for future to and to end being so isolated and alone.

And this is what triggers the acute depression. Also, the entire high stress situation of coming back home and being exposed to my super abuser. My lifelong abuser, and signing up for all that in return for an unused office/ apt space that I was offered, and then taken away from me. Stripped completely of. Over the course of one month.

I’ve been having this idea of, if I could. And when I get so lucky that someone would want to get married, and look into the future, share a life together, create together in our spare time filming recording all this stuff, you know, starting a family, maybe in whatever way that this idea of like having a wedding or a wee ceremony. So wedding without the DS. In the middle, so a we in ceremony. The first thing I would do is ask. My first brother to be my best man. Number one, and my second brother to be my best man. Number two, and then two, essentially, merge timelines and merge families.

So I think that’s what the this, we in ceremony is. It’s like a merging of families and a meeting of families. And, again, a merging of timelines and and this life partnership that’s built around building every single day. And I do think that’s what the point of view camera glasses. And the podcasts, the music, the transcription of phone calls, and conversations and life stories, but to take it back to the original artist healing journey point of view. Video is currently full swing at Snapchat, Facebook is developing their point of view camera glasses. And they’re in the research phase. Microsoft is working on their wearable point of view, glasses, as well as Apple. From a social standpoint as well as technology, augmented reality, virtual reality, user experience standpoint. So at the end of the day.

This is about becoming art, or an artist long term. And chasing a dream. As Henry Miller would put it, “ to turn living itself into an art. That is the goal” is the quotation. And I think when you record more and you document more of your life, you leave a trail for the next generation. And that trail will last and live forever on the internet, which I believe, theoretically, at least from myself. It reduces anxiety and reduces depression. And there’s a movie called the circle and a book, actually, where they talk about going transparent. And I’ve just witnessed all of this, privacy, being where the abuse. The Super abuse happens in these private spaces.

So having a third person there, which is basically what this technology is it allows for everyone to think before they speak, and sort of feel sort of remove this idea of hearsay, you know, everything is on the record, always. That’s I think the big goal is to have nothing to hide. For the rest of our lives, in, in my personal experience that I think is generally the goal. Obviously, there is a nuance and exceptions to this, that, you know, privacy, in your own home is important to decompress from all the anxiety of society, and so on. So this week, the most interesting title is, quote, depression, capitalism, and love. And I think we’ll wrap this therapy session (Weekend Review, And then you can ask questions) with a song that we’d like to premiere.

I’m not sure if we’re gonna add an intro to it. I think we have an inch. We have an intro, from a movie called the end of the tour about David Foster Wallace. The writer who wrote. Infinite Jest, which is a book that was published. I believe in the 90s, that was 1000 pages long. And this writer is extremely interesting, emotional, intellectual, and so we do have a quote, that’s sort of about America, from the movie, which we really like and a lot of the times with this music. And these poems, we use quotes, audio clips from movies as poetry writing prompts to input this stuff, mix it with some instrumental music, and we do it on the app called band lab. That’s one of the technologies that we are using every day. Another technology is the one we’re currently using right now called otter OTTer, it is artificial intelligence in the form of audio transcription. The other one is tape a call, which is exactly what it sounds like taping and transcribing telephone calls, conversations with people, helping them to write whatever they want to write about life stories or books, fictional books based on one’s life is what a lot of these look like. And then finally, the technology called spectacles, which is the Snapchat camera glasses, which take videos, these real life, because the camera is quiet. It captures real life first person point of view, in the form of 10 seconds up to 30 seconds, and that’s the limitation, and this is the camera that we have yet to really experiment with for five years we used a different type of point of view camera, which you can record up to an hour. So this is going to be an experiment that hopefully happens with traveling, you know, staying on the move, being on the move, but mainly in New York City, where it’s legal to record the streets, and to turn them into art without people knowing, and therefore capturing real life.

