"Hypergraphia*", text book, Vienna, 2017/18
Once more something in me was pressing to get out, if only myself escaping myself.
In my birthday in 2016, my friend brought me a notebook as a gift and wished me to write a new chapter in my life on his pages because of the difficult years and arduous experience I spent after leaving my home country.
On one midnight time, I started to write only one sentence repeatedly “I loved Vienna, but Vienna didn’t love me”. I felt this sentence is intensively saying it all, I was not able to stop writing it, it was like overwhelming compulsion to write, a hypergraphic act and it was not the first time.
Writing is an act of healing when you are going through an overwhelmingly difficult time. Both your immune system and mental health will better when you do it. And language is the thing which separates men from beasts.
What could it mean to want to share one’s feeling or worldview with strangers?
It will help other sufferers to not feel alone.
*Hypergraphia is a behavioural condition characterised by the intense desire to write or draw. Forms of hypergraphia can vary in writing style and content. It is the incurable writing disease.
It wasn't until the 20th century that scientists explored the brain chemistry behind this lust for language. In the 1970s, neurologists discovered that hypergraphia was often triggered by temporal lobe epilepsy. Scientists later linked it with bipolar disorder.
Many writers suffered from Hypergraphia like: Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Ezra Pound, Dante and Moliere