Chemical brothers
Setting sun (setting – grave yard 2003)
Delusions sometimes come in the form of songs. This Chemical Brothers song “Setting sun” takes me back to the September of 2003. My father had been admitted into a psychiatric hospital after a painful (for all concerned) separation from my Mum. I have been facing my own battles as I had been diagnosed schizophrenic only 2 years before. it was a hugely stressful time for me and I had also fallen out with a friend and potential love interest.
In the early September the sun was still shining and is still warm but the leaves were starting to change to a brown tint the promise of autumn chill was on it’s way. All the stress of that and the fact I had with my Psychiatrist’s consent looked to come off my medication. Made me not only depressed but in a rapid cycling spiral like one of those leaves rising and falling with my mood like that leaf upon the wind. There was no way to escape the onset of psychosis and I hurtled towards my fate like a steam train with no brakes speeding towards a signal which was coloured neon red.
In those days I lodged with my boss Dave who had taken me in after my various troubles and dramas with my illness. Anyway he had his Mum staying I remember waking up to strange smells probably forms of smell that were delusions I believed i had heightened sense and my messiah or Jesus complex was rearing it’s ugly head. My Psychosis took me out on Sunday afternoon stroll to the graveyard on the hill by our old victorian gothic style church. Me being me decided in my psychotic state decided that me being Jesus should raise the dead from their graves. This was after I saw that some of the graves had been vandalised. I remember lifting one the head stones back on to it’s other piece I have no idea how I managed to do this. Maybe it was the adrenalin or the chemical imbalance in my brain and body.
I prayed to father God to restore these spirits to their bodies. It of course didn’t happen and made me feel even worse. When you are ill you cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Maybe I was being tested. After praying many times I gave up and laid myself in the corner of the graveyard out of the way from the passers by. I thought I was Jesus and that lead me down the path of being extremely paranoid of being found out and killed. I believed that anyone with the powers of God would be a threat to governments and the people and they would try to suppress or kill me!
I laid with my left arm clutching my stomach and my right arm holding a blade that I imagined in my mind. It felt like my world was ending and I wanted to die. Thats the type of mental pain psychosis brings. The cavernous lows of being buried in the cave of your mind so soon after thinking you have super powers and can raise the dead. I had real reasons to feel this way having seen my Dad struggling with psychosis as well and being medicated. There is nothing worse than being trapped in stressful situations only that of being trapped in your own unkind mind which vilifies you for not being good enough to be human let alone a god.
I had nothing left to give life and the people I loved but the sacrifice of my body and soul I would lay on the grass still dry from the summer sun and die…
However some one answered my prayers to God his dog was the first to come up to me and he gingerly followed. His name was Jon although I believed he was the devil come to tempt me. He asked me who I was and I swear to you even through the years that have passed one of the things I said was “That my body was young but my mind was very old” this was in line with what I had been taught mostly at Sunday school at my local church. Jesus was after all the word of god and had existed throughout time. Maybe if you read the lyrics at the bottom of this blog you will see that lyrics show the devil saying that rather than Jesus but maybe Jesus and the devil are in fact one and the same after all lucifer and Jesus both are bringers of light and gods favourite sons. Anyway I digress.
Me and John talked for a long time and I had visions like the song said. Maybe when you are mad or in madness there can be seen some truth in the insanity that is the world we live in. He I soon realised was very drunk and when he took me to his house down the road to get some help for me his partner who was a nurse and was very drunk also they offered me some alcohol. They didn’t know my back story and thought I was high on drugs.
Eventually Dave and Phil (my friend and neighbour arrived after they managed to get me to remember Dave’s home phone number but Jon and Liz thought there was something dodgy about my friends maybe it was the fact that I was acting so irrationally and that the situation was out of hand. But I am thankful that after an hour of speaking to Phil and Dave they let me go with them. I am also thankful to Jon the good samaritan for his help that day because If he hadn’t of found me I don’t know what would have happed later on with me in that state.
However this part is probably down to Jon being drunk but her swore that he saw a black blade in my hand when he found me and thought that with me clutching my stomach that I stabbed myself…
You’re the devil in me I brought in from the cold
You said your body was young but your mind was very old
You’re coming on strong and I like the way
The visions we had have faded away
You’re part of a life I’ve never had
I’ll tell you that it’s just too bad
You’re coming on strong
You’re showing your colour
Like a setting sun
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Where do I start
Where do I begin
