Posts

Posted on

Normal

When I’m working with clients at my day job as a therapist, a lot of questions get asked. These can as often be prompted at the client’s request than from my own professional curiosity. However, at some point in the course of our work, one question will almost always be arrived at, regardless that finding its answer in a general or objective sense would seem intimidating: what’s normal supposed to be?

This question is provoked by the arrival of two large, often incompatible and almost always incongruent masses: our-normal — the nuanced consideration of the innate (though not necessarily immutable) principles and conditionings that define who we are as individuals — and normal-normal — the broader idea of how we should be both as individuals and with others, and our expectations for how society works. In our unprecedented present situation, given widespread self-isolation, a death count that isn’t stopping soon, and worldwide unemployment, to name just a few items, normal-normal seems less normal than it did previously.

I’ll start by saying that I’m pretty sure our-normal, who we are as individuals, isn’t going to change as much as some might fear. Individual change happens slowly, even when its intentional.  That said, over the course of our current crisis we may feel different due to a host of serious inconveniences, which — depending upon socio-economic factors — might wreak havoc on our lives, even traumatize; this isn’t even to mention the ever-present tension and the fact most of us don’t know what the the future looks like beyond the next week. This is not a safe time, for anyone, and these sorts of situations don’t happen often on a worldwide scale. In light of this, if we find ourselves suffering anxiety or depression during this unsafe time, even if we haven’t experienced those things before, I don’t generally consider that to be a sign of our-normal changing; I would contend it’s a sign of our-normal reacting within an allowable range, given the present context. If anything we may end up seeing more of ourselves (the good and the meh).

For me, the prime question boils to: when this is all done, what’s normal-normal going to be? What will normal be like with respect to unemployment support and health care services? What’s normal like for travel and public gatherings? When we don’t even know the next time we’ll be allowed to sit in a pub or café — let alone our favourites because they might’ve gone out of business? When we don’t know when we’ll be seeing our next paycheque, what’s normal supposed to look like?

I’m tempted to look at normal like the passage of time from the standpoint of physics. Time doesn’t really pass, it just is. There isn’t really a 2pm — that’s just society trying to sort itself out so that we know when to sleep and when to feed the chickens. Given the unpredictable timeline ahead of us, I think we will need to look at normal-normal similarly. Most of us would readily acknowledge that words such as “normal” are open to subjective bias, even if at the same time we are using them to define objective standards because we have to, because humans. I think we may be less comfortable acknowledging that normal can be something as subject to change as it is to definition.

What’s happening, I feel, is not the suspension of normal-normal, or normal-normal being reprogrammed. Like being part of an engrossing movie only to catch a piece of fake scenery, we are jolted out of the way we have accepted our places in, and the construct of, pre-pandemic society. I see this as an opportunity to question to what degree normal-normal, beyond semantics, truly exists, and who benefits.

I feel it’s important not to get too hung up on restoring whatever our collective version of normal-normal was, like the last backup of a computer. Among other things, there’s a lot of inequality there. When our community, municipal, provincial, and federal representatives inevitably talk about moving forward I would prefer that we not reflexively reach for  previous notions without first considering what can be addressed so that there is less inequality. I want to pay attention to the laws and precedents being laid down presently — like taking over a hotel in order to house the homeless, an initiative that was ignored by city council in the past — so that we are able not only to take care of ourselves and our communities today, but to think about the evolving normal-normal we want from this point forward.

As I might venture to share with a client, in answer to that inevitable question I opened with, whatever normal can be, whatever normal can include, we get to have a say.

 

Share
Posted on

Abstraction: Breaking the Logjam

In our current state, with the coronavirus COVID-19 circulating around the globe, everyone is on alert. The good news is that many people, particularly on social media are providing helpful information and/or forwarding information from those who are working on the frontlines (I also appreciate the many newspapers that are sharing related resources without a paywall). Considering how some movies and books have modelled society’s chaotic behaviour during a pandemic, I’m impressed with how we’re handling it.

That said, despite the best intentions, for some it’s all too much. As in: too much information, too much input, too much emotion, too much logic. It’s the volume, both in spatial capacity and, in some cases, loudness (if figurative), that can get to us.

As someone whose day job involves the intake and intermingling of a lot of types of information, a lot of input, a lot of emotion, and a fair amount of logic, I know what it’s like to find yourself overwhelmed. Especially, and ironically, when it’s useful stuff that’s overwhelming me. The last thing you want to do is read something, or watch something, or listen to something after a day (or a week or more) of that. And yet how do we break the logjam in our head without simply inputting more information in the process?

