Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Not In My Name, Mr Duncan Smith
I’m not political. I’ve done politics of course, as a student, testing various schools of thought for size and settling on the idea that boxes like political parties are just too inflexible.
This is probably the closest I get to a political post – or a political poem in the video.
What has sickened me about the idea of the disabled in the WRAG benefits bracket being forced into unpaid work placements or lose their benefits is twofold. There’s a practical issue. These placements will not be “work”. So people won’t be protected by the employment aspects of the Disability Discrimination and Equality Acts. Nor will they be eligible for Access to Work. In other words they will not have in place supports to make their placements possible for them to carry out that are structurally recognised by DDA and AtoW as being essential for them to do so. This means people *will* be forced to pull out through sickness. Their health will deteriorate, be set back months, even years. And at the same time the blame will be placed at their feet and they will potentially lose benefits.
Then there is a matter of principle. And that’s where I say an unequivocal NOT IN MY NAME, MR DUNCAN SMITH. We are told that the stick of having benefits removed if people don’t do their placements is an incentive for them to do their responsibility. Now that I just don’t get. Responsibility to whom? To the taxpayer? Now, I’m lucky. I’m bipolar but thanks to medication, support, the cycle of my illness, and huge doses of luck, it’s been several years since I’ve needed to have more than a day or so off work. As someone lucky enough to have a job I fully accept that it is my responsibility to pay tax so as to enable society to care for those not so lucky. I don’t get how those people have a responsibility towards me to make themselves ill, and I seriously object to the idea they are being told I think they do.
Anyway, like I say, I don’t really do politics. But I do angry, and I do scared. And that’s in the poem.
I’m a mentalist.
I’m a ventriloquist and this fake smile’s my dummy.
Behind the guile I know I’m scum,
I’m hungry, desperate for your crumbs,
I’m broken by the years that no one spoke for me,
I’m choked beneath society’s conceptual thumb.
The thing is, if I’m cheerful
You think I’m well enough to work for free
And if I’m not then you’re unreasonably fearful of me.
The last boss I told I was bipolar said OK, but please don’t stick a knife in me
While I sat there silent, stunned
Thinking you think I’M the violent one
Just because I have an illness
That the media exploits for thrills
Because they haven’t got the skills to see beyond the pills
That someone else’s taxes paid for,
Someone wealthy for no other reason than that they happened to be born healthy.
But their hard work must not be squandered
On dropouts and shirkers,
On the berserkers lurking in the social undergrowth.
So now the government can force us into slavery
Without protection from the rules that gave us dignity
Or made staying alive in the cold and hostile environment a workplace can be
Anything close to a possibility.
With every decency they steal
They feel their backs slapped
By the so-called cash-strapped hacks in suits
Whose stacks are packed so tight
No cracks of light
Can leak out and disturb their sleep
With the sight of the smacked-up jacked-up lives
Of those whose dice fell on the wrong side of the tracks
And all this is sold as a triumph of slashed bureaucracy
A victory for democracy,
For a people poisoned
By years of drip-fed filth
And casual hypocrisy,
By myths of laziness and hazy memes of craziness
Dreamed up on whims on days of bliss and Pimms.
And here’s the thing.
People will comply.
People will try.
They will try so much
No matter that it takes an act of heroism just to get out of bed,
No matter that their eyes are red
Because they cried so much
And kept on trying
And held their heads high so much
Their tears were washed away by the saliva from the bile
That people piled on them.
People will die
Their voices will fall silent
The iniquity will not be heard.
Their indignity will have the final word,
But still those who are left will smile in the face of tyrants
Still they will cling with grace to the ideal of non-violence.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
I must be Mad to do this: writing, living, and mental health
I’ve been planning this post for months, and to be honest I’ve been dragging my heals. There’s an apposite reason – I’m bipolar my own mental health hasn’t been tip top the past few weeks. There are good reasons, as in yippee good – I’ve just finished touring a fabulous words and music show with a host of other great writers that’s played to a set of sell-out crowds.
