Michaela Coel - Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

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To the one who always
gets me out of trouble,
Jasmine Aboagye,
and the Mama who
bornd us.

Ode on Melancholy

JOHN KEATS

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissd

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrows mysteries;

For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with BeautyBeauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

Veild Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous

tongue

Can burst Joys grape against his palate fine;

His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Hello,

Thank you so much for picking up this book and peeling back the first page to discover its contents.

I will do what Im best at: tell stories, in the hope that youll be able to connect the dots, find threads to tie together.

I like TV, I like making burritos and I like my friends, so sometimes I combine all three by inviting friends over to make burritos and watch telly on my projector. One night back in 2018, my friends complained that the smell of the onions I was chopping was too strong and opened up the window. Cue a moth now dancing around the projector light, interrupting the visual perfection of Stranger Things. Moths disturb me, my peace and my flow, with their incessant fluttering. Their erratic, unpredictable movements get me the hell anxiousI hate them. Ive always hated them, so of course I have moth-killer spray on hand. I spray the ray of light until the moth is dead on the floor. Im so scared of em I cant even bear to deal with their dead bodies, so I ask my friend to pick up the corpse with some kitchen paper and dispose of it. But that friend is busy coughingin fact, all my friends are now coughing, covering their noses and mouths, burying their faces in my sofa or their clothes. Ive sprayed too much, apparently. The smell is insufferable.

I, however, am not bothered by the moth spray, just as I wasnt bothered by the scent of onions. The flat descends into chaos as my friends alternate between hanging their heads out of the window for air or running out of my flat entirely. I stand as still as the moths corpse. I inhale: my nasal pathways are clear. I walk around and begin sniffing things in the flat, curiously burrowing my nose inside shoes, coffee beans, vinegar, my coughing housemates armpits. I feel and hear the air traveling smoothly into my nasal passages, but that journey has no scent accompanying it.

Later, I seek medical help. The doctors dont know why this has happened, but they say theyve seen the sense of smell return after two or three years. I am offered smell training, a method known for successfully awakening the olfactory nerves. I refuse.

Of all the senses to lose, smell is not one I minded severing my relationship with. In fact, had I not sprayed moth-killer that day and seen my friends freak out, how long would I have carried on, oblivious to the fact that my ability to smell was gone? How long had I already lived oblivious to the fact that it had gone? Id go so far as to say I like having anosmia.

Yes, I cannot smell smoke in the event of a fire anymore, and expiration dates on food items are something to worship rather than to test ones fate on, but losing one sense enabled me to enhance my use of the others; listening, looking and feeling everything and everyone around me with more attention than before. No more smelling sewage pipes, cat piss, the stench of fish from the local mongernothing fishy will ever be going on again. Sweet.

Here I am in a public toilet cubicle, staring into the mouth of the bowl as one stares into the soul of a Gustavo Nazareno piece at a gallery someone elses unflushed feces slumbers in the water, thick skid marks marring porcelain I cant smell anything, and so I guess everything smells just fine.

That same year, 2018, I am asked to write and present a lecture to professionals within the television industry. The invitation comes as I am wrapping up on playing Kate Ashby in Hugo Blicks Black Earth Rising. At the time Ive never heard of the MacTaggart Lecture. Then again, back then, Id also never heard of Depeche Mode or Sarajevo, so no shade to the lectureit just hadnt beamed onto my radar. The MacTaggart Lecture is an annual event that takes place at the Edinburgh TV Festival in front of an audience of four thousand. I have no idea what I might write about or whether I am truly qualified to offer a lecture to anyone, and find the idea of speaking behind a podium for an hour to be very unattractive. However, I am told this sort of opportunity isnt the kind you turn down, so with navet and palpitations, I accept.

I begin in leafy Somerset, in a house generously lent to me by my drama commissioner: a space to think and write type of thing. Its an old house, stationed near a post office and not much else. Built on the grounds of what used to be a chapel. In the verdant garden, the chapel still sits.

I unpack my bags and for days, write tirelessly. Eventually I come up with a first draft, funny in some places, brutally honest, concluding with a positive message about the joy and purpose creating stories has given to my life. Its good, I think; its fine.

I finally allow my back to lean against the sofa, and as the afternoon sun flirts with my eyelids, I fall asleep.

I enter a dream.

The dream goes like this: Im in the exact same position on the sofa, stirring awake instead of falling asleep, and its the dead of night. A group of men have found their way into the house and are taking novelty selfies with my sleeping body in the background. As soon as they notice Im awake, they apologize and sprint out of the house.