One of those hypomanic episodes

Esen Küçüktütüncü
2 min readNov 11, 2020

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I do suspect that I have hypomanic episodes. I’m pretty sure I’m in one right now. It’s that you can follow the way your mind moves. Those little hops that happen between ideas or sentences tell you subtly how weird and uncanny they actually are.

I’m not sure if I brought it to myself. I’ve always fantasized about being crazy, from a young age. The thing that made it appealing was lack of responsibility on the things you do. The sheer liberty of being as you wish and people having no choice but to abide to you. The other thing was my assumption that “to be an artist you have to be crazy” taking things into the extremes was the rule of thumb for being and artist. I wonder if it still is that way, I mean according to my merit of artistic success.

I cried when I saw the Las Meninas of Picasso. It was unexpected, I’ve never cried infront of an art piece. I remember distinctly our cultural history professor back in Turkey told us the of the time she first saw an original Jackson Pollock. How she couldn’t move her limbs and eventually had to sit down to regulate her breathing. I was fascinated when I first heard it but than the rationale kicked in and I found it a little exaggerated. But then again, here I was looking at a room full of Las Meninas and a few Spaniards and I couldn’t stop the tears falling from my eyes.

I think it was the level of obsession that struck me the most. The act of waking every morning with the idea of another alternative. The endless possibilities of recreating the masterpiece by Velasquez and the strength of not being crushed under that big rock of possibilities but to be carried miles by it.

Having a mask might have helped with crying, the anonymity has allowed me to do all sorts of weird stuff in public to be honest. Same goes with the online lectures or gatherings, not that I do anything to sabotage what is going on but on the opposite I become this highly motivational and participatory being who doesn’t hold back to ask question, in the risk of looking like a fool.

That has been the main drive of my life, if you can call it that. Whatever you do, don’t look like a fool.

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Esen Küçüktütüncü
Esen Küçüktütüncü

Written by Esen Küçüktütüncü

Researcher in affective computing, consciousness and the mind. Also happens to cycle, a lot. www.esenka.co