Vincent Van Gogh, Beethoven, Eugene O'Neill, John Keats, Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Schumann all had mental illness. One in four American's will suffer from it during their lifetime. Yet I was afraid to admit that I had mental illness since there is a stigma attached to it. People, like life, can be hard.
I wish there was a place I could go, sit down and not feel I'm being judged. I'd love to hang out in a bohemian cafe with Vincent Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath. They'd understand my problems and their conversation would be full of fire -- not weather and football scores. I feel more comfortable with other minds that aren't limited by main stream dreams. In my head there is a place as freewheeling as Dylan in Greenwich Village.
My artist's cafe of the mind is now open on the web. A place where artists with huge imaginations and minds unlimited can fly. Painters, writers, musicians, poets and dreamers -- welcome. It is always open mic night at the Strange Light Cafe. And our walls are always ready for another work of art.
If you want to share something (thoughts, dreams, songs, rants, poetry or art) with the world, the stage is ready.
Email it to me: vincentblackwod@yahoo.co.uk
