MONDO FILMS ARE MY ASMR

I have difficulty sleeping. All the over the counter medication you can think of I’ve tried: Melatonin,
ZZZquil, Valerian Root, Sominex, and etcetera. At best those make me slightly drowsy. I’ve become
dependent on Nyquil but I only use it when I need to get up early for work. The downside of Nyquil is
that it makes you too tired when you wake up. As an alternative, I let movies and videos on the internet
play on repeat or an endless playlist hoping I can drift away. The results vary. Sometimes I can fall asleep
and other times I’m left just staring down in my bed while noise plays on. In these experiments I’ve
noticed that anything with excessively loud screaming or knocking noise is not ideal. The screams are
obvious but knocking is a unique feeling I discovered while letting David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive play
on: every time there was a knocking noise (such as a knock at the door) the film would alert a
subconscious feeling of panic and I would awake in a paranoid state thinking that there is a presence
nearby trying to get into my home.

Then I started playing Mondo films as I attempted to sleep. They are documentaries focusing on real
murder and the bizarre. They’re often fraudulent or have an insincere tone or both. I would end up
drifting away to a droning narrator and the sounds of murder.

A dog is lead into a pound. The condescending British narrator invokes weak against the strong musings
in a universe indifferent to our pain. The dog is heard shrieking in agony off camera while the narrator
continues how it’s a dog’s world.

The memories of nasty people at work are forgotten. The screaming customer, irate that we couldn’t
deliver a coffee table during a catastrophic storm, is in the recess of my mind as the screen warms with
images of Africa and hunters mass slaughtering cows. Buildings topple in rhythm to a melodramatic beat
and I am content with my detachment from humans. There are often many montages in Mondo films. I
am considering creating a fan-edit of the many montages to form a grim musical.

More changes at work, taking away more privileges as crucial problems escalate and are ignored in lieu
of record-breaking profits. A widow watches the final recording of her husband on his death bed musing
about life; she watches this tape whenever she wants to be reminded of him. The heat grows and I make
barely enough to continue on. The mortician being interviewed goes to answer the ringing phone as the
body on the operating table is ignored mid-autopsy. The peeled back scalp reveals a concave skull with
the brains taken away and replaced with dirty rags. My coworkers laugh and guffaw at the simple
comedy at meetings and pretend how great it is this current existence –the idiot glee of the tortured.

As I turn over on my side with my pet lying next to me on a pillow, the narrator goes on about three
pubescent girls raped and murdered by their softball coach. The black and white photographs of the
aftermath reflect in the corner of my eyes and the narration is only partially obscured by the
intermittent noise of my air conditioner. The narrator reflects in a curious tone on the ferocity of the
rape/murders but how the culprit neatly placed their shoes next to the mass grave. But I’ve watched it
all so many times now that the words auto-play like remembering the lyrics to a favorite song.
“There’s been so much violence.” A man holds a TV station hostage. At first he speaks calmly to a
reporter, sounding like your average concerned citizen, until he brandishes his weapon and directs the
pistol at a wandering hostage. In his meandering dialogue he confesses to murdering his girlfriend and
pleads to an end to violence shortly before committing suicide off & alone.

You would expect dreams reincorporating these gruesome images but I am instead greeted by a calming
void. All those times of meditation where a song is interrupted by the idiot & grotesque with their noise
and presence are replaced by a montage of the dead while Danse Macabre plays on. And in that void I
am no longer being robbed of a moment of cherished solitude. In the past there I am screamed at by my
mother, I am screamed at in my time in service, and I am screamed at by customers. I see a man take a
running leap from a skyscraper to the tune of a comedic melody as an actor claiming to be a doctor
warns of the horrors of modern times. In another Mondo, there is a montage of boys and girls raped to
death that concludes with a still image of dead boy where foam has overflown from his agape mouth
and crystalizes. I am numb to it and I am numb to the customer complaining about attending a funeral
and not having a couch.