The Canine Guru’s Guide to Wanting

photo by Pietro Battistoni

“You can’t always get what you want,” sang The Rolling Stones. Wise words and a lesson we hopefully all learned as children, but they then went on about getting what you need. Well, Mick, as lyrics go, that’s not terribly sexy, because (aside from freedom from tyranny) all we need is a litre or so of water, roughly 2,000 calories, 25ug of vitamin D and exercise each day. 

Wouldn’t life be great if that was all we wanted too? I’m serious. Chuck out Desire. What’s that feverish emotion done for us anyway? Except lead to a loss of credit and appetite, a bad case of silent internet stalking and a cupboard full of trainers that you’ll eventually sell on eBay. (Insert your equivalent here.) 

If life is a song, then we’re all complicit in writing the lyrics to The Great Con of Wanting. It hurts our ears to listen, but we keep singing along because success is often defined through material possessions. We can’t go back now, not unless some cataclysmic event replaces currency with cooperation.

Wanting is a bleary-eyed piano player, sitting at the bar in the smoky jazz club of our subconscious – an airless dive filled with misfits and dreamers. Here the lights are dim, candles burn down onto unwashed tables and, emanating from muffled speakers, Jelly Roll Morton plays a 1920’s ditty. We don’t normally work behind the bar here, but sometimes – when Calm takes a sick-day – we can be found pouring drinks and talking to the regulars: Insomnia and Anxiety. 

When you were young Wanting was your buddy, you did every stupid together: bought those clothes that made your mother say, ‘I don’t think so!’; held each other’s hand during a piercing that later became infected and kissed that boy with the cold sore. But then it got into things that were downright irresponsible. As an adult, you distanced yourself from this rebellious friend. You’ve chucked it out of the club a few times over the years, but it sneaks back in through the entrance marked Social Media and Romantic Notions. You know you can’t afford to pay it attention, financially and emotionally, but it sits there smoking a filter-less cigarette, waiting for you to notice its dishevelled, persuasive genius.  

“Come on, baby, I’m the fun one,” it says.

“I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here. Fire hazard.” You pass Wanting an ashtray, which it ignores. Ash falls onto the sticky carpet. You’ll have to clean that up later; try not to look peeved. Wanting takes another long drag and blows disorientating smoke in your direction.

“I do as I want. You should too,” it says. 

Don’t look up. What are you doing? Too late, an enigmatic smile lights up its face and there is nothing you can do but smile back. There’s melancholy in its eyes; something is missing. Wanting confides that it yearns to perform for you, but it needs a new piano. If you can just get one, the music it will play will change your life. Only a monster would deny this creature the means by which it can express longing. Are you a monster? And in any case, what the hell!

Anyone would think Wanting was the villain of this story, but no, it’s the guru, sent to teach us about ourselves. There is no better teacher than the piano player in your head. How you behave when it is most persuasive tells you about yourself. You may not learn the first time or the tenth, but one day you’ll realise you don’t need Wanting; you’ll be happier if you just ignore it.

Not tonight, however. Tonight, a storm is raging outside, but inside you are snuggled up under your duvet staring at your phone. Instagram suggests something that might make your life shiny. Most of the evening, you’ve been pouring pints for Concern and Worry, who won’t stop banging on about Covid19 and money issues. Their voices are so dull you’ve hardly mustered the energy to pay attention to your friend’s holiday snaps or memes about a demented US president, but, ‘ping’…this looks interesting.

Wanting is sitting at a nearby table chatting up Sleep, keeping the brunette from nodding off with its charming smile, but it has heard the ping too, senses the change in your mood. Excusing itself from Sleep’s dozy-eyed adoration, Wanting saunters over. 

“What you got there?” 

“Ah, nothing, just a silly suggestion of fleeting joy.” 

You try to hide the phone under the bar, but Wanting’s hand touches yours. You reveal what you covet.

