Why you should NOT overshare on the internet. . .

Friends:
On the eve of my 62nd birthday, something of a re-birth announcement...
The mania I've been experiencing for the past few weeks continues. I am making every effort to recognize and do what I can to manage it, and with some success provided I stick to certain things. Among these: my online presence. It's become baldly obvious to me that I must reduce my internet activity considerably, and that's why I write to you all: if you're wondering how I'm doing, where I am, if I am, etc., it may take a day or two before you hear from me.
I'll spare you the thinking behind this -- god only knows, but makes sense to me -- but I also wanted to let everyone know that this is a struggle that I absolutely refuse to go through alone. And by that I mean going public. Once I am finally able to trust my thoughts again -- or even to corral them better -- I've got a plan.
I want to put this before everything. I want to re-emerge from this as a public activist. I've already got a semi-public profile, and it seems obvious and necessary that I try to harness this to my own recovery and public function. I know there's a book in this, but also a specialized website (under construction already), but possibly a documentary, podcast and as many public speaking opportunities as I can book.
I mean, who wouldn't want this: the world's first Bipolar standup addict terminally unfiltered movie critic?
See? This mania is K-razee.
Much love to y'all and more to come.

This quote from a Facebook page (going back a few years) haunts me and won't leave my head. It was written by a Canadian movie critic whose heyday was about ten or fifteen years ago, and who specialized in movies about mental illness. No, that's not an exaggeration, as there was an event called Rendevous with Madness (and how I HATE the term, worse than "demons") every year in Toronto, and he seemed to be everywhere, doing this and doing that and, I would imagine, analyzing every movie down to the last detail.

It's, I guess, ironic that this happened to him, and there was a lot more to the story (he mentioned in passing that he had been "kicked out of rehab" twice, though not specifying why). I don't even know how I got onto his posts, as he isn't a Facebook friend - though we do have contacts in the publishing industry in common. But I became fascinated, and for several months his posts got more and more bizarre. I remember something called the Bipolar Cartoon Character Hall of Fame, with pictures of Olive Oyl, Pepe le Pew, and various others I don't remember. 

He also mentioned being "taken in" by the police, escorted to a psychiatric ward which released him the next day. (Yes. The next day, with no support system, not even a reliable source of medication.) His recounting of the story had all the manic delight of Randall P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as if it was just one big jolly romp.  

It came out at one point that he was living with his elderly parents, not so he could take care of them but so that they could take care of him (or try to - but think of the burden on frail, elderly parents trying to deal with a 60-year-old man acting like a wild teenager). He did harrowing things like ask his Facebook buddies what meds he should take, and of course got a lot of terrible advice on milk thistle, turmeric, mountain goat horn extract, and other reliable treatments for major mental illness.

Then - it stopped. I think it stopped just as the pandemic hit, but for a long time there was nothing, and I did wonder what had happened to him. Then I noticed he was posting movie stills, several a day (though not the same ones over and over again, as he had done before). But these were strange, not the polished poses you'd see in a publicity still. These were screenshots taken nearly at random in the black-and-white films he seemed to focus on. Then, eventually, those stopped too.

With my Sherlock mind, I couldn't leave it  alone, and I did find a tweet (back when you could still read them without donating a few pints of your blood) which talked about how he was going to "recklessly" share his story of "multiple arrests", breaking sobriety, disturbing the peace, etc. etc. in an event called But That's Another Story. I didn't see this as an advocacy thing, but more of the "drunkalogue" syndrome you hear in AA - telling the same story endlessly, embellishing each time, and getting lots of laughs from the most painful experiences a human being can suffer. 

One of the things in the description was "undiagnosed sex addict", which made me feel he wasn't QUITE over the manic episode yet - not the so-called diagnosis, but the hypersexuality which is one of the most alarming (not to mention humiliationg) symptoms of bipolar mania. He did delete quite a number of his Facebook posts, including some which were actually pretty gross. Did someone take him aside and advise him on what was appropriate (or not) to share?

