Telegrams of the Soul

Mood

“Today, for Christ’s sake, not the slightest little poem or sketch comes to mind, God knows, I’m just not in the mood!” is one of the lies you used to get away with a couple decades ago, say around 1870. Either you haven’t slept enough, or jealousy hampers your “mental machinery,” a ghastly impediment of all bodily functions, practically prompting “the murderer within,” or it’s your stomach, your worthy intestine, or “the rent,” “the tailor,” “the florist,” “the waiter,” or “ambition,” “envy,” “humiliation,” “injustices,” “disappointed expectation,” “the promise didn’t prove fruitful.” Everything, just everything is to blame, or rather for the rest of us, pleasantly impeded your creation of the slightest little poem or sketch! “Mood” is one of those common lies! The “unhampered” organism is always in the mood! You ought to see me when somebody in parting presses twenty Crowns into my hand! It happened once years ago, and the magazine to which I was at that time an active contributor, previously inactive, wrote me: “Please do put a lid on your perfidious productivity.” (Der ‘März,’ Munich, Kurt Aram, Editor!) “Mood” is nonsense, a lie, a swindle. It’s enough to spawn perplexed amazement in “psychopaths!” Not to be in a “mood?!” That’s impossible. There are only “somatic” causes, all matters of the mind, of the spirit are merely a necessary consequence of the overall machinery. Loosen the little screws, and the valves, and the “mood” must out! When the machinery’s in working order, the mind and spirit work to capacity! Often beyond capacity.