Writer/director Paul Dalio is bipolar. Touched with Fire is his first feature (extraordinary). Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby play Carla and Marco, two bipolar people (artists) who meet in the psych ward. They create such a strong connection, based on their shared obsession with what Vincent van Gogh was trying to tell them in his “Starry Night”, that the doctors think they need to be separated. Their relationship ratcheted up their mania, they fed off of each other. It was impossible for them to get well as long as they were connected. The movie follows them through a year of life, as they are hospitalized, released, hospitalized again, released, re-connect, throw out their meds together, and fly up into the stratosphere into a dangerous mania.
Mental illness sagas are so rarely done well in film. The worst kind of mental-illness drama seems to say that mental illness is akin to being creative and ALIVE. Maybe the mentally ill know the SECRET TO LIFE. Those are the really bad and really insulting films. Sometimes actors chomp at the bit to “play crazy” and that’s insulting too. I can’t blame them, they usually win Oscars for those portrayals, but it does the mentally ill no favors.
Touched with Fire is not QUITE as good as Angel Baby, for me a high water-mark in a film of this kind, with quite a few similarities: two mentally ill people fall in love. She gets pregnant. She goes off her meds because she’s pregnant. She knows what will happen. And it DOES happen. Angel Baby is somewhat hard to find, but if you can track down a copy, get ready. It’s brilliant.
Touched with Fire is more conventional than Angel Baby, and so there are the conventional tropes of worried parents, and crazy journal-writing, and lens-flares to show insanity … They’re all used very effectively, but … well, all films can’t be Angel Baby.
What is so good about Touched with Fire is the understanding of mood-cycles, #1, as well as the galvanizing organizing factor of Kay Jamison’s book about bipolar illness and artists. Both lead characters become obsessed with and set free by Jamison’s book. (Kay Jamison makes a cameo as herself in the film.) That’s what this post will mainly be about, as well as my own experiences, so if you’re looking for a regular review, this is not it. All I can say is: I highly recommend Touched with Fire The performances from the two leads are gorgeous, with not one whiff of condescension or that “Hey, Ma, look at me playing crazy, gimme an Oscar” thing that is so disgusting when you can feel it in operation in an actor. Holmes and Kirby have created such a real and visceral sense of a relationship that there are times when it seems like they are the only two people in the movie. And it feels like that for the characters too. They work so well together. Both actors have done their homework, but their performances do not feel be-labored, or “respectful” or even “created.” They actually look like people who suffer from – and are elevated by – the illness. Their faces change over the courses of their respective cycles. Their eyes BURN. And then their eyes go flat. There’s one sequence where the two of them, in the hospital, obsessed with the messages they are getting from “Starry Night”, start to investigate and research it, making connections to ancient Egypt and Euclid and the moon … In a less sensitive movie, it might seem insulting, like they’re gibbering lunatics. But honestly: that IS what it can be like. The film showed it with no condescension, it did not gild the lily, it is HONEST. Both actors seem to ride those mood-waves organically (Katie Holmes dissolving into tears as she talks with her mother at 4 in the morning in the middle of a manic episode: she’s HIGH, and then whoosh, she’s LOW). Both Holmes and Kirby understand how the cycles operate, how they rise up, and crash over, what it is like. It’s a beautiful film.
I am not the person to point out faults in Touched with Fire. I came to it with trepidation and hope, fearful that its tone would be insulting or reductive, fearful of what it might do to the extremely important (and still controversial) book that was its inspiration, Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
Jamison is mostly known for her memoir, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
It’s not a COINCIDENCE that so many artists through history exhibit manic-depressive symptoms (even before there was a diagnosis for it). Touched With Fire is controversial (then and now) because it makes claims for the useful-ness of manic-depression, especially when it comes to artists. What would have happened if Van Gogh had been medicated? (for example). For those who are very sick this can be dangerous speculation. But Jamison treads into those waters anyway. She examines how the cycles operate: the increase of mania often increases productivity (as well as brain-activity, more on that in a second) and increases stamina (you can stay up longer, you don’t sleep much and you don’t get tired), and then the crash, which obliterates facility and feeling. But after the crash comes the most important part of the cycle (for artists, anyway): a slight up-swing in mood following the depression, where the mind course-corrects itself back towards a more normal baseline, the baseline where most other people LIVE. In that slight up-swing of mood (not into mania, but into normalcy – a word I use deliberately), things slow down enough to provide clarity, but they aren’t SO slow that you are buried in a grey blanket. And that part of the cycle is where the best work is often done. (We have the records of artists, their journals and letters, who describe this entire thing, long before there was a real diagnosis or Lithium or anything else.) You can’t stop the creative flow when you’re manic, and you may feel that everything you have created is world-changingly brilliant, but when you come to your senses, you’ll have to throw the majority of it out and start again.
My favorite story illustrating the useful-ness of this pattern is that of Beethoven. While manic, Beethoven was insanely productive, and not only productive, but innovative and world-changing and revolutionary in what he was creating. I think we can all agree with that. Then would come the inevitable recurring crash – which sometimes lasts for months – where no work could be done at all. When his mood lightened a bit, not as high as the mania, but just enough to get his head above the fog, he would take out what he had written during the mania, and, with a clear and ruthless eye, set about editing it. It’s the editing process that separates the men from the boys in artists. Beethoven could toss what didn’t make sense, he could be ruthless with himself in that process, and he had the energy to set about fixing what didn’t work. That was his process over the course of his life, and this is how the cycle can work (and does work: so many artists use their cycling in ways identical to Beethoven’s.)
Bipolar comes with agony. Anguish is as much a part of art as joy, and harder, in many respects, to express. People do the best they can with what they have been given, and pre-Lithium, people white-knuckled it, or gave up the ghost and committed suicide, a choice made understandable if you have even a glimmering of what it is like to live in anguish beyond words.
To make claims FOR bipolar is risky business. And Jamison is a risky writer and thinker. We need more of those. Perhaps to those who are not bipolar, but who have loved ones who suffer, Touched With Fire is terrifying. Because it seems to say: There is good in this. And to family members and friends/partners, there is nothing good about watching the wild fluctuations and agonies of their loved ones. Mania, so exhilarating to the person with bipolar (until it turns on you), is terrifying to witness to those who know the crash is inevitable.
But, and this is just my personal take wrenched from hard-won experience: There IS good in the condition, and the fear – shared by those who have the illness – that medication will obliterate the good as well as the bad – is why bipolar people so often go off their meds. You are being asked to live at a less pleasurable level. And who the hell would say, “Yeah, sure, sign me up for that.”
What happens with treatment is that your MIND – synonymous with your SELF – is being regulated. And, healthy people, please imagine how that might fuck with your sense of self, your identity. How do you police your own mind? Your mind is where you think, make connections, create from, dream, analyze. It IS you. So to start to futz with that can feel invasive, cruel.
For artists that sensation is tenfold, because so much of art can be connected to those cycles, and one RELIES on the cycles: the fear is that your creativity will be whack-a-moled out of existence along with the illness. There is a sinister siren-song in mania, that’s for damn sure, but if you’re an artist, then you come to rely on its power and drive.
So. What to do.
Well, bipolar is a spectrum, so there’s that. It occurs in degrees of severity. There is also the fact that our understanding of the brain has improved immeasurably in the last 30 years. Along with that comes new medications, ones that really seem to work quite well, and befit the spectrum-model of bipolar. Lithium is a life-saver, but the dosages are subtler and where people were once upon a time deadened into almost a Zombie-like state by it (not an exaggeration), this is not so much the case today. There is still much work to be done, but there has been progress in my lifetime alone.
However, the question of art remains, and the question of identity/creativity/SELF remains, as it probably always will with mental illness. The literature of mental illness is made immeasurably richer by Touched With Fire.
To add yet another wrench into this conversation: If you read Tumblr with any regularity (and I highly suggest you do not. I need to stop going there myself), there is a tendency to dispute the fact that any disability, mental or physical, comes with a negative side. “Who’s to say what is normal” and all that jazz. Anyone who admits that there might be a negative is being “able-ist.” I understand and (somewhat) respect where that attitude comes from. In a world that prizes normalcy, anyone who deviates can be stigmatized. So yes. Less stigma, please. We are all as God made us. Bipolar is not a mistake. It’s a kink in the wiring, and that happens in Nature all the time, in animals, in trees, in weather, etc. It’s nature, not a robot-lab. Self-loathing makes the malady worse, and the more we can educate ourselves and stop making people feel ashamed because their mind doesn’t work right … well, the world will be a better place. (Tumblr people would shriek at me that “right” contains a judgment. Damn straight it does. It’s not a MEAN judgment, but it does show my discernment of reality. See? I need to stay off Tumblr.) We also might stop using mass-murderers as mental-illness “teachable moments”. How many people suffer from mental illness and never ever would shoot up a shopping mall? THE MAJORITY OF THEM. We should not wait for some horrible thing to happen to try to understand what mental illness is, how it works, and how to help. It is in everyone’s best interests to try to understand. Most people probably know someone who suffers from some form of mental illness, be it depression or anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia. Mass murderers who shoot up schools need to be studied in terms of depersonalization and anti-social tendencies, not mental illness. Tumblr refuses to admit that ANY of it is “bad”, ever. Who is society to tell me that my mind doesn’t work right? It’s a dangerous and naive attitude. Admitting that bipolar can be a KILLER is not taking on the “world’s” assessment that mental illness is something to be ashamed of. It means that you actually understand reality. Admitting that there is a negative is not akin to “shaming”. Enough Tumblr-speak.
I have many stories of my own to illustrate every point I made above. Some poor mis-guided woman emailed me after my interview with Reed Morano, the director of Meadowland, chiding me, “Millions of people suffer from bipolar.” I laughed out loud when I read her email. I thought: “Oh, you poor soft-hearted assumption-filled soul, you’re lucky I’m going to go easy on you.” I emailed her back, telling her that yeah, I knew that millions of people suffered, including one person in particular. Unsurprisingly, she did not write back with an apology for her insulting assumptions. Look out for the over-protective white-knighting “tolerants”. They are often the WORST. And then there was this lovely exchange in the comments. Weirdly, he never returned. Huh. I wonder why. That’s what happens when I DON’T go easy on you.
Nobody corners the market in mental-illness narratives, due to the spectrum nature of the thing, as well as the fact that it is, by its very nature, a subjective experience (even if it lines up in a textbook way with other case histories): again, it’s a malady of the MIND. And we are inside our own minds. Our minds ARE us. Or, that’s pretty much the only way we can conceive of “us.” It can be disheartening, actually, to get diagnosed and realize just how text-book you have been.