There’s meditation, right? I value meditation, and it is a legitimate option (particularly now with apps such as Headspace), but it’s not something that you just plug in and benefit from immediately. It takes practice and not a little guidance for some. Even potentially meditative arts such yoga or martial arts require training before we feel their benefit.

I would like to recommend abstraction. Go ahead and read, but maybe try poetry — where form itself, as well as language, is at play, where you are free of the necessity of following a story and plot. Speaking of language, for those practicing a second (or third) language, try reading poetry in that language aloud to yourself. Go ahead and listen to music, but perhaps you might try ambient or experimental — where there is no overly familiar verse/chorus structure, but something enveloping and amorphous (I wrote more extensively about ambient/experimental music here). Want to watch something? Go for a walk, without headphones or devices to distract you, and instead take in what’s around you; take routes you’ve never walked before. The advantage of abstraction, especially if, like me, you are sensitive to patterns, is the lack of literalism — the sense-making is more constructivist, less top-down and objective.

I think it’s important to give ourselves something to help take our minds off the waves of information we’re intaking every day, to stimulate our ideas without overwhelming us at the same time. Getting back to meditation, one phrase which I find very helpful, taken from a professional seminar I attended, is this: acceptance is not approval. In other words, there will always be things outside of our control, some of which may frustrate us — a classic example is coming to a busy streetcar stop only to have people stream aboard before we can get off — but if we can learn to accept that we cannot realistically control these things then the darker parts of our psyche won’t be (as) activated — and, most importantly, that this is not the same as bestowing some sense of blessing on those irritants.

Share
Posted on

Memories of a Virus

I can’t help but think about Toronto in 2003. I had just started working with a well-respected performing arts film company in the autumn of 2002 after having been laid off from my previous job after the bottom fell out of their financing for an ambitious Grimm Brothers-based children’s TV series. Some context is important here. 9/11 had only happened a year before my lay-off. The effect of 9/11 was huge on the film and TV industry. One large factor was advertisers: they weren’t producing new ads — I don’t exactly understand the psychology behind this though I gather many were waiting for what the Bush Jr. administration would do as a response to the attacks. But, as I did start my career working in TV commercials, I can tell you that those 30 second spots pump tonnes of money (and jobs) into many parts of the economy. So, no new ads, no ad money to broadcasters, thus no budgets from broadcasters for new productions, which meant industry jobs were scarce.

Then came SARS.

I wrote about this for the Torontoist ten years after the fact, albeit in a more generally-geared way (not focused on the film industry). It may not be the definitive SARS essay, however it’s topical both as an overview of the what and how, and also as a point of comparison to what we are facing today, nearly 20 years later, in the early days of the coronavirus COVID-19 as it spreads its way across the planet.

As I wrote then, we were caught flat-footed as a result of economic downsizing (or to use more current parlance, austerity measures). And if 9/11 took the legs out of the film and TV production in Toronto, SARS was a squarely landed sucker punch. Even though the job I’d just landed paid much less than my previous one (don’t get me started), I had to be thankful because I ended up avoiding an industry-wide cull that left all but the best (or well-connected) in the industry. For a simplistic explainer, Hollywood movies shoot here in order to take advantage of rebates on labour costs, and thus undergird the infrastructure that the native Canadian industry depends on for their productions. They didn’t want to cross the border for risk of any cast or crew getting ill. Even beyond North America we were affected: the company who hired me was about to start pre-production on a feature shooting in southeast Asia — then like now a hot zone of the virus — when the plug got pulled for insurance reasons.

Even though we pulled ourselves out of it, it got bleak. It felt like Toronto was put in a sick ward and someone wrapped it in protective plastic from the rest of the world.

A lot has changed since then. Canada learned its tragic lessons — losing 44 lives and having a hole drilled through the economy will do that. Our medical infrastructure is now among the best prepared in the world. It’s a strange and unsettling deja vu to see other First World countries who weren’t affected by SARS struggling to stave off infection. This includes, coincidentally enough, film productions (as it stands, Toronto has become and remains a boomtown, especially since Netflix has invested in studio space). I am very thankful for the lack of social media (as we know it now) back in 2003. What I witnessed then was only a precursor to the more virulent online racism, xenophobia, and paranoia that we are seeing today.