So why am I still so obsessed with this? His new save-the-world persona made me wonder, as perhaps he was unable to wonder, just what he actually planned to say. How could you get up there and talk for an hour about reckless oversharing, multiple arrests, and bizarre behaviour that baffled everyone who thought they knew him? It would probably be stream-of-consciousness rambling, but I also know it would be a kind of  standup stuff meant to elicit howls of laughter. Does this take away the horror of it? Is this stuff truly funny? You tell me.

Of course not, but in the moment it might have seemed like a good idea. Advocacy is a way for people to feel important, experts on the subject, which gives you a sense of power, as if you can and should advise people on what they are supposed to think about a subject. It can also involve trying to rescue people who are too helpless to help themselves. That doesn't happen either. And it cannot happen when the "help" is just as sick as they are. 

So now he has disappeared entirely. I do wonder what happened. The last Facebook comments consist of "friends" (in the Facebook sense, not real ones) wishing him a happy birthday, some time last year. I remember with dismay the way my dear friend David West was getting birthday greetings on Facebook two years after he died. Though I know he would have gotten a kick out of it, it points up everything that is wrong with social media, and the internet in general. I get "notices" every day about "friends" having a birthday, and I don't even need to go on the person's page to send them a generic message! How wonderful! No work at all, nor do you need to care - just pretend that you do, because it makes YOU look good.  Which is why so many people send automatic or automated birthday messages to a person, not even knowing or caring very much if they are alive or dead.

Well, I hope this manic guy isn't dead, but he seems to have retreated a long way. It would be nice, once the dust settled, to see some commentary on what he actually lived through, but just as you can't be a heart disease advocate while you are up on the stage collapsing from a heart attack, it is really not such a good idea to display the  extremes of mental illness to an audience too embarrassed or frightened to do anything but howl with laughter.

ADDENDA (sample Facebook posts): 

If anyone knows anybody in the Burlington police or psychiatric biz, please share.
The care and patience I received during my long night of gonzo batshit free fall was AMAZING. I regaled the cops who delivered me to psychiatric emergency — named, God love them, Scott and Geoff — with the dirtiest movie true life trivia I could — and boy did I. I was like the Groucho Marx of psychiatric emerg.
As I was escorting them out — until the psychiatric staff pulled me back inside — I tried to hug them, which they warmly refused. I offered a handshake, and Scott said “How about a fist bump, Geoff?”
And as for Jenn, the gorgeous and deeply empathetic psych muse, whom I fell deeply and obviously in love with inside of three seconds: thanks for the only memory of this whole shitshow that I cherish. That and Scott and Geoff’s fistbump.

. . . Sadly, I have been forced to accept that a raging libido is an indication I’m about to go off the reserve. On both recent flipout sessions, I was hornier than a cartoon goat. Not to put to fine a point, but I’d have happily even filled a doughnut.
So this is it, huh? Antidepressants smother my libido into perpetual remission, and if I get horny it means I’m about to smash my stall. How fucking fair is that?
Doughnuts. Now why didn’t I think of that when it might have helped?
Love and thanks.

(And this, the most disturbing of all):

Talk about a discussion starter. Veronica Liskova's affecting, disturbing and resolutely balanced portrait of a 'virtuous pedophile' cuts to the very heart of the idea of mental illness and social stigma. A documentary profile of a young man who maintains a clinically-assisted regimen of absolute sexual abstinence so as not to act on his desires, the movie not only ask us consider pedophilia as a form of treatable mental illness, but to consider what the real consequences of intolerance, ignorance and moral outrage are: that somebody like Daniel remains ashamed, in the shadows, and possibly poised to act out. 

I never thought I'd see this again!!

 

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

(Click on the link to watch!) I was astonished and deeee-lighted to find this entire series on Internet Archive! There are only fragments of it on YouTube, and a confusing array of chopped-up pieces on Dailymotion, so this was buried treasure, unearthed at last.  I LOVED this series when I first saw it on PBS in 2014 (it's yet another Ken Burns masterpiece), but it was never shown again. It is fourteen hours long, the most ambitious thing Burns has ever done, and by far the best. And it never seems too long or tedious - in fact, I didn't want it to end.