And there’s the real reason – I don’t really know what to say. Well, that’s not true. I would like to go off on a rant about the ridiculous perception that having mental health issues is glamorous. Or that bipolar people are predisposed to be creative. But I’d just get too angry, and I’ve done it before. Many times.
So I’m not going to hobbyhorse you. Well, I am but not in a down your throat and make you gag kind of way. Hardest and most counterintuitive, I’m not going to talk about me, me, ME. I’m going to talk briefly about three remarkable artists and how mental health relates to their art. Then when I’ve got that out of the way I’ll talk about me! No, really, I won’t.
Cody James, author of The Dead Beat and Babylon, is the best novelist of her generation. She also has schizophrenia. She is also and has been also many many things – meth addict, Satanist, punk, opening act for Marilyn Manson, consumer of ludicrous quantities of noodles, zinester, photographer, my best friend. And just about the funniest person I’ve ever met. She’s taught me two things about mental health and writing. Well, the first is more about writing in general. Back at the start of last year, she made a brilliant video advertising our first big live show, at Rough Trade Records. In it, she read a passage from Babylon in which the central character, Daniel, tries to kill himself, something Cody has done 4 times. The video was deleted from Facebook after being reported and a massive debate followed. Cody’s contribution crystallised everything I feel about writing. She explained how an English teacher told her once she should try and make the world a better place. Her take – “maybe there is no way to leave the world a better place, and all we can do is tell the truth.” Simple, and all-encompassing. The truth doesn’t mean facts or autobiography. Telling the truth in your writing means peeling your skin off and poking down through the layers to reach the innermost part of yourself, then smearing it all over the page.
Which leads to the second thing – life, the truth, everything to do with this glorious and messed-up world, is complex (and mental health is only one very small part of it). It has more than one side. There is always hope in despair and despair in hope, humour in depravity and depravity in humour.
In a wonderful interview she did for me Cody said:
“What upsets me more than anything in novels and movies in this genre (Selby Jr. I’m looking at you) is that they seem hell bent on portraying only the moments of shock and depravity – they rob the reader and the viewer of the full experience. Yes, we were really fucked up and yes, we did bad things, but we were still trying. I still spent some Sunday mornings eating cereal and watching cartoons with a 7ft tranny. And, even though you’re all jacked up and your apartment has no furniture, you still try. Even though the person cooking the turkey has been up for three days and can’t remember how to work a stove, and your guests keep going to the bathroom to shoot up and then keep falling asleep in the mashed potatoes, you’re still there celebrating Thanksgiving. There are still moments of utter joy and there is still so much laughter. If, as an artist, you don’t portray that, you’re nothing but a cheap hack.”
I can’t really add to that.
Katelan Foisy is the author of Blood and Pudding. It’s the book that has influenced my writing and performing more than any other. It tells the story of her bipolar, heroin-addicted best friend Holly. Specifically it is a transcript of tapes Katelan made when one Xanax-fuelled teenage day the pair of them decided to get in a car and see where they ended up (another lesson from Katelan – record everything. You never know when you’ll want it). The transcriptions, full of idealism and energy, form the book’s bones, which Katelan has fleshed out with stories from the years between that trip and Holly’s death from an overdose just a few years later. I have never read such an uplifting celebration of a life. Or of Life. Holly’s was a life cut short, a life shadowed and tarred and tarnished, but it was a Life. Damn, it was a life. Blood and Pudding opens with the wonderful words “Wherever we end up, we end up,” and urges the reader to “go out and live. And live. And go on living, because you never know when it’ll stop.” There are two things to say about that. Mental illness is not a death sentence. Don’t treat it as such. In yourself, or in others. And make sure your writing contributes to Living. Because anything else is as good as being dead.