Am I myself? Or am I my diagnosis? These questions are crucial and urgent. Language does help. Finding a way to frame these questions – framing that sets you free, as opposed to trapping you – is key. Good doctors can help. You can over-identify with your illness (“Hey man, this is me, this is how I was made, get off my back”) and this is, again, understandable: the illness is in your mind and body, and your mind/body IS your identity, and so if you got diagnosed late in the game, like I did, it is sometimes impossible to un-tangle what is the illness and what is you. You’ve been left so long to your own devices that what is actually the illness is perceived by you as “the way I am.” (And it IS the way you are. That’s the thing. So you see the problem.)
And, ultimately, all of it is not to BE untangled. Because the illness is not outside of you. It’s not being IMPOSED on you. It is a PART of you, as much a part of you as, say, allergies are to an allergic person, or a tendency towards migraines, or diabetes. These are physical ailments that have to be managed on a day to day basis. They are part of what Nature cooks up for us, and who gets what is the luck of the draw, plus genetic history and environmental influences and all the rest. It is easy to look at physical ailments as Enemies, and maybe that works for some people. I am not here to say what should and should not work. Being prescriptive about it is just as damaging as being laissez-faire. I can only speak for myself, and Kay Jamison’s book (forced upon me by one of my doctors) helped me frame it in a way that felt manageable as well as freeing. The illness is not outside of me, and it does not necessarily have to be fought with a battering ram. Because what that attitude then does is make “slip ups” or the mere FACT of cycling seem like it’s “wrong” – when it isn’t wrong at all. Saying it’s wrong would be like saying a hurricane is wrong. Yes, a hurricane is destructive, but there’s nothing “wrong” about it. It’s just doing what a hurricane is supposed to do. Managing an illness can be like being in recovery from drug addiction, the nearest analogy I can find. There is no “magic pill” that will take it all away. There are things that help: exercise, sleep, diet, knowing your triggers so you can avoid them, avoiding things like sugars and starches, getting your nutrition in line with what your mind needs, be aware of what happens when the days shorten in winter, be ready, bone up on Vitamin D, get a light lamp, and on and on. Frankly, it’s exhausting. It’s living under military discipline. But it’s better than the alternative.
Kay Jamison makes the claim that bipolar has its uses. If it DIDN’T, it would have been evolved out of existence at some point along the way of human development. Having seen The Witch recently, the Victorian-era malady of “hysteria” comes to mind. “Hysteria” was seen as totally real by the doctors who treated it, the women who suffered from it, and the families who looked on helplessly. Books were written about it. There were symposiums. There were tours of mental hospitals where patients were studied. It was as seen to be as real as tuberculosis. “Hysteria” rose as a “thing” in an era when women were idealized so much that they were seen as barely human. The pedestal is only flattering if you are made of marble. You don’t read about pioneer women suffering from hysteria, or Middle Age peasant-ladies suffering from it, because pioneer women and women in the Middle Ages were equal to men in the fact that everybody had to work their ASSES off just to survive and everything – child-bearing, house-building, cow-milking – was essential to the whole. Don’t impose a 20th-century mindset on a 1500s dynamic. But then came the rise of Industrialization, and a new class emerged: the white urban middle-class, where men went to work, and there was enough money that women could stay home, and it was prestigious to provide for your woman that way, and so women suddenly had fuck-all to do. All of the “normal” work of womanhood was out-sourced to nannies and servants. At least a pioneer woman on the plains of North Dakota had to work from morning til night on food and laundry and child-wrangling, as her hubby hunted for food or built a damn barn or a dam in the river, whatever. Everything was essential, everything needed to be done, food-preparation was as important as fence-building. At night, everyone – men and women – fell into bed in a state of sheer apoplectic exhaustion. Well, I wasn’t there, but you know … But almost overnight, in the 19th century, women of a certain class did … nothing … except be decorative elegant hostesses. They could not vote, own property, have a bank account, travel by themselves, enjoy sex – or at least admit to enjoying sex, etc. Their humanity was taken away from them, and they were seen as not useful in any area of life outside the parlor, and women in droves responded accordingly by going batshit insane. Totally understandable. I would have flipped out too. But once women started gaining political/economical power, and more life options, more education, and then the vote … Voila: hysteria vanished from the earth. People barely remember that it even happened. When societal conditions changed, hysteria vanished, it was no longer “needed”.
But bipolar is different. It has probably been around since the beginning of time. And so clearly, like an opposable thumb, it has its uses. It MUST, right? There is evidence that what happens inside the brain during a manic phase could be somewhat responsible for giant leaps of connections and inter-connections, as well as bold beyond-the-horizon thought processes, which is how progress is made. And so perhaps, just one example, if you’re a bipolar composer, in a manic phase you hear music that has never been made before, chord combinations and variations, wild and unconventional but also right and inevitable – and are able to brush aside fears and limitations and “Oh, you can’t do THAT” inner voices, and put it down on paper. Who could say that was a bad thing?
But any gift has a price. There is productive mania, and then there is un-productive mania. And of course, in bipolar, a crash always follows the highs, the worst thing about it. You KNOW it’s coming, but you can’t stop the mania, and sometimes you don’t want to stop the mania because it’s FUN and SEXY (libido goes through the roof) and PRODUCTIVE. You feel you are OWED it because the crashes into depression is so bad. The price is built INTO the illness, and it’s brutal. It’s common to think, “Well, I am being made to PAY for feeling so good.” You’re Icarus. If the peak is as high as Everest, then the crash is Mariana Trench depth. And unless you have experienced it, you would not wish it on your worst enemies.
It’s terrifying even without the consideration of what is known as a “mixed state,” the #1 most dangerous mind-set in the bipolar spectrum. More dangerous than depression. The fact that a “mixed state” is, in every literal sense of the word, “unbearable”, gives you a sense of what people will do to STOP it. People are a danger to themselves and to others when in a “mixed state.” (Even the term alone brings a chill of dread.) To simplify, a “mixed state” is equal parts anxiety and depression, happening simultaneously. The experience is beyond words. One is FRANTIC to make it stop. I now know that I was in a mixed state for 19 days in July of 2009. I had no idea what was happening to me. I should have been hospitalized. But … oh well. I made it through – not without scars – I will be forever marked by those 19 days, they were so harrowing it was literally surreal – and now I know enough to know how lucky and how STRONG I am to have survived it, cold-turkey.
Jamison talks about the gift of mania as well as the price attached to it. Statistics don’t lie. Under-estimate the power of this thing at your peril. The end of the book has page after page after page of famous artists, mentally ill – with bipolar, depression, whatever – who have committed suicide. Like: don’t kid yourself. This thing is a killer. But she attempts to loosen the language a little bit, to let some (dangerous, yet welcome) air into the conversation, especially since she cares about art, and understanding WHY there are so many manic-depressives in the history books of Art is a valid field of inquiry. (Many people feel it is not. Many people felt Jamison was glorifying the illness, or counseling people to not take it too seriously, that it was a good thing. Well, I guess if you need to over-simplify conversations, then I can’t stop you …)
Jamison questions and queries and investigates. How did these artists work WITH and withIN their cycles? How did their minds operate while in the throes of creation (intensified by insomnia, usually)? Vincent Van Gogh is a prime example. We have so much more information about him than we do about other artists, because of his voluminous correspondence with his brother, and also because of what a brilliant writer he was, especially about 1. his own subjective experience and 2. what he was trying to express in his paintings. Is there anything we can LEARN from this? Is there any other response than the usual one (tut tut what a shame, what he could have done if he wasn’t so crazy)? AND, now that bipolar has been identified, and there are treatments available … is there any way for artists (and other people, too, I guess, although Jamison’s book is only concerned with artists) – to work with/accept the GOOD part of the illness (the productivity/creativity that can go hand in hand with mania) and respect/”reject” the bad (the nothingness of obliteration that equals the crash). Respect/reject meaning: stay on your meds, keep an eye out for danger signs, go to the hospital if you have to.
More conventional thinking goes: These people’s moods need to be stabilized. So if they have to give up the intensely thrilling highs, that’s better than being DEAD. But to an artist – if the creativity is bound up in the highs – even if, like Beethoven, you rely on the “lows” to do the crucial work of editing the manic stuff you poured out onto the page unthinkingly – then getting rid of the highs entirely is tantamount to killing creative freedom. People don’t want you to say stuff like this. It seems to be making special claims for the illness (bipolar people are more special than you, nyah nyah) or “come on, it’s not all that bad, we got Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” out of it.” But that’s not at ALL what Jamison is saying. What she IS saying is that artists ARE special, they DO have different thought processes than normal people, and we NEED their special-ness, and their unfettered creativity, as much as we always have. If bipolar is here to stay, then is there aNOTHER model for people who have it? (As I mentioned earlier, the last 30 years have shown more progress in understanding how the brain works than in the entire history of the solar system.)
Can a bipolar person, especially an artist, ride the waves of the cycles in a way where they are aware of what they are doing, like a practiced surfer, who can coast up a wave-surface, and then scoot out of the way if it’s too big/dangerous? Is it possible to do that? To recognize the upswing of mood that signals the start of mania … but be able to use it the way you need to … creativity/productivity/quickening-connections … and then scoot out of the way before the wave crashes, or before the wave gets too high? And then to use your doctors/meds/all the rest to avoid the Mariana Trench crash? And to understand the cycle, to know that while what goes up must come down, the opposite is also true. Jamison fills her book with examples of how artists, undiagnosed ones, rode the waves of their cycles by instinct, and perhaps they are role models as opposed to cautionary tales.
How you respond to this is up to you.
For me, it was freeing. Indeed, liberating.
I felt about the book the way the characters in the movie did. I felt that what Jamison provided, in that book, is a life-saver, as well as a more integrated view of mental illness. It exists, you have it, work with it, understand it, even befriend it. Befriend it?? Yes. Befriend it. Fearing it almost makes it worse. But be CAREFUL too. Understand you are playing with fire, you are “touched” with fire already. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Jamison provides a counter-point to the expected narrative with a total lack of New Agey bullshit (thank God, I “can’t even” with New Age stuff, because it is often shockingly naive and privileged about true suffering), or Tumblr-esque special pleading for special-snowflake-ness. Others may have different feelings about it. Sane people (in the medical sense of the word) may balk at the book’s insistence that there IS something special about these artists, that their illness DID help them to be the great innovators that they are. (There’s a great moment in Touched with Fire when Marco says to Carla’s mother that she must have a “lower emotional capacity” than he does. He does not mean it as an insult. But she, of course, is totally insulted. But Marco is also right, to some degree. An excess of feeling is part of the problem and people who regulate their emotions naturally and never go so high or so low have a very very hard time understanding the fluctuations and also the experience of feeling ANYthing that intensely, good or bad.)