Even Wanting looks surprised, but eventually says, “You really do Want that gold satin bedding covered in exotic birds. Sure, those threads would be more at home in Saddam Hussein’s palace, but you’ve had a long-assed week. Don’t you deserve a holiday from yourself under garish bedlinen? You do!”

“Oh Wanting,” you sigh coquettishly. 

It sits there watching you, thrumming its fingers on the dusty chair it’s straddling, a tease of a smile pulling at the corners of its mouth. 

Just then, the bar door swings open and in walks PayPal, the cool cat drummer, going, “I’m just a click, click, clickety click away from making your life better, baby.” Bad-at-kat-ching, brush, tap.

And here comes Dopamine on Sax, stumbling out of the toilets, wiping white powder from under its nose. Dope is one hot hormone. A raven-haired soloist who smells of Madagascar at dusk. Dope gets up on stage and starts practising a solo. Enchanting! All high notes and sudden tempo changes. We all know Dope has flaws; after all it’s the one who makes you come down from that extortionate payment, that flirtatious message, the meeting you shouldn’t take, but ‘hypnotic’ is the only word to describe the music it makes.

You press ‘place purchase’ on your phone, and the cog starts to whirr on the screen. Payment processed. Suddenly the piano player is on stage, sitting at a Steinway and the band produces one of the slickest sounds you could ever hope to hear. 

photo by Divyadarshi Acharya

For a moment, it’s like you are the piano and Wanting’s fingers are on your back, playing your spine. You’ve done the right thing; this feeling confirms it. But within minutes the notation changes. PayPal wasn’t prepared for this trip out of time. It drops its sticks, just as Dope puts down the sax to take a nap, and the charming piano player is putting its head in its hands, saying, “This wasn’t the piano I asked for.”

You disappointed the musician precisely because you gave in. This was what Wanting was always going to do. It can never bring you happiness. The moment you get what you desire it disappears, and you are left all alone with Saddam Hussein bedding and the knowledge that you gave in, again. 

Wanting has its uses but generally only when you dress it in a lab coat. It is good for society because it drives us and leads to progress (thank you Pfizer) but it often robs us as individuals. At the lowest level it makes us selfish and vain, and at the highest, it steals our dignity – just ask a heroin addict or Donald Trump, who, I’m pretty certain, has been enjoying a life-long lock-in in his subconscious speak-easy. 

Wanting craves adventure beyond the confines of our adultness, but we can’t let that happen, so we hire a bouncer for the club who goes by the name Self-Control. Wearing conservative clothes and thick-rimmed glasses, SC comes with its own problems, mainly of insisting that everyone play the same tune. It struts about the place with its truncheon trying to conduct the musicians who are having fun just improvising. 

“What the hell is this noise?” barks SC.

“It’s called jazz, weirdo,” croons Lazy from its supine position on a velvet banquette.

SC commands the emotions play a different tune, a better tune, over and over again until we retire and die: the commute, the taxes, the toilet roll, the homework, the pension…

“I don’t hear a lot of pension in there, people!” SC yells, whacking its truncheon on the fire exit door. “You, Procrastination, on double bass, how d’you expect to get to the end of the piece without it?” 

Procrastination shrugs.

“You need to get yourselves together. Play it again from the top, and this time prestissimo and with more pension!”

“Someone get this guy a large whisky,” groans Wanting.

As if material possessions weren’t hard enough to deny yourself, people can catch Wanting’s eye too, and that’s when the piano player really bashes the keys. Occasionally you meet someone whom you acknowledge on a level that is far deeper than mere attraction. There is something in the other person that reflects your soul. (Ah, the Soul…we can debate its existence another time.) If you can become friends with this person, all the better (and safer), but if there is something more, then Wanting plays a tune that drowns out all the other noises in your life. Even SC loses its composure and has to step outside for some air. 