Dave Griffiths is the former frontman of the band Witches. He’s the writer and musician behind the fabulous Grey Children project. He’s using the project, which combines his considerable musical talents with his equally considerable literary ones, to raise awareness for Pure-O, the form of OCD he has. In a recent interview I did with him one of the things we discussed most was the role music plays in managing his symptoms. Music provides a total immersion that draws his mind away from everything else. I realised how similar what he was saying was to the role writing plays in my life (and listening to music), to the experience of so many people I know with various mental health problems. Sadly, sometimes the things we use to engulf our minds, to drown out the noises in our heads, are things that do us as much harm as the illness itself, if not more – drink, self-harm, drugs. But art is something that can improve both our mental health and our wider lives. Maybe even the lives of others.
There we have it. Three amazing writers. Three amazing people. Three ways mental health and writing intersect. And a single strand running through the whole thing. Life. And the importance of living it. Without apology and without restriction.
And there’s the real reason – I don’t really know what to say. Well, that’s not true. I would like to go off on a rant about the ridiculous perception that having mental health issues is glamorous. Or that bipolar people are predisposed to be creative. But I’d just get too angry, and I’ve done it before. Many times.
So I’m not going to hobbyhorse you. Well, I am but not in a down your throat and make you gag kind of way. Hardest and most counterintuitive, I’m not going to talk about me, me, ME. I’m going to talk briefly about three remarkable artists and how mental health relates to their art. Then when I’ve got that out of the way I’ll talk about me! No, really, I won’t.
Cody James, author of The Dead Beat and Babylon, is the best novelist of her generation. She also has schizophrenia. She is also and has been also many many things – meth addict, Satanist, punk, opening act for Marilyn Manson, consumer of ludicrous quantities of noodles, zinester, photographer, my best friend. And just about the funniest person I’ve ever met. She’s taught me two things about mental health and writing. Well, the first is more about writing in general. Back at the start of last year, she made a brilliant video advertising our first big live show, at Rough Trade Records. In it, she read a passage from Babylon in which the central character, Daniel, tries to kill himself, something Cody has done 4 times. The video was deleted from Facebook after being reported and a massive debate followed. Cody’s contribution crystallised everything I feel about writing. She explained how an English teacher told her once she should try and make the world a better place. Her take – “maybe there is no way to leave the world a better place, and all we can do is tell the truth.” Simple, and all-encompassing. The truth doesn’t mean facts or autobiography. Telling the truth in your writing means peeling your skin off and poking down through the layers to reach the innermost part of yourself, then smearing it all over the page.
Which leads to the second thing – life, the truth, everything to do with this glorious and messed-up world, is complex (and mental health is only one very small part of it). It has more than one side. There is always hope in despair and despair in hope, humour in depravity and depravity in humour.
In a wonderful interview she did for me Cody said:
“What upsets me more than anything in novels and movies in this genre (Selby Jr. I’m looking at you) is that they seem hell bent on portraying only the moments of shock and depravity – they rob the reader and the viewer of the full experience. Yes, we were really fucked up and yes, we did bad things, but we were still trying. I still spent some Sunday mornings eating cereal and watching cartoons with a 7ft tranny. And, even though you’re all jacked up and your apartment has no furniture, you still try. Even though the person cooking the turkey has been up for three days and can’t remember how to work a stove, and your guests keep going to the bathroom to shoot up and then keep falling asleep in the mashed potatoes, you’re still there celebrating Thanksgiving. There are still moments of utter joy and there is still so much laughter. If, as an artist, you don’t portray that, you’re nothing but a cheap hack.”
I can’t really add to that.
Katelan Foisy is the author of Blood and Pudding. It’s the book that has influenced my writing and performing more than any other. It tells the story of her bipolar, heroin-addicted best friend Holly. Specifically it is a transcript of tapes Katelan made when one Xanax-fuelled teenage day the pair of them decided to get in a car and see where they ended up (another lesson from Katelan – record everything. You never know when you’ll want it). The transcriptions, full of idealism and energy, form the book’s bones, which Katelan has fleshed out with stories from the years between that trip and Holly’s death from an overdose just a few years later. I have never read such an uplifting celebration of a life. Or of Life. Holly’s was a life cut short, a life shadowed and tarred and tarnished, but it was a Life. Damn, it was a life. Blood and Pudding opens with the wonderful words “Wherever we end up, we end up,” and urges the reader to “go out and live. And live. And go on living, because you never know when it’ll stop.” There are two things to say about that. Mental illness is not a death sentence. Don’t treat it as such. In yourself, or in others. And make sure your writing contributes to Living. Because anything else is as good as being dead.
