The Art of Arranging One’s Melancholy

When I was young, I imagined life as a magnificent circus.

There would be dazzling lights, impossible acrobatics, beautiful women on trapezes, and, naturally, a considerable amount of applause. I had not yet decided upon my particular talent, but I was confident that it would involve flying.

Life, however, is notoriously careless with casting.

Upon my arrival, I was handed a broom and directed towards the elephant enclosure.

I protested. There had clearly been an administrative error. I possessed the soul of an artist, the ambitions of an explorer, and a perfectly respectable collection of existential questions. Surely someone had mistaken me for a member of the cleaning staff.

The management declined to comment.

I have been sweeping ever since.

Occasionally, I look up at the trapezes, where people considerably less troubled by metaphysics perform astonishing feats of self-promotion. The audience applauds. The elephants continue their essential activities.

Eventually, I began to suspect that the entire circus was fraudulent.

This suspicion was confirmed by the internet.

Never in human history have so many people been provided with such sophisticated instruments for pretending to be someone else. The medieval aristocracy required castles, heraldic symbols, expensive portraits, and occasionally an inconvenient war to maintain its illusions. We require only a telephone and favourable lighting.

The results are magnificent.

Every second person is an entrepreneur, philosopher, traveller, or enthusiast for personal growth. Everyone has discovered the importance of authenticity, usually after consulting several tutorials on how to manufacture it.

Even unhappiness has acquired professional standards.

One must suffer attractively, preferably beside a window, holding a cup of something expensive and looking towards a horizon that suggests both emotional depth and excellent real estate.

I tried this once.

Unfortunately, my window overlooked a supermarket car park, and the only available beverage was instant coffee. The resulting photograph suggested not existential anguish but a man waiting for a delayed delivery.

I deleted it.

Naturally, I disapprove of such vanity.

I have therefore spent considerable time perfecting my own.

My adventures in digital romance proved particularly instructive.

I discovered that modern love is frequently advertised as an opportunity for personal development, although the precise qualifications of the prospective instructor remain unclear.

Some people seek a companion who will appreciate their independence while remaining permanently available. Others require spontaneity, provided it is scheduled in advance. Almost everyone values honesty, although opinions differ concerning the circumstances in which it should be exercised.

I approached the matter scientifically.

After examining several hundred profiles, I concluded that humanity had developed a remarkably sophisticated vocabulary for describing people who did not exist.

I then attempted to write my own profile.

This proved unexpectedly difficult.

I wished to appear intelligent without seeming pretentious, romantic without appearing desperate, independent without suggesting emotional unavailability, and amusing without attracting people who expected me to be amusing before breakfast.

I selected a photograph in which I looked thoughtful.

It had been taken seven years earlier, during a period when my hairline and I were still on speaking terms.

For my interests, I listed literature, philosophy, travel, and meaningful conversation. I omitted my actual principal activities, which included misplacing reading glasses, developing elaborate objections to minor inconveniences, and wondering whether it was too late to become a different person.

I examined the finished profile.

It was excellent.

I would never have wanted to meet the man it described.

Nevertheless, I published it.

For several days, I participated enthusiastically in the international exchange of carefully curated disappointments.

Then I received a message from a woman whose profile declared that she valued authenticity above everything else.

She asked what I was looking for.

I spent forty minutes composing a reply.

I eventually wrote:

Something real.

It seemed sufficiently profound to conceal the fact that I had absolutely no idea.

She never answered.

I considered this an encouraging demonstration of her authenticity.

After this experience, I withdrew from the digital marketplace and devoted myself to the cultivation of aesthetic melancholy.

Melancholy, properly managed, is an exceptionally versatile possession. It requires no expensive equipment, complements almost every philosophical position, and provides a respectable explanation for one's failure to answer correspondence.

Naturally, one must distinguish ordinary unhappiness from the superior melancholy of the cultivated individual.

Ordinary unhappiness is untidy. It involves unpaid bills, unwashed dishes, uncomfortable shoes, and the humiliating necessity of explaining oneself.

Aesthetic melancholy, by contrast, requires appropriate lighting, an extensive vocabulary, and preferably a long coat.

I possessed the coat.

It was an excellent garment: dark, theatrical, and sufficiently impractical to establish my independence from conventional expectations.

On particularly disappointing evenings, I would wrap myself in it and arrange its folds with the solemn concentration of a sculptor completing a national monument.

I imagined myself a solitary figure standing against the vulgarity of the modern world.