So those are the four technologies spectacles otter app tape a call app and band lab that we are evangelists of. And to get back to IT band lab is where we create hundreds of song sketches, mixing music and movies quotes from movies, and it takes us 20 minutes in the morning, we basically do it very quickly. And that’s why we call it a song sketch a rough draft to eventually take into the studio to record professionally with an engineer producer mixer to create albums and he pees in the future when there’s a budget for studio time. The same goes with podcasts. I think you can do a great podcast at home every day with home recording equipment, technology microphones. I think also, though, when you go into a studio it’s a different experience. And a lot of the times, a more collaborative experience. And there’s more of a range of what the episode can look like because you’re working with a producer, and that’s a collaboration. So it’s a different type of collaboration.

Anyways, here’s the premiere.

The song is called kitten in a tree. And it’s introduced in the way that it is a personal account. And I think originally when I spoke about it I said it was through the eyes of a specific person that I know. But now that I’ve had sort of some time to think about it in a more global sense, and to expand and zoom out. I believe this is a song about capitalism, and where it is in its current form. You could also say obviously, like I said, like I mentioned earlier, that it is a song about depression, capitalism, and love, or capitalism, depression, and love, but I think I like the first one, we can have a vote on it. I like voting because I do not like making decisions alone. I like CO writing in a writers room, and hopefully that’s what these therapy sessions, essentially become. Since you are nice enough to allow me to record these sessions, they’re writing sessions for myself and eventually we’re going to copyright. All of this stuff will be copyrighted, in the form of life stories in the format and context of a life story, everyone has one life story, and one life perspective, and then you can break it down into different titles scenes, years. You know I’m 34 years old so I have 34 titles, chapters, movies, you know there’s multiple different movies or maybe it’s all a television show, books with volumes, this type of thing. So it depends how far you zoom out, and then how far you’d zoom in to these flashbacks and flash forwards and present, past, future, all this sort of merging and mixing of timelines and character arcs and plot lines, etc, and so on. So, here’s the song. It’s one of our all time. Discovered beats. This is one of our all time all time top top instrumentals, that we ever discovered on SoundCloud. It’s by a producer called Beat Dune, who is just the top producer to TBD, to be discovered. artist to be discovered, musical producer engineer recording artist to be discovered. So, that that’s the main setup. The main introduction. This is a song about depression, capitalism, and love.

Link attached here and at the bottom;

KITTEN IN A TREE (prod. BEATGOON)

It’s called kitten in a tree, produced by the one and only beatgoon. Thank you for listening. Enjoy. Talk to you soon. Okay, so now we can just get back to the therapy writing session. And you can ask me questions. Okay. All right, I’m gonna stop. Oh, I’m going to stop recording and then start recording again. Thank you. Basically Thank you, Barbara. I mean that’s the, that’s your name. My therapist. My current therapist, but you currently don’t accept my insurance for some reason so you have applied. If I’m getting this right. You’ve reapplied to accept Medicaid, which is the excellent insurance that I’m on right now. And then we’ll we will be back on a weekly regiment. Oh, the last one very last thing I’m going to look at the time, and make sure. Okay, one last thing.

This week, so it comes from a movie called Judas, and the black Messiah. He says, quote, our job is to heighten the contradictions. And this was the hardest part of our week was identifying a contradiction that really knocked us down a few notches. And we are, we’re over here in a current situation that is temporary and emotionally charged because we’re staying with family, but the contradiction that flew into our heads. This week was obviously after the whole traumatic experience being evicted. My brother and I, by our father. And that is a much longer story for another time and you know a lot of it is my brother’s story to tell. But this is a very fresh contradiction. So when that happened, he told us to go get mental help that we are the sick one, not him. Considering, keeping in mind that he is the psychiatrist, which is highly recognized in society as an expert of psychology and the brain. So you have this expert, telling us, their son to go get mental help, and we are saying no we are not the sick one you are, but this is the contradiction is in the past, we have this memory of them telling us that our depression was fake, that we were faking. Our my depression that I was faking my depression because of an I believe the quote is close to, you know, being badgered like Woody. What do you even have to be depressed about. You played all the little league baseball that you wanted to. As a kid, you know, what do you have to be depressed about. And this being turned into this accusation of of faking one’s depression. So this is an incredible contradiction. And there are many many many contradictions in the story of in the stories of my father that I have and that both of my brothers have and that other people who have known my Father, have had and seen. So, you know, go get help for your depression, and your anger towards me.

