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<\/a><\/p>\n\nWriter\/director Paul Dalio is bipolar. Touched with Fire<\/i> 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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Touched with Fire<\/i> is not QUITE as good as Angel Baby<\/i>, 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<\/i> is somewhat hard to find, but if you can track down a copy, get ready. It’s brilliant. <\/p>\n
\n \nTouched with Fire<\/i> is more conventional than Angel Baby<\/i>, 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<\/i>. <\/p>\n What is so good about Touched with Fire<\/i> 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<\/i> The performances from the two leads are gorgeous<\/i>, 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<\/i> 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<\/i> 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<\/i>. It’s a beautiful film.<\/p>\n I am not the person to point out faults in Touched with Fire<\/i>. 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<\/a> Jamison is mostly known for her memoir, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness<\/a> 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<\/i> 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. <\/p>\n 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.) <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/i> is terrifying. Because it seems to say: There is good in this.<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n 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.” <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n So. What to do. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/i>. <\/p>\n 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.<\/i> 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?<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/i><\/a>, 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<\/em> 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<\/a>. Weirdly, he never returned. Huh. I wonder why. That’s what happens when I DON’T go easy on you. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n And, ultimately, all of it is not to BE untangled. Because the illness is not<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/i> 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<\/i> was taken away from them, and they were seen as not useful<\/i> 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”. <\/p>\n 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? <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/i>. 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<\/i> – and now I know enough to know how lucky<\/i> and how STRONG I am to have survived it, cold-turkey.<\/p>\n 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 …) <\/p>\n 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<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n How you respond to this is up to you.<\/p>\n For me, it was freeing. Indeed, liberating. <\/p>\n 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<\/i> 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.)<\/p>\n Here’s how I remember it: A word on language:<\/big> <\/p>\n 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<\/i>, 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n The recent Amanda Bynes public breakdown was a great example of how the public discourse around mental health is often so disgusting<\/i>, 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/i>, and then make out, and then order takeout and on and on and on. He handled<\/i> me. Sounds condescending, right? Nope. It was awesome<\/i> 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<\/i>. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Back to the treatment of Amanda Bynes: I wish people would realize that that’s what it looks like<\/i>, 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<\/i> 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.) <\/p>\n 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> 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. <\/p>\n 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.” <\/p>\n 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<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n 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.” <\/p>\n In one scene in Touched with Fire<\/i>, 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? <\/p>\n 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? <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Touched with Fire<\/i>, the movie, addresses all of this in a way that feels, for lack of a better word, expert<\/i>. 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/i> is bold enough to admit that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n
\nWhen 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. <\/p>\n