A personal reflection on silence, survival,
and the unmasked life behind my memoir, Crackmask.
| There are moments in life when the world feels too loud to bear, when the noise presses in from every direction, demanding my attention, my outrage, or my allegiance. I’ve lived through enough chaos to recognise that feeling instantly. It’s the same pressure I felt as a boy in the places where my life first cracked, the same suffocating noise that followed me through derelict ships, circus tents, psychiatric wards, and refugee camps. Noise has a way of trying to claim you. Perhaps that’s why silence became my oldest companion. Not long ago, I was talking with my old Siamese Buddhist friend, a man who understands silence the way some people understand scripture. Our conversations drift like slow rivers, circling the same questions humans have asked for centuries. On this particular afternoon, we found ourselves speaking about belief, and I mentioned my fondness for the number 42. Not as a cosmic truth, but as a small reminder that meaning is something we craft ourselves from the rubble of our own experience. |  |
He smiled, then asked how I manage to stay sane while living in the West, where the world seems to buckle under the weight of greed, noise, and the endless theatre of power. It wasn’t a challenge. It was a genuine question, the kind asked by someone who has watched the world exhaust itself in much the same ways I have.
My answer was simple, though it took me decades to learn it: I stay sane by refusing to let the world script my mind for me.
I stepped away from the screens long ago. I haven’t owned a television for years, and the last time I surrendered myself to a blockbuster film was back when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Soldier Blue were still echoing through cinemas. I never learned the rituals of sports, never felt the pull of crowds chanting for someone else’s victory. I realised early on that the noise of the world is not neutral; it filled the cracks before I even knew they were there. And I have had enough cracks in my life to know that I must choose carefully what fills them.
This stepping away is not an escape. It’s a kind of unmasking, the same unmasking that became the spine of Crackmask. Since I stripped away the distractions, the noise, the borrowed opinions, I have been left with something raw and unsettling: myself. My own thoughts, history and the shadows I left behind. And if I sit with them long enough, something unexpected happens. The shadows soften while the noise fades. The fractures stop being places of shame and become places where the light can finally get in.
My answer was simple, though it took me decades to learn it: I stay sane by refusing to let the world script my mind for me.
I stepped away from the screens long ago. I haven’t owned a television for years, and the last time I surrendered myself to a blockbuster film was back when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Soldier Blue were still echoing through cinemas. I never learned the rituals of sports, never felt the pull of crowds chanting for someone else’s victory. I realised early on that the noise of the world is not neutral; it filled the cracks before I even knew they were there. And I have had enough cracks in my life to know that I must choose carefully what fills them.
This stepping away is not an escape. It’s a kind of unmasking, the same unmasking that became the spine of Crackmask. Since I stripped away the distractions, the noise, the borrowed opinions, I have been left with something raw and unsettling: myself. My own thoughts, history and the shadows I left behind. And if I sit with them long enough, something unexpected happens. The shadows soften while the noise fades. The fractures stop being places of shame and become places where the light can finally get in.
 “Lowry saw the fractures in people. I’ve spent a lifetime learning to live with mine.” | Silence, I’ve learned, is not empty. It is a room where truth can breathe. It is the same silence that carried me through the hardest chapters of my life, the ones I’ve written about and the ones I haven’t yet found the courage to share. It is the silence that taught me how to listen, not to the world, but to the small, stubborn voice inside that refuses to be extinguished. People often imagine sanity as a fortress, something you must defend against the world’s chaos. But I’ve come to see it differently. Sanity is not a battle. It is a choice. A quiet, daily choice. It is the decision to step back from the noise, to breathe air that has not been filtered through a screen or a headline. It is the willingness to let the cracks show, to let the light find its way through them, to trust that the parts of me that once felt broken might actually be the parts that keep me human. My friend nodded when I finished, as if he already knew the answer before he asked. Perhaps he did. Perhaps we all do, somewhere beneath the noise. Sanity, for me, is simply the quiet air I choose to breathe. And maybe that is all any of us can do, choose our air, choose our silence, choose the truths that help us stay whole in a world that keeps trying to pull us apart. |
A gentle invitation... If something in these words resonates, if you recognise the cracks, the silence, or the stubborn light that keeps returning, you’re welcome to stay connected. I share occasional essays, fragments, and reflections as Crackmask moves toward publication, and as the larger story continues to unfold.
You can leave your details on the Contact page if you’d like to follow along. (Or just Email Eddie if you can't be arsed with the contact page)
You can leave your details on the Contact page if you’d like to follow along. (Or just Email Eddie if you can't be arsed with the contact page)
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