Portrait of the artist as bipolar

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Bipolar - what's wrong with this picture?

When you do an image search for "bipolar",

you get a lot of pictures like these...

i know that a broader dialogue and awareness
about bipolar and other such topics is better
than silence and shame and blah, blah...

... and i'm willing to believe that the people
who created these images - and the thousands
of others quite like them - mean well, and are trying
to get people to feel the pain a little, and it's hard
to express something so inexpressible...

... but as somebody ten years down the road
of the diagnosed... with some experience
in the creation of images and communicating
about challenging topics...

i really don't like them.

on a bad day, i frikin' hate them.

why?

for starters, because they are wrong.

they are all about the extremes.

the 'crazy high' and the deepest darkest of the lows.

and that's not how it is. most of la vida bipolar,
in my experience, is lived between these edges.

by portraying the extremes, they misrepresent
the reality of bipolar living.

by going for the drama, they misrepresent that reality
to those who do not know any better.

there is no line running down the middle of my life
or the lives of the bipolar people i know.

it's not on or off.

it's not digital.

it's not that simple.

it's a continuum.

and scary pictures don't help anybody.






<<>

a Bipolar-positive perspective?

i've taken somewhere around fifty thousand
photographs in the last ten years or so.

Somewhere along the line it dawned on me
that it was my way of mapping my world...
of capturing a handful of the thoughts that
were racing thru my mind as i wandered around.

On the rare occasions i ever looked at them again
afterwards, i realized that these images were also
a kind of diary.

This was partly due to the fact that i file them away
by date, but it was also because looking at those images
i could tell you where i was that day, and what the day
was like and what else happened that i didn't take
a picture of and so on.

But in the last couple of years i've also found
myself thinking that these images are also a way
of communicating, in some small way, to other
people what one person's bipolar experience
was like sometimes.

This is what the world looks like to me.

This is what the world looked like to me
wandering around a more tropical zone
than i usually live in ... sort of.

i say "sort of" because my wanderings - and
hence my image-making - are rarely as tidy
or as linear as a posting like this might imply.

Between one plant here and another there
might have been buildings, birds, statuary,
graf, clouds and anything else i might have
stumbled over along the way.

In that sense, just posting all the images taken
on a given walk would be a more accurate portrait
of a/my bipolar experience*.

At the same time there is something to be said
for a thematic approach too, and respect for one's
audience is one of those things. If one is going
to try and communicate, i think it behooves one
not to waste anybody's time...
including one's own.

i don't spend a lot of time trying to "get" a picture.
i may take two or even three photographs of something
trying to capture what i'm after, but that's it.

If i haven't "got it" by the third shot,
then i'm not really clear on what i'm after.

Why do you or anyone else need to see
a photograph that i don't think captures "it"?

Likewise, i don't spend a lot of time fussing
with the images once i've got them. i might
tweak the cropping or sweeten the contrast
or the colour, but if it takes more than five minutes
i'll bail... partly because again, if it needs more
work than that i didn't "get it" and need to work
on my skills, not try and fix it in the mix.

As John Lee Hooker used to say...
"That's the best, and later for the garbage".

None of the above has a lot to do with what
was on my mind when i set out to post these.

What i wanted to do was collect some of the images
on this theme where i really felt that i had got "it"...
(or come very close at least) as a way of speaking
to the perspective that most people - including
many of the diagnosed - have about "bipolar disorder".

i would not for a minute deny anyone else's
bipolar experience or their right to speak
about it in whatever terms they want,
and likewise for their friends and family,
or medical professionals or who-have-you.

The reason i started this blog was to have
somewhere that i could do exactly that,
and what this post was supposed to be about
is that i really really hate having my life,
my experience of the world characterized
as "a disorder".

One of the reasons i hate it so much
is that characterizing this way of being
as a "disorder" can very easily become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As soon as one is diagnosed,
one becomes "the other".

Hello stigma.

* hmmm... note to self.


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Medication for the Youth of the Nation!

If the "War on Drugs" was the bad cop confronting
what most Conservatives agreed was the biggest
social evil facing America in 80s, then "Drug Education"
was meant to be the softer, more feminine good cop
that would help eliminate this nemesis once and for all.

Nancy Reagan would personify the campaign - a new way to keep kids off drugs, and billions
of dollars would be spent imprinting this catchy
slogan into young minds and the minds of so many
frightened parents everywhere...

