THE FROSTED PANE AGAIN
2026-03-07
THE FROSTED PANE
Driving across Witney today my music player randomly selected Pagan Wanderer
Lu's The Frosted Pane. Just like the first time, I was absolutely wrecked by
the heartwrenching lines that show the bout of depression he's singing about
is interminable, as the seasons pass with him still unable to see the world in
the clarity and colour he'd enjoyed before:
>
> Trick or treaters
> I see them through the frosted pane
> Carol singers
> I see them through the frosted pane
> My wife and daughter
> I see them through the frosted pane
Probably it wouldn't have hit me so hard, but things have been tough lately.
There've been plenty of times (not always the obvious ones) over the last few
weeks where my "healthier" coping strategies haven't really pulled their
weight and I've definitely found myself resorting to flumping, overeating, or
"just one more glass of wine" (By the metrics, I'm doing better now, on F-Day
plus 22, than I was earlier on: even with Lu's successful attempt to bring me
to tears this afternoon, I'm now crying fewer days than not, so that's a win,
right?).
IMG Blurred monochrome silhouettes visible through frosted windows.
A PHILOSOPHY OF DEPRESSION
The experience reminded me of a blog post published about four-and-a-half
years before the death of David Bowie (Why do I mention Bowie's death? It
features in the first line of the song and acts as an anchor in time to the
events it describes, as well - perhaps - as a catalyst.). A philosophy of
depression, published pseudonymously by "malbo21", describes the strategies
the author finds successful in managing their depression.
>
> If you believe it’s the tree in your neighbour’s garden that’s giving you
depression then you can’t cut it down. You can’t ask the neighbour to cut it
down. So maybe you start to resent the neighbour? You resent the way he puts
out his bins. You resent the way he parks his car. The way he laughs all the
time and looks happy. You resent the fact that your friends don’t agree what a
dick your neighbour is. Stupid friends, they’re just like him – with their
laughter, and car parking and bin putting out. Wankers.
> So maybe it’s your friends who are making you depressed as well? After all
you do seem to be depressed whenever you’re around them… You remember that one
occasion that you were out when everyone else was having a good time and you
just wanted them all to fuck right off. You sat there thinking what unbearable
idiots they all were. And yeah sure, you were tired, you were a bit drunk,
you’d had a stressful day… but those things have happened before and you were
fine. So it mustn’t have been those factore, it must mean either that your
friends are awful irritating people, or that some external force called
‘depression’ is manifesting itself via your friends, your neighbour, and that
fucking tree!
Looking back on it with the experience of, y'know, studying for a foundation
degree in counselling and psychotherapy in the interim, the fundamental
strategy suggested here might be described as self-reflection, internalising
your locus of evaluation, and developing your authentic self. A Rogerian hat
trick, and exactly the kind of uplifting humanistic approach I might expect
from somebody with malbo21's history (Obviously the author's using a pseudonym
for anonymity, but I'm pretty confident that I could pick them out of a
line-up of "everybody I ever helped train to volunteer on an emotional support
helpline that happened to be underpinned by similar psychological principles",
possibly with my eyes closed.).
>
> Chopping down the tree is as easy as getting your ass in the garden. Feeling
better about the tree is harder, but it might lead to greater insight and to
genuinely solving the problem.
That's a simplification. I don't intend to minimise it! The post's still
great, and it's reinforced by some excellent examples and metaphors. Putting
fancy words on it doesn't undermine it. Humanistic psychotherapy is of that
special category of magic that still works even when you know the secret!
But fucking hell, having a human brain's hard sometimes, right?
NORMAL LIFE
Mostly, I just want my normal life back. For a while there, I felt like I'd
got shit mostly figured-out. Ruth jokes that I'm the kind of person who likes
to carve out a comfortable rut that they can sit in, and while she's mostly
used it as a metaphor for my tendency to find a job I love and then stop
considering the possibility that there might be a better one... I think
there's an analogy there for the rest of my life, too.
IMG A man in a dark tunnel, captioned "you can't spell ROUTINE without R U T".
I like to know what I'm doing and where I'm living a week from now. I like to
know where my stuff is. I like to have my own space and make my own mark on
it. And while I also like to explore and adventure and to be surprised, I like
to do so on my own terms: I like to be able to "turn off" the crazy-times. If
that's being-in-a-rut, then yeah: I like being in a rut.
But all the disruption in my life right now doesn't give me that feeling. It
makes me feel unsafe and unsettled to not know where I'll be living in the
near future, or how it'll be paid-for. It leaves me uneasy to have my routine
broken, re-cast, and broken again: even if it's just little things like...
normally, I try to get myself 5-10 minutes of piano practice on weekdays,
while my lunch heats. But the piano lives on the ground floor and it's not in
its best state and even if it were... that's not where I am.
When supporting a person in emotional crisis, I like to consider their window
of future vision. A person in the most-critical of distress might not be able
to tell you what they'll do tomorrow, because they struggle to imagine a
tomorrow in which they still exist. As their distress eases, they expand their
window to be able to see past hours, then past days, eventually past weeks and
months: to be able to plan a future that has a place for them in it.
Distress causes a person to close their own window. But uncertainty in your
life closes it for you. The reason I don't know where I'll live (or work,
given that I work from home!) in two weeks is because, well, that's uncertain!
It is, at least, easier to be rational about a window of future vision that's
being closed by an external factor... but it still isn't a pleasant feeling.
Ugh.
A DIM PLACE
All of which is to say, I guess... thanks, Spotify and Pagan Wanderer Lu?
(Clearly this whole thing is the result of an RNG/PWL collusion!) Thanks for
throwing a stumbling block right in front of me when I was already limping.
Thanks for tripping me up such that I landed on a 15-year-old blog post,
written from a dark place, and had to look back on it from a somewhat dim
(This bit is a coded way of saying "no, I don't think I'm depressed, just...
fragile". This footnote is a non-coded way of saying the same thing. Footnotes
are great. Why don't Andy's lyrics come with footnotes, hmm?) place of my own.
There's light at the end of the tunnel in the saga of our flood. My brain just
lags a little behind, I guess.
LINKS
HTML Pagan Wanderer Lu
HTML The Frosted Pane
DIR The first time
HTML Things
HTML Have
HTML Been
HTML Tough
DIR Lately
HTML The obvious ones
DIR My "healthier" coping strategies
HTML Flumping
HTML Overeating
HTML A philosophy of depression
HTML I just want my normal life back
HTML Ruth