For a while this is wonderful, for Wanting plays a mesmerising ballad. But what if that music is played where Wanting’s counterpart doesn’t reside? Or worse, shouldn’t be played at all because the band is already complete? How on earth do you stop it then? This is tough. The only advice I can give is:  

Stalking.

Bahahaha. I’m joking. You must absolutely not do that. But we’ve all looked up an ex or checked out someone we shouldn’t. Often, we label this as ‘just a bit of fun’, but if Wanting plays loudly enough it can drown out all reason. (For more information on this Google Love Addiction or read any romantic tragedy by Shakespeare.)

How do we get Wanting to calm down in this situation? Well, for that we need to go to the back of the bar. Over there, in the corner, the character with the unbrushed hair and colourful clothes, engrossed in a book. Distraction hears you shuffling over and closes the book. You glimpse the cover: Freedom from Need. 

Non-judgemental and amused by your fluttering heart, it smiles indulgently at the dishevelled musician clasping your arm. 

“What’s Wanting taken now? Looks like it’s about to fall over.”

“A large quantity of Can’t-Have,” you say.

Distraction frowns. Wanting looks nervous and well it should, Distraction doesn’t take any of its trills and foot stomping seriously. It hands the piano player a glass of milk and tells it to go sit quietly next to Regret, which it duly does. 

You confess your craving; you think Distraction will understand. It seems to, but while you talk, it’s dressing you in weird clothes that don’t fit and telling you you’re going out running until they do. It promises that if you move fast enough, only Serotonin and Endorphins will be able to catch you. They don’t crave anything, they just exist, like babies’ laughter caught on the air. They never visit the smoky club because they are too busy drinking carrot juice and doing sun salutations. Yes, I’m advocating movement to banish Wanting. What is this, the Victorian Age? I hear you ask. Well, they were onto something. If you can’t run then swim, walk, dance, prune a bonsai, push – just keep moving. With all that smoke in Wanting’s lungs, it’s hardly going to be able to keep up with you when you run out the door into daylight. 

Speaking of which, the sun’s coming up. Before we leave the bar, it is my duty to draw your attention to the shady character hiding behind the velvet curtain near the kitchen. Lanky hair, skinny legs, antisocial and malevolent, you think you don’t recognise this character, but you do. You’ve seen it on the socials advertising impossibly quick diets and in the eyes of ascetics, its name is Self-Induced Deprivation. SID fools you into thinking it is the slayer of Wanting, the creator of Calm, the enemy of Chaos, when in fact it is the orchestrator. 

I had my own brush with SID in my mid-teens and I have seen it recently in a girl I know tangentially. (This part is really for her.) I was once a fairly talented dancer, training at a school that was brutal in its honesty towards your prospects. I was never going to make it, mainly because, while deeply in love with dance, I wasn’t as naturally gifted as I needed to be and had the curves of a normal, healthy woman. I could do nothing about the first problem, but I did have control over the second. One morning, at a ‘weigh-in’, I was told to lose some pounds if I wanted to succeed and so I set about reducing my calorie intake. At first things went surprisingly well: teachers commented on my new-found svelte prospects and rewarded me with places in dance troupes. A relative told me, “I knew the puppy fat would fall off.” Well, it didn’t so much fall as shrivel, with the help of three apples and a cuppa soup a day. I was congratulated on my ability to starve myself. 

I didn’t notice SID slide into my subconscious until it was too late. It jumped on my back and throttled me with surprisingly strong arms for one so skinny. At the time I thought it was about weight loss, but it was about dream loss. SID thrives on your pain; it tells you you are in control of whatever ails you. It is a liar! I don’t normally advocate violence, but in this instance, feel free to punch it full in the face, drag it out by its lanky hair and throw it in the bins out back. 

Wanting has fallen asleep at the keys. Leave it sleeping. It’s time to close the club. Last orders you reprobates! Grab Distraction’s hand and let’s head out into the sun. 

Additional credits:

Blog thumbnail by Spencer Imbrock / Music by Ketsa