I wanted to write that Torontoist essay in 2013 because it seemed nobody wanted to acknowledge what happened in 2003 — that somehow, maybe thanks to “SARSstock“, we could wash ourselves of it. The body count. The World Health Organization’s travel advisory. The second SARS wave that hit later that year. The economic downloading that made us so vulnerable.

I’m writing this now because I work in the middle of Chinatown, which has been unfairly punished by the association with COVID-19. Restaurants and businesses are suffering for no reason other than the public’s ignorance. I realize it’s early days for COVID-19, which has the potential of wreaking great havoc. My hope is that, where applicable, medical facilities are upgraded to prevent the spread of infection, people use common sense when travelling and — of personal importance — that populist governments do not use this as an excuse for clamping down on democratic freedoms (i.e. public assembly, elections). We shall see.

Share
Posted on

Comedy

The next book is going to different.

I’ve given up on “the next book isn’t going to be an ambitious book” because inevitably I churn out something that ends up doing so, or at least attempting. That said, I would like to write something funny, which is hard — at least if you’re aiming for something that is consistently funny. Then there’s the type of funny. Not all funny is funny to all, and that’s the main problem with writing something comedic: it has to have a consistency that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from other genres (as long as a thriller contains a handful of thrills then it earns the merit badge of its title), and not just in terms of how populated it is with humour; there’s consistency in terms of the volume of material but there’s also consistency in terms of texture — is this a satire that a smaller number of people with more rarefied knowledge will appreciate (think of the film The Square, a wry satire of the upper echelons of the art world), or a broader, more bombastic, plot-driven variety (see Hitchhiker’s Guide)?

It’s intimidating and I may abandon the whole thing, but Radioland, my second book (hello, publishers at this year’s London and Frankfurt Book Fairs — my agent will be looking for you!), took a lot out of me and I’m looking to try something stylistically different.

Wish me luck!

Share
Posted on

Jean Vanier

Yesterday, I read the revelations concerning an internal report by L’Arche, an organization renowned for its work in changing the way society takes care of those with developmental and cognitive challenges. Its founder, Jean Vanier, has been accused by several women who worked with him of sexual assault. I was gutted to read this, as are many people around the world, I suspect. Let me be upfront, because I realize not everyone is going to follow the link I’ve posted (and sometimes I blog thinking that this will automatically be the case): these were women of faith who were working dedicatedly with his organization and/or directly with him, whom he coerced and pressured, sometimes over years, breaking so many personal and professional boundaries in the process, doing so much to hurt people while he was helping others.

Vanier, who passed away last year, was one of those people who, while I did not explicitly follow, I held in esteem. Ever since first learning about his work in my late 20s, his commitment to humanizing those who do not have a voice — which included the homeless, among other sectors of society — I’ve looked up to him as a high water mark of how to be a decent human being capable of walking the talk. And this makes the stories coming out all the more sickening, because of the extent of his abuse of power, how much harm he has done to his victims. 

So, what do we do?

I’m not on social media much but I can already imagine people dismissing everything to do with L’Arche, the organization. And while it would be healthy to see how the internal investigation evolved (in particular how quickly it responded to complaints), I am cognizant that the news is due to L’Arche’s internal investigation and not as a result (from what I can see) of an external journalistic exposé.

I want to continue to support the work of L’Arche in spirit, even if Vanier’s actions in private were so intoxicated and self-absorbed — in particular, for me, the accounts in which he justifies his actions to his victims as being in the spirit of God. While it appears that none of the people he cared for — the most vulnerable in society — were targeted, I am holding my breath on this last part. But there are already victims, women who trusted and believed in his work, in him, and who are scarred by their experience, and whose relationship with their religion I can only imagine must have exacted a great toll as well.

A question that is particularly relevant these days: is it possible to support the continuation of someone’s work despite their horrid private actions? Yes, I think it is, and I don’t think one requires a lawyer to parse out that logic, however I think in this particular instance L’Arche will need to gain the trust of the public, and to define themselves beyond (probably by expunging) Vanier’s image.

Incidentally, I’ve been reading Becoming Ethical, by Alan Jenkins, which provides ways for therapists and social workers to work with men who abuse. I appreciate Jenkins’ philosophy, part of what is called the invitational model, which is not to lock those who have abused into a permanent status of abuser, but allowing them an opportunity to represent themselves and find their own path through the pain they may have caused (as well as deep reflection on their own internal logic). I mention this because I deeply wish there had been a last act in Vanier’s career where he was able to recognize the damage he had done and at least had begun the work of transforming himself ethically.