So what do I love about it? Everything. From the superb gallery of  photos and archival film clips, to the meticulous research, to just the right amount of commentary from the inevitable historians, and - most of all - to the superb narration, there is not a false note in it anywhere.

Bad narration, which is nearly universal on YouTube now (most of it AI-generated) is the bane of my existence, but in this case, the main narrator, not to mention the dead-ringer, right-on voices of Teddy, FDR and Eleanor (the last voiced by no less than Meryl Streep!) are so note-perfect that it's no surprise the music is sensitively chosen and utterly appropriate as well. I begin weeping when they feature Aaron Copland at his most tender and majestic, the heroic Richard Strauss (Death and Transfiguration, which is now my theme song), and sublime quotes from Stephen Foster.

It all works. But what was most gratifying to me was watching the first part again, and far from having my usual reaction to something I used to love and now can't fathom, I think I loved it all the more.  I've started reading more about the Roosevelt dynasty, but none of it is more poetic and hard-hitting than this series, which I honestly thought I would never see again.

Comes at a time when I am still feeling pretty rotten at times. Having supposedly dodged the bullet with my surgery, now I am not so sure. "Things" are showing up in my x-rays and blood tests, and I am more than concerned. I will be seeing a hemotologist, which made no sense until I finally clicked with the fact that I had to have a blood  transfusion in the hospital (why?). And I also might be seeing a nephrologist, a kidney specialist, because my poor old ageing kidneys might be out of whack as well. In the hospital, they found a spot on my lung which terrified me, though the followup x-ray seems to have indicated it was resolved. But my doctor is not so sure. So, more tests, more specialists, more trips to the lab.

I am trying to convince myself, and sometimes I even seem to believe it, that the surgery fixed everything and I am now back to full and vibrant health. But once they gut you like that, you're never quite the same, and I feel it almost every day.

I don't want to overshare online, but it gets lonely sometimes, and this blog is supposed to be more personal than, say, Facebook or YouTube (which I am now "off" in many ways, just fed up and not wanting to keep feeding something nobody watches anyway). I feel the same about the blog: I do post links on Facebook sometimes, but I am not sure why I bother.  I am convinced nobody really reads them. They are, however, there for my own reference, so that is something.

Something, but I am not sure what.

So when I find something as superb as this series, whole and complete, and in magnificent HD, it geos a long way (though not far enougth)  to make me feel this is all worthwhile. But I had a thought at the grocery store today, when I could not lift a five-pound bag of sugar into the cart: the natural limits of a human lifespan used to be "threescore and ten" - and by that reckoning, I'm already one year over the limit.

So why is this statement so subversive?

An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED. Proceed: not succeed. With success, as any world or unworld comprehends it, he has essentially nothing to do. If it should come, well and good: but what makes him climb to the top of the tent emphatically isn’t ‘a billion empty faces’. Even success in his own terms cannot concern him otherwise than as a stimulus to further, and a challenge to more unimagineable, self-discovering – ‘The chairs will all fall by themselves down from the wire’; and who catches or who doesn’t catch them is none of his immortal business. One thing, however, does always concern this individual: fidelity to himself.

- e. e. cummings

Lots of people object to this statement. For one thing, they don't like the use of "man/he/his", which is absolutely not allowed now - for God's sake, why doesn't he say "a man OR a woman", "he OR she", etc., especially with all the pronoun confusion affecting language right now? But the idea that failure is part of the game echoes my all-time-favorite quote from Teddy Roosevelt, which dares to call itself "The MAN in the arena". (Can't have that!)

But even more subersive is the idea that success has nothing to do with you. If it comes, fine, but if you strive for it, you will be chasing a phantom. Our entire culture revolves around success or failure, defined in terms of dollars and one's contribution to the overall economy, the GNP. Very seldom is artistic merit even considered. Popularity and the ensuing financial gain is the whole story.

