In the beginning of puberty, I had a brief compulsive episode, maybe it was the oversensitivity of my adolescent brain or maybe it was due to hormonal changes. I remember waking up at night with an almost irresistible urge to do a headstand. I’ve always been terrible at gymnastics, so it was out of the question to actually do one, but I still recall how stressful it was to resist the overpowering sensation.
While there were other compulsive thoughts I still remember, the absurdity of this one has stuck in my head. Why should I feel compelled to stand on my head?
The opening of Georg Büchner’s fragment Lenz always felt very relatable in this sense:
On the 20th of January, Lenz went across the mountains. The summits and the high slopes covered with snow, grey stones all the way down to the valleys, green plains, rocks and pine trees. It was damp and cold; water trickled down the rocks and gushed over the path. The branches of the pine trees drooped heavily in the moist air. Grey clouds travelled in the sky, but all was so dense – and then the mist rose like steam, slow and clammy, climbed through the shrubs, so lazy, so awkward. Indifferently he moved on; the way did not matter to him, up or down. He felt no tiredness, only sometimes it struck him as unpleasant that he could not walk on his head.
The thought of walking on his head comes up so unexpectedly after the description of the landscape. Maybe it’s because, when you walk on your head, the sky becomes an abyss below your feet.
Today I’m still very much unable to do a headstand, but sometimes I like to hang my head over the side of the sofa and lift my legs in the air. I’m always struck by how radically the perspective shifts. Once you stop seeing things through gravity-accustomed eyes, everything becomes twisted. The ceiling becomes a floor, doorframes turn into obstacles, and windows begin to shelter you from the sheer drop beyond.
Many painters, myself included, like to turn paintings around and look at them upside down. It’s amazing how instantly this creates a distance between yourself and the surface you’ve been staring at while painting. You can see the image through entirely new eyes.
Hounds of Love by Kate Bush has been one of my favorite albums for as long as I can remember. Beneath its seeming naivety, it’s a work of great conceptual depth and incredible storytelling. On the B side, titled The Ninth Wave, she tells the story of a woman who survives a shipwreck and is floating in the water, waiting to be rescued. At first, she resists the urge to fall asleep. But in the second song, Under Ice, the scene turns surreal. As sleep takes over, different sensations blend with the protagonist’s situation of being lost at sea. Bush imagines skating across ice and suddenly becomes aware of herself trapped beneath it, trying to get out.
It’s almost like a second self: one above, one below, inverted, with the surface of the ice as a pivot point. A great shift of perspective.
I broke into the ice on a river once, as a child. We were taking a winter walk in the forest with my family. My brothers and I were playing with the ice forming on a creek, throwing stones at it. I picked up a long stick and started poking the ice from the embankment. When the stick broke through the surface, I lost my balance and fell in. I can still remember that the shock made the water actually feel warm.
Of course, a reflection on ice or water is no more an abyss than the sky beneath your feet during a headstand. In my case, the abyss was only knee-deep. Still, you never quite know what’s hiding beneath a reflective surface.