I am so fucking angry at the man. And terribly saddened with yet another public figure – someone synonymous with raising the quality of the lives of others — has unveiled himself to be culpable of something so avoidable and destructive.

[For those who are curious, I’ve revised this piece many times. Why? The answer may be its own blog entry, but I feel I didn’t give as much space to the victims in the original post.]

Share
Posted on

Social Media

In November of last year I decided to walk away from Twitter. There were a lot of things about it that were bugging me and, without making a big to-do, I logged off and deleted my browser and app shortcuts. I have not been back. Perhaps I will at some point.

Why did I leave? For a number of reasons that accumulated over time. Here’s an incomplete list, in no particular order:

  • people complaining about things outside of their control
  • writers sniping other writers
  • those wonderful people who speak as if they are in fact camp counsellors, on a pulpit, which is to say with the sort of blinkered condescension that makes my eyes water

Okay, so it’s a little more complicated.

A major attraction of social media is the lure of transparency. And there is a ridiculous amount of transparency. You have access to both the minuscule, quotidian drip-drops of individual human life but also world events happening in real time (KOBE BRYANT DEAD alongside 20% OFF SPORT JACKETS). Society has never before had this combination of immediacy and wide signal breadth. The volume of information is incredible, which also makes the proffering of forfeited information or divisive info-blasting all the more possible (and damaging).

In Yevgney Zamyatin’s novel We (which predated Orwell’s 1984), people under a totalitarian regime live in glass-walled apartment buildings, and thus, with their every action on display they (we) monitor and police themselves. The same can be made of Twitter and Instagram, where our thoughts, diatribes, party pics, and ever-present selfies are sent instantly to a potential audience of thousands.

I cannot imagine my 70s childhood under this sort of extreme transparency. What would the assassination of Anwar Sadat, or the Chilean coup d’ètat be like through the intense and unblinking lens of our current media landscape? Sure, we can look back and talk about things like cultural imperialism but how would those events have been exploited and plundered by the scandalously invested corporate media interests we have today? I cannot imagine what the early 80s, when I was entering puberty, would’ve been like, seeing the depressingly real possibility of thermonuclear war overshadowing our lives. I can imagine anxiety and depression on a level beyond what I already experienced. I can imagine suicide.

And then there is the interpersonal angle. As a therapist I often hear clients frustrated by the sight of friends, enemies, siblings, and exes seemingly having the time. of. their. goddamn. lives. Why? Because social media also acts as a combination hall of mirrors / highlight reel for people who may or may not be who they seem, or events that may or may never have happened in the way we see them. We, the viewer, permanently on the outside, can only guess. And if we are feeling less than confident (or worse, if our self-worth is particularly low) then our imaginations might construe in those fleeting, polished glimpses a dreamworld we aren’t invited into. We feel less, as a result. Our ultimate worth as people feels less because when we see ourselves in the real world, unfiltered, unpolished, not surrounded by laughing BFFs, it can feel as if we missed the boat. A lifeboat. A showboat. We end up feeling intrinsically less in every way. Don’t get me wrong, in client work I can invoke whatever expertise I have and tell someone it’s all a highlight reel, that no one is proudly posting selfies of themselves, alone, watching Dharma and Greg reruns with popcorn dust on their face. But when that person is feeling particularly vulnerable there’s no guarantee how they’ll feel when an acquaintance asks Did you see that video of ______ on Instagram?? and once more they are drawn into that alluring bauble-rich world.

Let’s not even get into how much time in our days are wasted scrolling to check user comments or mainlining “breaking” news updates. Let’s not even get into how populist politicians are exploiting the reactive nature of social media networks in order to sow chaos and divisiveness.

There are legitimate reasons we stick with social media platforms. Despite being seemingly abandoned to Moms and Dads, Facebook manages nonetheless to be an efficient way to organize social events with friends through its messaging app, or to share interesting articles. I’ve personally appreciated being able to follow numerous psychology researchers on Twitter, as well as musicians I admire. The problem is that each platform’s defects — the targeted bullying, the bots, the account hackers, the sanctimonious calling-out, as examples — are left for us, the users, to deal with and find solutions for.