Here’s how I remember it:
When I was first thrown into treatment, I was in the mania teetering like a too-tall wave about to crash. I was in the stage where literally all I could do was pace and wring my hands. If you think wringing your hands is a literary conceit from the 19th century, think again. However, and this is important, I’ve lived that way my whole life. I have been incredibly productive, all things considered. Who knows what I might have done if I hadn’t been, as my doctor says, “trying to drive with the parking brake on.” However, all things considered, I’ve done okay, even with the parking brake on. I’m not incarcerated. I’m not a drug addict or an alcoholic. And, most importantly, I’m not dead. (The usual end for people like me.) My loony-bin-team think the illness “introduced itself to me” at the age of 12, when I started menstruating (it often happens that way for women, just one example of the Cruelty of it. Welcome, puberty! Oh, and look what ELSE slipped through that door. Sorry!). I cried for 4 months when I was 12. Every day. So, you know, that was the illness saying, “Hi!” But I got diagnosed in 2013. So that’s a hell of a lot of years where I was just living this thing, and bearing up under it, but also … also … as Jamison says … USING it. It came with quite an “up” side and I came to depend on it. If you’re GONNA have lows as low as the Mariana Trench, then thank God it’s counter-acted by highs as high as Everest. There are compensations.
A word on language:
I know that “crazy” is a pejorative, let alone “loony bin”, “nuthouse,” etc. But I use those words. I know what the “snake pit” is from personal experience, and I call it that. I also call it, my favorite, the “booby hatch.” I do not do so to make other people feel sad or offended. I do so because I feel that my ability to describe my own experience is hard won, man, hard won, and I OWN those words. The hearty warrior group of people I know who have also been hospitalized and have an understanding of how bad it can get also use all kinds of words that people on the “outside” – the good ones, anyway – hesitate to use – and rightly so – but we feel that we get to use them. A bunch of us filled up a FB thread with our own favorites. Nobody else commented but us. It was hilarious. I don’t judge those who choose not to use those words. I don’t think everyone needs to have the same attitude about such a personal matter. Nobody should be forced to de-sensitize if they don’t feel like it or don’t want to.
But my thing is: Words like that are used to describe people like me all the time – I hear “crazy” almost every day and you probably do too, and a lot of times it’s said in ways that really are offensive, and I’ll be DAMNED if I let those words be “owned” by those who don’t get it or are dismissive/contemptuous of people who suffer. The SNL sketch about the “nut job” Trump supporter is hilarious to me, not offensive. I’m TOUGH. I’ve been “touched with fire,” bitches. You aren’t gonna knock me over by calling other people “nut jobs.” Please.
The recent Amanda Bynes public breakdown was a great example of how the public discourse around mental health is often so disgusting, even from people who should know better: I watched people make fun of her and I thought: What on earth do these people – many of whom I know who clearly think of themselves as “tolerant” lovely liberal people – think that mental illness or breakdowns look like? Do they think people are SYMPATHETIC during breakdowns? Or understandable? Or “manic pixie dream girls” who cry copious tears and yet still remain adorable? What the hell are you people smoking? A breakdown looks AW. FUL.
I’m lucky I have any friends left considering how unbearable I’ve been since … forever, or until I got diagnosed. I’m lucky I had that one boyfriend who never judged me, or ran away from me, or “ghosted” me, but stuck with me. And we were together when I was in my 20s and early 30s, long before I got diagnosed. He would say shit to me like, “Okay, crazy, you’ve been talking for half an hour. Pipe down.” It may sound rude, but it was so awesome, because he didn’t say, “I’m outta here” or slowly remove me from his life. He stuck around. (Perhaps because of the libido thing I mentioned, but obviously you don’t stay with someone as long as he did just because of that.) And the way he would say, “Hey. Crazy. Pipe down” I would suddenly realize that my heart was racing and I couldn’t stop talking, and I would basically snap out of it, and then we’d lie under a blanket on the couch and watch Planet of the Apes, and then make out, and then order takeout and on and on and on. He handled me. Sounds condescending, right? Nope. It was awesome because it had no judgment in it. He was not a psychologist. He wasn’t even particularly sensitive. As a matter of fact, he was one of the crankiest most macho men who ever lived, who drove a conspicuous roaring gas-guzzling muscle car way over any given speed limit, and he rolled packs of cigarettes up in his T-shirt sleeve unironically. But he liked me, and he was tough enough to stick around and be able to say, “Hey. Sheila. Calm down” in a way that didn’t belittle me. I would burst into insane sobs for no reason, and he’d hold me, patting my back awkwardly, going, “Now, now, come on, let’s knock this off, it’s all okay.” I have no idea how he did all this but I am grateful. We had so much fun together and he never let me down OR hurt me, a mini-miracle. I’m lucky that I at least have that positive experience in my rear-view mirror. It was one of those small life-saver things that happen on occasion.
So my friends knew how bad it got. He knew how bad it got. Nobody said, “Hmmm … bipolar?” even though it runs in my family. It was just “the way Sheila was.” She had “bad times”, real bad, and then she would recover, and everyone rode those waves, which was probably exhausting. A friend of mine, a good friend, said to me in 2012 as I started sinking down into a trough again: “Sheila, I’m coming to grips with the fact that someday you’re probably gonna commit suicide. I feel like I’ve already grieved it.” It was a SLAP in the face, and it was MEANT to be a slap in the face. I had no idea that my loved ones would ever think such a thing, and I felt horrible and guilty that I was putting everyone through that. I couldn’t stop though. In looking back, his blunt comment was one of the “wake up calls” that made me hold on until I finally could get into proper treatment. Like, it scared the shit out of me. It was supposed to.
Back to the treatment of Amanda Bynes: I wish people would realize that that’s what it looks like, for God’s SAKE. If I was famous in 2009, then there would have been similar footage of me raging all over Manhattan, and everyone would have made fun of me too. Nice, culture, real nice. The same was true when Britney Speaks was falling apart, and I will always be grateful for that South Park episode, which NAILED the public attitude towards what was happening with Brit-Brit. So yeah, I use the words of the enemy on purpose. It feels GOOD. Because fuck them. I don’t see myself as sensitive, although I obviously am. I see myself as TOUGH. Tough enough to survive all this stuff without opening a vein, an option I “rehearsed” by “cutting” in high school and college. So yeah. “Crazy” is a term I use. It’s MINE. Your mileage may vary. But this is MY language, as much as it is anyone else’s.)
When I was forced into treatment by my family, after their intervention, I was pissed that I had to see this mood doctor. PISSED. My attitude: I have lived this way my whole life, thankyouverymuch, I don’t know WHY my family has GANGED UP ON ME like this. I don’t really remember the first meeting with the doc, but he did tell me later that he was very worried about me (he didn’t show it at all). One thing I do remember: The second I sat down opposite him, I didn’t wait to hear what he was going to say first, I launched in: “Listen. Whatever happens here, you should know. I write about Elvis all the time. I get obsessed about things and I write about them. If, at any point, you tell me I need to scale back on writing about the things I love, or that I need to stop being obsessed with things, we will be DONE here.” In other words: the first thing he heard out of my mouth was a threat, barked at him like a gangster in a 1930s movie. He had no idea about the Elvis thing at that first meeting (although we did end up talking about him quite a bit in those first weeks – he told me a colleague of his who also specialized in mood disorders had done a study of mental illness among Southern blues musicians, believe it or not) – but all he said was, in his Italian accent, “Darling, once you get better, you will be MORE productive, rather than less. I can promise you that. I will not take Elvis away from you.” (It’s funny now. It makes me laugh now. But it was not funny then. And I did not trust him at all.) I can only imagine what I looked like to him. My hair long and wild, I wouldn’t take off my coat, and I’m threatening to walk if he tries to make me “give up” Elvis.
The fact that a movie would be made inspired by Kay Jamison’s book is a mini-miracle. That book helped contextualize myself, and also ACCEPT the illness in a way that was deeper and more healing than “This thing I have is BAD and I am SCARED of it.” Her book was like: “Okay, so I have this terrible thing. Look at the pie charts of statistics and be fucking afraid. Bow down in respect to what a monster it is. But there is a flip-side, it is not ‘either/or’ here. There is more to be perceived. Just think about it.”
To see someone “accepting” their illness by flushing their meds down the toilet is terrifying. I get it. Grandiosity, as everyone knows, is part of how bipolar “presents”. You’re a God, you see things others don’t, you are connected to something other people can’t see, you have superpowers, you are GLORIOUS. This is how bipolar is and often feels. It’s a fact, it’s one of the “symptoms.” As with anything, that grandiosity gets stronger exponentially the more you sleep only 3 or 4 hours a night. The film addresses the grandiosity, the reckless feeling of being immortal or somehow immune to disaster (you can fly, you can breathe underwater, etc.) Touched With Fire also shows Carla and Marco choosing, repeatedly, to throw out their meds, because they miss the intensity. This is so common with bipolar people as to be practically mundane. Carla and Marco’s worried parents look on, helplessly, as their adult children make, frankly, insane and reckless choices, and seem to glory in what their bipolar minds perceive, instead of accepting that a more modulated baseline is preferable.
If you don’t miss the lows (and nobody misses the lows), then, boy, you miss those highs. The highs can feel like God’s reward. “Okay, you have this thing, and so you have to have those lows … I’m sorry … but here is a high like nobody else has ever experienced to compensate.”
In one scene in Touched with Fire, Marco, now medicated and out of the hospital, meets with his psychiatrist. Marco and Carla have been re-united out of the hospital, only now they both are stabilized. Marco is saddened to realize that he doesn’t feel much towards her. She was EVERYTHING to him when they were in the hospital together, but now … he can’t feel anything. The psychiatrist says that Marco has been living so long in the extremes of emotion, that “normal” emotions don’t even register. Marco will interpret “normalcy” as boredom and deadened nerve-endings, or that something is “missing”, when in the reality that’s what Love feels like to a lot of people. Marco has no experience of what it is like to be stable. So how could he know if what was happening was right or wrong, acceptable or not?
That rings true. It’s one of the most sensitive empathic points made in the whole film, and could actually change people’s perceptions of their sometimes-annoying-and-frustrating mentally ill family members/friends. WHY won’t they stay on their meds? WHY don’t they want to be happy in a CALMER way?
Well. The illness is a siren-song, that’s why. There’s a reason sailors ignored all of their experience and knowledge of the rocks near the shore and followed that sound. Because it was the most beautiful sound they had ever heard.
