Wind-up Key Equals Depression

So there is currently an ad playing online, at least – possibly on television as well, but I don’t know – for a depression drug.  A drug you take to assist with your depression, I mean.  Can’t quite think of the brand name of the drug, although it begins with P and has a Q in it somewhere.  But the drug itself is desvenlafexine.

In any case, it is an animation, with the protagonist being a woman in a drab colored dress and sandals, with a large wind-up key in her back.  She is a toy, in fact, a doll with stiff and jointed limbs and sort of stylized jerkiness in movements.  She bends stiffly forward from the waist with her arms hanging straight down, and shuffles in tiny little steps, looking at the ground.  This represents her life in her depressed state. 

She then progresses through her interaction with the doctor and others in her life, and, after taking desvenlafexine, finally joins in the shopping trips, and make-up wearing, and yoga classes that her friends are all experiencing.  They are all stiff and jointed dolls as well – the doctor included.

But she is the only one with the wind-up key in her back.  It persists, as well, throughout her depression, and improvement.  And no one else has one. 

So what does it represent?  Is it her condition, her depression?  And if so, why?   Depression is not what motivates her – not what keeps her going – not the impelling force in her life.  I have seen ads wherein the depression sticks around throughout treatment, which is supposed to let us know that this treatment is not going to “cure” the depression sufferer – just going to make their lives easier and more normal.  But in this case, I think they chose a ridiculously wrong article to represent the depression (if indeed they did) – a wind-up key?  Stupid!  It should have been something like an umbrella, that she could have folded up and carried, but that no longer kept the sunlight off her head.  And if they didn’t choose this key to represent something, then they are even more stupid, since no one else has one, and this is the only thing that she has that they don’t.   Bugs me.

Questions About Life

 
When I unlocked the office this morning, the first thing I smelled was not air-conditioned air, nor the copy machine, but the enchanting, intoxicating aroma of daphne odora. From the tiny little bunch I have on my desk, three days old. I immediately become a nymph on a Grecian hillside, half hidden in the daphne, peeping shyly out at the sheep and shepherds, while I draw a deep breath, and my eyes roll back into my head.  Gorgeousness. 

Why can't all life be as intoxicating, as perfect and as meaningful as the scent of daphne?  Or just even other beautiful scents -- we'll leave out the philosophical questions about life, this time -- I don't have the mental fitness to be pondering those questions this Wednesday morning -- even other great smells, like roses (nice, but...) or fresh cut grass (evocative, but...) don't carry the smeller out of their body.  Don't have this emotional effect.  It can't really be because daphne is rarer, either, because there has never been one time that I smelled that smell that I didn't experience this.  This what-you-may-call-it.  This emotion.  And I lived for seven years in an apartment building with bushes of daphne beside the gate.  And every day it bloomed I plucked a bit and had it on my body, being warmed by my skin, so that the scent rose with my heartbeat.  And each time I would catch a whiff, I was exalted.

So is it something about the composition of the aroma?  That it tickles a tiny place in the brain?  A race-memory?  Of a time when I was a numph on a Grecian hillside, half-hidden in the daphne bushes, warmed by the sun and pouring their fragrance out over the country and making the people (and the sheep) drunk with giddy joy?