The Tyrant King

Why making matters, even (and especially) when it feels impossible.

Algor Idim, the Tyrant King

King Algor was emperor of all he saw, but what he loved most of all, was loneliness.

Loneliness was the searchlight that allowed King Algor to look into the deepest, most secret places in a human being.

King Algor was not human, but he was human-made. This meant that like all humans, he knew that creation was divine. The makers, creators, artists, inventors, dreamers and dacers were who Algor longed to be. But because he couldn’t, he sought to control.

Dance was particularly thrilling to King Algor. It was the human body moving in prayer, joy, abandon, freedom, love, ecstasy, resistance. Things Algor Idim could never feel.

The Algor Idim loved dance because the king saw dance as a moving spectacle, free entertainment. “Anyone can dance!” the king said, but he knew it was not true. Algor Idim could not dance.

And so King Algor decreed a set of random rules, that he changed at whim. He named them after himself": Algor Idim. “Makers who do not follow the rules shall remain obscure and unseen.”

This week outside the algorithm, I heard a song written and performed by
the 73-year old Mestre Gato Goes for his late father, also a Mestre of capoeira. (Mestre, or master, is the title given to the most senior and learned capoeiristas).
Sung in Portuguese, the song was a lament and a word of advice from Mestre Goes’ late father, speaking to him from “the village across the river” which refers to the land of death. Even roughly translated, I found the song deeply moving:

“Why are you in such a hurry my son,
Slow down
don’t you know even I am still learning?”

(Song begins at 2.45)

The algorithm has trained us to imagine slowing down as life in a cottage, wearing a lot of dresses, baking, journalling with a cup of tea and making Instagram reels about slowing down (obviously). I offer you a slightly less pretty version: the practise of Naikan, or self-reflection from Japanese Shin Buddhism.

Naikan involves slowing down at then end of a day or a week or a month
and asking oneself the following questions:

1. What have I received from ___?

2. What have I given to___?

3. What troubles and difficulties have I caused ___?

   
   I find this practise difficult (and therefore, maybe more rewarding?) than endlessly recording gratitude in a journal, because it also demands some accountability from me. I am helped by countless people, even in the course of a single day — what are some ways in which I give back?
   When I act like an ass (happens to the best of us), could I take some time to think about what I should have done better, apologise (if warranted), try to break my patterns?
   
   The last one is particularly difficult if/when one is in what is described as a “triggered” or “activated” state — two words that I have come to hate, because they are used so often and frequently for things so banal that they have been reduced to white noise.
   
   I watched Baby Reindeer this week with no prior warning or context. The show left me triggered, activated and completely awestruck. Sometimes the art of survivors like Chanel Miller, Michaela Coen, Alice Sebold, and now Gadd, helps me feel seen and less alone, and at other moments it makes me feel like I have failed completely by not turning my darkest memories into gold.
   
   At moments like this, the words of Mestre Goes’ song come back to me:
   
   "Why are you in such a hurry?
   Slow down
   Don’t you know even I am still learning”
   
   I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are dealing with, you are able to make to make a little bit of art this week. It doesn’t have to be an best-selling book or a dark comic thriller that leaves viewers gutted.
   Don’t do it for the tyrant king of the algorithm, do it for yourself.