The fact that they crashed their boats and drowned could be seen in a number of different ways. It all depends on your perspective. Beware the siren-song, certainly. Or, worse (and most damaging to the bipolar mindset): Well, death and drowning is what you get for trying to get too close.
But Kay Jamison suggests that maybe there is a way to get close… not so close that you crash into the rocks and drown, but close enough that you still can hear that eerie beautiful music, music that makes the world seem like a place of magic and possibility.
Touched with Fire, the movie, addresses all of this in a way that feels, for lack of a better word, expert. Paul Dalio understands this from the inside out. It’s not an amateur-hour-mental-illness story. It’s sophisticated and complex, it’s honest – not only about the dangers of the illness, but the unfathomable joys as well.
And don’t let anyone tell you any different: You DO lose something when you stabilize. Something precious. Something you WILL miss. Nobody wants to hear you say that shit because they’re afraid you’re gonna throw out your meds. And I understand. I do.
But there IS a price. Getting well is not 100% puppies and ice-cream. There ARE things you will miss, things you need to reconcile yourself to never feeling again. Maybe something better will replace it, but there are no guarantees. Touched with Fire is bold enough to admit that.
Quite a remarkable post, and I think that’s all I will say lest I stumble onto a landmine…
Landmines abound, that’s for sure.
But thanks for reading, Patrick!
Wouldn’t be the first one I stepped on :)
I looked at this post and thought it looked awfully long and I’ve never heard of this thing and I think I’ll just skip it, but I dipped into a few paragraphs and saw where you were going and I’m glad I read it, written with your usual clarity and insight.
Regarding the language thing – someone I read is fond of saying that “1984” wasn’t intended as a How To manual, but some people seem to be doing just what it warned against.
// “1984” wasn’t intended as a How To manual, //
hahahaha I know, right??
It’s amazing how it happens naturally in a closed group – you really have to be aware of the tendency and fight against it.
I’m all for everyone not using words that are hurtful.
Awareness/kindness towards other people’s feelings can only make the world a better place.
But not to the degree that some people take it, where then people become afraid of speaking at all.
Touched With Fire is a good movie, with two wonderful performances at the center of it, and I am very grateful that the film is what it is – AND that someone actually would have made a film based on this book that very few people outside the bipolar community have even heard of? It’s very cool and I did not feel insulted by the portrayal, or annoyed – and neither actor felt like they were grasping towards “playing crazy’ in that “go for the brass ring” way that a lot of actors have in such roles.
They really GOT what this condition is about. And the film is also not afraid to show how crazy – really really crazy – shit can get. People are right to be afraid of this thing.
(Also, the film is not afraid to show WHY the parents are so worried. Griffin Dunne plays Marco’s Dad and Christine Lahti plays Carla’s Mom and these people are not unsympathetic – but this condition terrifies them – and so, to Carla and Marco, their interventions seem evil and controlling – but you can see their point of view totally.)
I credit a lot of this to the director. He has a three-dimensional perspective on what the whole thing is like – other people get to be real too, not just the “crazies.”
I was prompted to toss in one more comment when I just read an older quote from a talk show host who warned a guest that they should be careful about using the term “hard working” because slaves were hard working and maybe that phrase diminishes that experience. People seem to drum up sensitivities and then try to make their own poorly thought out views on these words and phrase other people’s concern too, and you must listen to them. No one (almost no one) would even make such a connection, yet suddenly there is a phrase that because one person finds to be troubling, it’s not to be used. Fortunately, this is a such an extreme example that it never took hold, but I think there are many many instances of this where some small group decides a thing should no longer be said and then can impose their views on larger groups. I think partly this gives people the feeling of occupying the moral high ground and they can feel virtuous about themselves, and probably superior (look how sensitive and concerned I am).
(I hope this isn’t straying too far from the vastly larger subject of your post – there is so much there I’d have no idea where to begin, except maybe to reiterate how excellent it is. you are pretty damn good, you know…..)
Patrick – :) Thank you.
I share your concerns about that kind of rigidity in language – and sometimes it is taken to truly absurd levels – like, “the ancient derivation of the word ‘table’ means ‘let’s boil puppies and children’ so please let us say ‘upright food-holding piece of furniture’ instead”. Like, come on. Language changes, original use morphs into something else, that’s how it works.
But I do think we need to listen to people who say “That hurts my feelings” and adjust our language. What does it cost anyone to NOT use the word “fag”? This is a hurtful word. Or “tranny.” Like: just don’t say it! (I’m not saying you do. It’s just an example.)
Trying to be kind to other people and trying to listen when people say “That hurts my feelings” as opposed to rolling one’s eyes and saying “God, the world is so politically correct now” or “What about my freedom of speech??” … is a good thing.
And, of course, context matters. Amongst my friends, anything goes in terms of language. Well, not anything. I would never use racial epithets or say “fag” or “tranny.” But even there – the rules are a bit looser because that really IS a safe space, and no one would ever say something in order to hurt someone. But … I’m a trash-mouth and I use words regularly that would get me tossed off of Tumblr. Ha. Or anywhere, really.
Context is decisive. Know your audience. Try not to hurt people, as much as you can. If someone says, “Hey, that word is really offensive …” I don’t know, it doesn’t cost all that much to not say it anymore.
One example: I used to say “I have a BIG FAT problem” with this – or whatever – and an obese friend of mine – who reads me all the time – emailed me telling me those words were really hurtful and he felt a sting of pain every time I said it. I was horrified at the thought I had hurt him by using words that I never even thought twice about. And I would never have said, “Come on, you know that’s not what I meant. Lighten up.”
So I stopped using it. I’m not THAT wedded to free speech. I care more about not hurting my great friend.
As always, it’s a nuanced conversation, and without nuance, you get the silliness you mention AND the mean-spirited, “I will use whatever words I want to use” kind of people, regardless of the pain they cause.
So yes, I would say tread carefully with all of this.
Just another example:
I call myself crazy all the time. I refer to my mental hospital as the “loony bin” because it takes the edge off. I say “batshit insane.” And yeah, I do feel that I am allowed to say that because I AM that. If somebody else threw those words at me – in a different context – I’d batten down the hatches and say, “You don’t get to talk like that.”
The kinds of people who say, “But YOU get to say it ..” are the WORST. You see this all the time with the n-word. It’s nuts. Like: so you honestly feel like saying that word all the time? And you feel held back because you aren’t “allowed” to say it? What are you, 12?
Of course black people are allowed to say it. Get over it. It’s not that important and it is a terribly hurtful thing to say, so just don’t fucking say it if you’re white. Even Eminem understands that.
I probably shouldn’t even say this but I love the word “cunt” and use it a lot. I don’t use it in my writing, of course, I never say it around people I don’t know (like … here. Hm.) – and when someone hurls it at me as an insult, it feels so violent that I actually cringe as though I’ve actually been punched. That’s how much power that word has, when in the wrong hands.
But – to myself – and with friends – we all use that word, in different contexts, and it’s all fine. Maybe we’re awful. That’s the most extreme example I can think of. The word is unsayable – in the public realm – and I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want to hear some news anchor say, “And now for a report from our cunt on the ground in Florida …”
(Also, Irish people say “cunt” constantly – as do British/Scottish – and since I’ve spent so much time over there, you really get used to it. It’s no big deal at all. You wouldn’t last 24 hours if you didn’t get immune to the word “cunt” thrown around – by cab drivers, bartenders, your makeout-buddy, groups of women, it’s everywhere.)
But God forbid some man calls me that, or a stranger emails me out of the blue calling me that (the most recent mean man email I got called me a “god-forsaken twat”) – and again, these words are SO violent, SO misogynistic – that yeah, you really need to be careful with them. And I have friends who can’t hear the c-word at all without cringing. And so I don’t say it around them. I don’t think people need to “loosen up” about that word. Who am I to say what word should or should not hurt them?
I use the word “cunty” once in my script. I did it deliberately. And it’s a man who says it, and he says it in a casual way – saying, basically, “You were being so cunty right now.” I knew I was taking a risk and I WANTED to take that risk – because the guy in question is an awesome guy, and he’s RIGHT that that is descriptive of her behavior. I also deliberately made her NOT flip out. Her response is a calm, “Wow.” I felt that this exchange was pushing the envelope – I wanted to really push the audience in terms of their identification with this guy – I wanted it to be COMPLEX and have people really wrestle with what they feel about both these characters. When we had the reading in New York, that moment came, and a man in the audience literally exclaimed, spontaneously. Not a word – just a sound, a totally shocked sound. I have goosebumps just remembering it. I’ve had some REALLY interesting conversations with men especially about that moment in the script. It sort of freed men up – again, not like I’m recommending people fling that word at one another – but because I used it in that way, the men in the audience – many of whom I did not know – came over to talk to me – about the whole thing, not just that moment – but that moment ALWAYS came up. And I just let them talk to me about that word, and how shocked they were in that moment, and how they had been identifying with the guy and then re-coiled – but they also totally got where he was coming from …
I listened to these guys and thought: “Well. Mission accomplished. That’s exaclty what I want you to feel.”
I’m re-reading Shakespeare’s sonnets right now – a couple a day – and the amount of “cunt” puns in those things would fill up 100 outraged Tumblrs. I’m cool with it. He’s talking about a body part. It has been turned into such an ugly word, the most vicious I can think of, but, yeah, I feel like I get to say it, because I have one, because I love mine and I like that word for it better than the “p” word (geez, TMI, too late now), and I refuse to let hateful men OWN that word and use it as a weapon. Plus, the whole hanging out with Irish friends thing, you totally get immune to it.
But you’ll never hear it on my site, that’s for sure. (Well, except for here right now. Oops.)
BAH. One final coda on the cunt thing:
Yes. I don’t think men should say it. Or they should be very very sure of who they are talking to before they do.
But recently: I got my first “troll” showing up to my Supernatural posts. That fandom is so intense that I was surprised it hadn’t happened before. This troll was so furious at my “take’ on the show that she (he? who knows) left furious comments on post after post after post – I woke up to 30 new comments one morning – each one angrier than the last.
It was actually entertaining.
I never responded because … I don’t engage with people who show up in “my house” and start screaming at me for 12 hours straight.
Finally, my troll had HAD it (although I’m not sure with what – not one of us engaged with her) and signed off with: “Bye. You’re all a bunch of annoying cunts.”
Well, the people who post on my Supernatural posts are hilarious and awesome (mostly women, although there are a couple of men) and of course they watched this whole thing go down, silently observing.
A couple of us started ROARING about it on Twitter, and one of them put a hashtag after her comment:
#proudtobeanannoyingcunt
I am still laughing and I was joking that I should put those words up on my banner but then, of course, I would scare everyone away.
