Taken together, these studies suggest that at times depressed people are ‘sadder but wiser’ than nondepressed people. Nondepressed people succumb to cognitive illusions that enable them to see both themselves and their environment with a rosy glow. — Lauren B. Alloy and Lyn Y. Abramson, Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?

His despair lay under a distinct hope; his overwhelming melancholy fed into a supple creative power, which allowed him not merely to see the truth of his circumstances but to express it in a stirring, meaningful way. — Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Great Depression

In their 1979 study, Alloy and Abramson posited that persons who are not depressed perceive an unrealistic view of the control they wield over their own circumstances — I am the master of my domain — while those diagnosed as depressed hold a more realistic view of, well, of reality. Undiagnosed was whether the subjects’ depression makes them more perceptive, or whether they are depressed because they realize that reality sometimes sucks.

I see things as they are and I say, ‘no!’ Uh, wait, you see things as they are not and you say — wait, uh, you see things — do you see things as they are? What do you say when you see things? — George Costanza, Seinfeld (The Limo)

The past year has provided plenty of fodder for depression: illness, isolation, unemployment. Some have reacted with a bizarre amalgam of defiance and delusion — Don’t worry, Karen, our Second Amendment rights will protect us from the pandemic! — while others have retreated into that nether world that exists between the cushions of their couch, where only coins and the Crumbs of Pizza Past had previously dwelled.

With ‘when my eyes had set on you,’ shidasp channels the current circumstances into healthy creativity. I just needed to do something to quell a steadily declining mental health, he told us. The song, like all my music, is about self-doubt and longing; can’t seem to not write about that.

self made insecurity
did you get it right did it fall apart
too shy to speak my broken heart
to fill the void or await the day
i see your face
and by the time the adderall
ran its course
you came to find
you never had her at all

The song slips along under a dreamy shimmer of synthesizers, the words a half-whispered stream-of-consciousness note to self. Listen for the drums that capture the large, loose-headed feel of Phil Collins.

Today’s track appears on shidasp’s new three-song EP, painting warmth. We first stumbled across shidasp’s music three years ago, when he released an EP of very lo-fi rock under the name Garage Goblin, and we featured the appropriately-named ‘2021’ as a Song of the Day. The tracks have since disappeared from the internet, but we look forward to someday hearing them on the shidasp: a 30-Year Retrospective compilation.

The music of shidasp is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Music. And be sure to follow shidasp on Instagram and Twitter.