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Our Own Silent Hill: What Haze Does to the Mind · insyed; cozy psychology

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  Outside, I can barely see what's in front of
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  me. Places that used to be familiar now blend
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  into the background like a memory gone distant,
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  of the only thing blinking through being pink
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  dots on impossibly tall skyscrapers. The city
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  of sharp edges has turned soft, the air burning
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  our eyes. Cars only appear a few meters ahead,
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  and it's hard to see anyone at all. It's been
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  said a lot, but for good reason. Things are starting
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  to look like Silent Hill. For the past several
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  months, haze has engulfed my home, Malaysia,
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  along with neighboring Singapore and most of
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  Southeast Asia. Super El Niño has stripped the
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  land of rain and left it dry as a tinderbox.
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  Who knows how long until we see the sunshine
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  again. In Silent Hill, the haze isn't weather,
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  and it isn't the consequence of poor agriculture.
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  It's something else. Not a haze, but a fog. A
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  veil that settles over places that would otherwise
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  be normal and fills them with things that are
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  terribly, terribly wrong. Everything feels uncomfortable,
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  claustrophobic, stressful. You can't see what's
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  ahead, so you walk ever so slowly, listening,
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  waiting to make sure it's safe. The game never
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  explains why this happens because it doesn't
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  have to, but I couldn't help noticing. It all
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  sounded so familiar. Whenever I take the train
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  around the city, I look out the window to step
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  away from doom scrolling. It doesn't work. Outside
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  is the same gray, and all I can feel is the same
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  sense of doom. Many people have looked at what
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  the haze does to our bodies, a dry, coarse throat,
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  shortness of breath, eyes burning red as if dragged
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  across sandpaper. But we are more than our bodies.
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  We're eternally connected, like the horizon and
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  the sky. Our mind meets with the physicality
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  of what we feel with our hands, with what we
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  feel in our hearts. What I felt on that train
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  wasn't in my lungs. When our memory goes blank,
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  is there a reason it's called rain fog? In 2018,
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  researchers in Tianjin, China went looking for
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  that feeling in the place people say things out
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  loud, social media. They matched posts against
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  daily weather records. and built an emotional
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  thesaurus from the words people reached for.
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  The link between haze and negative emotion was
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  there, and its strength shifted with the season.
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  The gloom wasn't just a personal illusion. Across
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  the whole city, they could count it. The words
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  they used were ones that were heavy. Gloom. Helpless.
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  Horrible. Terrible. Sorrow. Even end of the world.
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  Thousands of kilometers apart. With nothing in
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  common but the sky, sun, and moon, we reach for
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  almost the same words. When our cities fall under
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  blanketed shadow, our shared vocabulary drifts
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  towards the apocalyptic, the quiet dread of a
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  world turned upside down. Mild haze, we can tolerate
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  and adjust to. But when it refuses to lift, day
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  after day, the gloom compounds instead of fades,
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  and it becomes a communicative burden. will all
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  force to share. I'm not the first to feel this.
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  Painters have been putting fog on canvas for
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  a long time, and it's rarely just weather. Falling
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  back into visual history, you can see artists
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  have long married atmospheric conditions with
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  state of human mind. In Felix Vallotton's Honflur
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  in the Mist, the mist is more than weather. It
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  acts as a veil, dissolving the townscape into
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  soft, muted gradients of pigment and hue. Buildings
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  fade into the dense fog, and familiar streets
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  blur into distant memories. Veloton is known
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  for hard edges and stark contrast, which is why
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  this one stands out to me. It reminds me of the
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  haze -drenched transit platform and the people
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  I'll never meet again, waiting on it. Yet the
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  fog isn't always gentle. In wartime, it grates
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  the eyes like nails on a chalkboard. I keep thinking
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  of Paul Nash and his work Wire. a picture of
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  the horrors of war. The red haze in the background
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  bleeds towards the sky, hinting the rest of the
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  landscape, a grayish fog, devouring whatever
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  color it might once have had. Harsh, chaotic
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  strokes scratch across the foreground, the uncertainty
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  and confusion of the front line, the fog of war.
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  But for all this catastrophizing, the haze will
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  soon lift again. At the time of writing, Parts
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  of where I call home are enjoying clear skies
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  after what felt like weeks of gray. It's a relief,
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  and it's also a reminder. Air doesn't burn on
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  its own. Someone lights the fire, and the rest
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  of us breathe it in. Islam teaches us that we
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  are placed on this earth not as consumers, but
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  as khalifa, trustees appointed to tend and protect
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  it. We do not own the trees, the soil, or even
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  the air we breathe. They are alone to us, held
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  in trust for generations to come, and we answer
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  for them only to the one who made us. When the
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  fog within our cities and our heads finally settle,
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  it leaves us with a choice. We can stay passive
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  and wait for the wind to shift, or we can read
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  the haze for what it can be, a warning. It frightens
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  us, not knowing what comes next. In Silent Hill,
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  the fog is built from what people did. and the
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  game never lets you forget it. Ours is no different,
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  except that we're still in time to change it.
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  Much of it is something we do, which means it
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  is also something we can stop. The gloom and
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  helplessness measured in a city far from mine
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  tells me the shared weight isn't a reason for
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  despair, it's a reason for care. So when the
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  sky is clear for good, as they have for now,
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  may we not forget what the haze was trying to
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  tell us. And if you felt it too, on a train,
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  on a platform, at a window. It wasn't just you.
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  Thank you for listening to Insyed. If the heavy
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  skies left you carrying the weight of the city,
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  turn your ears upward next. In the stars that
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  were already there, we step out of the gray haze
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  and into an empty field at midnight. It's a podcast
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  on awe, a curious fox, and discovering the small
• 6:49
  self under the night sky. These podcasts are
• 6:52
  also available in essay form on Substack. If
• 6:56
  you'd like to support this labor of love, where
• 6:58
  psychological science meets the tapestry of art,
• 7:01
  consider subscribing. Until then, do take care
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  and have a nice day.