… now, of course, some horrible man will email me about what a “cunt” I am and then say, “Hey, you said you loved the word.”
Watch, it’ll happen in the next 24 hours. This is how predictable it is! T-minus …
Hmm, reply buttons vanish at a certain point it seems, wonder where this will go.
I kind of have a natural negative reaction when people try to tell me (tell anyone, that is to say) not to say certain things – don’t tell me what to do – but once I’ve settled down I do try to consider whether the person is over the top or if it’s a reasonable request and using these phrases and words really is insensitive. I think tolerance has increased, sometimes it does feel like you are being clubbed over the head though…
The latest cause de jour seems to be cultural appropriation (don’t wear a sombrero). Silly.
That was a popular word in “Deadwood” I remember. I confess I do flinch at the use of certain words, that’s one, never has gained the popularity of some of the others though, bad marketing maybe, you rarely, almost never, hear it – unless hanging around a certain part of New York I guess….
If anyone stumbled into this discussion, well, your commentary on the use of that word, they’d probably be going – What in the hell?? Funny.
With respect, I think people have needed to be clubbed over the head. As long as people still think it’s okay to fling the word “fag” and “slut” and “n-word” at their fellow man, then yeah, we need to bust out the clubs.
I just watched the 30 for 30 about Christian Laettner, and when the rumors came out that he might be gay, there’s footage of an entire audience in a basketball stadium shouting in unison as the game went on: “FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT” in unison. It’s fucking disgusting. It was 1991 or whatever. So that’s progress. and yes: people should be told not to use that word and if they insist on using it, then they deserve all the outrage they get. I mean, really. If a person is so wedded to using the word “faggot,” then they really need to look at WHY they want to use that word so much.
I don’t agree with making words illegal, of course, and I am against trigger warnings. But a civilized society needs to protect its minority citizens from having to walk around in a state of siege/threat. It’s everybody’s business. And screw “names will never hurt me.” Tell that to a 13-year-old who commits suicide because they can’t take it anymore.
I never hear the word “cunt” thrown around in New York, or maybe you’re joking. Maybe in the Irish neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens you’d hear it in the pubs. Like I said, if you go to Ireland, you cannot walk a block without hearing that word. And over in Ireland it’s used differently – it’s more like “asshole” or “obnoxious” or “outrageously full of himself and gives a crap about hair gel” – a man can be a “cunt” just as easily as a woman can. It’s not used AGAINST women – solely -in the same way it is here, and it has lost its sexual connotation – so maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel as vicious.
I think we all could use some sensitivity when dealing with others.
and honestly, I’m not really comfortable with where this is going. It’s not your fault. It’s just the way it’s going … but this post in particular is a plea for understanding, compassion, and me being transparent about my own suffering so that others – who don’t suffer – might better understand – and maybe might THINK first before speaking. or, at least, LISTEN to those who have experiences different than yours (you, in general, not you you) and maybe even think, “Huh. That person is coming from a place that is so unlike mine. But maybe I should just listen because she/he knows their own life better than I know their life … and maybe there’s some opportunity to understand other people better.” Or “wow, I know people who have bipolar and it is totally incomprehensible to me, and my family member is so FRUSTRATING and I can’t even be around them when they’re manic … but now maybe there’s another possibility and I can be patient with those who aren’t as ‘together.'”
Any time someone shoots up a school and I have to hear the “what are we going to do about mental illness” thing come up again – yes. It hurts. This post is expressing my own experience because mental illness is so incomprehensible – and there’s still a shit-ton of stigma around it – and even pressing Publish on this thing was a risk. Because people JUDGE as opposed to LISTEN.
I would like this comments section for this post, in particular, to not go down the path of debating free speech and whether or not people should be allowed to use words that hurt others.
Hope that’s okay.
That was a joke about New York, doesn’t bear explaining.
I think I was trying to say that some of the refinement of language was ok, pretty much what you say about not doing the name calling, part of which is to see people as individuals and not just a type where they are probably dehumanized and it’s ok to name call. We are not terribly far apart here, I may just not be expressing myself very clearly.
Yes, I hear you. The over-control of language (in academia, in university settings) is damn near totalitarian right now – and so kids will (unfortunately) be unequipped to read Huckleberry Finn or Shakespeare or the love poetry of the 19th century – without being shocked/outraged, whatever.
George Orwell showed what was already seen out there in the world in tyrannical societies:
If you limit the words people are allowed to use, you limit THOUGHT. Which, of course, is the whole point of tyranny, and newspeak. Take away the subtlety of language – and terrible things happen to the brain’s flexibility.
So I am against that totally.
But the “Hey, man, it’s free speech, I can say whatever I want to say, stop being so sensitive …” That’s boorish and cruel.
But back to the topic at hand: despite the fact that everyone knows we should be more sensitive to mental health issues and people who have mental illness – the stigma still exists. If I go into a loony bin, why is that any different from being laid up with a cast on your leg, or getting dialysis? Why is it different? If you’re physically sick, you go to the hospital. But it’s still not understood how serious mental illness can be – AND so many people say stuff like, “Stop being so sensitive,” or “Toughen up” or “Stop being dramatic” – or, worse, “I have bad days too, I know what you’re going through.” No. You don’t. Until you’ve spent 19 days wringing your hands, in such a state that you had to take 2 weeks off of work, you have no idea what I’m going through. People don’t mean to be stupid, but unfortunately they are.
And this is where, yes, language helps – and people need to understand what language helps, and what language DOESN’T help.
I know we shouldn’t care what other people think of us – but unless you’re a woodsman living in a cabin with no interaction with other humans – you care about what other people think. It doesn’t run your life but still. It’s embarrassing to have a mental health problem, and the stigma keeps people from getting help.
So like the commenter here – who had never heard of the book – and now wants to read it to see if it can help his family …
This is wonderful. We need to listen to one another. And try to help each other.
Thanks for this. I feel you on the Tumblrkids, as I’m afraid I started to think of them. I suspect at least a few of them are trolls or plants, but enough who aren’t nonetheless go along with the nonsense to the point that Tumblr gets very frustrating, in terms of trying to explore something in-depth or have a conversation about a fraught topic (to say the least!) that admits more than two possible viewpoints–that isn’t itself bipolar and either/or. I finally concluded that I am too damn old for Tumblr. I like conversations that proceed as though I were face-to-face with people, with nuances of meaning and all that old-person jazz, and I just can’t have ’em with someone whose only joy appears to come from blasting me as a “neurotypical.” So I’m glad you post about this stuff in the way that you do.
// I just can’t have ’em with someone whose only joy appears to come from blasting me as a “neurotypical.” //
Are you kidding me, ilyka. Grrrrrrrrrrr. See that makes me see red. Ah yes, because what the world needs more of is name-calling. And barriers between people so that we can’t understand each other. And yes, what a GOOD idea to keep people OUT of conversations! Good plan!
Yeah, I’m too old for that nonsense too. I also can’t stand the somersaults done by everyone involved to use “sensitive” and “correct” language. Some of that is obviously a good and right thing. But when it eventually becomes so rigid that no one can say ANYthing without being “corrected” … well, these kids need to read Orwell. Because that’s what they’re doing. Creating their own “newsspeak” that nobody else can understand.
Dammit, there’s a feminist blog that I used to read and then stopped because the language-policing was so out of control that the moderators were actually shaming people in the comments section who showed up to share real-life traumatic stories but didn’t use the right language. Then another blog was set up by “survivors” of that original feminist blog – and on that second blog all everyone did was bitch about how horrible that original blog was. hahaha Ah, the Internet. Why can’t I remember the name of it? It was run by one woman – it wasn’t a group blog. But it was a very interesting “case study” in what happens when language becomes so rigid that everything MUST become an echo chamber. It was actually kind of chilling.
This is not (obviously) to make any broad statement about feminist blogs which do tons of great work – but this (in my opinion) was run by a very damaged control-freak woman who flaunted her Trauma Bona Fides like a broad-sword and wouldn’t let anyone speak if they didn’t use the right words. It was Tumblr x 10.
I have an Elvis Tumblr – and I love a lot of the art-focused Tumblrs – photography and fashion Tumblrs – or fandom Tumblrs, although those can get insane too – the flame wars in the Supernatural fandom alone could light the Eastern seaboard!! But that’s fandom – and is actually kind of entertaining.
People love things, and Tumblr is great as a place to share whatever it is that you love.
Anyway, Ilyka – thanks, as always, for weighing in!
Okay I remembered the name of the blog. Now I’m afraid that you may very well enjoy it and I just spent 4 paragraphs trashing it.
Shakesville is its name.
Hahaha–fear not. That’s all I’ll say about Shakesville because your four paragraphs are a perfect summary of my issues with it.
I am generally not an advocate for “safe space.” I understand wanting to make room for people who justifiably fear to speak up to finally do so, but I haven’t yet seen where it doesn’t eventually turn on itself, because to make it “safe” you are compelled to remove anything, or (more often) anyone, who threatens that safety. Plus come on: Safety is an illusion. It’s a conceit of the modern era. I was futzing around on Ancestry.com one day, researching maternal lines, and turned up a picture of one of my three-times great grandmothers and this lady–she lived on a homestead out west and she LOOKED like it, you know? Like, “Ten minutes ago I shot a bear trying to get at the chickens and now here I am, having my photo taken. Hurry up, because I still have a hog to butcher at home and the roof’s not gonna repair itself.” It’s hilarious to imagine trying to explain to such a person what “safe space” means.
On sites like, ah, some blogs, the unwritten rule becomes, “You must disclose your standing in order to speak on this topic.” So if you want to talk about mental illness, for example, you have to be “out” as having a diagnosis, and if you object to strangers on the internet knowing your medical history, why, that’s too bad and shut up, troll. Pretty soon someone’s unofficially in charge of credentialing everyone; how can it NOT go authoritarian from there?
At the same time anyone online, definitely women online–you quickly learn that there are times you’re gonna have to take out the trash, like you did with that Noel character. Mansplainers kill me. They always keep digging. Then, when it finally penetrates that MAYBE they aren’t going over so well, they try to “lighten the mood” with something that’s guaranteed not to. “I know! I’ll bet she’d love to hear what I think of Kirsten Dunst’s body.” It’s like that old Onion headline–“I love the way your tits bounce when you type.” So clueless.
// but I haven’t yet seen where it doesn’t eventually turn on itself, because to make it “safe” you are compelled to remove anything, or (more often) anyone, who threatens that safety. //
You know, I’ve sensed this too – but hadn’t been able to put it into words. That’s seems to be the natural way it goes, unfortunately.
and so everyone becomes so inhibited about “ruining” the “safe space” that no one can speak freely.
