Untitled [They realized that their capacity...]
They realized that their capacity for not feeling lonely carried a very real price, which was the threat of feeling nothing at all – so reads the caption beneath this painting of four young men. Forest, perhaps summertime, they are together, and are perhaps also zonked together. You clearly notice how blissful their eyes and bodies are. But as that wording warns us, the price for not feeling lonely at last is desensitisation: feeling nothing at all. Sometimes joy is confused with feeling nothing negative, with holding back anger, sadness, fear, or disgust. In the psychiatrist Antoni Kępiński’s practice, he often quoted one Kraków-based patient: “I feel miserable because I’ve lost my sadness”. Joy had been his cherished goal, but it all turned sour.