That’s what he’s saying that it’s a legitimate, anger, he is not accepting it, he is not acknowledging it, he’s just labeling people as sick and mentally ill. And we are all saying that no actually, it’s your mental illness that you have accumulated over the years, because you’re at, you’re you’re living in these countries. These schizophrenic contradictions of love and fear. Cold and hot. You know, anger, hatred, you know, right rage buried rage. And so basically all. It’s just always aggressive and always putting the responsibility on others, as opposed to ever taking responsibility for yourself. So that’s kind of where my dad is at with things it’s like you’re the go get help for your anger, it’s not mine, it’s yours. And then also, You are faking your depression, and that really threw me off my surfboard. This week and also again thinking about love being the purpose of life and living, breathing, sharing a life with another person having these three people. Over the past 10 years that I’ve been lucky enough to know and stay in contact with. So these were my last three partners that I’ve sort of been in contact with every day or every month or every couple of months, saying, you know, talking about how we love one another and so we are 30 minutes into this therapy session. Thank you again, Barbara, thank you again to my brothers, specifically.

My first brother who we’ve been really collaborating on a closer level these days and, and I’m glad I’m able to transcribe this and send it to him and and really let him know that this was that, you know, I’m trying, I want to, you know, obviously, I want to get paychecks and have a budget and chase the dreams and the art, but I really think that my loneliness, before taking pills, which is what my dad does, and possibly what his problem is that he takes pills, and also prescribes them to people that, you know, I’m going to try and my loneliness, and then I want my brother, my first brother to be best man, number one, and my second brother to be best men number two. And that’s an offer, you know that’s a reality of what is important in life to people. And so that is an offer. That is an ask. That is an honor that will be on the table. Forever. Whenever I can I get married with somebody and form this relationship, this bond, this marriage. This promise this vow. Well I don’t know about a promise. Because that, that’s a heavy old word, but it’s a, it’s a vow of of love and kindness and softness and life and living and sharing and collaborating, deeply every day in creating co creating co writing co directing. Alright, that’s it. Now you can ask questions, Barbara, thank you for letting me do my Weekend Review. Let me just end this recording transcribe it and send it to my brother’s. Oh and also, I guess. Today’s Saturday, and I missed. I kind of lost track of the days, so I lost a day. Within this whole spiral of depression that I went into in, but I did do a lot of writing, you know five pages of writing a day. And so I’m gonna transcribe this and it’ll probably take 15 minutes to read, and it’ll just be there for documentation, whenever they get to it.

And eventually I put my mom on to this to these therapy session transcriptions and eventually. My dad, he can be on Read Only listen only maybe in the future. With these, but read only as a concept that comes from Word document on the computer, and you know when you open it, when you open up a document, sometimes you can just choose read only, so they can’t add to it or edit it, they can just read only. And that comes from listen only. Okay, so I’ll be seeing my first brother today. He’s staying overnight, and my mom is here now, and so I’ll talk to her, and we’ll go from there. Alright, so it’s your turn to talk and ask questions, Barbara, we have about 30 minutes left in our session today. All right. You’re turn to say things and ask questions and I will listen and give short answers. Second half of the session is more of a conversation. Or sometimes it will be a shorter Week In Review and more of the session can be a back and forth to and flow, if you will. Anyways, what do you think about this new structure? For us as a therapist-patient, storyteller-storylistener team and relationship-communicators? Would you like to co-author a book together? 😁

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

KITTEN IN A TREE (prod. BEATGOON)

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