// “You must disclose your standing in order to speak on this topic.” So if you want to talk about mental illness, for example, you have to be “out” as having a diagnosis, //
UGH. Yes. I HATE that. I have seen poor people on Tumblr (naive, I get it, but still) bemoan the fact that they DON’T have a diagnosis. This is LUNACY. The pressure to “fit in” now means: “You must have multiple diagnoses, and live in a state of such sensitivity that you need trigger warnings on the post of a kitten.” – I remember a moment in Shakesville where you know who posted a picture of cherry blossoms and – yes – put a trigger warning on it. Not kidding. I can’t remember what was potentially so upsetting about cherry blossoms that a reader would have a PTSD flashback – but come on.
It’s not CRUEL to value strength, and to cheer people on to being strong, to be survivors – as opposed to victims.
// “Ten minutes ago I shot a bear trying to get at the chickens and now here I am, having my photo taken. Hurry up, because I still have a hog to butcher at home and the roof’s not gonna repair itself.” It’s hilarious to imagine trying to explain to such a person what “safe space” means. //
hahahahaha
I know, something like that is very very good for perspective.
and in re: Noel. I know, right? He just could not let it go, or let me “win.” He was so pissed off that Melancholia didn’t “include him” – but of course it DOES, it’s just that he felt “left out” because a woman was the protagonist. And so his parting shot about Dunst’s “tits” was a way to put me in my place.
It was a bummer, too, because he is 1. an Irishman and 2. a huge Elvis fan. That’s why he found my site – In general, I have found that Elvis fans are the nicest, sweetest, most positive fan-grouping I personally have ever stumbled on – everyone just lOVES him and loves other people who love him in uncomplicated ways.
Noel, clearly, was an exception. He was fine in the “Elvis posts” but when he ventured out into the rest of my site – THAT’S what came out. That Melancholia post was the first time he commented on anything other than an Elvis post, and look at how well he did!! Bah!
//If you read Tumblr with any regularity (and I highly suggest you do not. I need to stop going there myself//
Hahahaha. Tumbler is grand for looking at pretty & inspiring photos and that’s about it.
Agreed!
Thank you for this. I had never heard of the movie or the book, and now both are things that I think need to be shared with my family. We’ve spent so long coping (and not) with a bipolar loved one that it sounds like they’ll be… refreshing, to put it mildly.
-j
J Greely – wow, I am so so glad I wrote about it then! A comment like yours is what someone like me hopes for – and I hope the book helps, or at least provides an alternative perspective – to you – to your loved one – that may be freeing. I know how tough it is, and I can only imagine how tough it must have been (and continues to be) on my own family.
Knowledge is power – to use the cliche – and I have been so grateful for Jamison’s book (Touched with Fire, in particular) and very happy my doctors made me read it.
Good luck, and my best to you and your family!
Brilliant piece, Sheila. And the timing is impeccable. I’m in an endless recursive discussion with one of the “white knights”.
Thanks, Mitch! And thanks for reading.
I have a pretty funny story about a white knight. The poor guy. The thing is: white knights truly do mean well, and are protective of sensitive people, and want to make sure blah blah blah. And this guy meant so well and was so “sensitive” to my pain (I barely know him) that I felt bad about having such a bad reaction to it. He wasn’t being disingenuous – he really IS as sensitive as all that – but since we don’t know each other, his sense of needing to protect me – his belief that I needed protection (from what? Dude, I don’t know you!!) – all why he constantly positions himself as a feminist …
Like, dude, do you see the problem? You are acting in a patriarchal patronizing protective manner (and you mean well, I get it, I do!!!) in the same breath as you say you’re a feminist. It happens a lot with male White Knights in this realm. I appreciate male allies. I do. But often it comes out in that weird way and seems (weirdly) to re-inforce the out-moded attitude that women need a male shield from the dangerous world. I don’t know, it’s so bizarre!
We had one interaction where I basically said, “Dude. I’m fine. You don’t need to weep for my plight or stick up for me. You have no IDEA how tough I really am. Like, Rizzo from Grease tough. Save your tears for someone else.”
It made me feel bad, though, because … it was like being mean to Laura from Glass Menagerie.
… and so I admire your stick-to-it-ive-ness with your White Knight. I find them unbearable although I know they don’t have a mean-spirited bone in their bodies. Like that lady who emailed me. She assumed I had no idea what I was talking about, and that I was being dismissive of bipolar by … saying it looked like the bipolar character was going to jump off the roof?
But … she DID look like she wanted to jump off the roof. That was the whole point of the scene.
I didn’t say, “Like most batshit-nutty people, this character was so self-absorbed that she was willing to jump off the roof and leave her child an orphan.”
You know? Then I would deserve outraged emails.
But she was so busy assuming I was being offensive that she couldn’t even read what I actually wrote.
I don’t know where to post this, Sheila, so thought here might be best. I love the way you’ve written so honestly about something I’ve encountered, although don’t experience myself. I saw on one of your posts, some where in a myriad of wonderful posts and commentary, that you missed the “bookslut”, Jessa Crispin. I wonder if you’ve read her new books: “The Dead Ladies Project” and “The Creative Tarot”. Both books are extraordinary meditations on life and I’d be interested in hearing what you thought of them, in your passionate and concise way of writing.
Bainer – Thanks!
I love Jessa so much but have not read either book – The Dead Ladies Project sounds so up my alley that I can’t WAIT. I love her writing, and I also I just love how her mind works. It’s very unique. Very happy for her!
I will check both of them out!
I read the book about 5 months ago and found it both thought-provoking and commonsensical. I was unimpressed with the trailer and didn’t want a cruddy movie associated with the title. I’m so glad it’s good. And glad you wrote about it.
Since reading,whenever I hear of a musician or actor or artist behaving in a wild or destructive manner, I find myself wondering if the person is bipolar. And I want to cut that person more slack.
//Kay Jamison makes the claim that bipolar has its uses. If it DIDN’T, it would have been evolved out of existence at some point along the way of human development.//
I had started on a long riff about this, using Dennis Dutton and E.O Wilson and how evolution appears to favor increased complexity. But I’m not sure when something becomes mansplaining, so I’ll keep that to myself.
************
I’m curious. How much can you tell in advance that your moods will change? Do you know if you’re going to be in the sort of up-but-not-manic state that you mentioned with Beethoven and plan on spending a few days (or whatever) editing your script? Or can you not tell whether the mood elevator is going to stop at the 3rd floor rather than the 223th? Could you guide yourself to the lower mood with the CBT? Or is that just a naive fantasy, akin to thinking that one could turn nightmares into lucid dreams with practice?
Hey – I’m pleased to hear you read the book! That’s so cool! Yeah – I avoided the movie at first but then my pal Susan, over at Ebert, reviewed it favorably and it made me curious to check it out. It’s good! I think a lot of that is due to the director – it’s a very personal project and he cares a lot about making it right. And Katie Holmes (who was one of the producers) also clearly cares a lot. Luke Kirby, too – I have been a fan of his since first season of Slings & Arrows! He’s excellent!
I think with bipolar it’s important to keep in mind how common substance abuse is among those who have it (I’m very lucky that way) – and of course, doing coke, or drinking to excess is a way of self-medicating but it makes the cycling that much steeper – I think a lot of the destructive stuff you see in, say, rock stars (who also live a totally nocturnal lifestyle – which can fuck with your circadian rhythms for all time) – is exacerbated by drugs. It’s hard to tell which comes first – chicken or egg.
// How much can you tell in advance that your moods will change? //
I can’t. I know to dread and respect daylight savings – since daylight is such a key factor in regulating bipolar. “We” tend to become manic in November or March – I mean, it’s embarrassing how clock-work it is – because of the shortening/lengthening of days. It doesn’t mean you WILL, but it means you have to be extra careful. And buy a light lamp!!
And I’m too newly diagnosed to be trusted in any way whatsoever in gauging my moods. (It’s like the scene I described with Marco’s psychiatrist saying You have no experience with what normal moods feel like. Neither do I.)
I got extremely manic in the winter of 2013-14 and didn’t know it. And then when I did figure it out, I didn’t care because I was having so much fun and I was sick of being a “good girl” and trying to be calm and normal like everyone else. My doctors pulled rank on me. I told them to Fuck Off. Literally. My doc (the “I won’t take Elvis away from you” doc) is awesome. “I’m FINE.” “My darling, no. You are not.” “DAMMIT”
I finally caved. and then had to be a good little girl and do what I needed to do to get back on track (and honestly, it took about 3 months to course-correct. It’s like an ocean liner – you can’t just make a right-hand swerve.)
It is a tricky and shitty illness because it hides itself, it masks itself in really good positive things (excitement, ambition, joy) and then turns those good things on you.
It’s very common to then become afraid of ANY positive feelings because they might lead to mania. God help me if I ever fall in love again. I have no plans to do so … but with stuff like that – uncontrollable experiences that bring happiness and joy and lots of sex … well, this is dangerous for bipolar people because we have no brake pedal. And so things that normal people look forward to, I am scared of because I don’t want something exciting to push me into mania.
Interesting though in terms of Beethoven: (and I am not in any way comparing my work to his work – but the example of that artistic cycle was so gratifying because it IS a mirror of what I did naturally, through my whole life, without ever knowing I was sick).
That “mixed state” I mentioned in 2009: Now 2009 might not be the best example because my father died in January – so who knows what was what. In February/March of that year (a month or so after my dad died), I wrote a one-act. That one scene is what would eventually become the full-length script I wrote. But at the time, it was just a 15-minute thing. We had a reading of it (and other scripts) in Los Angeles – in June of 2009 – and it went far better than my wildest dreams. Everyone there was crazy for my script so I decided to expand on it into a full-length. I came home from Los Angeles, and on the flight back I was already getting depressed. It was like surfing down a 100-foot wave, and I’ve been going through this my whole life, so the general feeling was, “No, no, not this again.” I arrived in New York at dawn in a purely suicidal state. I got through it. I treaded carefully. I tried to control my thought. I was doing okay (sort of). And then, from out of no-where – the “mixed state” arrived. It literally felt like it was not there, and then it was THERE the next second. I’ve had “mixed states” before (I can see that now) – but never for such an uninterrupted length of time. I was so incapacitated I had to take a leave of absence from my job.
It lasted for 19 days. I put up posts on my blog during that time – which I still can’t believe – but most of them were cryptic. Just a photo and some weird statement. Or song lyrics with some weird message from me. I’ve considered taking all of July 2009 down, but whatever, let it stand.
