State of (Mental) Health

It is not without cause that parents shudder when a child of theirs expresses the wish to become an Artist: they will, of course, do everything in their power to protect the child fromsuch a fate!: they will even send him to institutes which will create phony arts and phony art appreciation to distract him . . . . just as they will send the young explorer to the safe jungles of Disneyland or those of the TV movie, etc. to undermine any real adventuring: the society will, in fact, distort the whole meaning of the word appreciation . . . . confusing itwith voyeurism . . . . to tame the energies of any active involvement: for real aesthetic appreciation runs exactly the same hazards as art-creation leads as surely to what society calls madness as any creative making: (you may find this hard to believe, but only because we have less example of real attendance to art in our culture than of creativity . . . . thus aneven phonier idea of audience than of artist . . . . an ideology of many millions who imagine they appreciate ”who are as silly in such imagination as would be a drunken group ofmountain climbers scaling the papier-maché rock sets on the back-lot of a Hollywood studio.) ~ Stan Brakhage

I co-taught a course at Naropa University in 1994 called “Existentialism, Madness, Poetry & Performance”, for the purposes of this essay I won’t go into the syllubus too much except to say that there was one interesting fact discovered during preparation for the course.

I discovered, that  since the end of WWII, over 65% of recognized artists, writers, commercial creatives and actors had been institutionalized or been in some sort of psychiatric treatment. That means, over half of the people define or observe perception and document it are considered to have a mental disorder, if not considered certifiable. Now, really, how could this be true?

Could it be, as Brakhage states in the above quote, that a creative life is decisively more prone to fatalistic behavior? Or, is it the medical esablishment’s definition of what is a mental disorder in the first place faulty. A definition that doesn’t take into account the role of the creative in society outside of established modes of expression – which to me, does not really give a pure explaination of the creative process nor a creative person. And absolutely ignores it, innately. And not only the mental health establishment, but extention popular culture and even our very legal and law making system relies on faulty definitions. At best, the entire society is in a medieval fog – at worst, being decieved!

We have all heard the jokes, the slurs, the people that say “I can’t take meds… I need my depression to feel like myself and to write (draw, make films, etc)”. Let’s look at that for a moment; why on earth would someone say that? Isn’t the creative drive actually only a reflection, or a record of perception? Why can’t you be bored and complacent and not make something worth a damn? Maybe the creative work, the influences, and the process are reflections of a deeper understanding of a subject. Maybe one that is not so much “gift” but curse – but nonetheless, part of the person recieving the “data”.

In Stanislaw Lem’s book/story The Futurological Congress his character wakes up one morning to find the world a horrific place. People do not have vehicles, cars, trains, but are on conveyor belts to get to work… and they do not wear the work fatigues of business, suits, only a sack-like gown that covers thier skin… skin which is coverd with carbuncles and syphillic horns, to where the appendages are leperous and disfigured. Lem’s anti-hero has woken up into a nightmare.. and later finds out that his nightmare is reality, the true illusion was the artifice created by mega-corporations and a group of folks that keep the world’s population sedated on a hallucinagen/opiate to keep them productive and instill a sense of happiness in a decaying world.

I fear under Bush’s planned mental Health initiative, Lem’s world of torture and disease will come to fruition. And no one will complain. No one will notice the difference…

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