Dave Griffiths is the former frontman of the band Witches. He’s the writer and musician behind the fabulous Grey Children project. He’s using the project, which combines his considerable musical talents with his equally considerable literary ones, to raise awareness for Pure-O, the form of OCD he has. In a recent interview I did with him one of the things we discussed most was the role music plays in managing his symptoms. Music provides a total immersion that draws his mind away from everything else. I realised how similar what he was saying was to the role writing plays in my life (and listening to music), to the experience of so many people I know with various mental health problems. Sadly, sometimes the things we use to engulf our minds, to drown out the noises in our heads, are things that do us as much harm as the illness itself, if not more – drink, self-harm, drugs. But art is something that can improve both our mental health and our wider lives. Maybe even the lives of others.
There we have it. Three amazing writers. Three amazing people. Three ways mental health and writing intersect. And a single strand running through the whole thing. Life. And the importance of living it. Without apology and without restriction.
Monday, 20 June 2011
Head Health and Hard Choices
By now most of you will be aware I'm bipolar. If not, I clearly haven't been banging the campaign drum hard enough for a while. Something I'll try to rectify this summer. I had a minor but rather debilitating low episode this March, and have begun to recognise some of the oncoming symptoms in recent weeks: the disjunction between headspace and reality, that rushing feeling that the world is moving too slowly, an increasing inward-looking slience as intrusive negative thoughts start to gnaw away and need time to be dealt with one by one, the slow tunneling of one's vision on the one hand and tuning up of other senses on the other.
So, at a ridiculously busy time, the only thing to do is pare back. But what do you cut? Work is always the last thing to go, because it's what pays the bills.
Following Amazon's so-called Sunshine Deal whatever (see this post on the effect), sales of my books have absolutely tanked. So, at a time when money is desperate, the last thing to go should be something that gives me the chance to perk up sales, right? OK, before I talk about my decision, I'll do the beggy buy my booky thing:
The Company of Fellows is still just 70p for Kindle here, and has spent over 3 months in the top 100 thrillers on Amazon, as well as being voted "favourite Oxford novel" in a Blackwell's poll. You can get the paperback at Blackwell's, or here. And remember, to read Kindle books you don't need a Kindle - just download the free app for your phone, Mac or PC.
Black Heart High is just 69p to download. It's the first in a 7-part series designed to be the literary equivalent of a classy HBO series. It's genre fiction (dark paranormal romance) but I think it's the best thing I've ever written.
So, what to cut back? The obvious choice would be for the one thing that could make me serious money to be the one thing that stays. I was recently asked to take part in the Kindle Summer Book Club. It's a super collaboration between some of the bestselling independent authors out there - the likes of HP Mallory, J Carson Black, Victorine Lieske, Saffina Desforges and the Mark Williams/Louise Voss combo behind not one but two books in the current top 5 on UK Kindle. It's an extraordinary honour, and an extraordinary opportunity.
And it's the thing I've cut. The main reason is simple. It's a venture in which 10 other people would be relying on me, and pulling out half way through if my health deteriorated would cause all kinds of chaos and be really unfair on everyone. Also, those things in which other people are relying on you are always the ones most likely to cause dangerous amounts of anxiety - most people I know care more about not letting other people down than they do about letting themselves down. It's one reason I get so stressed about my work at eight cuts gallery. Especially the publishing - there are people relying on me to come through for them. Not just people but dear friends whose work I consider the best to have graced the 21st Century. And sometimes I don't have the mental resources to do what I'd like for them. And that hurts me deeply.