So anyway, (sorry! so long!) – somehow, the wave receded. I was decimated by it, but I went back to work. It was good to go back to the office and see my friends. I wasn’t crying all day. I started to be able to enjoy things again. (I bounced back pretty quickly – another clear sign of bipolar, but moving on.) My mood rose a tiny bit – just a bit – into the “normal” range, not the manic range – and suddenly I had mental energy (not mania), and I took out the one-act I had written, and wrote the entire rest of the script in August and September of that year. (Humorously: the final title of my script is July and Half of August – it went through a number of different titles, but that’s the one I settled on. I did not at all do it deliberately as a way to reflect those two horrible months of 2009. I mean, I could have made the romance in the script last from March to April, and the title then would have been March and Half of April. It’s just one of those weird beautiful little coincidences that happen sometimes, and I can’t really take credit for it. But clearly … there’s a reason I landed on those two months.)
I didn’t write the entire script during the manic phase (which was rising up in April and May of 2009). I wrote it during that Beethoven post-crash up-swing period. I had recovered enough that I calmly, quietly, determinedly, organized the first public reading for my script in October of 2009. I am still blown away by myself, honestly. CAHONES.
That’s the clearest example I can see of my own life of how I USED those natural cycles, even rapid cycling (the most dangerous kind). I sure wish I never had to go that July, though.
and I’m not sure I could ever do any of that consciously. Way too scary.
And lastly: CBT is a life-saver for bipolar. My CBT person has definitely guided me back from the edge. And I’ve sometimes resisted because I am so sick of people getting nervous when I show I’m excited or happy. Oh God, is she manic? Bah Humbug.
Talk therapy did jack-squat for me. I got worse with talk-therapy. I am sure it is wonderful for people who aren’t as sick as I am. CBT is fast and FOCUSED and goal-oriented. I hate it in a way because I just want to be normal and not have to work so hard at Life.
// Or is that just a naive fantasy, akin to thinking that one could turn nightmares into lucid dreams with practice?//
There is some of that too. Very difficult to separate naive fantasy from what is actually do-able.
I don’t know – the drug addict recovery thing applies. Day to day. One day at a time.
and finally: evolution “favors increased complexity” – really? Well, this is hopeful news. Tell me more about it, I don’t know anything.
/And so things that normal people look forward to, I am scared of because I don’t want something exciting to push me into mania./
I hope you and your doctors can find a way past that.
//“We” tend to become manic in November or March.//
Yes, I remember the charts of moods and productivity for the British artists and writers.
//rock stars (who also live a totally nocturnal lifestyle – which can fuck with your circadian rhythms for all time)//
You’ve mentioned the circadian rhythms and your lamp. I hadn’t thought about that effect upon musicians. I wonder if it’s similar with comics and other late night performers.
Elvis was a vampire. Up all night, slept all day. Now this was because he performed at night – not because he was a lazy-bones.
As beautiful as Arctic countries seem to be, I’m afraid to even visit. A 23-hour day? I shiver.
and I’ve had plenty of excitement since I got diagnosed – more than I’ve had in a long while. I got an agent! We made my short film last year! Criterion! Gena/Angie/Oscars! And so it’s all good. It’s just a kind of fear that exists – exacerbated by missing mania. There were a couple of times when I thought, “Oh man, how much better this would be if I were cycling like crazy.”
This is why the drug-addict-recovery thing seems the best analogy. There’s a moment in the Amy Winehouse doc – where she’s just won the Grammy – a huge triumph – and she sits on an empty stage afterwards, and the first thing she says is, “This would be so much more fun if I was high.”
Oddly, I’m really liking the more extreme daylight/nighttime of Seattle compared to Hawaii. My friends here told me I’d get tired of it, but I’m kinda bummed that the days are getting “even” again.
23 hours of night sounds cool. But I had spent some time in Alaska, and trying to sleep when it’s still light at 10PM is a challenge. Maybe this is as far from the equator as I should live.
//Well, this is hopeful news. Tell me more about it, I don’t know anything.//
Thanks for asking…
I’m sure you recall the philosopher Dennis Dutton, the founder of The Arts and Letters blog — which is still going strong after his death. He wrote a book called The Art Instinct where he went over his theories (shared by other folks) on how a desire to make art, and an appreciation of it, evolved in us humans. His general thinking was that the desire to make it was a form of sexual selection. If you’re not up on the terms of evolution, this is the term used for anything that is done purely to promote oneself as a sexual partner. Something that doesn’t make the organism stronger, faster, better camouflaged, etc. The things could be moderately deleterious for the organism — as long as they are not too harmful. The most common example is the peacock’s tail feathers. A peacock has to put a lot of energy into growing those things, and they trail behind him, making him vulnerable to predators. But the plumage appeals to peahens, and they usually choose to mate with the peacock with the biggest, brightest plumage.
The Irish Elk was often used as an example of an animal that went overboard in terms of making sexual selection characteristics too harmful. The story of their extinction used to be that the antlers became too big (fossils have them at 12 feet across) for them to support in terms of moving around or being vulnerable to predators. Current evidence for what caused their extinction is inconclusive, with human predation being one possibility. But still, a cautionary tale for any guy who asks a genie to make him a gigantic hood ornament.
So Dutton suggested that the urge to make art was one way to make yourself look more attractive to the opposite sex. “Yo, I’m so good at providing that I have extra time to do this other stuff.” Like the bling that you talk about. Now, he also suggested that certain artistic motifs bring positive associations: landscapes of pleasant vistas (essentially, watering holes free of dangerous critters and filled with fruit and game), nudes, rhythms that are near heartbeats. And that the instinct to make art evolved along with our pleasure in these associations. So, being an artist was a way to get laid more often than one might otherwise, and pass along the genes for making more artists (and more people who like to have sex with artists). A doubly pleasant positive feedback/feedforward loop.
I mentioned the Harvard entomologist E. O. Wilson above because he wrote a book Consilience in which he called for science to try to understand things like the art instinct — along with various other areas associated with the humanities. The notion was to try to understand why we quirky humans do the things we do, and use the methods of science to investigate not merely our pathologies, but also the positive things we do. His assumption is that there must be evolutionary benefits to those things, and it would probably be useful to understand them. Dutton spoke frequently to Wilson as he was writing, in hopes of making sure that his speculations line up with evolutionary theory.
I think Dutton’s is an interesting idea, but I’m also inclined to go along with people who criticize it as a “just so” story. It’s not science in the sense that it generates a testable hypothesis. At least, as he presented it. I do think there’s a lot to it. Now, I’m more comfortable modifying KRJ’s “if it didn’t it would have evolved out of existence” into “if it diminished one’s chances of passing along descendants, then it would have evolved out of existence.” That seems less open to dispute. Even though I believe she’s correct.
I’m trying to make a distinction between what I believe is true and what I could justify as true. And now I’ll add speculation on top of what I believe.
I suspect there’s some positive feedback in artistic performances being in evenings. The night time is the right time for loving. And if you’re a performing artist, you want to perform when you have maximal opportunity. But that may just be a consequence of our industrial society — we do the “serious” stuff during the day and the fun stuff at night. I wonder how often the folks who perform in the noon time slot at Glastonbury get laid compared to the folks who go on stage at 9PM. Of course, the bigger acts get the better evening time slots, so it’s hard to see how you might do an apples-to-apples comparison. I don’t know if the ancient Greeks did their plays in the evening. I’m not sure how they would light them if they did. I could imagine Homer telling his stories around a bonfire. And then the groupies going back to his tent to get his autograph in white ink – as per Pushkin.
So, to tie this more to Touched With Fire, if there are reproductive advantages to being an artist — and there do appear to be advantages to being bipolar for creating art – then I could see how there could be positive selection for bipolar disorder. Of course, one could point to artists who had too much of the disorder and didn’t leave descendants. And to artists who do not have any of the bipolar characteristics.
None of this speculation requires that the artist think that she’s dancing/painting/singing to get laid and pregnant. The motivations for those behaviors don’t need to be conscious. They can be one of many reasons. And there are artists who have no interest in making kids.
Also, as I was reading TWF, I wondered how many tycoons or financial giants might be bipolar. The James family she mentions (and Wittgenstein’s, I think), I wondered if Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller or Paul Allen might be bipolar. I know nothing about their behaviors, I’m just picking names. I wondered if the manic episodes (if they aren’t coupled with too much profligacy) might be the start of some large fortunes.
Now to the speculation that I don’t like.
It appears to me that organisms can become more complex over time. This is a controversial idea, with the difficulty in defining “complexity” being one of the areas of dispute. And I mean “complexity” in terms of habitat richness (absent asteroid destroying large groups), in terms of behaviors, and in terms of morphology. But, setting aside the reasons and the difficulty in quantifying complexity, I think nature is like Detroit in the ’50’s: it likes to add chrome and tail fins as long as the price of gas is low. Of course, there are things like sharks that stay simple and efficient.
A related idea is one of variance — basically small differences that don’t cause new species to arise. Variance increases as a species get more members. This is not a controversial idea within evolutionary thought — some people use it to explain increasing complexity (or deny increasing complexity as merely as a misnomer for variance). So, for example, if there’s a variance of 10% in the weight of adult male deer when there are 20,000 of them, there might be a variance of 15% in weight if there are 2 million of them. So, as we get more and more humans, I worry that “variances” like bipolar disorder might become more common as a percent — as well as in absolute numbers. So if 2% of people had that disorder when there were 4 billion of us, there might be 3-4% when there are 7 billion of us. I don’t know how variance increases with population size, and without a better understanding of the causes of bipolar disorder, I don’t think we could predict how it might increase. But I have a bad feeling that it would.
We do seem to be getting wiser with our treatments of mood disorders, better drugs and therapies. So maybe we can do a better job of helping folks in the future… there can be enough “variance” that we get people who can help with this. Maybe a Jonas Salk of mood disorders. I think this was not exactly what you were hoping for with “evolution favors increased complexity.”
Interesting! (I have a suspicion that Alexander Hamilton may have suffered from some kind of mood disorder. He had a similar cycle, or at least one immediately recognizable: almost unimaginable highs, and then – right on the heels of the highs – suicidal bitter lows. Peaks and crashes. In general, I dislike diagnosing anyone from afar or from history. Similar to speculation about the sexuality of, say, Shakespeare. I suppose some of it is harmless – but way too often it becomes a way of CLAIMING those people as “one of our own” – to any given grouping. “Well, if Beethoven was bipolar, then I feel better about myself” (to boil it down out of existence.)
The “evolved out of existence” was me paraphrasing Jamison – just to be clear.