I would love nothing more than to share news about my next book or short story being published, and to readily engage with readers (and other writers). I would also like to not see people I may know post things that are racist, or, more mundanely, inappropriate for a shared space. And here we come to another problem with social media: it can just as easily reflect and magnify our darkness, our ignorance, as much as it can broadcast our brilliant ideas about the world. I can’t fault the platform architects for that, though it would be disingenuous to suppose they hadn’t factored that bit of behavioural chaos into the algorithm.

I don’t know what to do with this because I don’t have an answer. For the time being I’ve decided to rotate my attention to whatever is least bothersome which also provides the value of communicating with people I know.

Share
Posted on

Tips For Finding a Therapist

I wrote a quick guide on my professional site to who-does-what (in Ontario, at least) when it comes to providing psychotherapy. It’s complicated, as I’ve commented here before. It can also be political, as there can be professional viewpoints that don’t align. I would like nothing more than for psychotherapy to be covered by OHIP (well it is, but only a) in the evidently magic hands of a Psychiatrist, which is funny because less and less Psychiatrists are providing psychotherapy, or b) a recently announced provincial pilot program, but only CBT is allowed). I’d like all licensed professionals such as myself to be covered because I understand the human value of what talk therapy can do for people who are seeking help and perspective.

Here are some tips for people who are looking for a therapist:

  1. “Fit” is everything: no matter how conveniently a therapist is located to your place of work, no matter how reasonably priced they may be, no matter how many initials they have after their name or what hallowed “evidence based” therapy they practice, it all takes second place to fit. What I mean by “fit” might be a little different than how it might sound to you: a sense of comfort (but maybe, for some of us, not too comfortable because we’re not going to therapy to be lulled but rather to learn and sometimes learning can be uncomfortable), a sense of the who-we-are being intrinsically acknowledged (i.e. not feeling as if they would say exactly the same things to the next person who sits on their couch). Overall, it’s the sense that the shrink “gets” us. Now, as I type this I’m thinking of all the reasons someone may not want this sort of “fit.” Maybe we want someone who reminds us, less than consciously, of our high school Phys Ed instructor, you know, the guy who you never not saw wearing sweats and a polished whistle dangling from his neck, who will call us on our bullshit. Maybe we’re not comfortable making ourselves vulnerable with the opposite sex, but nonetheless we want to push ourselves out of our comfort zone for reasons of growth. People are really complex. Ultimately, the better understood we feel by the person working with us, the more easily we stand to open up.
  2. Sliding scale. Not everyone can afford regular weekly sessions with a therapist (Registered Psychotherapists are generally cheaper than Psychologists, but, even then, cheap is relative), so look to see on their website if they offer a sliding scale for clients who are financially challenged. If you don’t see it listed it doesn’t mean that they don’t offer sliding scale, rather it might just be something they don’t advertise, that you may need to inquire about before your first session. I get the fact that some people find asking for things like this to be stressful. Consider it part of your growth.
  3. Therapists-in-training. Another option, for those who are looking either for the right fit or are concerned about the financial burden, is to check training institutes to see whether they have a program where therapists-in-training might be matched with prospective clients. Not everyone is keen on working with a therapist who doesn’t necessarily have all the practical experience in the world, however the price is often right. I’ll also note that, just because someone is in-training doesn’t mean they lack life experience, if you get my drift.
  4. Has your therapist ever been in therapy? I personally don’t understand how anyone can practice long or short-term psychotherapy without ever having been in psychotherapy themselves, and while the regulating college in Ontario encourages “safe and effective use of self” (or SEUS), there are still therapists seeing clients (Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and Registered Psychotherapists) who haven’t seen the inside of a therapist’s office that doesn’t have their name on it. So, when you’re shopping around, feel free to ask whether they have been in individual psychotherapy, either as part of their training or by personal choice (for the record, I have been in therapy in both contexts).

Share
Posted on

Book Review: Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness, by Anne Harrington

image of

For the longest time I’ve been looking for an impossible book: an historic exploration of psychiatry and psychology over the last 150+ years that lays the groundwork of how we got to where we are (with the infighting, the arrogant spectacles, the tentacles of private interests), that also isn’t painfully academic or with too little (or too much) of the author’s own perspective of such a unwieldy topic. Well, as I said, it doesn’t exist, but Anne Harrington’s Mind Fixers comes very close.