The last few lines are the most subversive, and totally nonsensical to most people: the claim that how an artist's work is received is "none of his immortal business" (how I love that phrase!), and that the sole necessity of art is fidelity to himself (herself, itself, elephant self, Old Testament prophet self, Joan of Arc self, etc. etc. etc.)

This quote, along with a few others, has informed my life, and I have come back to them again and again because they run counter to cultural pressures and expectations. So many artists are crushed by this. Even artists who make a lot of  money, and are therefore deemed "successful" go through the tortures of the damned, because it is NEVER ENOUGH. Jump high, higher, higher - no, sorry, you failed to grab the brass ring. Maybe next time.

Go get 'em, Teddy! (Read at your own risk!)

 

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, on Americans:

“As for my own country, it is hard to say. We are barbarians of a certain kind, and what is most unpleasant we are barbarians with a certain middle-class, Philistine quality of ugliness and pettiness, raw conceit, and raw sensitiveness. Where we get highly civilized, as in the northeast, we seem to become civilized in an unoriginal and ineffective way, and tend to die out. In political matters we are often very dull mentally, and especially morally; but even in political matters there is plenty of rude strength, and I don't think we are as badly off as we were in the days of Jefferson, for instance.”

Whew! Let me blow out the flames coming from that particular statement. Though it was in a private letter and not meant for public consumption, it's more than candid about what T. R. perceived as the woeful limitations of his beloved country and its (too-often-craven) citizens. 

Of course, you're not supposed to like or admire Roosevelt. He killed animals, he seemed to love war, he pounded the podium when he gave a speech. (And those teeth!) But I've always loved the man, and have always wanted to know more about him. To this end, I'm making my way through an 800-page biography by H. W. Brands, called T. R.: The Last Romantic. But I have to tell you, the portrait he paints of the Old Lion is woefully un-romantic. 

I watched a PBS series on the Roosevelts (and how I wish they'd show it again, all 8 hours of it!), and my favorite two hours was devoted to T. R. And yes, the portrait that emerged was of a true romantic: fiercely passionate about everything (especially his family - he was devoted to them), sometimes too opionated for his own good, and not one to suffer fools gladly (or at all!) - yet at the same time, warm and gregarious, genuine, sincere in his patriotism (his vision was of what Americans COULD be, but somehow never were), and a lot of other things. 

But this Brands character does not even seem to like Roosevelt, and there are little jabs at his character on every page. Talk about thinking in black and white! This fellow has decided T. R. needs to be deconstructed, or should we say, given a hatchet job. I have ordered another bio (there are no doubt hundreds of them) which has been criticized for sentimentalizing Teddy too much. But what the PBS bio got right, and what Brands missed by a mile, was his complexity. 

The man was positively Byzantine, and was full of so many opposite traits that you wonder how he got along. But one commentator said, "What you MUST know about T. R. is that he was a depressive." The fierce exterior disguised a very tender heart, and he was hypersensitive, not to mention a ferocious intellect which soared above most of his contemporaries. THAT is the T. R. I want to hear about, read about, get to know better.

I even wrote in my journal about this! The book critic in me never quite dies, and each book I read comes under analytical scrutiny, but this one. . . I kept getting so turned off that I had to unload somewhere:

I am getting fed up with the TR book, which is a disappointment after a good start. It begins quite positively, but as it goes along the author gets more and more snide, then just starts taking shots at him on every single page. He’s literally attacking the man, claiming he did everything for his own gain and towering ego. Nothing about the latent depression, nothing about the warmth and charm of the man, which his supporters never failed to notice. (They named the Teddy bear after him, for God's sake!) But the book is all about his insufferable ego and how he’s basically a windbag, hot air that is all designed for self-aggrandizement and political gain. He doesn't befriend people - he "cultivates" them. 

