Susan McKeown "Singing in the Dark, Bringing Drepression to Light"

A great article on Susan McKeown (www.susanmckeown.com) in the Spring 2010 issue of The NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Advocate (www.nami.org/miaw). (Click on article to enlarge.)

Cluck, Cluck, Buzz -- Crunch

Labels, I have started reading labels. I flipped over a package of hot dogs and read the following, “Ingredients: Beef, Pork and Mechanically Separated Chicken...” WTF! I’m not joking. Look at a bunch of cheap wieners the next time you are at the “Gas and Gulp.” I had a horrible vision of C3PO ripping a screaming hen apart as the bird’s little chicks watched. Droids are not very picky butchers either. When’s the last time you heard of a Kosher robot? Just imagine what part of the hen ends up in your food thanks to that damn Droid.

The other day my nightmare came back to me a dozen times worse. I read an article “What's for dinner? You don't want to know” by Karen Youso in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 21, 2010 (page 1E, variety). The FDA will have new labeling requirements beginning in January and we will finally get to know what is REALLY in our food. Eat donuts with sprinkles on top? Well, under the old regulations they simply had to list “color added” in the ingredients. That will change to “carmine,” come January. Carmine? Those are the dried and crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect. Yep. You are eating bugs. Lovely crush Mexican bugs. Crunch.

Never mind. You eat healthy. Raspberry yogurt? That may contain “Castoreum, a secretion from the anal glands of beavers, used mostly in perfumes and sometimes to enhance raspberry flavor in candies and fillings.” How very Canadian. Now I know why Celine Dion’s perfume smells like the asshole of a beaver. It is. The list of “I didn’t know that” -- followed by my frightened “ewww” was pretty long. You may wish to click on the link at the end of my article and read more. You may not. The only thing that seems fit to eat these days is Soylent Green.

I began to think. It has been a long time since the warning labels on music have been updated. All it really cautions against is foul language and -- really, that isn’t a warning. It is a selling point. I think songs should be labeled with as much care as our food. What goes in your head is at least as important as what goes in your stomach. More so, food is gone in a day. A Lady Gaga song can stay in your head for a lifetime.

Let’s take the most innocent song, “Sugar” as performed by the Archie's... not even a real group. But the pain underneath? That’s real. Very real. I have footnoted all the ingredients corresponding to the FDA’s upcoming guidelines.

Sugar

Sugar, ah honey honey [1]
You are my candy [2] girl [3]
And you've got me wanting you. [4]
Honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.
I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you [5]
(I just can't believe it's true) [6]
I just can't believe the one to love this feeling to.
(I just can't believe it's true)


Vincent Blackwood’s Product Warnings

1. Ingredients: Pollen regurgitated by angry, sexless insects, genetically predisposed to acid-reflux and crawling into your Pepsi can at picnics. Buzz... Ahhhhh! Surprise. And calling someone insect vomit is a red flag of poor judgment skills.

2. Referring to the other party as a possession, not as a fully cognizant person possessing free will and a need for a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.

3. Warning: the songwriter is referring to a fully grown female as an infant. This is a sign of low self-esteem denoted by the belittling phrase -- and an obvious attempt to seize power in the relationship.

4. Another red flag: unable to accept responsibility for his own action.

5. More than bad poetry -- the whole song reads like a note from a stalker, the words cutout from a mildewed muscle man magazine.

6. Schizophrenic, unable to determine reality from fantasy. Staying in this relationship may require many years of intense Adlerian Therapy. Slip that mix tape under his door and run. Let it be some poor idiot on eHarmony that is dismembered and buried in his backyard... or worse yet, knocked up. You’re too smart for that... this time around.


The Original Star/Tribune Article:

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/96820404.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

The Dark Side of the Tune

I Wonder Who Could Be Writing This Song?

A few months ago, I went on my second NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) walk. Years ago when my friend started going, the local NAMI office could have held their meeting in a cafe. This year it was held in a vast gymnasium. It is good to see more people each year, eager to break the stigma attached to a condition that strikes one in four Americans in their lifetime. If you are one of them, you aren't crazy. You are human. And you are not alone. Think of Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Winston Churchill, Earnest Hemingway, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Van Gogh -- they had mental illness. They enriched our lives.

