The Distorted Power of Derailment
There are forms of clarity that make you sluggish. And there are forms of confusion that electrify. When thoughts tumble over each other, when the world suddenly speaks, when meaning flashes in everything, an inner state emerges that cannot be measured, yet it resonates.
It is not healthy. Not rational. But it is full of movement. Everything seems connected, everything pulses. A glance, an impulse, an idea – and suddenly the entire structure starts to quiver. It is no truth, but neither is it a lie. It is a state of over-meaning, where even the absurd finds its place.
What is missing when it is gone is not the confusion, but the glow. The sharpness. The sense. For what replaces it is often nothing more than pale order. And as the system normalizes, the vibrant part retreats. What remains is thinking without urgency. A being without reverberation. And the quiet sense that somewhere between the extremes, something has been lost. Something compelling that you cannot will into existence, but sometimes need.
Perhaps the goal is not to remain in such states forever. But they reveal something: that intensity is possible. That thinking does not always have to be disciplined, clear, and sober to hold meaning. In this dissolution lies a unique form of insight. Not objective, but radically personal.
The fear of losing control is understandable. Yet equally understandable is the longing for a kind of thinking that does not merely function, but glows. For a feeling that is not flat, but piercing. And so the question remains whether it is not precisely in excess, in the disproportionate, in the irrational, that we find the sparks that make us feel alive.
