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.






<<>

Robert Crumb on "Normal"

       Kinda creepy, huh?




.

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.


*

Vincent van Gogh

... another person with "mental health issues"
     who decided death would be better...

!

What's it like to be bipolar?

now there's a loaded question.

dark novella      dugg simpson    Aug2012

the first answer that comes to my mind
    is "you know, it's pretty interesting".



*


i love to read. i love to write.

and it long ago became clear to me that much
of what i was writing was just me trying to explain
myself to myself...

... a kind of sit-down with the seemingly random bits of information
i'm immersed in every day with what i've already learned, the truths i hold to be self-evident and the emotions it all stirs up in my heart and see what - if any - connections there might be.

someone's go to do the math      dugg simpson    Oct2012

on a good day, it makes me laugh.

on a good day it's like surfing, down a beautiful river
on a summer afternoon, the water glittering with music
and a breeze in the leaves humming harmonies
in every shade of green.

on a good day, no one is more surprised
than i am by what comes out.

on a good day, i learn something.

i want candy      dugg simpson    Oct2012

but, as anyone living on a bipolar planet knows,
not all days are good days.

talk to the pig      dugg simpson    Sept2012

some days, words just make me weary. some days, there's so many in my head that my life feels
like a bad cocktail party, where too many desperate Rigbys and nerd-boy Prufrocks are talking too loud in a room already buzzing beneath flourescent lights and muzak so toxic i wish i was deaf.

some days, the thought of even one more word
just makes me sick...

from here to modernity      dugg simpson    Oct2012

that's when i want be around pictures.

to immerse myself in a big cool pool of shapes and textures and colours. don't think, just do. let my intuition off the great leash of 'meaning' for a run in the woods.
 
it's like my own personal mute button i guess.

buy the ticket, take the ride      dugg simpson    Nov2012

and on a good day, no one is more surprised
than i am by what comes out.

on a good day, i learn something too.

electric violin      dugg simpson    Dec2012

*

Bipolar sucks

Sometimes bipolarity just pisses me off.

Most of the time, i like to think that i'm pretty well adjusted
to being maladjusted.

i take most of my meds more often than not. i check in
with my pdoc on a regular basis and i pay close enough
 attention to how i'm doing to know when to adjust my
diet, bed time or what have you to keep things from
going any further up, or down.









Since i was diagnosed some years ago, i have learned
a lot about "my condition". i've read up on my meds,
past and present - what they're supposed to do and
what the side effects might be. 

On a good day, i can even testify to some of the upsides
of being a head case and actively enjoy them!

This isn't one of those days.



This is one of those days when everything about being
bipolar pisses me off... when i'm sick to death of noticing
things no one else seems to, or if they do, they don't
think it's a big deal.

i'm tired of bad news. i don't mean the traffic accidents
or the storms or even the latest on the lousy lying assholes
running my country.

what i mean is news done so badly. the stupid questions
that are so much a part of the "will it be this... or that"
either/or dichotomy. it drives me nuts.

or i guess "more nuts", to be precise.








Stupid questions can only conjure stupid answers,
and i'm tired of living on planet stupid.

i'm tired of dropping $133 every months on medications
that might make me sort of OK more days than i'm not...
 i'm tired of "sort of OK" being about the best i can hope
for, from here to eternity.


or maybe, maybe, maybe, if i'm real lucky, i can  even
be "high-functioning" again!







i'm tired of trying to "act normal" all the time.
why do i have to take all the weight?
why can't somebody act crazy for me once in a while?



i'm tired of of not having a future.
i'm tired of being tired.

i'm just tired.






*

Crazy for God

some people are born crazy.
some people have craziness thrust upon them.


and some people choose to be crazy...

being "born again" is like volunteer crazy.
i should know. been there. done that.

it's probably why i find these paintings so strangely
compelling.whatever you might think of their aesthetic
qualities, there is no denying their relentless sincerity.

but is it art?

sorry, but i don't think so.

i don't think so because there is no room in them for me.
they are a fait accompli.

they don't even need me. they are their own beginning
and their own end. closed systems.

and art, for me, is as much about questions as it is about
answers. in these paintings, there is no room for me
because there is no room for doubt.

which may be why this style of art is not only popular
among fundamentalist Christians - it's also popular
with Nazis, Joe Stalin, Mao, beloved North Korean leaders
and other connoisseurs of the efficiencies
of the fascist path..

maybe that's why these paintings - drawn from all these
histories, these different countries and decades - look
so much the same.

the sun is always rising, and the people are always gazing
into the dawn's early light of what sure looks like a better
day.

no wonder these people are always smiling .
they're high on hope. they're totally faced on faith.
they don't have a doubt in their heads.

which is another reason why these paintings aren't
for me. not only is there no room for doubt...
they are downright instructional.

it's pretty creepy. if you ask me.

never mind the "right, two of every animal
on the planet fits in a boat that size" factor.

...which doesn't matter in the slightest.

for all their so-called "realism", images like these
are not concerned with reality. they are fantasies.

they are fascist fantasies - fantasies of compliance.
fantasies of control. fantasies of a simple universe
that even comes with a book of answers...

a simple world. a better world. a world free from want.
a world free from thought.

like i said... creepy.

here, a Nazi soldier comes home to his family...

and here, an American soldier comes home, a la Rockwell...

when the war was over, there were some who found
all this relentless sincerity hard to swallow, and a process
of subversion began which continues to the present day.










thank god.

























see more images like these....

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai151_folder/151_articles/151_soviet_art_05.html


http://squashint.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/chairman-maos-socialist-realism/

http://pulpcovers.wordpress.com/tag/nazis/


what is "socialist realism"?






!