I know many people who are artists that are "mentally ill" but I can't tell you about them yet since I was told in confidence. The stigma is still there. It is becoming okay to tell the world almost anything about your private life -- anything... but that. Our bodies are out of the closet, but that door is still shut on our minds. People don't want to admit THAT -- not even to themselves.

That got me thinking about Syd Barrett. He created Pink Floyd -- wrote all the songs and was the lead guitarist. Early on in their career he was asked to leave the group (well okay, they just stopped picking him up for recording dates) because he developed Schizophrenia. It wasn't just hard on Syd, but for the rest of the group. To them it must have seemed like they were four Ringos trying to replace Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the Beatles. Syd had written all their hit singles and invented English Psychedelic music. What had the rest of the group done at that point? Watched in awe as he became a phenomenon and then in horror as he imploded.

"Thank you for m-m-m-making it clear that I'm not here... I wonder who could be writing this song?" Syd sniped in a song he wrote, "Jugband Blues," about Pink Floyd without him. After all, to him, his former mates were abandoning him (and any chance of continued success with the group).

Pink Floyd went on to become one of the most famous groups in history -- but they never really shook the ghost of Syd. The seminal Floyd albums: The Wall, Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon are about him. He was no longer leading the group, but yet he was still shaping the group's output. He had a profound effect on their direction and music (albums about madness) even after he had left. In a way, those albums are a family dealing with the loss of a cherished loved one -- a childhood friend lost to the world and him self.


“Jugband Blues”
By Syd Barrett

It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here

And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear

That I'm not here.

And I never knew the moon could be so big

And I never knew the moon could be so blue

And I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes

And brought me here instead dressed in red

And I'm wondering who could be writing this song.

I don't care if the sun don't shine

And I don't care if nothing is mine

And I don't care if I'm nervous with you

I'll do my loving in the winter.

And the sea isn't green

And I love the queen

And what exactly is a dream?

And what exactly is a joke?



Video for Jugband Blues

Nike Drake: "Clothes Of Sand"

I come alive in moments like these. I am intensely curious. I always need something new to occupy my mind and keep me full of wonder. I picked up a CD from the library entitled “Where Are They Now?” about one hit wonders of the 80’s and 90’s. It was full of the usual suspects: Big Country, Bow Wow Wow and the Dream Academy. I loved that song of theirs, “Life in a Northern Town.” I suspected there must be a great story behind it. There was. It was about Nick Drake, when I looked him up on Wikipedia it noted that he “...ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years.”

The hell?! I admit it, I’d never heard of him. Oh, that was at first depressing -- but than exciting. The Strange Light detective agency had a new -- more exciting case to work on. The miseducation of Vincent Blackwood was underway. I completely dropped figuring out that whatever-happened-to-the-Dream-Academy thingy. After all, I had begun with “Where's Fluffy?” and ended with the Maltese Falcon -- with Rosebud.

I was able to get a hold of Nick Drakes albums: Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972), along with some non-album tracks. This morning, I listen to them for the first time.

What I heard, took me off guard. His voice had a deep, gentle woodwind like sound. I wasn’t really making out all the lyrics at first. I have been conditioned to think of singer/songwriters as being all about the lyrics. But I began to realize that wasn’t what he was after. He wasn't trying to be the next Dylan. He was using string and a variety of other non-rock instruments in very original ways. They didn’t feel tacked on at the end as a cheap way to tart up the sound and make it feel classy. They were part of what he wanted to say from the beginning.

My expectations were black and white musical drawings (where the words are the thing), what I was getting was impressionistic sound paintings. His oboe like voice was another sound color in the mood he was depicting. Sleepily, I listened, but that was the best way to hear it all. Lyrics like: “who dressed you in strange clothes of sand” and “look through panes of shaded glass, see the stains of winter's grass” drifted into my drowsy consciousness. It was a beautiful, sad dream. One I will return to again and again.

I thought, as I stretched and got out of bed to write this, that I couldn’t wait to hear more from such a brilliant, original artist. But I won’t. Nick Drake only release three albums before his death at 26 from an overdose of his anti-depressants. There won’t be anymore songs from him. Clothes of sand have covered his face.



Clothes Of Sand
Nick Drake

Who has dressed you in strange clothes of sand
Who has taken you far from my land
Who has said that my sayings were wrong
And who will say that I stayed much too long?

Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me.

