“The eye is fond of you”…
What a horrible thing to find out. Martin Blackwood, a man who spent his whole life trying to be good enough, trying to be worthy of appreciation, is beloved by a force of voyeuristic terror.
It feels good, right? To be appreciated. Even if it’s by something that would eat you up whole for a sliver of fear. To be appreciated by something that’s killing the world-it’s special, and gut wrenchingly awful.
To find out that in your pursuit of an honest life you’ve become something that something so evil could be fond of, could want to keep around; that’s a shock, and to find out that your very existence in its favour is supporting the torture and inprisonment of innocent people? Also not great.
Martin, someone so sweet, so committed to his partner, fighting to save the world, to help people as he always tried to do, ended up admired by the Web, a key follower of the lonely, and under the fondness of the eye.
Is all this worthy punishment for seeking out an honest life through the path of deception?
One episode of TMA that I will NEVER be able to shut up about is 170 (Recollection). The first episode that made me properly cry! Not only is it a beautiful exploration of Martin as a character, but humanity in general.
The light, innocent, childish small talk that Martin offers to the tape recorder. He tries so hard to keep it comforted, welcome in his home, looked after. It’d be wrong of course, to ignore it, even in his despair; others should always be put first.
Through tangled, rambling sentences, Martin manages to always explain away his own emotions, actions… To be visibly uncomfortable, unwelcoming, is wrong. He offers up his life, details of his existence, but talks them into offhanded mentions.
The subtle embarrassment he has for himself; a hallmark of much of English society. Everyone must be a self contained functioning person, lest they risk being ‘odd’, 'troubled’, perhaps even 'disruptive’.
And as Martin’s inhibitions fade, as his memories of everything grow dim, his instinctual desperation shows so painfully through. Desperately reaching for answers, as a child desperately holds their hand out for an absent parent.
Martin never had a safe person to reach for, someone always there for him. His father gone before he really knew who he was, his mother infinitely distainful… This abandonment mirrored by Jon’s absence that floats into his mind in phases.
And even to be denied the pain, to forget what you were crying about, there’s something terrible about it. Feeling the lump in your throat, the tears on your cheeks, but never really being sure why they were there, if they even are.
And the chairs. To be denied the simple comfort of a soft place to rest.
Martin’s eventual return to his duties, caring for his mother, the subtle falsified joy he finds in it, and his decline into self hatred, blame. How easy it is for him to find his way back to a place of insecurity even when he has nothing to grasp onto.
And how strong he stays. How ready he is to shoulder the blame, to carry on, to be there for anyone who might need him, anything. It’s all outside, and when he falls deeper into the fog his internal, pressed down emotions spill out.
All of Martin’s fears come from a place of worrying he isn’t enough, and this domain reduces him to a state where he is nothing; and yet, he prevails.
Being stabbed is often seen as sexy, romantic, and clean. It’s not, and it’s definitely not the kind of death you’d want to give to somebody you love. But it’s not like Martin had a choice there in that room, with one way to save everyone, to stop everything; and it’s not like Jon had any other option.
Physically, stabbing someone isn’t difficult if your knife is relatively sharp; but you still have to press through fat, muscle, tendons, organs. Whether it’s psychological or genuinely feeling your knife tear in, you’ll know what you’re stabbing through.
Psychology, stabbing someone is a different story. To stab anyone takes a tremendous amount of effort, generally the human brain isn’t predisposed to such a level of violence. But to stab someone you love, rupture their body with intent to end their life? It’s excruciating.
Being stabbed isn’t as painful as you’d think. At first. It’s often compared to the feeling of being punched; the shock eats away at the initial nerve response. But realising you’re horribly, critically injured? That’s what really hurts. Feeling your blood spill out, knowing that the organs that give you life have been pierced, made obsolete. Knowing that everything you love may be over soon.
You begin to feel cold, fast. With an injury like that your body knows it’s failing, and sends all the blood to the heart and brain, hoping to keep you awake long enough to get help; the body doesn’t want you to die comfortably, it wants you to live. Cold hands, cold feet, cold face, shivering, and without hope. Can you imagine holding someone you love, bleeding and shaking from your actions. What could make that bearable?
They say that animals know when they’re going to die, when they’re beyond the point of healing; this, to a human, is possible, but so wildly ignored. You cannot ignore this wisdom when your blood is spilling onto the floor and your vision is growing dark.
Holding a person going through this, even if they say nothing, is to know the thoughts that race through their mind. The tension in their body as the shock reaches its climax, their desperation to survive peaking. The gradual loss of tension as they submit to their fate, and the eventual crushing weight of their unconscious body; the knowledge that you tore the life out of somebody. Your somebody.
Maybe it’s a good thing Martin didn’t make it out of the archives, because facing all that is incompatible with moving forward.