Zenrei's Zone: X

Marshland of memory / Music and melancholia

Hello, and welcome to the tenth edition of ‘Zenrei’s Zone’, a newsletter dedicated to creation and contemplation. This time, there’s another short story and an announcement. The last edition was published late due to travelling - this edition follows soon after to compensate and because I am keen to share.

Enjoy and thank you for reading! Any support, from sharing to subscribing (free or paid), is more than deeply appreciated.

Marshland of memory

This is an attempt to capture a particular state and stasis of depression that I have been in for almost a year now through images associated with brass rubbing, where you place paper over brass monuments in churches (made as graves in the Middle Ages) and take a rubbing of it. I would like to find perspective on it through writing it - exteriorising and excorcising it. I would like to stop defining myself and my narrative through the lens of depression, and living that way. That (and finding a job) is my goal.

Any thoughts or feedback would be welcome - you can leave comments on Substack posts or message me on Instagram. What words stick out? What do you feel?

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Latten

Patella placed on the hassock,

I roll out the lining paper.

It spreads down your latten body.

I prepare the cobbler’s wax to make an impression.

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I look inwards and backwards -

Conkers for colic,

Jam and Jerusalem.

I see it all, and I am silent.

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I have thought of my death so long.

Too long to say,

Knowing it can’t show enough

In the agony I feel in a shop

Or making a cup of tea.

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It is unpoetic and unverbal

I wish for it no longer.

I raise my wax and move the hassock;

I have made my impression.                                                        

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If you found some sense of meaning in what you just read, please consider helping my writing to grow by sharing it with others who may also find some meaning or sense in this, and/or subscribing:

Here is another about climbing into fields as children and the lost innocence of childhood:

Herringbone

i saw a sparrow 

swallow

the sun today,

et it whole;

and of course it struggled, poor thing

———

its staccato soar,

failed flutter

 spluttered… 

warm worms an’ a walking stick resting

in-between the ba-dum of its call:

———

‘what was that song at the funeral?’

———

i’ve learned to sew

slipknotted sadness 

the same way

the sparrow swallows the sun;

seeing sense, embroidering empathy

onto a patchwork of clashing colours.

———

Melancholia and music

The other day, I announced my next project, Still. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all - it’s also going to be tying up loose ends as I decide to stop making music for the foreseeable future.

Music is an incredible tool for connection, catharsis and creativity. However, as I try to turn a leaf and navigate out of this depressive stasis, I realise that the music I make is a product of my greatest strengths, but also of my darkness. At the moment, I feel like I inflict my depressive patterns onto it, and in doing so, exacerbate their reality. So I’m choosing to step away. Again, I want to thank everyone who listens and I’m so glad people enjoy and resonate with it. When we hit that question of what defines me, sometimes you have to take hard steps to move forward with things you don’t want to define yourself with and live by. I may still publish Zenrei’s Zone, depending on whether I am writing or not.

Thank you for reading!

A ‘Zenrei’ poster I made in late 2022.