I LOVED the PBS program, watched it more than once, and it was far more nuanced, claimed he was actually a secret depressive, his heart irreparably broken by the loss of his first wife. The portrait was of someone far more complex and nuanced than this Brands guy comprehends. I did order another bio, just out of interest. But it does seem the guy really doesn’t like Roosevelt and even thinks he was a phony. Typical politician, full of P. T. Barnum hype and even dishonesty. 

So why did he write this? As with the Van Gogh book, I see contractual obligation on every page. Brands signed a contract to write this, then began to get bored and irritated about ¼ of the way through, a contempt that just grows and grows. I’m reading it now because it supposedly helps me get to sleep, though it did not work last night. 

Enough said!

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit

Drove downtown in the rain
Nine thirty on a Tuesday night
Just to check out the late night
Record shop
Call it impulsive
Call it compulsive
Call it insane
But when I'm surrounded I just can't stop
It's a matter of instinct
It's a matter of conditioning
Matter of fact
You can call me Pavlov, dog
Ring a bell and I'll salivate
And how'd you like that?
Dr. Landy, tell me
You're not just a pedagogue
Cause right now I'm
Lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did
Well I'm
I'm lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh
So I'm lyin' here
Just starin' at the ceilin' tiles
And I'm thinkin' about
What to think about
Just listenin' and relistenin'
To smiley smile
And I'm wonderin' if this is
Some kind of creative drought because
I'm lyin' in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
Well I'm
I'm lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh
And if you wanna find me I'll be
Out in the sandbox
Just wonderin' where the hell all the
Love is gone
I'm playin' my guitar and buildin'
Castles in the sun, woh wo woh
And singin', "fun, fun, fun"
I'm lyin' in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
Well I'm
I'm lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh
I had a dream
That I was three hundred pounds
And though I was very heavy
I floated 'til I couldn't see the ground
I floated 'til I couldn't see the ground, oh
Somebody help me
I couldn't see the ground
Somebody help me
Couldn't see the ground
Somebody help me
Because I'm
I'm lyin' in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
Well I'm
I'm lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh, yeah
Drove downtown in the rain
Nine thirty on a Tuesday night
Just to check out the late night
Record shop
(Late night record shop)
Call it impulsive
You can call it compulsive
And you can call it insane, oh, oh
But when I'm surrounded I just can't
Stop

They took my eyes away. . .

I don’t like to post rants (too much), but this was a really bad experience. I noticed my glasses had a little gap where the frame was coming away from the lens. I took them back to SpecSavers where I bought them (2 years ago, so they weren’t ancient), and they took them into the back room. At one point I saw a guy, some repair person I guess, and he was holding them by one arm and waving them around. Then they gave them back to me and said, “No, we can’t fix them, but we’ll give you $50.00 off on your next pair!” The glasses cost $400.00, so this wasn’t much of a comfort, and for some reason I didn’t want to deal with them again. 

I noticed the frames didn’t feel right when I put them back on. When I got home, I saw that the split was far worse, and the damage now went halfway around the lens. All their manhandling and screwing around (I mean, waving a screwdriver around) had damaged them FAR worse than they initially were. I went to Pearle Vision to ask them what I could do, and they gave me a card for a glasses repair shop in Burnaby. (Nothing is close by in these parts.) We drove and drove and drove, couldn’t find a parking spot, etc. etc.. All the usual exhausting stuff. But the damage was still fixable. They did something called a laser weld, and now they look and feel perfect – BUT – they charged me $105.00. I doubt if we can get any of it back.

(P. S. Once more, this is a Facebook post that I copied and pasted. I was shocked to see my last post was in May. Surely some of them got lost? No, it's that I am still exhausted and having to parcel out my energy very carefully. Yesterday was draining and frustrating, as we always have  to drive around a lot, especially for medical things - nothing is E*V*E*R close by, as if Poco is the dark side of the moon and too primitive even for the most basic services. But never mind, the glasses are fixed, and I am NOT GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER EYE TEST - I am so tired of being tricked and even shamed into buying things I do not want OR need. So there.)