Are You An Emotional Murderer?

If we study the past we might not repeat it, we’re told, so history’s important — though we do repeat it, because the compulsion to repeat is not just an individual matter and mostly not voluntary. We return and return to familiar places, ideas, and beliefs, with enthusiasm, naiveté, and in paroxysms…The murderer returns to the scene of the crime, fascinated, horrified by the act, full of guilt and pleasure and fear.

Over the weekend I read The Downtown Art Book: The New York Art Scene 1974–1984, which is an excellent book and one I highly recommend. I think it’s out of print (I borrowed a copy from Some Man, thanks Man), but I saw a few used copies here.

The above quotation is from a Lynne Tillman essay that I cannot stop thinking about. It made me wonder whether this is true of all history — I think Tillman is right that the compulsion to repeat is universal, as the American people prepare for another Clinton vs. Bush election — but I wanted to apply this thought to our personal histories.

Over the weekend I spent some time with friends having conversations we’ve already had, variations on old themes: you know, normal Sunday morning feelings about exes of the romantic or friendly variety, loss and grief of all kinds being our preferred poison. I’d love to be the kind of person who can be sad for a bit and then move on, but nope!!! I love my sadness and nurture it like a sweet baby kitten or something equally worth snuggling.

There is something very comforting about repetition, about the circular thinking that returns us again and again to the scene of our emotional crimes. Most of those Sunday morning feelings conversations center around the pain inflicted on us by other people, but I want to at least try to recognize when I’ve been an accomplice. I guess in this metaphor we’re all murderers who killed our feelings when we ended it with this person, or when that person ended it with us. And we keep returning to those moments because of the perverse pleasure that comes from feeling bad rather than abandoning the…corpse. I don’t know, this metaphor is falling apart.

But yeah, sometimes having the same conversation or indulging in the same feeling over and over again doesn’t feel like a choice; it feels like the natural flow of my brain, and I’m powerless to resist. But I’d still like to think I could break the cycle, and go on the lam.