The Little Book of Demons. Ramsey Dukes

songs to play to friends and neighbours on balmy evenings. The next day he was being mobbed in the swinging streets of London, feted at the grandest hotels, flown by helicopter to wild parties in stately homes and setting out on gruelling concert tours. Unlike some who totally cave in under such pressures, he kept his sanity more or less and rode out his success over the years, putting enough money aside to be able to settle down comparatively when the frenzy of fame abated.

      But as he entered middle age, no longer a chart buster but still with a loyal following of fans, he began to yearn for that simple island life he’d left far behind. It wasn’t just a question of retiring to comfort in the sun, he missed the innocence of one who has known nothing but the simple life, for whom creativity is just a natural, spontaneous response to the beauty of nature and fellow beings—rather than a cash-cow being milked by greedy agents.

      As you can tell from my description, this is an idealised picture. It is not real. For people living the simple life need be no more innocent than anyone else. So, if it isn’t a real person, what is it? In my terms it is a demon, albeit a rather nice one, and it deserves to be properly addressed.

      So I asked the man how well he could picture himself as that hopeful youth, full of creativity and dreams and happy to express them in a relaxed and joyful way in the sun. He could picture him so easily, as he had been daydreaming now for months about that lost youth.

      So how did he see himself compared to that ideal youth? A middle aged figure, not unlikeable but a little jaded, dried up, less able to enjoy simple pleasures for having been everywhere, done everything.

      The irony was that, to his fans that youth was still very much alive in him. When he played his music they saw the flame sparkling as clear as ever, the humour, creativity and fresh outlook on life still shone in his music. That was why they loved to hear him play. But for him that same youthfulness was a will ‘o the wisp: just out of reach, ever teasing and seducing but never quite there.

      What was not working in his relationship with the demon of his innocent youth was that he had given it too much value. I have so far been arguing the case for giving value to demons, but you can overdo it by putting them on a pedestal. It can be fun to be idolised, and some people actually need a bit of that to compensate for unhappy feelings, but in general most people admit it is not so easy to live with someone who keeps you on a pedestal.

      The right value to give a demon is to empathise – i.e. assume that it has a value similar to yourself until proven otherwise. What he was doing was giving the innocent youth all of his own value— devaluing himself and inflating the youth.

      So what I suggested was that he should not only visit the youth in his imagination, but also see himself through the youth’s eyes. Remember himself as he was on that island and imagine how he would have felt if a famous star like himself came to visit. Would the youth have refused a visit from this dried up middle-ager as he saw himself? I doubt it. If I was that youth I might put up a certain show of not being impressed by the man’s star status, make a few jokes to my friends about what this ‘stuck up star’ would think of the island, but inside myself I’d be utterly thrilled and honoured by the visit.

      So, if he could really imagine his young, callow self meeting his old self, and realise just how exciting, worldly wise and experienced he would seem to the youth, then he would have taken back some of the excess value he had given away. Imagine the youth saying “wow! Did you really play with Hendrix? Is it true you dated Marianne Faithfull? You played at Woodstock?” And other such eager questions.

      This is when the real dialogue starts. Instead of psychic pederasty of an old dried up middle-aged bore chasing a golden youth, we now have a mutually rewarding meeting between an aspiring youngster and older mentor. He can see his present life through the youth’s eyes and realise that, although he was feeling bored and suffocated by it, it is actually pretty amazing. In turn he comes much closer to that once-distant and unobtainable youth, realises the sorrows and frustrations of being young and can begin to heal his own past. The youth never died in him, he simply left it frozen on an island.

      A whole class of demons is like that: parts of ourselves we left behind in growing up; parts that have been locked in the past, unable to grow up with us because they have been split off and frozen. The freezing can be as a result of shock or denial—as when an act of violence leaves a psychological scar that becomes repressed—or through sheer preoccupation with life’s other pressures as in this case. Can you blame these discarded selves for turning into demons and returning to us in dreams and nightmares when we allow them no other form of life? Nostalgia can be a source of great wealth if thoroughly enjoyed.

      There is a poignancy in this example. It arose from the fact that the star was about to go to hospital to endure a worrying operation, and it was this portent of coming old age that had precipitated his nostalgic contemplations.

      I pointed out to him that there were probably other such demons—old neglected or forgotten parts of himself left behind in the rush to fame—and that they were still around. If he would allow them and give welcome, they could gather at his hospital bedside and offer support. Some would support him eagerly, some grudgingly, but whichever way he would be surprised by the sum total of goodwill and affection they could offer him in his need—just like a real family that gathers around and supports even its less popular members when life comes to the crunch. He need not feel alone.

      THE BODY

      The book began with a very simple, down to earth example of an office machine that misbehaves, and then quickly proceeded to address much more abstract forms of demon. Rather than lose sight of my roots I include a very concrete example now— treating one’s own body as an autonomous being or demon.