I In The Mourning Now Stay — The Fishbach Issue [Director’s Cut]

Before my medical appointment of the day — my psychiatrist wants to replace my current antidepressant by another and, for that purpose, sent me to see a cardiologist in order to check my heart condition —, I was shopping in a domestic electrical store in order to buy a new coffee machine. Just when I found the product I wanted, they passed in the store Kim Wilde’s “Cambodia” on. Very loud. Although I love the song, I was about to cry (people suffering from bipolar disorder are generally very sensitive). I was about to cry not only because the song reminds me of the sad, separation- and depression-related movie Dans Paris by Christophe Honoré (2006) bust most of all because I’ve known for a long time “Cambodia” is one of the Fishbach’s favourite songs (Note: I’ve got used in this blog to write ‘Fishbach’ by coding the name with the greek letter ‘φ’ and will do in this way hereafter). I was about to cry but I hold back my tears. During the last year, I bought three tickets for three distinct φ’s concerts. I missed the two first ones because I was staying in a clinic in order to (quite in vain) cure my long-term, resistant depression. About the third one, which will occur in exactly one week, the 30th of November, in the Olympia showroom, Paris, because of my current very weak psychological and physical condition and since I am deeply afraid to see or even meet her again regarding my stalker’s past, I have decided to (with success; it was not that easy… Why?…) gift someone my ticket through Facebook. But this act of generosity is not only a question of health condition and fear, not even of renouncement. It’s a question of killing a part of myself: during the last five–six years, φ has been in many ways the centre of my disease (in a so disproportionate dimension that I have frequently replaced the psychiatric term ‘mania’ by ‘φ-mania’), both in my highs and lows. And, since my bipolar disorder has always been, since the definitive diagnosis in 2016, extremely difficult to stabilise (I have almost never known the equilibrium, the so-called ‘euthymia’), impeding me, for instance, to work and have a normal social life, up to a point that if you ask me what I dedicate my life to I will answer: “being bipolar” — φ has been the centre of my life.

And, yes, during all those years, I would love φ. Her music, of course, and her, her, Her. Sincerely and deeply at the beginning (when we used to chat after her first important concerts, in April–May 2017; I was shy though she probably guessed my love through my gazes) and then in a sickly fashion way that led me to become an insane, remote (essentially through social networks) stalker. But there are doors to close. In May, while I was ‘resting’ in the clinic, badly doped by excessive doses of antidepressants and, therefore, shifting towards mania, I wrote on this bog a pathetic–poetic farewell letter to φ (to be read here). Since I was quite all of the time in delusion, the letter doesn’t work: falling again in depression, whereas I was not really convinced by φ’s last album, the love reemerged. The last weeks have been hard (see almost all the articles I have written during the last ten days): when you feel you sink towards what I call the ‘death zone’ of depression, you try by all means to hang on branches and totems you have in mind. Nevertheless, a terrible anxiousness appeared: becoming a new “Harvey Weinstein” — in my nightmares, φ was dramatically ridiculing me at the Olympia’s show. Few days ago, I chose to unfollow φ both on Facebook and Instagram. I wrote it hereabove: it’s a deep part of me I have to destroy. But I cannot love her anymore, I do not want to love her anymore, I even do not want to see her ever again — she drives me too much mad (she’s the woman of my dreams, the woman I have always dreamt of since my childhood, but dreams are dreams and have to remain dreams, period).

All that I am writing here habitated me during the morning. When I arrived at the cardiologist’s surgery, I was shaking like a leave in a storm. It was a woman — a very charming woman; surprisingly, despite various cigarettes since the early morning and a very strong coffee drunk in a brasserie after my shopping at the electric domestic store, despite a kind of tachypsychia attack (I was writing in my head the draft of the present post), my heart pulse was very low (48 bpm). Everything was OK with my heart. Then, I came back home. I ate very little: a glass of orange juice, a yoghurt, a piece of dark chocolate. I just wanted to listen music, smoke, and write. I prepared a big cup of concentrated coffee (actually, I cannot smoke if I don’t drink coffee at the same time). I located the Kim Wilde’s “Cambodia” 7 inches record in one of my shelving units: no, definitely no, I didn’t want to cry. I needed something loud, I needed to be a little knocked out — the perfect choice was the φ’s “Mortel” remix by SIERRA: without giving a fuck about the neighbours, I put the track at an excessive volume and listened it twice and, then, slipped towards the Suede’s masterpiece Sci-Fi Lullabies (probably their best album ever whereas it is a collection of B-sides) and sat in front of my computer. Now, “Europe Is Our Playground” is playing and I have to admit that I have to hold back my tears…

I have sometimes the feeling that all of my life has been a question of mourning (loss of my mother, loss of my life and love in Chile, loss of my mental health… And now loss of φ plus/and me). By leaving φ on the side of the road, I have to (impossibly?) abandon incredible memories (and yes, one more time, it is here partly question of the famous ‘hypomania nostalgia’ in bipolar disorder). Memories of rain in green. In Spring ’17, φ and her music made me travel through domains I had never explored. There is somewhere in this blog, as an attached PDF file, an old article written in July 2018 called “Spring And My Own Goddess Of Spring” — and, in this article, a sentence I know by heart and sums everything: “Under my umbrella, smoking, my back pressed against the outside walls of the Saint-Donat church, on the top of the hill of Arlon, amazed and overwhelmed, I was listening to Fishbach vocalizing before the concert and there was nothing else to live.”

Bye, bye. Now, I’m ready — to pass Kim Wilde’s “Cambodia” on.