The dictionary definition of malaise is that it is “a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.”
From the brain fog I am in, I consider that very carefully, and think through the murk: yes, that’s exactly it—that’s the fugue I’ve been flailing in since I arrived back from Singapore a few weeks ago. I wanted my return from that trip to mark some kind of refreshed start, a clean reboot of the self. But instead, a few days into my arrival in Dumaguete, I got sick. Flattened by something suspiciously COVID-like, probably the new strain that everyone’s whispering about again but refusing to name out loud, as though we’re too exhausted to even fear properly.
That unexpected illness floored me. The days in early June were a blur of fevered dreams, sore muscles, and the desperate awareness of breath, and suddenly the world receded into muffled silence.
I recovered eventually, or at least the body did what bodies are designed to do—it carried on. But something else stayed. Something stubborn, low-humming, and disorienting. Something I have come to recognize as “malaise.”
Not the dramatic kind. No weeping on the floor, no screaming into the abyss. Just this quiet slippage of self into a fog where nothing feels anchored. It’s as if I’ve misplaced the coherence of my life, and I don’t know where to look for it. I try to read a book, and the words swim away. I sit down to write, and the blank page stares back at me, unimpressed. The days blend together. I avoid calls. I forget to reply to messages. I move through the house like a ghost haunting his own life.
At first I told myself it was just physical fatigue, the tail end of an illness’ wreckage. But as the weeks rolled on, and my body grew strong enough to lift grocery bags and climb stairs again [I even managed to do my part as a resident panelist of the 63rd Silliman University National Writers Workshop for one complete week], the fog still didn’t lift.
That’s when I realized it wasn’t just my body that had been infected. My spirit, too, had caught something—something darker and harder to shake. A kind of existential weariness. A deep, gnawing ennui. I know ennui well.
And when I interrogate the shape of that ennui, I see it plain as day: it’s really the world, and all the dirt we are caked in. It’s the politics that seep into every crevice of our lives, choking beauty, distorting truth. It’s the endless cycles of betrayal in the headlines, the impunity, the hypocrisy, the spinning of narratives so brazen that gaslighting feels like air.
And it’s the art we try to make in the midst of all this—art that cannot help but be affected by the political, even when all we want is to simply tell a story, to nurture culture, to capture a feeling, to make something true.
But I won’t kid myself. The act of making art is no longer a neutral act. In this time, in this country, in this fraught global moment, to make art—especially art that speaks—is to wade into a battlefield. Everything is coded. Everything can be weaponized. Silence can be complicity. Expression can be read as sedition. A simple poem can be torn apart for what it did not say, or for what it dared to.
And yet, all I want—if I am being honest—is to live a fruitful life of culture. To write what I must write. To teach what I love. To read a good book. To mount a play. To celebrate a painting. To attend a concert and feel joy bloom in my chest. To do these things without the constant noise of politics and the havoc it brings. But how do you do that in a world where even breathing feels like a stance?
The simple answer is: you can’t. Not entirely.
But maybe the better answer is: you do it anyway.
You write the story, even if the world is burning. You stage the play, even if the theatre is falling apart. You curate the exhibit, even if funding is scarce and freedom scarcer. You teach the class, even when students are too distracted by the collapse of everything to listen. You do it knowing that it “matters.” Knowing that every act of culture is also an act of resistance—not necessarily against a regime or an ideology, but against despair.
Because that’s the real enemy, isn’t it? Not just the politicians, or the trolls, or the systems of oppression we all navigate. The real enemy is the part of us that wants to give up. That whispers, “What’s the point?” That tells us the fog will never lift. But there is a point. There is always a point.
I used to believe we make art to make sense of the senseless. I used to believe we make art to stay alive, to find meaning, to dream another world into being. I used to believe we make art to remind ourselves—and others—that we are still here. That we feel. That we refuse to go numb. I badly need to believe in all of this again.
So this is what I tell myself on these doldrum days when the malaise continues and wraps itself around my chest like a wet shroud: write something. Anything. Like this column you can barely write. Let the cultural work you do be the quiet rebellion it has always been.
But I am still tired. The fog still lingers. In these small acts of a little bit of writing, I hope I can find a way through. Maybe, for now, hoping and a bit of writing is enough.
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Author’s email: icasocot@gmail.com
