WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO STAY MAD
Ithink it was the Dalai Lama who famously said “Maintain your rage”, and God damn it, he was right. Anger, properly vented, can achieve miracles, especially when released at high pressure and pointed directly at the heart or head of whoever or whatever is causing the problem. Of course, these days the PC police are out in force with their daffodils, bludgeoning anyone to sleep who seems the slightest bit cross or shouty, but getting Mad as Hell occasionally has throughout history achieved great things for humanity; huge strides forward for not only equality and fraternity but also liberty and the pursuit of happiness were achieved not because of reasoned discussion leading to détente, but because people lost their tiny minds and starting throwing things.
You think the French Revolution would have been so effective if the peasants had sat down for a cup of tea with Louis XVI instead of cutting his head off? No, my friends, no. And who can name any great invention that was not the result of blind fury? Samuel Morse, who discovered Morse code, did so in a fit of pique because he couldn’t find his car keys one evening. His wife was visiting an aunt almost a mile away and Samuel, hoarse from screaming to attract her attention, started banging a frying pan on the telephone pole out the front of his house. One thing led to another and hey presto: mass communication.
Ditto the great works of art that we all know and love. Mozart’s The Magic Flute was composed during a 12-hour temper tantrum over whether the dog should be allowed to watch television; da Vinci, following an argument with a neighbour about an overgrown hedge, painted the Mona Lisa when he stormed into his shed and hurled a bucket of grease at a wall; the ballet Giselle, which has enchanted audiences around the world since it premiered at du Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier, Paris in 1841 was never choreographed and has always been performed by dancers who are just stomping around the stage because they are feeling a bit crabby from low blood sugar.
So the next time your boss tells you to cool it, or a judge orders you be manacled in the dock, just remember that your craziness, if properly harnessed and yoked to a greater good, can move mountains. Literally. When Krakatoa blew its stack back in 1883 it wasn’t because of any highfalutin geology, it was because it had simply had enough and, fed up with being a boring old mountain that did nothing all day but sit around getting climbed by the Javanese, it thought, “To hell with it,” and exploded. Tectonic plates shifted and not only did the mountain move 12 inches to the east, it now identifies as a volcano and couldn’t be happier, freer, more equal (compared with other volcanos anyway) or full of brotherly/sisterly love. •