The Wit's Guide to Depression

Or, a sorry business at best

Melancholy, Depression’s Artsy Cousin, Edvard Munch, c.1892.

You might think a witty depressive would be better off than a regular depressive, but you would be wrong. Take Oscar Levant, the mid-century pianoman who glumly punned his way into a catatonic state.

“I had always resented sleep as an intrusion on my nocturnal self-pity.”
— Oscar Levant

Famous for insults like “He’ll double cross that bridge when he comes to it” and  “He’s a self made man. Who else would help?,” Levant once quipped that he began each day by brushing his teeth and sharpening his tongue. His definition of chutzpah as “that quality which enables a man who has murdered his mother and father to throw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan” has ascended attribution.

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
— Oscar Levant 

But as he sunk into the abyss, his cutting remarks bled from self-effacement into self-harm. “I was an inert, happy-go-lucky derelict who could have been created by Gogol,” he wrote in the second of three increasingly disjointed memoirs. “I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”

“He’s turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he’s miserable and depressed.”
— David Frost

The abject unceasing misery of depression is way too grim to dwell on, so let us acknowledge it as follows:

“I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits.”
— Samuel Johnson

…and move onto solutions. My spirits were buoyed this week by the discovery of the brilliant jazz historian Albert Murray, whomst I came across via this line in one of the Kurt Vonnegut graduation speeches collected in the book If This Isn’t Nice, What is?:

“He says the blues can’t drive depression clear out of a house, but they can drive it into the corners of any room where they are being played.”

Murray’s book Stomping The Blues is a history of the musical form but also an explanation of how the whole point of singing the blues is to expel them. As he explained in this interview with Wynton Marsalis:

“Well, the objective of the blues musician is to get rid of the blues; is to stomp the blues and of course you stomp the blues not with utmost violence but with elegance. The more elegant you can be, the more effective you’ll be at getting rid of the blues.”
— Albert Murray

It must be said that the clinically proven methods to stomp the blues are medication and therapy, and as the compound adjective “clinically proven” suggests, they work. For milder forms, I think of a tweet from early in the very first pandemic lockdown by Richard Warnica, a gifted feature writer at the Toronto Star: 

“When I was a new father, and very depressed, I came up with a bare minimum self-care plan I called Treat Yourself Like a Dog. Basically: eat at regular times, go for a walk, try to play. I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but I suspect it’s a lot of you: this works.”

This solid advice brings to mind one of the greatest lists of all time, written by the Rev. Sydney Smith (the star of GWQ No. 91) in a letter to his despondent friend Lady Georgiana Morpeth in 1820. 

It’s long but too good not to quote in full, mainly because it offers useful tips (amusing books, blazing fires), repeats the vital stuff (stay busy, not idle) and ever-so-gently acknowledges that human life is “a sorry business at best.” 

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th. Don't expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don't be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Sydney Smith

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Quote Vote

“Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.”
— Steven Wright

You guys, I really do want to work through the Five Stages, even if they have been discredited. We’ve done Denial and Depression, which leaves:

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Get Wit Quick No. 226 will soon be visiting the jazz section of Sellers & Newel, the first-rate secondhand bookstore on College Street in Toronto, to get a hard copy of Albert Murray’s Stomping the Blues, because skimming the digital version at the Internet Archive left me wanting more. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting aims for Category 3 on the Smith List. Endeavour to please everybody of every degree by tapping the❤️ below.