But there's something else I've learned from years of experience, and from many many hours of advice from GPs and shrinks - mine, my wife's, and friends'. Sometimes for the sake of your long-term mental health you have to say no things that would be financially beneficial in favour of those that, for the want of a non-naff phrase I can't quite find, make your heart sing. And anyone who knows me at all knows that selling books doesn't make my heart sing. If it happens as an accidental by-product it's a godsend in keeping a roof over ur heads. But I went indie so I didn't have to think about selling books. I did it so I could write what I want to write and put it out there how and where and when was best, and sod whether anyone would pay.
It might feel some times as though the agonies of organisation are driving me nuts, but The New Libertines tour is a large part (not as large as an understanding and equally fruitcakish wife, of course) of how I've stayed sane these past few months. Creatively, I live to perform. If I quit a summer and Autumn that promises gigs in Covent Garden, Blackwell's, Birmingham and the Albion Beatnik as well as preparation for a now-definite run on Edinburgh next summer, then something would die. And to write whatever needs to be scraped from my head, be it sentimental or plain sick. At the moment that's a 7-part series of books about a teenage ghost who lives to take revenge on the people who took the love of her life away.
One of the particular aspects of my own bespoke customisation of bipolar is an extremely strong (we're talking scotch bonnet) side order of anxiety, which means letting people down in any way seems a way worse sin than protecting your own mental health (OK, there's a cayenne dish of self-loathing there to boot). But sometimes it's not possible to avoid letting people down. You can't please everyone all the time. And when you're in that position and every sound in your head is screaming to a crescendo telling you just to ignore the situation and hope it'll go away, actually the only thing that will make it go away is taking the hard decision knowing it'll leave people mad at you.
Which (and this is the banging the campaign drum bit) leads to the very reasonable question (which, thankfully, because they're great people as well as great writers - go on, go and support them - I don't think any of the Summer Book Club authors will put) - knowing I'm bipolar and susceptible to the vicissitudes of an unstable mind, shouldn't I just have declined when I was first invited? And by transference, shouldn't I avoid things I may need to pull out of later? I want to present a rational answer to that question based on taking equality seriously, based on valuing people, based on seeing what someone can do and not what they can't, based on the kind of society we want to claim to be part of. But that's not really how I feel about it. If people really think that, then my honest response is a request to please leave before I give them an even more honest response.
So, at a ridiculously busy time, the only thing to do is pare back. But what do you cut? Work is always the last thing to go, because it's what pays the bills.
Following Amazon's so-called Sunshine Deal whatever (see this post on the effect), sales of my books have absolutely tanked. So, at a time when money is desperate, the last thing to go should be something that gives me the chance to perk up sales, right? OK, before I talk about my decision, I'll do the beggy buy my booky thing:
The Company of Fellows is still just 70p for Kindle here, and has spent over 3 months in the top 100 thrillers on Amazon, as well as being voted "favourite Oxford novel" in a Blackwell's poll. You can get the paperback at Blackwell's, or here. And remember, to read Kindle books you don't need a Kindle - just download the free app for your phone, Mac or PC.
Black Heart High is just 69p to download. It's the first in a 7-part series designed to be the literary equivalent of a classy HBO series. It's genre fiction (dark paranormal romance) but I think it's the best thing I've ever written.
So, what to cut back? The obvious choice would be for the one thing that could make me serious money to be the one thing that stays. I was recently asked to take part in the Kindle Summer Book Club. It's a super collaboration between some of the bestselling independent authors out there - the likes of HP Mallory, J Carson Black, Victorine Lieske, Saffina Desforges and the Mark Williams/Louise Voss combo behind not one but two books in the current top 5 on UK Kindle. It's an extraordinary honour, and an extraordinary opportunity.
And it's the thing I've cut. The main reason is simple. It's a venture in which 10 other people would be relying on me, and pulling out half way through if my health deteriorated would cause all kinds of chaos and be really unfair on everyone. Also, those things in which other people are relying on you are always the ones most likely to cause dangerous amounts of anxiety - most people I know care more about not letting other people down than they do about letting themselves down. It's one reason I get so stressed about my work at eight cuts gallery. Especially the publishing - there are people relying on me to come through for them. Not just people but dear friends whose work I consider the best to have graced the 21st Century. And sometimes I don't have the mental resources to do what I'd like for them. And that hurts me deeply.