Does it now seem worth all the colour of skies
To see the earth through painted eyes
To look through panes of shaded glass
See the stains of winter's grass.

Can you now return to from where you came
Try to burn your changing name
Or with silver spoons and coloured light
Will you worship moons in winter's night.
Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me.

Video for Clothes of Sand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5xJbaYBIwE

A great site if you wish to know more on Nick Drake

http://www.michaelorgan.org.au/drake1.htm

Death in a Northern Town

(A Dream Full of Rain)

"I personally prefer to think Nick committed suicide... I'd rather he died because he wanted to end it than it to be the result of a tragic mistake. That would seem to me to be terrible_.." [1] singer-songwriter Nick Drake's sister, Gabrielle. It is a mystery that may probably never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction. Nick Drake died in obscurity (from either a suicide or an accidental overdose of his anti-depressants) in 1974. Since then the Dream Academy wrote a haunting song about him ("Life in a Northern Town"). Drake now ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. [2]

What Nick's sister said at first appalled me but then I realized something even more tragic when it comes to promoting artists: all our lives are stories we are writing everyday. And a good ending is important in any story. A compelling, misunderstood artist leaving the world in one last defiant gesture sells more records then someone who made an elementary accounting error.

That is horrible and unfair. Life is so magical and fleeting that it should never be thrown away. I have friends who have attempted suicide and my life is so much richer for them still being around. I want to be above the romantic notion of treating a real life like a good read in a press kit or a heartfelt Academy Award winning movie. But I need to be honest with myself. I love Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath. Their tragic ends are impossible not to think about when I look at their work.

I wish it wasn't a factor, but my mind can't separate things out like that. Nick is part of that Van Gogh thing, isn't he? Someone very talented dying young in obscurity engages my sympathy as a caring human being. (I want to go back in time at that critical moment and stop them from robbing themselves, and the world, of all the wonder that is still ahead of them.) It also gnaws at the deepest fear of any obscure artist. Will this be our fate?

The Dream Academy's song about Nick Drake is a haunting series of images: a Salvation Army band, someone (in my imagination, Nick Drake) sits in a park telling stories, the rain starts, Nick leaves on a train... perhaps without really saying goodbye. It is a dream full of rain. And like a good dream, or real life, it resists easy answers.




Life in a Northern Town
by The Dream Academy

A Salvation Army band played
And the children drank lemonade
And the morning lasted all day,
All day
And through an open window came
Like Sinatra in a younger day,
Pushing the town away
Ah -

(Chant)
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.

They sat on the stony ground
And he took a cigarette out
And everyone else came down
To listen.
He said, "In winter 1963
It felt like the world would freeze
With John F. Kennedy
And the Beatles."

(Chant)
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.
Ah hey ma ma ma
All the work shut down.

The evening had turned to rain
Watch the water roll down the drain,
As we followed him down
To the station
And though he never would wave goodbye,
You could see it written in his eyes
As the train rolled out of sight
Bye-bye.

Video for Life in a Northern Town

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXqqw-gQqzo


1. The Death of Nick Drake http://www.michaelorgan.org.au/drake4.htm

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Drake

Strange Flowers

I was watching a documentary about the rock group the Ramones. When he was a teenager Joey Ramones' mother had taken him to a psychiatrist. The doctor took her aside, after talking to Joey, and said, "Your son will never be a useful member of society." She knew the doctor was wrong. She knew that Joey was bright, curious and full of ideas. Joey had a lot to give the world. It is a better place because he was in it. Imagine how awful it would have been if he didn't have that one person in his life that understood him.

Feeling you are understood by someone can make all the difference. Mental illness creates a special bond between those that have it. We understand what the other is going through. We were all tossed into the dirt and stepped on. It rains on us more days than not. But we have made the decision that the world will not beat us. We can make that earth into a garden, even if they call us crazy. We grow when they tell us we will never be a useful member of society. They are wrong. We know they are.

These are my fellow travelers: Tippy, Nicole and Kerry. We are on a very long journey together. 

Nicole and Tippy 

First, Tippy -- an amazing songwriter from California. Tippy's support and encouragement helps me go on when I think, "Is this worth it? Am I really getting anywhere?" She lets me know that what I am doing is vital. More than that, she has sent me her writings on mental illness and creativity. She sets a standard for honesty and emotional eloquence that I will never surpass.