Naturally, there would be t-shirts, bumper stickers
and a host of other merch. This simple solution to
the whole darn problem would be shouted from the
mountain tops, echo down the valleys and reverberate
down the corridors of power.

Like so many of the solutions of the Reagan era-
the Star Wars defense system, trickle-down economics,
etc - "Just Say No" was simple, clear and effectively
useless. Here too, billions would be spent to no great
effect beyond scratching the itch of the aging Puritans
who would back Ronnie come hell or high water.

To this day, no one knows how many kids just said
no, but apparently not enough because in spite of
all the best branding money could buy, more people
were buying more - and better - drugs all the time.

As time went on, and it turned out hugs weren't
making the crucial difference, drug education
took on a nastier edge...

In the tradition of Reefer Madness,
the gloves started coming off....

Yeah. Right.

One of the challenges of addressing young people
about drugs is that kids aren't stupid. The best
one could hope that a campaign of simplistic
slogans might do is start a conversation - ie -
when a parent or other authority figure says
"Just Say No", the child might respond with
"Why Should I?".

At that point, the authority figure needs to have
an intelligent reply. Ideally, it will include scientific
facts and some reasonable qualifications.

The facts should not fly in the face of the kids'
lived experience (marijuana leads to heroin, etc).

The reasonable qualifications need to address
the latent stupidity and/or intrinsic hypocrisy 
of "Just Say No"- like why so many adults don't,
whether it's cocaine or bourbon or gin.

One might also need to explain why, if Drugs
are for Losers, that anyway they should Just Say
Yes to the Thorazine/Nembutal/Ritalin/etc that
have been prescribed for their depression/anxiety/
other newly diagnosed condition...

There is a growing concern about the incidence
with which kids are being prescribed pharmaceuticals
for a growing number of mental conditions.


Some think that many normal childhood behaviours
are included in ever-expanding medical definitions
of "illness". If I was a parent, I would be concerned.

That said, as these vintage ads show, the idea of
drugs for kids is nothing new...

Is this for the child or the adult?

It's certainly possible that kids are developing
more mental issues these days. They live with
stresses I can't imagine, from metal detectors
at school to social media bullies to the growing
sense that the future is really going to suck.

There won't be enough jobs, and most of them
will be of the "do you want fries with that?" variety.
Just going to a club or even a mall might get you
shot by some wanna-be gangster and then there's
the climate... changing.

It would be more surprising if they didn't have
an issue or two.

The last thing I would think they need is somebody
busting their chops, or even their ass, for smoking
a joint with a friend once in a while. Or dressing
"weird" or listening to "awful" music.

Maybe it's the adults who really have the problems.
Maybe they are giving kids issues.

Maybe instead of talking down,
we should listen up.

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Marketing Pharmaceuticals

i find the advertisements for pharmaceuticals fascinating. The images speak to how the end users for these products are perceived, at least by the manufacturers of the drugs. The texts are a whole other story...

 Dramatic benefits in
heavily narcotized patients.

The suspiciousness and hostility inherent
in paranoid schizophrenia can cause many
patients to avoid taking medication.

"quiets down" the queasy spastic colon

When tension disrupts treatment,
elixir Alurate disrupts tension.

Medicines and drugs in Mr. Jones
new world are a giant industry-
a billion dollar industry...

kind of a classic. i guess.

...probably.

i get a kind of nausea side effect
from seeing Vincent used like this.

is it an Angelina thing,
or is it an Angelina knock-off thing?

i mean seriously WTF?

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Is It A Bad Attitude? Bipolar? ...or both...?

does everyone who is bipolar
have a "bad attitude"

or is it just me, and everyone i know
who's been diagnosed?

hard to say...

the times in which we live

are such that if one doesn't have a bad attitude


it may well mean you ar....


a) illiterate


b) not paying attention


c) straight up stupid



d) over-medicating

it's an interesting time to have "a mental illness"

implicit in the diagnoses
is the the idea that one exists outside the "sane"..
the normal.

which is - allegedly - to be preferred.

i'm not sure that if i wasn't bipolar
i would still have "issues" with the pervasive
bullshit that the "private sector" and my government
tell me everyday.

but of course, it's one of the things
i can never really know.

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