But there's something else I've learned from years of experience, and from many many hours of advice from GPs and shrinks - mine, my wife's, and friends'. Sometimes for the sake of your long-term mental health you have to say no things that would be financially beneficial in favour of those that, for the want of a non-naff phrase I can't quite find, make your heart sing. And anyone who knows me at all knows that selling books doesn't make my heart sing. If it happens as an accidental by-product it's a godsend in keeping a roof over ur heads. But I went indie so I didn't have to think about selling books. I did it so I could write what I want to write and put it out there how and where and when was best, and sod whether anyone would pay.
It might feel some times as though the agonies of organisation are driving me nuts, but The New Libertines tour is a large part (not as large as an understanding and equally fruitcakish wife, of course) of how I've stayed sane these past few months. Creatively, I live to perform. If I quit a summer and Autumn that promises gigs in Covent Garden, Blackwell's, Birmingham and the Albion Beatnik as well as preparation for a now-definite run on Edinburgh next summer, then something would die. And to write whatever needs to be scraped from my head, be it sentimental or plain sick. At the moment that's a 7-part series of books about a teenage ghost who lives to take revenge on the people who took the love of her life away.
One of the particular aspects of my own bespoke customisation of bipolar is an extremely strong (we're talking scotch bonnet) side order of anxiety, which means letting people down in any way seems a way worse sin than protecting your own mental health (OK, there's a cayenne dish of self-loathing there to boot). But sometimes it's not possible to avoid letting people down. You can't please everyone all the time. And when you're in that position and every sound in your head is screaming to a crescendo telling you just to ignore the situation and hope it'll go away, actually the only thing that will make it go away is taking the hard decision knowing it'll leave people mad at you.
Which (and this is the banging the campaign drum bit) leads to the very reasonable question (which, thankfully, because they're great people as well as great writers - go on, go and support them - I don't think any of the Summer Book Club authors will put) - knowing I'm bipolar and susceptible to the vicissitudes of an unstable mind, shouldn't I just have declined when I was first invited? And by transference, shouldn't I avoid things I may need to pull out of later? I want to present a rational answer to that question based on taking equality seriously, based on valuing people, based on seeing what someone can do and not what they can't, based on the kind of society we want to claim to be part of. But that's not really how I feel about it. If people really think that, then my honest response is a request to please leave before I give them an even more honest response.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Life
My new book (life:) razorblades included is now on sale!!The chapbook, with a beautiful wraparound cover made from Daisy's stunning image (a photograph she took of herself as soon as she had finished reading the book), is just £5 + P&P.BUY THE BOOK HERE
Most of the content can be found online in various places, but the fully curated (i.e. I actually thought up an order that kind of reads like a journey. Or something), collection, with introduction, is just 99 cents, for all ebook formatsBUY THE EBOOK HERE
(cover image copyright Daisy Anne Gree)
That's the promo bit. What I wanted to share here is the introduction to the book, which explains why I put together the pieces I did, and left others out. Of course, I hope it makes you want to buy the book. But I hope it's also something to think about.
"live"
Camus was wrong. Whether or not to kill oneself is not the only question. That would be as absurd as those old romantic novels that ended at the altar, as ridiculous as Ewan MacGregor walking into the credits choosing life. The difficult question, the one that matters, the one we have to answer in the real world and not the halls of learning, is what the hell you do next once you’ve decided to live.
For all that so much of the material in this book deals with death, this is a book about life. It has two starting points, the two things we wake up to every day – that it would be so much easier not to open our eyes, but to lie back down and slowly forget to breathe; and that we do not. We take that magnificent, exhilarating, impossible, anarchic, destructive, mind-boggling, terrifying decision to live.
Choosing life does not mean oblating oneself on the altar of beige. To live, in the belief that it is somehow easier to do so than to die; to live, and to believe every obstacle is thereby behind us; these are acts of self-deception I long to able to perform, but can’t. For many many people, making the choice to live means a daily struggle with, and embracing of, pain, hurt, and helplessness.
