A Bird That Wants The Sky

Rejecting the 9-to-5 and capitalist conformity, Dolly Sen explores creative freedom, alternative living, philosophy, books and what it means to be human.

One thing I have realised my heart has finally found its place. Even my unruly mind dancing on burning, shifting sands, knows it is in the right place, knows it is living its best life, even if its rain does not feed thirst but dreams through holes the world sculpted my child brain into.

I have found myself through rejecting the 9-5, the capitalist grind. In the career of normality, I am redundant, I have tried the ‘normal’ job route, but no job has lasted more than a couple of years at most; most of them just lasted a few months before I wanted to shed my skin and break my bones. I just can’t stand the bullying, bullshit and obsequence of ordinary jobs. When I worked in mental health in the NHS and reported abuse or bad practice, and ostracised as a result, I could not countenance my complicit fellow humans or be around them. Even if there is no nasty stuff in the workplace, I am unable to stand doing meaningless, repetitive and mundane work, or being around boring people. It is like asking Iggy Pop to do a desk job. At some point, breaking point, I’d want to jump onto the desk, rip off my clothes and offer incantations to fluorescent lights to bring the sun. Fortuitously, people like my creative work and I have been able to make a living from it, and I derive meaning, joy, soulfulness and dreams from it. I am so lucky. I know there are billions of people who can’t stand their jobs or are paid so little, and it breaks my heart. Fuck the fucking fuckers of Capitalism.

Out of being an artist, I also understand I can only live the bohemian life, a life that rejects mainstream society and conformity, a life elevating creativity rather than financial accumulation. I don’t live in a garret, because my wife won’t let me put one on her bungalow- ha! I live simply and try not to be pretentious. I care about what it is to be human. I want to understand what it is to be human. I believe, as Socrates believed, that the unexamined life is not worth living. We enter life reading from scripts written by others. They are usually uninteresting or brutal, corrupted or meaningless. We need to know what our story is, the one that can’t be separated from our bones. We need to unravel our conditioning, the conditioning of people and systems that want us as unthinking slaves. We need to be still at times and think about thinking and being.

If you experience psychosis that rips up the linearity of your thinking and turns it into vicious circle collages, when there are flashes of clarity, you try to disentangle and make sense of it.

The intellectual life, that of pursuing ideas, truth, of satiating curiosity; and the philosophical life, can be transcendental. My life has been hard, but as I have said to a few people: based on the sole act of reading, my life has been worth it. Books do save lives. Books redirect thoughts and actions down so many more roads than it would otherwise travel. Those who can read but choose not to, I cannot understand. It’s like being a bird and wanting no skies.

Humanness is a puzzle, a road that seemingly goes nowhere, but the artistic, intellectual and philosophical life is an interesting ride, sometimes taking you into the clouds, touching the far walls of your being. You understand why we have to invent gods, because divine sparks light up dark skies like fireworks and dancing stars. I am flying even when I am on my knees.