I think a lot about Mickey's room- all those posters, drawings, broken things, built things, scattered in every corner. It was a space of chaos, but it was his. And it made sense if you think about how it was probably his only place for most of his life to maintain an identity that didn't dissolve into his father's. Unable to act verbally, unable to fight back physically, unable to express himself coherently because he couldn't manage it or didn't know how at all- somehow, art and creation became his language. And yeah, there were stupid childish drawings on the walls, the kind only a kid could make, but even that speaks about him and what was going through his head. A lot of sexual elements. Repression, but at the same time, an attempt to express his own body, his own desires. And ways of reaffirming himself within a toxic masculinity that forces us to take apart Mickey's adolescence piece by piece, but through a physical testimony.
It's curious how the act of destruction that was expected of him -and that he often performed- gets reversed, in a way, into an illogical, scattered, imperfect form of creation. It's almost like destroying what you make, or making something already broken. All those "fuck love" messages and drawings of women. Objects that could have come from the trash. There's no real intention behind keeping them, they don't have a purpose to begin with. They're not useful as tools or transactions, even though his whole life could be seen as an exchange of selfish interests, functioning under a code of utility. Why would you keep something useless in a house like that? Something that gives you no benefit? But again, it's Mickey collecting. Trying to fill the mismatched holes of a life that demands things from him, that he has to give. In the privacy of his own room, he can simply possess. And what he possesses is always something broken or seemingly purposeless -because that's probably how he felt about himself.
It's incredible to me, the violence he operates from, and yet his way of interacting with the world. Because his room is proof that he can be delicate inside his own roughness. That he can recognize something, accept that it interests him, that he likes it, take it from the world and make it his own. It's almost a small, silent act of rebellion.
And maybe he kept things from other people too- to look at the lives he doesn't have, the ones he can't get close to because he's not allowed. Because someone like him can't stay near. So he uses art, uses all that rage and confusion, and dilutes it into something only he can understand. It's not even about the physical value sometimes, it's about the impulse that made him take it and shape it. Boredom, too. The curiosity of a child that was never allowed to develop naturally.
All those stretches of his life, all the journeys of his mind, they're soaked into that room. Even sharing his music is a way of facing anonymity to recognize himself as someone independent. Even if it's only in private. Even if it's only for him. Someone so locked inside themselves tends to consume what they love with more ferocity- finding a tunnel to look inward through simpler paths when you've been denied the right to declare, or even weigh, your own identity.
I don't know what the point of this text is. It's just something that fascinates me. And I hope to write more about it in the future :_)
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