Nicole? Awwww, Nicole is our not-so-cowardly lion, a Brooklyn street cat with a bright red mane and a never-back-down attitude. It is her I need to thank for introducing me to the other strange flowers. She asked me to listen to Tippy's music. Once I heard it, I knew their was room for one more on our journey.

Nicole and I talk on the phone for hours when our world falls apart. It isn't easy being a lion. The world tends to stare or run. We understand each other -- the battles that are fought everyday just because we have decided to be ourselves.

Kerry

And that brings us to Kerry, and I love her most of all. She opened my eyes to a world, and a sensitivity, I never knew about. She watered me and watched me grow. Her family claims she has killed every plant she has ever tried to nurture. They should see me. I'm six feet tall. Even in Kansas, that's a frickin' big daisy. I would not be writing these words if not for the world she showed me. I would still be in the dirt, never having sprouted, but for the day I saw her. She was clutching a stainless steel coffee dispenser as big as she was -- an Irish pixie with huge brown eyes carrying what looked like R2D2 in the coffee shop where we worked.

I looked at her and said, "Is that carbon scoring on your droid? Looks like you guys have seen some fighting."

Little did I know she had been in a war most of her life. Witches and fire and flying monkeys trying to steal her damn ruby slippers. But she held fast in them. She knew their power must be very strong. I was a scarecrow, not attentive enough to have noticed that battle raging. I've grown so much since that day. Today I'm amazed when someone tells me that they have never changed. They are the same person they have always been, as if that is something to be proud of. What a shame. What a waste of a life not use the challenges to help us grow into something new. Strange flowers like us can bare some pretty amazing fruit.

Nicole, Tippy and Kerry, thank you.
Shine on,
Vincent



If you want to read something else that will make you fall in love with these strange flowers:

Kerry: This is What it is Like
Tippy: Superglue and Seashells
  Tippy: You Won’t See Me

Strange Light

I was reading an article about Susan McKeown (www.susanmckeown.com) in the Spring 2010 issue of The NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Advocate (www.nami.org/miaw). Susan wanted to know about other songwriters who also suffered from depression, but her search on Amazon.com only revealed Leonard Cohen. Well, he's the one who admitted it. There are millions of others who don't want to deal with the world's meanness, misunderstanding and the whispers as they leave the room. The world has made them feel ashamed to be themselves.

I know that for a fact. I've been ashamed. I am an artist with depression, so it is possible that I am seeing this problem through my own experience and not as it is. I've been known to do that -- a lot. One thing I do know: mental illness is today's civil rights battleground. I'm not crazy. Other artists I know with mental illness aren't crazy either. They are sweet, sensitive and so alive.

I should write about them. THESE are my people, my heroes, my friends. They are me. I have pretended for too long that I am like everybody else. I have... what is the phrase? Been in denial. Been a coward. But that really hasn't worked for me. A bird makes a really crappy gopher. I must be what I really am, even if it frightens the gophers.

I know some people will never understand, but I must explain what it is like to be us. Too many people assume "mental illness" equals crazy. I must have a mental defect and a low IQ. People begin to talk slowly and in small words, so I can understand. Others say I am too sensitive, I feel too deeply. God help me the day I become insensitive. Feeling too deeply (having both mental illness and creativity) can be a curse and a gift. They are a strange light that illuminates the world in frightening and thrilling ways. Being a mentally ill artist is not for the faint of heart.

The stories that I write for Strange Light (Adventures in Mental Illness and Creativity) will not be dry, clinical, serious or painted with a fake smile. They will be funny, tragic, silly and real. Now and then, as you read them, you may mutter, "I can't believe he wrote that!" Believe it. I am out to change minds.

If you want to chime in and tell me your take, please do. I need the interaction with like minded people. You know, us crazy artists. Understand, this is just a personal view from one artist with mental illness. When I write about an artist, I am not insinuating that they too are mentally ill... or particularly creative, for that matter. In the end, I worry about pleasing the toughest critic I know: me. I simply write about what fascinates me. My essays begin and end in my own delight. They are the expression of my own rapture with the world around us and the world in my head -- that mental landscape, the inner playground where creativity is the best swing set ever.

Shine on,
Vincent Blackwood

Written July 4th 2010 (Independence Day)