Yet Untitled 120 - Confessions of a Lapsing, Dichotomous Human
OR - the Saga of Hooboy Humdrum and Positivo Pepperdinkle
Dearest Yet Untitler
I’m usually a pretty positive human being, but sometimes I lapse.
By that I mean that sometimes, I’m also a very negative human being.
This almost feels like a forbidden confession - because by general consensus I’m regarded the one who’ll be positive in the face of anything. If you’ve been reading these newsletters for any prolonged amount of time, you would have found them mostly inflected towards optimism and the positive. All of that sentiment you read is genuine, but I thought that today, it would be healthy to express a part of myself that I sometimes do not give a voice to.
Perhaps that’s not entirely true. I’m constantly holding conversations with that part of myself, and this entails that the said part has a voice. It’s just that in my current avatar, I mostly don’t let it hold conversations with anyone else. It may be that I don’t find that part of me attractive, but I also know that it’s as much a part of me as my once problematic L4/L5 vertebrae.
I’m no stranger to hiding things about myself that I consider unattractive (remember YU073?).
Taking a cue from the fact that I’m no stranger to the ill effects of this kind of repression, I will - keeping your hand in mine - step into a that other place that I don’t reveal as much to the world.
Consider it your Gold Pass, your Subscribers-Only Merch, your Member Benefit. I hope this little walk is useful in some way, for both of us.
The world of Mr. Hooboy Humdrum, one note at a time
He speaks, but isn’t communicative. He broods and would rather be somewhere else. He wonders why he isn’t being left alone, and he hates been asked ‘what‘s the matter?’.
The world generally reacts to this version of myself as if something’s wrong. This version of myself - Mr. Hooboy Humdrum - does not respond well in return. The usual version of myself - Mr. Positivo Pepperdinkle - must be so different, that people cannot compute that it’s the same person. Now, writing this, I’m suddenly thinking of so many people I know who I’ve stared at in disbelief when I’ve seen their Saddus Sardonicus appear in place of their usual Gladys Gaylord.
I’ll try be more understanding next time, promise.
His body feels different. His eyes feel heavy, he feels like he’s on the brink of a fever. His breathing is shorter, his frame is heavy. He avoids mirrors.
To Hooboy Humdrum, everyone who spies him is a mirror. Hooboy doesn’t want to be seen, but the irony of his life is that usually he finds himself occupying the body he shares with Positivo Pepperdinkle in the busiest of places. This has a physical effect on Hooboy and Pepperdinkle’s shared body, which just deflates in response, like a half-empty balloon after a party in the corner (in the words of Ben Harper).
But there’s another way to see this: Perhaps Mr. Positivo Pepperdinkle is the one who occasionally runs away from scenarios that he finds uncomfortable. If he bolts, then who else remains to captain their shared body but Mr. Hooboy Humdrum?
Pepperdinkle and I should cut Mr. Humdrum some slack. The poor dude does he best in our absence!
He feels he knows the truth about the other guy; that he alone knows what they really are. He feels that in hiding, he’s saving them both.
Hooboy Humdrum would lecture Positivo Pepperdinkle, were they to ever sit across from each other at Dakshinayin snacking on podi idlis. His words would be strict, but he knows that their harshness would be for the best. He’d tell Pepperdinkle that he must awaken to the fact that he’s a fraud, and a dumb one at that, who’s constantly and recklessly exposing them both. He should take a page from Humdrum’s book and simply hide, spare himself the pain!
Were Positivo Pepperdinkle to take Hooboy out for Italian and lecture him over a nice pinotage, he’d badger Hooboy with philosophy, reminding him that - in truth - in the logic of some unseen, unifying field of being - they were indeed the same person. They would argue about finger pointing and Positivo would lean heavily on the adage about how-one-finger-points-at-the-other-while-the-other-four-point-at-the-self till the pizza with the gluten-free base arrives.
It’s a pain in the ass being him. It takes too much energy, tiring out the body he shares with the other guy. When he runs out of steam, he sometimes lies flat on his back waiting for the other guy to come and take over. If the other guy delays, he lifts his ass up and goes looking for him.
If you ask me, Mr. Positivo is feint-hearted in comparison to Mr. Humdrum. Hooboy is the one who’s working to find a way out of peril, even if he’s the architect of the said peril. That Pepperdinkle fucker is simply bolting whenever he feels like it.
A better version of the podi idli conversation between the two would be Humdrum learning the lightness of being from Positivo and Positivo learning some grit from Humdrum.
Hmmmm.
Dearest YUer, some of you know by now that whenever I write ‘Hmmmm’ in instalment, it usually means that I have managed to surprise myself in some way.
This little Jeykll and Hyde simulation experiment has made me think some, and then some more. I think Positivo Pepperdinkle and Hooboy Humdrum can coexist in harmony. I’d hate to see either of them disappear, but I have a feeling that neither are going anywhere.
They definitely need to understand each other better and I think they can.
In an ideal world, I would love for the world to understand their existence (and coexistence) better. But, as I’m seeing through my filmmaker’s eyes - the world around me is increasingly rejecting the world’s complexity and preferring to see it as a string of banal simplicities. I hear it in the feedback I receive to scripts. I feel it in filmgoers’ responses to films. I sense it in peoples’ interpretation of what’s happening in the news.
I watched the Cannes Grand Prix winning ‘All We Imagine as Light’ at the MAMI film festival yesterday, and - after experiencing its gentle exploration of the most-often ignored and unfathomable layers of human beings, I felt a lot better about how Hooboy Humdrum and Positivo Pepperdinkle simultaneously exist within me.
They bicker, they contradict themselves, they co-exist. As all our Humdrums and Positivos do - in all of us.
How wonderful!
Thanks for listening!
Lots of love
V
PS. I’d love to hear from your Hooboy Humdrum. I’d also love to hear from your Positivo Pepperdinkle. Both are welcome to join the conversation!