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ON TELLING THE TRUTH
"From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth."
---"An Autobiography", by Janet Frame
I was first introduced to Art Therapy while in a psychiatric institution. There, I learned that when there are no words, there can be pictures. I learned that an artist is not necessarily someone who has studied art, but one who has something to say, and the courage to say it. I learned that an artist is someone who makes art to save her life.
I have Dissociative Identity Disorder---DID/MPD, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. I am also bipolar. I do not consider my being a multiple to be a disorder, however. I see it as an elaborate system that my/our psyche devised, in order to deal with severe trauma. I/we could have NOT survived at all. instead, we survived as many. Our system---the reality we have created "inside", where our parts exist---is the place we call M-Land.
"If you bring forth what is within you
what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
---Jesus, from The Gnostic Teachings
I/we give voice to our "alters" through writings, paintings, assemblage sculptures, photographs, and music...
I work with words---journaling, writing poems, short stories, and songs.
Sometimes, only sounds come---raw and visceral, to express feelings for which there are no words coming from an intellectual place.
I do extended vocals, releasing emotion through pure sound.
I chant and drum.
I create assemblage sculptures out of found objects whose shapes and colours speak to me,
I draw in my journals, to complement the words.
I paint...
And then there is the dialogue, with the work---unearthing and literally "drawing out" the voices of M-Land.
Everything, as Ram Dass has so well said, becomes "grist for the mill"---a rock with a face on it, a piece of wood, a kitchen utensil, an old tool, a car part…
"In the great crises, when one's very existence is threatened, the soul acquires transcendental qualities" ---Paul Strindberg
"All art is the memory of our dark origins, whose fragments live in the artist forever." ---Paul Klee
"The scars that mend.
Colours that blend." ---Wassily Kandinski, in a story poem, including language and imagery, had his character repeat these words, over and over again, like a shaman's
mantra, as he tried to make his way through an impenetrable forest.
One of my goals is to help de-stigmatize mental illness. Much has been done, these past few years, to bring skeletons out of the closet. To make it easier for a person to be able to talk about her "problem". To re-define terms, so that they have less melodrama (thank you, Hollywood...) attached to them.
And treatment options have changed. But there are still too many bright lights being dulled by medications given by doctors who would rather numb and anaesthetize a client, than allow that person to explore her inner self/ves in what are ironically referred to (in this day and age) as 'non-traditional methods", such as the shamanic power to heal that lies in the expressive therapies of art, writing, music, and movement. When budgets are cut in mental health centers, the creative programs are always the first to go. It's easier and cheaper to hand out meds.
And not for a moment am I trying to romanticize mental illness here. It is a very real thing to live with. And finding the right medications can make the difference between not merely surviving , but thriving.
However, all mental dis-order, in my opinion, needs to be viewed from a holistic perspective. We, as individuals, carry the symptoms of our ailing culture and planet. Some of us, more so than others. The web of life vibrates, and all of us are on it. Personally, politically, spiritually---we are all connected. When one person says something that another "hears", from a soul-place---this is felt on the web. When one person makes a piece of art, or writes a song, or poem, in which another recognizes herself, that moment of recognition is felt on the web.
And so, no event taking place on what Carlos Castaneda referred to as "the path that has heart" is small or insignificant.
There is a stigma attached to "mental illness', in our "feel-good" culture. Those who feel overwhelmed by their shadows, isolate. Or they are quickly prescribed medications that promise to make these shadows 'go away'. They are certainly not encouraged to explore these shadow-places. In a culture that 'believes' only in black or white, good or evil, we are not even given words with which we can express being caught in the grey areas.
"Creativity takes the destructive threads of life and puts them together with something from within that changes it all into what can sustain a faltering self."
---"Trapped In The Mirror", by Elan Golomb
I do a lot of what I call "shadow-work", both in my writing and art-making. I find my self/ves identifying and owning my demons. Creating my/our mythos, out of the icons we have un-earthed from within our selves. This culture we live in exiles demons, without getting to know them. The result---internal combustion, like the riots of '91, I witnessed in Los Angeles. The dark side of Kali, long unacknowledged--- rising, as fires erupted throughout the city...
The Persian poet Rumi said, " Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light." This is what telling the truth means to me.
The exploration of the dark and the light.
The excavating of one's shadows, and so, the culture's.
LIFE + ART = ALCHEMY
ART HEALS !!!
c.copyrightMAF2004