The King is Dead

Last week leaving supervision I was reminded of the banners from the photographs taken of the 1979 Iran revolution, the banner and tabloids said that the King left. Like after that intersection turn left and if you don’t know where you are, find yourself a psychoanalyst. It is at that intersection with the street named after a dead and an anonymous man and people these days don’t know the difference anymore. We tend to forget and not remember. What we don’t remember is certainly bound to make a come back, like shoulder-pads. Remember those? Be careful, they might come back. We have had 3000 years to figure it out, and we still haven’t figured it out. Because, not only we forget what’s unpleasant but also destroy remnants and any evidence of what came before. The Elamites would have told a different tale about the Persians. Repetition, that is what Freud said in his article Remembering, repeating and working through. We are good at repeating, not remembering and ignoring. Sometimes we repackage the same shit and sell it as something authentic and different. I am reminded of Pegah’s painfully sharp short film: I am trying to remember.

Yeki bood Yeki nabood – one day there was one, and there wasn’t one. A patient reminded me. This is the way to begin a children’s tale in Persian. One day he left. Vanished. It is much more pleasant than saying the king is dead. The king left, but he also died. People always forget to mention the second part. Now I feel as though I am talking about Elvis. I was reminded of his death in supervision last week. I walked away thinking about my supervisor’s words about something I said about meanings and transitions regarding a case, having realized not only the king left Iran, but he also died in exile. He left after a mad and drunken party with all the guests having acquired a huge hangover the next day. Drunk people are really bad at remembering what they did or said the night before. Everyone was intoxicated including the host. People leave parties and there are doubts about inviting them again because they vomited on the precious and beautiful Persian carpet. We all had those guests who overstay their welcome. A lawyer in a cake shop queue in Malvern once said to me that he was there two weeks before the take over. The “take over” he called it. There are also kings who pollute the air with noise and a terrible sense of humor.