Agony. My life, like the lives of so many Americans quietly quivering with fear, has drifted into some alien realm I scarcely recognize. It is a dystopian wasteland populated by techbro serpents and slimy venture capitalists cooking the books to disguise and delay our inevitable economic collapse. And it is little more than agony.
I walk the streets with gushing exuberance and cautious optimism. Because kindness and good times require no effort and it makes me happy to give someone else a reason to carry on fighting another day. It is also my responsibility as a citizen. I crack jokes and smiles. If a modest reserve of energy overtakes me, I spend it on others who need my guidance and reassurance and who have less than I do.
I generate this vital inner fuel by taking in the many sights and sounds and figures who make life so precious and special, all the while nursing the Matroyshka doll of hopeless hurt and suffering that bounces within me, caused in part by the worst and cruelest breakup of my life (this time, not my fault) that transpired six weeks ago and the significant energy and maintenance I have had to expend to secure a permanent roof over my head during the worst housing crisis in a century.
Take the top half of one painful layer and there’s another sad face, the mouth caught in an exasperated Soviet O, to unscrew beneath. Sometimes an invisible hand adds another doll to dwarf and occlude and ensnare the full nest. But I have agile and resilient hands. I am often surprised to find that I can organize these dolls within dolls of pain, even as these dolls keep multiplying like some porcelain cancer that won’t stop metastasizing.
Small wonder that Backrooms and It Ends, genre flicks that brilliantly captured the Sisyphean hellscape of American life, have been hits this year. Their cinematic cousin, Obsession, sealed the triptych by adding incel coercion and toxic masculinity to the grisly Joycean nightmare that we all can’t wake up from and we are all desperately trying to escape. Horror movies have become more dutiful in documenting American life in 2026 than our increasingly censored news outlets.
Why do I not give up? Well, it is because I am a student of history. You have to keep moving like a shark during dark times to get to the light that awaits you on the other side. And rest assured. There is something after the Orange Fuhrer’s demise. Though how many of us will be irreparably broken when that joyful moment arrives? This is why empathy now operates at “too big to fail” levels (though not at the expense of people’s homes or financial portfolios). I want to help as many souls as I can, but I am learning that even I can max out. It is a weird guilt to possess about one’s finite limits, but I cannot seem to shake it.
It is the promise of this future luminescence that keeps me going. But am I believing in a lie? Prosperity is just around the corner! That was muttered by a fraud malingering in the executive branch one hundred years before us. He was, if you can believe it, more capable than Donny, the eighty-year-old monster who will not die — even as the Grim Reaper smites national treasures like Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. I have to consider the possibility that this small and diminishing aperture into a more secure life that is situated so far ahead, so indeterminate in its timing, may not arrive until my own existence terminates. And isn’t that a depressing thought! But that is the hellscape of Trumpism and rising rents and escalating prices and dodgy unregulated food and diminishing shots at affordability. All Americans have dreams but we increasingly don’t have the means. Corporate profits go up. Data centers plunder our water and our power and cause the good people of Gary, Indiana to suffer without electricity. And if you’re unemployed, it’s now a game of Beat the AI Algorithm! Be prepared to apply for four thousand jobs minimum.
And that is what I mean by agony. Unfiltered agony rather than “depression.” Originating from agōnia in Greek. A constant jostling for victory. An endless series of struggles. Contests, countless contests.
I am a man of words and I choose “agony” with care. Agōnia came from agōn — a public gathering for games. Does that not bear an uncanny cadence to the whims of social media? I was a main character well before it was fashionable and nobody outside of a small group of people knows the true story. I have spent the last twelve years of my creative life in exile, expressing my deepest fears and anxieties bluntly and baldly in multiple media formats (and even through the prism of award-winning audio drama), knowing that I am rebuked by media people who have lied and prevaricated about my history because they resented my voice and my knack for getting through to people. They invented whole incidents that never happened and that they never questioned. They could never get me on my work and they will never stop me from writing. And now that they are losing their jobs, they are discovering that they cannot stand with robust legs against the vicious wakes of the sea. But I can. I’m actually somewhat grateful to them in a morbid way. When you have defeated Erebus once, you can defeat him again.
Still, this is agony. A neverending series of contests. I am constantly wrestling with a grave sadness that threatens to jostle the robustly jocular foundations of my spirit. Because now everyone on every point of the political spectrum can say anything. Alternative facts have become democratized. AI has twisted the knife further by turning vast swaths of our population into softheaded morons cutting and pasting pablum. The craziest thing is that they feel entitled to being a fraud.
In Everything is Now, J. Hoberman rightly noted that cheap rent was one of the mechanisms that allowed New York to be the center of American culture for many decades in the 20th century. It was a great shock to learn that the average one bedroom apartment — even in Brooklyn — now goes for $3500. Multiply by forty and that means you need $140k/year just to live here. And even if your credit is very good, they’ll still demand that you sign with a guarantor. Just to humiliate you.
When I first moved to Prospect Lefferts Gardens forty years ago, I paid $900 in rent. You only needed $36k/year to sign a lease. And I somehow managed to generate enough money as a full-time writer for a while. But those days are now gone.
I still wrote. I can’t not write. It is how I stay sane and kind and honest. It is how I am able to give and help.
Before she wounded me this summer, my ex said one very smart thing: “You put the worst parts of yourself online, Ed. Why don’t you put the best parts?”
Well, this is the first essay I’ve written in six weeks. I don’t know if this reflects my good parts or my bad parts. Maybe it’s all parts. We’ve become so accustomed to presenting nothing but our best parts that life has become little more than a performance. Why then can we not perform truthfully even under these imaginary circumstances?