And bipolar is genetic. (Which comes into play in the movie of Touched with Fire – I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that when Carla and Marco get together – in the manic phase – they fall in love, and want to have a baby so that they can pass on their great gift to the baby – and raise him in an environment where bipolar was the greatest thing to ever happen to you.) I know that I have uncles – one in particular, my godfather (whom I miss every day) – who probably – most definitely were. In fact, there’s many of us – at least on the O’Malley side. Two first-cousins diagnosed (we all commiserate, and also diagnose the rest of the family … hahaha Oh well) – which, including me, is pretty representative of the whole population (I have a lot of cousins).
I agree (somewhat) that art – be it poetry or song or theatre – makes the artist attractive to others. I’m sure the stars of the day in ancient Greece had groupies. Anyone who can do something that very few other people can do – or have the courage to do – have automatic sex appeal. Astronauts are the first group of people that come to mind for me, not Clark Gable or Byron. I’m not sure, though, that that has anything to do with anything. It sounds sketchy to me. If the human race needs art – which we do – we’ve been doing it from before we even had language, really – then an intensified sensibility is advantageous. (That intensity is required to not only do art, but to have the GUTS to do art – to stand up there in front of anyone else, and declaim a monologue or draw on the cave wall the herd of antelope you just saw … You know: it takes a certain kind of person to be okay with doing that, to choosing to do that.)
Also: plenty of people with mood disorders are not artists. Because most people, in general, are not artists. So who knows what that means. But among the artist population – mood disorders are very common, and the self-medication that comes with it (alcohol) is also more common than not.
More art sucks than doesn’t suck. People may want/yearn to be artists, but they are too sick – or addicted to drugs – or – basically – untalented – to get anything much done. You can be as sick as you like, don’t mean your poetry is going to be worth much. But those who are, say, “touched” … like Beethoven – or Byron … the question remains: What is it that “touches” them? Jamison puts out there her own ideas, based on her knowledge of the brain’s functioning/wiring – and (most controversially) the good parts of mania, which nobody wants you to admit.
But that’s the reason why so many of us don’t want to take meds, or flush them down the toilet. Because the mania – before it goes bad – is so so good – and you rely on it (especially if you’re an artist – and I consider myself to be one of those). Depressed people have different challenges – the lethargy and nothing-ness that come with depression is so brutal that, again, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemies. And anxiety is strictly unremittingly unpleasant. But bipolar brings intense pleasure with it – meaning, possibly, that it comes straight from the mind of Lucifer (once he’s gotten out of his cage, that is).
I did this whole post about Elizabeth Wurtzel and F. Scott Fitzgerald and their two essays about their “crack ups” and weirdly I wrote it pre-diagnosis, if I recall – like, a couple of WEEKS before I got diagnosed. (I am insanely productive. I write every day, no matter how bad it gets.) But it was really interesting to see
1. How they both interpreted their “crack-up”
2. How one is a more gifted writer than the other – which makes a huge difference
3. How willing readers/observers were willing to sneer/chuckle/laugh/make fun of Wurtzel for “overdramatizing” her illness and being totally unsympathetic as a persona – when, my God, what do these morons think mental illness is like? Do they honestly think it makes us crazies SYMPATHETIC? How do they THINK it presents? As socially acceptable behavior?
This is why we need education, understanding. And not wait for something horrible to happen (Wurzel killing herself, for example) to be all sad and sympathetic towards her. This happens so often. The making-fun of Amanda Bynes was so vicious that it actually hurt my feelings. And these from people who were normally “sympathetic” towards racism and sexism and every other “ism”. Proud snobby liberals. Making fun of someone who was obviously having a very public mental breakdown.
It’s vicious and it still happens all the time. People “act out” in, yes, INSANE ways when they’re cracking up. I’m not sure what these onlookers THINK it would look like. Adorable with soft-streaking tears down a pale pretty face?
Drives me insane.
/and also diagnose the rest of the family/ Ha!
It’s good when family is a safe space and you can be obnoxious/bitchy/loving/insightful all at once.
We humans don’t even do necessary things like eating for only one reason, so complex and hard to explain things like making art have tons of reason. I like Brian Eno’s definition art is everything you don’t have to do. Except that’s not how it appears to artists. Sometimes statements are pithy and wrong in interesting ways. He’s kinda zen in that sense.
I was thinking about Amanda (and Britney and LiLo) when I was writing this, but things were already getting … expansive. I see she’s back at the Fashion Institute, so I hope she’s doing well and can stay that way. If only everyone was as self-aware and thoughtful as Craig Ferguson. As you mentioned above, drugs and alcohol can exacerbate mood disorders – and they do seem come come on in late adolescence and early adulthood. Just awful timing if you were a child star.
I think I overemphasized the sex/procreation part above. I also think that the pleasure given by art is a reason for the continuation of the urge to make it and experience it – especially if it doesn’t get in the way of other things that are required for survival. And I think that many people possess an open-ended desire to make things. I see lots of people around me who like to make things that aren’t art. I’m not an artist. I think of the sorts of analyses that I did as an engineer as “things” that I made. I still have that urge. And I imagine that urge manifests itself in different ways with individuals, and with different opportunities as available in the time and place and culture. The urge to make jet engines was probably not something that anyone felt in the 4th century BC, but I know folks who have that urge now. Not just as a way to make a living.
I’m not suggesting that making things is the same as art, just saying that if humans didn’t have the urge to make stuff, we probably wouldn’t have the urge to make art. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition – as we say in math.
/we’ve been doing it from before we even had language, really / Yup. Anthropologists say that “behaviorally modern humans” began about 50,000 years ago. And cave paintings are 40,000 years old. And some objects that are assumed to be decorative are even older than that.
Making things is definitely akin to art, although different skills may be involved. It requires the same boldness of thinking, the “but why CAN’T we do this” mindset that is part and parcel of being an artist, any artist.
Sheila, somehow I missed this post when it went up; but then found it today as a link from your Katherine Dunn post. It’s brilliant and beautiful and sad and inspiring and informative. THANK YOU. Just . . . wow.
It’s going to take me a while to process it all; your mini-articles in the comments are as interesting as the main post! But in the meantime I’ve added Kay Redfield Jamison, Katherine Dunn and Jessa Crispin (thanks Bainer!) to my Kindle. Happiness!
A couple of quick thoughts/references:
* Are you familiar with Nijinsky’s career? I recently discovered that his brilliant dancing career ended at 29 and he spent the rest of his life institutionalized for schizophrenia (another 30 years). And during that time, he turned his creativity to visual art since he could no longer dance. In his lifetime his drawings were dismissed as worthless doodles of a madman, but today they’re enjoying a resurgence, of sorts, as “outsider art.” I’m fascinated by both the inner richness of his life (both halves of it) and by the relentless force of the creative drive.
* Are you a Homeland fan? I’m curious what you thought of the depiction of Carrie Mathison’s bipolar. I’m not a big Claire Danes fan, but I thought her performance wonderfully captured both the terror and the siren-songness (yes, I’m saying that’s a word) of bipolar. And especially interesting how she evolves in trying to both manage and USE the highs and lows — even to the point of deliberately going off her meds to induce a manic episode in the belief that it would allow her to see the underlying connections that were eluding everyone in a very complicated case. And it did! And she — and the people who loved her — also paid a price for that.
* And just for fun, a shout-out to David Leddick’s “I’m Not for Everyone. Neither are You.” No mental illness connection, but a wildly creative gay man who was always resolutely himself, in an era when people really didn’t know what to do with that. A great reminder for us all, no matter what our individual challenges. My new favorite book. ;)
Deborah – Thanks so much! For reading and commenting!
Nijinsky has always been a fascination of mine – his journals!! – Joan Acocella wrote a brilliant essay about him for The New Yorker – I excerpted it on my site somewhere, I’ll find it and provide a link. It’s amazing because everyone who saw him dance was so blown away and we have almost no record of it. And yes, there are some truly terrible stories of his institutionalization … like, people showing up to “visit’ him – bringing a group of friends with them – who basically came to gawk/stare. And they’d ask Nijinsky to show them how he used to jump – and he – now fat and lumbering and quite mad – jumped up and down as they took pictures. I have tears in my eyes. But yes: he was so artistic and such a muse to others – his journals are an amazing record of his mind and his heart and how he saw things. Sometimes hallucinatory – but beautiful and important.
Here’s a link to the post I wrote about Joan Acocella and her essay about Nijinsky: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=59334
Deborah – I haven’t seen HOMELAND although it’s right up my alley (one of my nicknames is “Special Ops”). I have stayed away from it because of the bipolar but a friend of mine has told me she thought it was well-done and accurate. I will, eventually, check it out!
I’m sometimes annoyed with the “let’s show mental illness in a positive light’ people (like my white-knighted in the post). Because to the person suffering, there IS no positive light – AND to the loved ones – there is also no positive light. I wish to God I didn’t have this thing. I’m never going to say “It’s awesome that I have this.” So from what I’ve heard about HOMELAND – from my friends and what you’ve said here – they’re showing it in a pretty honest way. We could definitely use more of that in our culture!!
// “I’m Not for Everyone. Neither are You.” //
Ha! I love that book title! Thanks for the recommendation!
Oh – and very excited for you to check out Kay Jamison’s books – her memoir is excellent but (for me) it was Touched with Fire that was the game-changer, especially in understanding how I’ve already worked out how to deal with this thing – and now maybe I can keep working with it, as opposed to having it destroy me.
And the research that went into Touched with Fire!! She definitely has her pie charts of statistics and scientific terminology from the mental health profession – but it’s the stories of artists that really make the book what it is.
Deborah – just wanted to let you know that your comment was the impetus for me to finally start watching HOMELAND. Watched the first 5 episodes. I am loving it!
And although her illness is not (yet) named, I think she’s doing an incredible job of showing the cycling that happens – and how intense things get – and then the crashes. I’m loving it so far! Thanks for the push!
Sheila,
This is wonderful. I am grateful that you are letting me link to this for my students. You are so articulate about the complexities of the disorder (in a much less dangerous way, I think ADHD–which I figured out I had when I was somewhere in my 30s–has a similar upside to go with the downside (possibly why I haven’t been on meds again for several years…)). I really look forward to the Jamison books (despite my general feeling that until I have read all great literature, nonfiction can wait), and I will have to find time to watch the movie–it sounds fantastic.
// until I have read all great literature, nonfiction can wait //
Beth – ha! Oh man do I understand THAT.
Thank you so much for sharing this kind of stuff with your students. The more people can do to try to understand not just the diagnosis – but what it’s like for the people who suffer – the better off we’ll be.