The beauty of a restless mind

I’ve spent the last few weeks in the company of people who have lost their heads – or lost them. In the autobiography of Sinéad O’Connor Memories, The 54-year-old singer focuses on life marked by child abuse, abandonment and long periods in the sanatorium. The latest period of insanity – according to his diagnosis, was caused by a poorly prepared hysterectomy after a psychosis caused by menopause – was found in institutions and abroad for six years. Much of his life is forever clouded; he wrote the book in two sessions, “in the walnut house” on either side of his time, as he calls it.

However, the woman was once sent into cultural exile while pretending to be taking a picture of Pope John Paul II. Saturday Night Live it’s still great. She distorts the industry that she used to throw in as a “crazy lady” with destructive views, and in her madness a woman who is narrowly deceived appears.

Also on its latest Netflix special, Bo Burnham: Inside, who wrote, performed, directed and edited, explores the anxiety created by the comedian after his lightning fame and the suicidal feelings he often puts into the song. As a teenager who found international recognition through streaming YouTube sketches from his bedroom, Burnham remembered thousands of thousands of thousands of years old Tom Lehrer.

Inside it’s an inner odyssey where she harmonizes mental illness, cultural wars, and the pandemic experience with black humor and weird universal themes: my favorite is the sketch, the sketch that gives her the urge to decide in junior school. Whether or not Aladdin will endure the birthday party and the social media crowd for cultural awareness.

Finally, in a year Father, Florian ZellerThe French writer made his directorial debut, directing Anthony Hopkins to the Oscars in an adaptation of his play on Alzheimer’s, filling the screen with a Polanski-like announcement, creating an atmosphere that feels anomic and confusing as the protagonist. .

Although some of these projects were completed and executed before Covid, they are likely to form a set of creations that will be judged within the “pandemic art” genre.

Seeing Father, A performance of the play, which was produced in 2012, Zeller seemed to me to be incredibly familiar with the depiction of the capture – perfectly repeating the horror of mindless repetition and living in a rapidly shrinking world. Sinéad O’Connor writes with tremendous clarity about the agoraphobia he now feels has spent a long time in solitude, and how he would rather be at home despite trying to socialize. Bo Burnham ends up dramatizing his exit from the claustrophobic space where his material has worked for a year, when he tries to leave the door he finds himself shivering in front of a spotlight.

It is ironic, perhaps, that these studies of psychosis, misery, and brain functioning should have greater force than the sharp hoopla that comes with returning to normal life. I shuddered to read the New York magazine’s recommendation on “The Return of FOMO,” a recent cover story devoted to the return of social anxiety that could have been “lost” in the pandemic.

The irony, perhaps, is that these studies of psychosis should be much more powerful than the hoopla that comes with returning to normal life.

“FOMO may have been in hibernation for a while,” wrote Matthew Schneier, “but we may now be on our way to a new golden age by trying to make up for a lost year by doing more than ever…. , are you on the list, can you get a table? “catechism; plan performance”. Eurgh. Although I felt pretty euphoric about Sinéad O’Connor, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the uproar I hoped to be on the right list.

In the US, or perhaps the New York way of thinking, the pandemic is now considered almost as old news. “Now that Covid is behind it. . . ”I have been reading emails from my colleagues in the US in recent weeks. America is believed to have wiped out the virus. To make the constitution stronger, like no one else we can predict #hotgirlsummer. If we want to believe in new underground advertising couplets, we’ll start a tumultuous summer in scenes reminiscent of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new musical film. At heights.

For now, I’m much more comfortable in the company of the excluded. “Nutjobs,” as O’Connor allows himself to describe himself, is much more interesting to say. This long pause in production has allowed for strong introspection. I hope it will be time to do some great new work.

After all, Alfred Hitchcock’s genius may be a “visual poet of anxiety and accident,” as suggested in Edward White’s new biography Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Was blamed on the excessive fears he created during adolescence in World War I. Paranoia and the panic of almost everything fueled him to throw about 50 films. As the pandemic meme reminds us, it was produced by Shakespeare King Lear in a year of plague, perhaps in his forties.

Is Bo Burnham going to be our Covid Bard? Maybe not, but Inside it is an excellent study of the mind mixed in on social media. Also, with his portrayal of “madness,” O’Connor becomes this year’s most difficult audience.

Send an email to Jo jo.ellison@ft.com

Continue @FTLifeArts Discover our latest stories on Twitter for the first time