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The blacks.
Everyone gets the blues, but the really special people get 'the blacks'... that gnawing, deep depression that sends your mind spinning into wheels and circles intertwining in your deepest fears and doubts.
Using the term 'the blacks' is just fraught with peril however... too many connotations that have priority in people's minds, but 'the blues' doesn't cut it, and even 'depressed' just fails to get across the utter despair.
Well, I learned a new term yesterday.
dubhachas
I'm currently reading Patricia Kennealy's Keltiad series, and while it is *far* from an authority on Gaelic language, I liked this term.
Our heroine is in the midst of deep peril, and has lost (as in can't find) her closest friend, behind enemy lines, etc, etc, etc.
"She could do no more tonight, save fret herself into the dubhachas, that evil mood known to its victims as the 'Keltic blacks'."
Being of Celtic descent, I can relate. I think it's a genetic ingrained symptom of centuries of misty skies.
But that word... dubhachas... it rather jumped out at me. Gaelic pronunciation, as explained in the series (no, I don't speak it), states that this word should be pronounced doo-vachkas, bh = a slightly guttural v, and ch = the 'ch' in the German 'ach'.
Try it. It has a deep rumbling despair to it, and it bites neatly off at the tongue. Use it as an epithet, draw it out in emotional agony... it works.
Using the term 'the blacks' is just fraught with peril however... too many connotations that have priority in people's minds, but 'the blues' doesn't cut it, and even 'depressed' just fails to get across the utter despair.
Well, I learned a new term yesterday.
dubhachas
I'm currently reading Patricia Kennealy's Keltiad series, and while it is *far* from an authority on Gaelic language, I liked this term.
Our heroine is in the midst of deep peril, and has lost (as in can't find) her closest friend, behind enemy lines, etc, etc, etc.
"She could do no more tonight, save fret herself into the dubhachas, that evil mood known to its victims as the 'Keltic blacks'."
Being of Celtic descent, I can relate. I think it's a genetic ingrained symptom of centuries of misty skies.
But that word... dubhachas... it rather jumped out at me. Gaelic pronunciation, as explained in the series (no, I don't speak it), states that this word should be pronounced doo-vachkas, bh = a slightly guttural v, and ch = the 'ch' in the German 'ach'.
Try it. It has a deep rumbling despair to it, and it bites neatly off at the tongue. Use it as an epithet, draw it out in emotional agony... it works.