Cecil Poole on ennui

I’ve been feeling so down, so slothful, exhausted, stuffed, without purpose.  Listening to the ABC hasn’t helped.  I feel like Rick from “The Young Ones”, – ‘peace man’.

The only things that happen to me don’t.

So for the best part of ten weeks I’ve failed to write.  I’ve spent so much of my life seeking approval, validation, friendship.  From Quentin Cockburn.  From Ira Maine.

I dress in conspicuous clothing.  Bold checks.  Polished shoes.  I try to be cool.  I speak out the corner of my mouth.  I saunter.  I sashay.  I even smoked a cigarette (once).    Yet no one notices me.  At least not in the way I want.  I was in Brunswick Street once and a young fellow poked me in the side and said (cruelly) “Country Boy”.  I happened to be with the most gorgeous cosmopolitan woman, a woman I’d been tying to impress (from a distance (of some miles) for years.  “Country Boy”!  The shame, the utter shame is with me still.   26 years, four months and seven days later.  Tears well up just writing about it . . ..

. . . sorry.  I’ve got a clean handkerchief.  AND I’m not wallowing in self pity.  I’m not.

Still I’ve been keen to impress Quentin and Ira.  Or even get them to notice me.  But nothing.  Not even a curt dismissal.  I know they are men of the world.  Their opinions are sought at the Sandhurst Club, at the Tolmie Tavern.  I’ve little doubt they are sought to advise at Davos, Jackson Hole, Toronto.

I was so down the other day (about ten weeks ago) I tuned in to the ABC, Radio National.  And listened to a conversation recorded at the Brisbane Writers Festival with Lionel Shriver (and how anyone could use the word ‘Festival” and ‘Lionel Shriver’ in the same program is beyond me) and the talk turned to that well known middle age, middle class female condition ennui.  I always thought it was pronounced ‘en/u/ee’.  Devastatingly I mentioned this to a PhD from the Sorbonne who gently corrected me.

As I tossed and turned, unable to write, unable to laugh, unable to sleep, (and being quite old unable to get the requisite blood flow to ensue a self satisfied sleep) I self-diagnosed on-wee (with an almost silent ‘n’).  I sat up startled, shocked that I would suffer this complaint.

Well, what does one do when one has a self diagnosed condition?  Look for confirmation of course.  Resort to google.  So weeks ago I got that confirmation.  Up to a point.  Was it ennui? Could it be angst?  Or the wonderful Weltschmertz? 

Well I set up my matrix and considered the  options.

Angst: was I worried  and dissatisfied in an “introspective, overthinking” Germanic way?  Absolutely not.  The way ‘Angst’ rolled off the tongue just did not do it for me.

Weltschmertz: Oh, what a word! If I said it often enough surely i’d have my lips tuned to master any wind instrument at all.  However, as I don’t wear sensible shoes, and have no real ‘sadness in my heart for a world that can never be’ weltschmertz is not the answer.

So that left me with Ennui.  That the English word annoy comes from ennui is a hint.   That it has “connotations of self indulgent posturing and European decadence” strengthens the case.  Now I “proclaim this, with a long, slow sigh . . . (I’ve) got ennui.

So obviously I had to write about this.  It is the best part of ten weeks since the diagnosis, and I’m ready.  I open the computer.  Source the links.  Turn on the radio.  Marianne Faithfull sings ‘As Tears Go By’ – not the version I knew as a fourteen year old, but a wonderful funny ironic version sung 50 years later, then Jimmy Hendrix playing on New Years Eve 1969, and David Bowie accompanied by Rick Wakeman, then Chicago Blues – Chess Brothers recordings.

The Ennui seems to have gone.  I’ve nothing to say.

EXCEPT I watched this with Faithfull and Bowie and went to bed laughing.