For this installment of Ponytail Culture Club, I’d like to point your attention to the best quarantine monologue on the internet, 'The Madness' by Chris Enss. She poured her heart out about life in lockdown, from the dark depths of her closet. It's honesty at its comedic best, and the video brought me to tears laughing. Watching her spill her guts about her husband's shortcomings, helped me feel a little less guilty about wanting to murder parents in past weeks. Phew, I’m not alone.
Naively, I thought sharing the same roof with my folks ‘til the zombie apocalypse blew over was a sweet idea. “We’re all adults?” I said to myself, “surely we have our shit together enough to be civil to each other for a while?” How wrong I was. In fact, I hadn’t done this since I was 18, and I didn’t know how long exactly we were supposed to be bunkered down for. In hindsight, I could have just asked myself how long a piece of string was.
We hadn’t even made it a week before the whining and bickering started sprouting their sticky stalks through the pavement between ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight’. The repetitiveness of the media didn’t help either. That one-liner, "we’re in this together" haunted me day-to-day like a smartphone alarm clock. But what if I don’t want to be in this together anymore!?
We all have a dark side that loves to surface at the most inconvenient of times, no matter how deep you thought you burried it. That, my friends, makes life all the more interesting. It’s those tasty bits that stick to the bottom of an old fry pan. It's the depth of color that shadows offer to happy pastel hues.
My theory is that anger, sadness, and their beautifully moody friends are wise energies, not to be ignored. If forgotten, we wouldn’t have art, music, comedy, dance, literature, rap, nor poetry. Those who do pay attention to these dark energies, are a special few who humbly remind us of the richness that the life offers through their art.
Chris Enss eloquently reminded me of my dark side in this monologue that she posted on her personal Facebook page. I steam-rolled along the floor in belly-cramping laughter from her artilery of truth-bombs. Ahhh… a moment where my 'feels' were a little lighter. My urges to snarl and bark at those who came to close, had momentarily dissolved. I had floated up above my weather system of feelings, just for a teeny second, before I fell back down on my ass to lecture my dad for rudely interrupting. That, is the bittersweet human experience.
Words by Lauren Yates. Video from Chris Enss' Facebook Page.