As the subtitle states, Harrington (a science historian and the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University) has her lens steadied on the search for the (real, perceived, and ultimately elusive) biological underpinnings of mental health conditions. This is a terribly important topic and if this book has not ignited the debate it might have, it’s no reflection on the scholarship or insights gleaned from Mind Fixers, but perhaps a victim of timing and not being the loudest possible controversy to be found on Twitter. Even then, if you follow psychologists, psychiatrists, and those who specialize in related research on Twitter you’ll soon find yourself inundated with accusations of anti-psychiatry levelled at those who criticize prevailing notions of mental illness being caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, while the replication crisis undermines many of the foundations of Psychology 101.

If there’s a story here, it’s one of shifting hegemonies: from those who were concerned of their patient’s physical wellbeing, to those concerned with their brains, from those concerned about subconscious maternal conflict to those convinced the answer was in our brains, but only chemically. And with each shift in search of a possible answer to mental suffering there are reciprocal shifts in public investment and, eventually, interest from pharmaceutical companies. And at the end of the day what shifts the most are some of the most vulnerable people in our society: from sanitariums to hospitals; from wartime battlefields to community centres…only to be dumped onto the streets. It’s all here in Mind Fixers, and it’s a timely read considering the vested interests currently luring large investments in brain science, or in such promised but potentially dangerous remedies as ketamine, or those convinced of a genetic pathology. And if it sounds as if this book is strictly for history/psychiatry wonks you are dead-wrong.

What Harrington does very well is take reams of historical information and distill it into a narrative that ultimately maps out how those with what is generally called (though I hold some hesitations at times) mental illness were treated and what those in their charge felt was at play inside their bodies. Along the way we see ethical lapses in the form of wholesale human experimentation (i.e. injecting unknowing patients with blood infected with malaria), as well as the overreaching ideal of Freudian psychoanalysis as a Rosetta stone. Along the way we are introduced to ideas and theories which seemed to make sense at the time — narcosynthesis, insulin coma therapy — along with travesties such as deinstitutionalization, basically the dumping of people with mental health issues on the streets as a result of overambitious government policy that was out of sync with the realities of state coffers. Mind Fixers is also blunt about the influence of pharmaceutical companies, who increasingly figure in the narrative; the last quarter of the book is an admonishment of the profiteering that took place from the mid-1980s to the mid-00s as companies such as Eli Lilly were able to advertise directly to Americans and, with the help of an increasingly subjective DSM that allowed two people with completely different symptoms to be diagnosed with the same disease, exponentially increase their profits through prescriptions.

There are some issues. Repeatedly, Harrington refers to the “neo-Freudians” who, in their day (mid-20th century), held the reins of power with respect to diagnosis and how psychiatric trends were approved. There is a lot of confusion (just look at the definition provided on this U of C Berkeley page) about what a neo-Freudian is: those who studied but ultimately disagreed with Freud (however kept his strictly psychodynamic approach) or those who held Freudian views but refused to downgrade the role of biological processes? It may sound semantic, but in lieu of a definition the term’s repeated use without context begs for clarity. In the process it also makes it sound as if all psychoanalysts were in some way Freudian adherents. What about Melanie Klein and the rest of the object-relations movement? How did they differ? Indeed, the role of plain ol’ talk therapy — explicitly Freudian or not — is given short shrift, which might sound understandable in a book looking at biological underpinnings, but as a tool in the arsenal against so-called mental illness its absence feels odd, especially in light of the author’s emphasis on the misdirections of neo-Freudians. I get that Harrington could easily have written a book three times its size on her chosen topic. But if you’re going to talk about the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis in general then I feel you have to unpack and contextualize a bit more than what is on display here.

For the most part, however, Harrington is surprisingly fair-minded, not only unveiling the naked greed (and capricious biological arguments) of psychopharmaceutical manufacturers, but highlighting the testimony of those patients who were — placebo effect or not — helped by their medications, even if it came at a cost of other aspects of their health. She is by no means on a mission to dispel the notion of a biological source of mental illness, as I’m sure some vested interests might think looking at her book from a distance, but rather to show how partisanism, arrogance, and greed have wasted decades of valuable mental health research as we swing from trend to trend.

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness, is available at an independent bookseller near you, or online.

Share
Posted on

The One I Feed

If I’ve learned anything this year it’s the command, perhaps even the primacy, that music holds over my creative life, which is strange(ish) for someone who isn’t a full- or even part-time musician. Let me qualify “someone who isn’t a full- or even part-time musician”: I can play drums decently well, I’m barely adequate on keyboards, and I’m beginning to develop confidence on electric guitar. But there are no stakes for me: I’m not in a band, I’m not hoping to become a recording artist. So, as an established/emerging writer, what’s the deal?

