There's a big difference between feeling depressed and suffering from depression. If you're feeling depressed it's a temporary thing that you'll usually pull out of within a few days, after the effects of whatever it was that caused you to feel down wear off. Clinical depression, on the other hand, is a permanent condition that some people cope with their whole lives. Its insidious as it can emotionally and psychologically cripple you, leaving you bed ridden as surely as if you suffered from some physically debilitating disease.
You are overcome by a lassitude of such magnitude that you eventually don't see the point in getting out of bed. While there are all sorts of scientific explanations for what happens to the brain because of depression - hormonal imbalances and various chemicals either not reaching the brain in sufficient quantity or too much arriving all at once - it's not certain whether or not this merely describes what's going on in a depressed brain or if these are causes of depression. While it's true that the medication used to treat depression works on flat lining emotional responses by inhibiting certain chemicals, they are not cures for the ailment and barely even treat the symptoms.
In a society where feelings are frowned upon to the point that we're taught to repress them from an early age, there's a lot of stuff that gets bottled up inside. Most cases of depression are as result of that bottle coming uncorked and the person being overwhelmed. The chronically depressed person deals with that permanently, unlike the majority. They haven't shut down their ability to feel, and without an avenue to express what that does to them, they fry. The so called "artistic temperament" is in actual fact a creative person's ongoing struggle with depression as they search for the means to express what they are feeling. 
I suppose this must seem like an odd way to start off a CD review, with a dissertation on depression, but Jake La Botz's latest release on his own Charnel Ground Records label, Sing This To Yourself And Other Suggestions For A Personal Apocalypse is as lucid and honest examination of the subject as you'll hear anywhere. Without a trace of self-pity or melodrama the eleven songs on Sing This To Yourself explore and describe what a person going through depression experiences. While some might wonder at the rationale behind creating a recording of songs about depression, La Botz's explanation of "My hope is that these songs could be a comfort to those who are struggling" is worth remembering.
Article comments