Hamlet’s Dilemma
To or not to
To pee, or not to pee, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to lift a leg against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
– William Shakespeare
Suggested listening:
Vic Chesnutt
“Flirted With You All My Life”
Suggested reading:
Dylan Thomas
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
Originally published on Instagram
September 10, 2022
This dog, named Hamlet, began as a silly t-shirt design for a friend who always appreciates a joke (good or otherwise) at William Shakespeare’s expense. The idea was to print a slightly off-colour, toilet-humour pun on “to be or not to be” beneath the dog’s feet and leave it at that. But as I worked on it, I started to think more about the soliloquy from which the quote comes, and about the handful of friends, family members and acquaintances who reached a conclusion different from Hamlet’s and chose to take their own lives after asking themselves the famous question.
One of those people was Vic Chesnutt, an oddball singer-songwriter who managed to create a whole genre of haunting, off-kilter music all his own — a kind of otherworldly gutter-folk that sounds to me like it came down from the heavens. As a poet, I put him in a holy trinity with Dylan and Cohen. Like those other two — more so — he was possessed of a voice that many find tough to take but that I find divine. It was that voice, singing the same song over and over again, that I heard in my head while making this image.
I didn’t know Vic personally per se, but we had a few close mutual friends, and we met on a number of occasions. To call him a ‘loved one’ in the truest sense of the phrase would be wrong, but I love him and his music dearly. It hurt when he died by his own hand on Christmas Day, 2009, and it still hurts on this September 10, 2022 — which just so happens to be World Suicide Prevention Day.
If you or someone you know is asking yourself whether to or not to, I hope you’ll get to Hamlet’s answer and not Vic’s.
Local suicide-prevention hotlines are there to help if it seems like nothing else can.
Hug your loved ones. Hug yourselves.
Please.
Love,
Ink
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