This collection is about the full implication of what it means to live, not just to breathe, but to grapple again and again with the effortless simplicity of death and the impossibility of life, but to choose, again and again and again, the latter. To choose life is to choose the unpassable course. To choose life is to live at the edge of the map of the human soul, in a place where every eyeline looks beyond the horizon, and to continue into that hot, chill, black, burning bright unknown regardless. To choose life means, on occasion, to choose the unacceptable, the inconceivable, the immoral, the ridiculous.
My writing has been called bleak, dark, and bereft of joy and hope. The first two of these I will readily concede. The latter two, never. In a world where the default setting is vanilla, acceptance, expectation, normal; in a world where the tragic few who wrestle with life full-on and fail are condemned when it is not they who are too sick for the world, but the world too sick for them; in a world where the grey, suited swamp of the billion walking dead is revered; in this world, anyone or anything that celebrates the full, damaged, despairing, fucked-up and spectacular reality of life is a shriek, a shout, a holler of joy to pierce the eardrum of death.
Open up this book, take a deep breath of it into yourself and smell and taste and touch the words and let them graze the inside of your lungs. Fill your heart and your blood and your head with its oxygen, and go out and live.
For all that so much of the material in this book deals with death, this is a book about life. It has two starting points, the two things we wake up to every day – that it would be so much easier not to open our eyes, but to lie back down and slowly forget to breathe; and that we do not. We take that magnificent, exhilarating, impossible, anarchic, destructive, mind-boggling, terrifying decision to live.
Choosing life does not mean oblating oneself on the altar of beige. To live, in the belief that it is somehow easier to do so than to die; to live, and to believe every obstacle is thereby behind us; these are acts of self-deception I long to able to perform, but can’t. For many many people, making the choice to live means a daily struggle with, and embracing of, pain, hurt, and helplessness.
This collection is about the full implication of what it means to live, not just to breathe, but to grapple again and again with the effortless simplicity of death and the impossibility of life, but to choose, again and again and again, the latter. To choose life is to choose the unpassable course. To choose life is to live at the edge of the map of the human soul, in a place where every eyeline looks beyond the horizon, and to continue into that hot, chill, black, burning bright unknown regardless. To choose life means, on occasion, to choose the unacceptable, the inconceivable, the immoral, the ridiculous.
My writing has been called bleak, dark, and bereft of joy and hope. The first two of these I will readily concede. The latter two, never. In a world where the default setting is vanilla, acceptance, expectation, normal; in a world where the tragic few who wrestle with life full-on and fail are condemned when it is not they who are too sick for the world, but the world too sick for them; in a world where the grey, suited swamp of the billion walking dead is revered; in this world, anyone or anything that celebrates the full, damaged, despairing, fucked-up and spectacular reality of life is a shriek, a shout, a holler of joy to pierce the eardrum of death.
Open up this book, take a deep breath of it into yourself and smell and taste and touch the words and let them graze the inside of your lungs. Fill your heart and your blood and your head with its oxygen, and go out and live.
Friday, 18 September 2009
Begging a Favour
Not something I'm altogether happy doing, but that never stopped me before.
Let me begin with the favour. In the words of those slightly seedy classifieds:
Do you have a mental health difficulty? Have you experienced problems with debt? Would you be prepared to answer some questions for an article on debt and mental health? (Anonymously is fine). If so, please either comment here or e-mail songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
OK, let me rewind.
4 years ago, I began a blog called Mad Marrieds' Journey Into Debt, about the year my wife and I, courtesy of a decided "up" phase in the bipolar cycle, ended up in 23 countries and a lot of debt in one year (or my wifer ended in debt - I was already too indebted to be allowed a credit card!!).
A nice young man at the Royal College of Psychiatrists was, at the time, working on debt and mental health, googled debt and depression, and found my blog.
In the four year since, I've worked with Chris on 2 major projects, In The Red, a study on debt and mental health by Mind; Final Demand, which resulted in a leaflet distributed to 140,000 people (the largest readership I'll EVER get) in the social care profession about debta nd mental health; I've spoken in parliament to the All Party Parliamentary Group on mental health; and I've helped Mind produce a guide on debt and mental health.
