🎺📯 TRUMPET FANFARE, COUGH OF A SAXOPHONE REED, SOMEONE DROPS A PINT ON THE FLOOR 📯🎺

ANNOUNCING THE INAUGURAL BLAST OF
✶ THE PALIMPSET PARADOX ✶
(A New Monthly Column Where Psychiatry Meets Pub-Rock, and Both Get Sectioned)

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Case Report #1: The Bass Player Believes He Is a Snare Drum

By D.C. Waing (after a long weekend in Antwerp with Syla Fang)

Patient: Male, 27, bassist.
Complaint: States with absolute conviction that he has ceased to be a person, and is now “the snare drum that keeps the whole bloody band together.”

History:
Onset of delusion followed a 14-hour drive in a van whose heating system emitted fumes resembling both diesel exhaust and metaphysical despair. Patient exhibited strong identification with percussion instruments during load-in, repeatedly insisting: “Hit me harder, I’ll keep the time, I’ll keep the time forever.”

Examination:

• Affect: Slightly manic, but rhythmic.

• Orientation: Fully oriented to tour schedule but not to calendar dates.

• Insight: Nil.

• Beer intake: Above recommended dosage for three consecutive fiscal quarters.

Diagnosis:
Borderline Percussive Personality Disorder, with comorbid Gig Economy Psychosis.

Treatment Plan:

1. Prescribe two encores and a cab back to Shepherd’s Bush.

2. Encourage “talking cure” in which patient communicates exclusively via paradiddles.

3. Avoid lithium; recommend lager.

Prognosis:
Guarded. Will either recover by next soundcheck or remain permanently incorporated into the rhythm section.

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FOOTNOTE (scrawled in biro on a beer mat): The line between symptom and solo is porous. We all contain our own drum kits, poorly tuned, forever in need of adjustment.

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📯📯📯 Thus concludes the first sounding of the PALIMPSET PARADOX, where your madness is merely the verse, and the culture’s madness the chorus. Tune in next month for: “The Guitarist Who Believed the Monitors Were His Parents.” 📯📯📯

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