Rabbit Holes
I spend my life down them, and will be consequently sharing them here, beginning with my current obsessions: psychopath decor and a singer whose story I can't stop thinking about.
I’ll be writing a LOT about rabbit holes in this Substack. Getting obsessed with something, exploring every aspect of it, losing yourself, and then finding yourself again with your rationality hopefully back in place …it’s just the best part of the process. Well, the best part of the process is right at the end when you’re almost finished but you go back into your writing and omit every unnecessary word. That’s incredibly satisfying for some reason. But losing yourself down rabbit holes is the second best part of the process.
I’m soon to take a break from writing my new book to embark on Psychopath Night - a six week tour of the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand to celebrate the 15th anniversary of my book Psychopath Test.
It’s long been fascinating to me that different disorders tend to manifest in uncannily similar ways. If you’re a kid with OCD in the American Bible Belt, you may get fixated on the thought that the Devil lives inside of you. If you’re a kid with OCD in London, you may get fixated on the thought that you might at any moment blurt out something racist.
On the other end of the disorder spectrum, I write in the Psychopath Test about how psychopaths see the world in terms of predators and prey, and as a result many despots / corporate psychopaths fill their homes with sculptures and paintings of predatory animals. Here, for example, is Chainsaw Al Dunlap from my book, sitting in front of his painting of a lion…
Anyway, in preparation for the tour I’m currently down a rabbit hole about political despot home decor, and I wanted to share a couple of pics I found inside the very helpful book Dictator Style by Peter York. See if you can guess the dictators.
