I have wrestled with my Bi-Polar Disorder most of my life even before it broke out in the mid 1970’s I knew my point of view was not normative . In childhood I realized I was not the happy little boy I might have appeared to be. I had a strange sense of self awareness as if I was following some curious path towards an unknown destiny. As I have written before my home life was calamitous and unsettling but I found comfort in my secret internal dialog with my own self . As I was 2 beings the one who experiences and other who processes the experiences. As I have grown older now quite near 80 my past life comes back in haunting dreams and visions. I recall old fiends who are far away and some who have left the world . It’s as if my own ticket has been punched and dear friends vanish into the shades of dark death. Memory at its best is never precise though the arts seem to help us see things hidden in this curious half light of remembrances.
I have been fortunate to know many good creative people in my time here on earth. Each relationship in some degree residing in times of closeness and then often long spells of separation. Again as I first said my brain disorder makes my memory a bit more twisted and misshaped like my dreams curious details that give some dimension to remembrances of past times. The Bi-Polar dysfunction even when medicated throws much out of sync , and the price of these various delusional fancies cost dearly in friendships and romances. Indeed much of my life seems broken in retrospect , so many delusions that crease to pieces hurting all in proximity to my peculiar rhythms and moods. It’s said that most creative people suffer some degree of ups and downs and some like myself have spent portions of my life in quite complete collapse , hospitalizations recovery elations spells of intense creativity followed again by dips and swirls in the ocean of madness. Not a good recipe for one’s friends and companions to make sense of , indeed the pattern lacks sense only can be brought together in some semblance of a whole with considerable diligent effort.
Some prejudice follows the broken minds and lives. It’s often the straw that breaks the friendship or alliance asunder. No one I’d Saint enough that they can manage a romance or friendship with a delusion person. Love the caprice of romantic attachment often lacks the flexibility required to keep an alliance strong even with moments great insight and spiritual ecstasy adjacent to greats in fabric of belief. I hurt everyone in my life to some extent or another not by willful acts but rather by delusional thoughts often depressive scenarios like third acts in tragedies where all is woe. I lack the certainty of well grounded folks who have stolid simple principles that guide their interpersonal experiences. No one is expected to stay too long with a delusional being even at some distance the roller coaster of hope and grief is hard to fathom even though most of our lives are never all pastoral and gentle.
I think my father’s atheism was hard for me to swallow as a youngster going to church every Sunday putting my dimes into the collection plate. He was concerned that I would be swept away by promises of an afterlife of great splendor if I behaved myself and said my prayers at night asking the Heavenly Father to make a place for me in his celestial paradise. No my father was very adamant that all this hocus pocus was nonsense and that when died we were dust , waste actually it was a tough argument for a boy with his dreams in the stars.
Eventually I turned towards philosophy as a sort of inquiry into what to make of being alive. An accidental close reading of Nietzsche helped me imagine some grander world in the arts and particularly in music ( opera ) . Whatever I seemed to be swept along by the idea that wisdom was a kind of magical potion that would make life make more sense, particularly creative life full of ups and downs. But for many Nietzsche was too much of a riddle his own defeat seemed to arise from his madness which engulfed him and cast a deep shadow over his late work. The aphorism gained much in my opinion as a form suited to my own broken consciousness. I would dip into his works particularly his late work finding jewels of insight and delight.
But I digress, my own self doubt which I have fought at least to a draw on certain occasions at times overwhelms me and my mind turns towards death as the cure for too passionate a life which injures so many innocents along it’s path. But I had no choice really but to follow the cards I was dealt by my DNA and my fate. My mother’s long suffering I can never forget nor my fathers cruelty to her. Often it seems love transmogrifies into grief and suffering . For me my art was the ticket out of this downward spiral , I had found a sort of alternative to the long labor of my families histories. But this too was fraught with highs and lows, losses and gains. And now with my comrades falling away a despair shakes my being . That I have hurt so many I cared for , that my ambition my pursuit laid bare a rugged road through other people’s feelings and dreams. Madness in nothing to be desired but it does often seem to be the source of one’s gamble for a free hand in creative pursuits , that mad wisdom of the poets and musicians . The sound of the future being more pleasant by virtue of the creative labor we exercised in our fraught mindset. That perhaps some pleasure will come of all my pictures .