Unfortunately, the effect was occasionally spoiled by the discovery that I had forgotten to purchase milk.

There is something profoundly discouraging about descending from the heights of Schopenhauer to investigate the contents of one's refrigerator.

I developed a theory that the truly exceptional individual must learn to endure solitude.

This was a comforting theory because it transformed my social failures into evidence of intellectual distinction.

I became increasingly suspicious of ordinary happiness. People who enjoyed family dinners, television programmes, inexpensive holidays, or conversations about the weather seemed to me insufficiently conscious of the tragic dimensions of existence.

I regarded them from the magnificent isolation of my melancholy coat.

They appeared not to notice.

This was irritating.

Occasionally, I suspected that my disdain for the human circus was merely disappointment at having been given such an insignificant role.

The suspicion never lasted.

I had developed considerable expertise in dismissing inconvenient conclusions.

And yet, despite my philosophical achievements, I remained afflicted by a thoroughly unreasonable condition.

I was a romantic.

This discovery caused me considerable embarrassment.

Romanticism is difficult to reconcile with intellectual superiority. It introduces irrational expectations, compromises one's independence, and encourages an interest in flowers that no serious pessimist should publicly acknowledge.

Nevertheless, I continued to notice beautiful things.

A woman's dress moving in the summer wind. The unexpected kindness of a stranger. The extraordinary transformation of ordinary rain when sunlight passes through it at precisely the right moment.

There were evenings when the entire machinery of my carefully maintained disillusionment would collapse because someone laughed.

Not an especially remarkable laugh.

Just a laugh.

I found this deeply offensive.

After years of philosophical preparation, I could still be defeated by a woman in a polka-dot dress.

My imagination, which had proved incapable of producing a convincing solution to any practical problem, immediately began constructing an elaborate mythology around her.

She would be extraordinary, naturally.

She would understand my silences, admire my contradictions, appreciate the tragic elegance of my coat, and recognise the profound sensitivity concealed beneath my occasional failure to purchase milk.

She would be the living rose in the neglected garden of my soul.

I would endure her thorns with noble resignation.

I had already prepared several excellent metaphors.

Then I remembered a woman I had once known who disliked roses.

She considered them pretentious.

She preferred flowers that looked as though they had arrived somewhere by accident.

She also had an unfortunate habit of interrupting my most beautiful philosophical observations to ask whether I had remembered to pay the electricity bill.

At the time, I regarded this as evidence of a regrettably practical disposition.

Years later, I began to suspect that she had been attempting to establish a relationship with an actual human being.

I had been offering her a monument.

The distinction was uncomfortable.

I returned to my melancholy coat and examined its folds.

It occurred to me that I had spent an extraordinary amount of time arranging my disappointment into something aesthetically acceptable.

I had criticised the carefully manufactured identities of strangers while constructing an identity of my own, complete with philosophical references, romantic symbolism, and an impressive collection of grievances.

The digital masquerade had merely offended me by making the competition so obvious.

Worse still, I had been expecting love to arrive in the form of an audience.

Someone who would recognise the exceptional quality of my suffering, applaud the elegance of my despair, and perhaps offer constructive criticism concerning the arrangement of my coat.

I had not given sufficient consideration to the possibility that she might arrive carrying groceries.

Or that she might be tired.

Or that she might disagree with me about roses.

This presented a serious difficulty.

I had spent years searching for a woman who would appreciate the poetry of my existence.

What if she preferred prose?

I considered the question for several days.

During this period, the world continued its vulgar activities. People advertised their happiness, purchased unnecessary objects, published photographs of their breakfasts, and expressed opinions concerning subjects they had not investigated.

The circus remained open.

The elephants were thriving.

I still found much of it intolerable.

But one afternoon, while walking home, I passed a florist's shop.

There were roses in the window.

Naturally, I stopped.

They were beautiful, and I immediately experienced the familiar temptation to transform them into symbols of eternal devotion, impossible longing, and the tragic nobility of the human condition.

Then I noticed a bucket of small, untidy flowers beside the door.

They looked as though they had arrived somewhere by accident.

I bought them.

The florist asked whether they were for someone special.

I considered explaining that I was a solitary aesthete, philosophically opposed to the vulgar conventions of romantic commerce.

Instead, I said I hoped so.

Outside, it had begun to rain.

I had no umbrella.

My magnificent coat was getting wet, and the flowers were in danger of losing their remaining dignity.

For a moment, I considered the symbolic possibilities.

Then I hurried home.

There are, after all, practical limits to melancholy.