DISPLACEMENT, TRANSMISSION, SUBLIMATION...

I'm falling down the impending winter rabbit hole with alarming speed. It was the rain that did it I think. That sense of being trapped inside and the thought of months of the same. Last year it was Depeche Mode that saw me through winter; this year I'm already unavoidably drawn to Joy Division and it's only just October. And like clockwork, before long I will be compelled to knit something and buy some decent Scotch. Maybe I should listen to Beyonce, start drinking Malibu and report back on any changes.

The weird thing about checking your stats is that you find out stuff you don't necessarily want to know. I usually don't bother too much - but when I do, it's bizarre to see some of the search terms that have landed people here and which posts they've been reading. By far, far, far my most read post of all time is the old How To Crawl Out of a Hole one. You're not all majorly depressed are you, or is it because you're intrigued by the pretty sidebar telephone? Save our souls.  I suppose if I will write S.O.S. Emergency on something clickable...Anyway that post has some great comments, I'm glad it's being kept alive.

And then there are the really, really old posts from years back that suddenly get a crazy number of views in one day. It's something I shouldn't think about but it freaks me out a bit all the same. That's why I don't rummage around in my stats too much - usually.

Today I was thinking about the Louise Bourgeois quote, "Art is a guarantee of sanity" which appears on one of her large scale pieces (pictured).  She said it was the best thing she'd ever said. I also read the last interview she gave before she died, in Another Magazine - and the interview with Helmut Lang who said he thinks about Louise Bourgeois every day. At the same time I was thinking about sublimation - in the sense of displacing destructive energy by channeling it into creativity. It's apparently the strongest, most constructive defense mechanism we have, according to some bloke called Freud. Then, (are you still with me?) I happened to read Jeanette Winterson's piece on how she displaces difficult emotions. " I will drive the thing round and round in my head and suddenly try and park it, well crash it, actually, into my relationship."

So that was Thursday. The only answer is to sublimate.