There are some books that you know instinctively not to read out loud to anyone. There needs to be a conversation between the author and you, but mainly it is a conversation you need to have with yourself.
Presumably, you have seen a bit of the world and maybe have a few regrets of the garden variety to look back at, when you pick up Tom Gauld’s Mooncop. To appreciate, it is necessary to be able to relate. A cop on the Moon (let us pretend that is an important job), the tedium of routine and gradual decay (everyone is leaving for Earth because isolation makes the decision to move back an easy one), and no reprieve from all the existential flotsam of a life that shall have to be examined in the absence of easy distractions.
In one of the more poignant panels, Mooncop quietly laments about the party being over. The festivities and excitement are now over, and we need therapists to get us through the melancholy. Alas, even therapists are not built for the rough terrain of our lives, and you might find your therapist is now your burden to carry everywhere.
I have walked alone at night from some late parties. The one I’m remembering now: 2012, Munich, Christmas time. It is necessary to get back home, you know that, and getting back in bed might be the only worthwhile thing you do that day. It hasn’t even been a quarter hour past, you’ve left and already you don’t care how the party went. With each slow step back to the apartment in the rain, a little cold and miserable in a beautiful city with unforgiving people, you instinctively know how to romanticise loneliness.
It doesn’t really matter, honestly, a warm bath and easy sleep. The next day will come on by and yesterday wouldn’t exist anymore, unless you thought really hard about it.