Last summer, my wife and I were in Camden when we saw ni the local rag an article about a magazine called One in Four, run by a cool looking dude called Mark Brown. It was pitched as a lifestyle magazine for and by people with mental health difficulties. I cut the article out, and "filed" it. A month or so back, I took it out and sent Mark an e-mail, wondering if they'd like to rnu a story on a bipolar writer who'd just launched a collective.
We spent one of the most enjoyable hours I can remember drinking coffee together in a garage in Walthamstow, and I came away with my first ever proper commission, to write a piece about debt and mental health for their magazine. The piece will focus on case studies of people who've experienced debt and mental health difficulties, with a view both to connecting with people, but also to giving practical advice to help people with both aspects of what's often a vicious cycle.
Anyone who is ableto spend a few minutes of their time to sghare their experiences and/or advice, I would love to hear from you. I'm happy to write about my own experiences, such as the time I genuinely believed I couldn't get through a theology degree with just 20 Bibles and HAD to get yet another, or the time I couldn't open a letter, had the phone unplugged, sat on the sofa and cried solidly for 6 months waiting for someone to show up for their money with a baseball bat. But I'd ratehr write about someone other than me for a change.
And a little advance warning. October 10th is World Mental Health Day. As well as being a great time for raising awareness (if you have a blog, why not write something), you may, if you live in the UK and watch the news any time a few days either side, find yourselves in the unenviable position of being confronted with my ugly mug :-)
Let me begin with the favour. In the words of those slightly seedy classifieds:
Do you have a mental health difficulty? Have you experienced problems with debt? Would you be prepared to answer some questions for an article on debt and mental health? (Anonymously is fine). If so, please either comment here or e-mail songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
OK, let me rewind.
4 years ago, I began a blog called Mad Marrieds' Journey Into Debt, about the year my wife and I, courtesy of a decided "up" phase in the bipolar cycle, ended up in 23 countries and a lot of debt in one year (or my wifer ended in debt - I was already too indebted to be allowed a credit card!!).
A nice young man at the Royal College of Psychiatrists was, at the time, working on debt and mental health, googled debt and depression, and found my blog.
In the four year since, I've worked with Chris on 2 major projects, In The Red, a study on debt and mental health by Mind; Final Demand, which resulted in a leaflet distributed to 140,000 people (the largest readership I'll EVER get) in the social care profession about debta nd mental health; I've spoken in parliament to the All Party Parliamentary Group on mental health; and I've helped Mind produce a guide on debt and mental health.
Last summer, my wife and I were in Camden when we saw ni the local rag an article about a magazine called One in Four, run by a cool looking dude called Mark Brown. It was pitched as a lifestyle magazine for and by people with mental health difficulties. I cut the article out, and "filed" it. A month or so back, I took it out and sent Mark an e-mail, wondering if they'd like to rnu a story on a bipolar writer who'd just launched a collective.
We spent one of the most enjoyable hours I can remember drinking coffee together in a garage in Walthamstow, and I came away with my first ever proper commission, to write a piece about debt and mental health for their magazine. The piece will focus on case studies of people who've experienced debt and mental health difficulties, with a view both to connecting with people, but also to giving practical advice to help people with both aspects of what's often a vicious cycle.
Anyone who is ableto spend a few minutes of their time to sghare their experiences and/or advice, I would love to hear from you. I'm happy to write about my own experiences, such as the time I genuinely believed I couldn't get through a theology degree with just 20 Bibles and HAD to get yet another, or the time I couldn't open a letter, had the phone unplugged, sat on the sofa and cried solidly for 6 months waiting for someone to show up for their money with a baseball bat. But I'd ratehr write about someone other than me for a change.
And a little advance warning. October 10th is World Mental Health Day. As well as being a great time for raising awareness (if you have a blog, why not write something), you may, if you live in the UK and watch the news any time a few days either side, find yourselves in the unenviable position of being confronted with my ugly mug :-)
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