Update on "Singing in the Dark"

I just received an Email from Susan McKeown:

“Dear Vincent,

It's a bit hectic here this week as I draw all these threads together to launch the album and tour. In the midst of it I passed the $7,500 mark on Wednesday and backers are still signing up, so I'm thrilled that so many people are being reached and have come to help. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word...

Best,

Susan”

She would still love the help. And thank you for supporting her dream!

Vincent

Singing in the Dark

This week I received a sweet E-mail from Dublin singer/songwriter Susan McKeown telling me how much she loved my blog. She also sent me an MP3 of her new song “A Woman Like That” (with lyrics based on the Anne Sexton poem “Her Kind”). The compelling song was a wonderful surprise. I have been looking forward to hearing her upcoming album, Singing in the Dark, ever since I read an interview with her in the Spring 2010 issue of NAMI Advocate.

The passion behind the album is something near and dear to our hearts here at the Strange Light Cafe: understanding madness and creativity. The lyrics are from poets of the last thousand years who were writing through the lens of depression, mania or substance abuse.

Susan has financed the album on her own so far, a true labor of love, but she needs our help to finish. Please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark and learn what you can do. If you help, you could receive signed advance copies, extra tracks, tickets to her show, attend meet and greets or even suggest your own reward.

Your assistance is needed, not only to finish the album -- but to give it a proper release and to make sure it is heard. Help Susan complete her dream. Together we shine.

Vincent


Below is the Anne Sexton poem that the song “A Woman Like That (Her Kind)” is based on and a link to the video.

“A Woman Like That (Her Kind)”
Lyrics: Anne Sexton
Music: Lisa Gutkin

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark

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.)

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)