Meljoann · hyperjack arthole

Closing a gestalt cycle

Here begins an #incredible new blog. I love reading from other people's personal sites on RSS, but mine tends to be more like "I released this" and other boring shite. I decided to create a new feed, for posts I wouldn't necessarily want on the front page of my website. Just in case a rando visits to see if I'm a good musician, and instead finds a bunch of witterings about gestalt cycles and that.

Image of circular gestalt cycle

i got therapy, once

A while ago, I got some free therapy through a Help Musicians grant. One of my therapist's insights came back to me recently: I consistently miss out on the “satisfaction” part of the Gestalt Cycle.

Gestalt cycle diagram. A circle representing the self within an environment. The circle has points labelled: sensation, awareness, mobilisation, action, final contact, satisfaction, withdrawal, fertile void, leading back into sensation.

Gestalt is quite old-school, but like most useful things its core ideas are replicated again and again. Mindfulness, still flavour-of-the-month at time of writing, has a similar emphasis on what Gestalt calls "the here and now".

But rushing through the cycle, not allowing myself to feel satisfied with tasks completed? A very concise reading of this chronic anxiety I’m still dealing with. I think I had an impossible concept of what “closing the cycle” would feel like: complete safety.

Even a partial rendering of that concept (for example, freedom from the constant threat of homelessness) would mean changing larger socio-political realities that I’ve no control over. I formulated this fantasy of cycle-closure early in life, as a coping mechanism. It helped me through early isolation and depression, but it’s not helping now.

feeling satisfaction in retrospect

I think I need to learn how to close all these hanging gestalt cycles. To do that, I need to modify what "closure" can mean, in a world where systemic factors often dangle the fruit of our labours eternally out of reach. The first step: allowing myself to feel deep satisfaction in what I’ve done. Even writing that sentence, I felt a rising panic: “it’s not enough!” This is the root of workaholism. Our animal brains expect work (foraging) to result in reward (eating). Under capitalism, this reward is kept behind a barbed wire fence -- and we don't have the admission fee.

Inspired by a Fedi peer I admire, Prin Lu, I think I’ll start actually writing down what I’ve been working on, what I’ve finished and released, and any other things I can think of that have made me feel like a worthwhile human being.

There’s fear in that. My cultural conditioning expects scorn when displaying anything resembling pride. An understandable product of colonialism: where a people aren’t allowed to achieve anything, a good way to deal with it is to be iconoclastic. Redefine those who chase cultural capital as West Brits: Irish people with pretentions to Englishness. Notions: replicating imperialist ideas of social class, usually with specific cutlery.

While the reframing aspect of notions (in its more defiant dimension: enforcement of inherited cultural norms) helped my grandparents' generation resist total cultural obliteration, its shadow manifestation is to embed shame in any kind of pride. Irish people need to close our gestalt cycles, too! So, here goes.

2025: it was a year of stuff

did that make me feel better?

My first reaction was to look at the list and think: that's not enough. It's as if I'm looking at my life through the eyes of the worst kind of internet troll. But I think that is not helping me out.

My goal here is to feel satisfaction at my creative and personal actions. The fact that I'm operating well below the poverty line isn't under my control. Taking joy and pride in my work IS under my control.

Well done, me. Well done.