The deal is that music presents as part of a triumvirate of full-blooded influences on me: music, film, and writing. I am incomplete as an artist without one of these. Don’t get me wrong, I love other forms of art — dance, painting, sculpture, etc (to infinity) — it’s just that my DNA is activated by music, film, and writing.

But the predominancy of music in my life sometimes has me worried.

Let’s start with writing. Music twists around my work almost symbiotically. The Society of Experience involves a character whose day job is a music supervisor for film and TV productions, and thus the narrative is punctuated with songs from the very beginning; the main character is sometimes haunted by the sound of a jukebox in the bar beneath his apartment. And yes, of course I created a soundtrack for the book’s launch (which features music mentioned within as well as inspired by the themes and subject matter). My next novel, Radioland, involves a “successful” musician having a nervous breakdown. The novel I’m working on right now, [untitled matt cahill project], involves the power of a DJ on a young boy in the country. If I could afford the rights I would quote song lyrics to introduce book sections.

Even when it comes to film, music has been immensely influential. From the quirky soundtrack of Brazil to the Wagnerian flourishes of Excalibur, I have not only fed deeply on music scores and soundtracks but have followed a countless number of rabbit holes. If it hadn’t been for watching Underground, I wouldn’t have spent a year chasing down recordings of Serbian brass band music. In film school, one of the best things I ever did was a one-take b&w short I shot on a wind-up Bolex that I played back w/ The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Reverence blasting in the background.

I care deeply about music to the extent that, on a social occasion where we were taking turns playing songs on a nearby jukebox based on a chosen theme, I was asked to choose 3 songs I hated. I said I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t because a) it meant sitting through 3 songs I hated, and b) life is too short to listen to songs you don’t like. It made for an awkward moment and I felt somewhat precious, but that’s how it goes when you take a principled stand about most things.

So, my worries, however ephemeral, are whether I’m suffering from a blindspot in how I prioritize music. Is it a blinder? Is my appreciation for it distorting my perspective insofar as my writing (in particular) might suffer? I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of artist friends, and the ones I do have probably wouldn’t deem this to be something worth much concern. That said, sometimes I wonder: am I using one art form to inform and/or expand another, or am I misusing either/both? Should I be concerned when things become sacrosanct? 

These are not really questions that require answers, but as an artist who wishes to be reasonably self-aware, they are good to ask nonetheless.

Share
Posted on

State of Music

At some point early this year I found myself sitting at one of my writing spots in Little Portugal and hearing a really good post-punk band, Ought (note: the album to hear is 2015’s Sun Coming Down). It was everything I liked, reminding me very much of one of my favourite post-punk bands, The Fall.

And I was sick of it.

I’d had enough. I’d heard too much. And so I’ve spent the year focusing intently on other types of music: ambient (which I’ve written about here), classical, Afro-funk, R&B, soul, you name it. Especially coming back from Memphis I rediscovered blues in all its forms (gospel, rockabilly, etc). What I like about blues — and there are many derivations of it so bear with me for the purposes of a blog post; let’s assume I’m talking 1950s John Lee Hooker — is its lack of pretence, its sparseness. There’s nothing wrong with pretence, don’t get me wrong, but what I’m realizing is that part of me has seen the need to get back to basics; a compelling repetitive motif communicated succinctly with next to no frills. I suppose I’d spent my life listening to so many artists inspired by early blues, gospel, soul, funk, and R&B that I needed to (re-)acquaint myself with the original source material.

There is something about the sound of John Lee Hooker pulling and snapping an E-string on a hollow-body guitar that brings music to its essence. That sound is the equivalent of Pete Townshend doing windmills, Karen O screaming with a microphone clasped between her teeth. Simple, primal, pure.

There are so many incredible developments in music production (listen to Kaytranada‘s 99.9%) and yet it’s easy to get lost in all the plug-ins and digital magic. Under no circumstances, unlike a certain Toronto jazz radio station’s tag line, am I suggesting that the lack of analog instruments denotes a lack of soul or legitimacy. As far as I’m concerned, an instrument is an instrument is an instrument. What I’m saying is that at some point I lost sight of the primacy of musical performance.

And lately I’ve realized (ironically while listening to an awesome track by the band Dry Cleaning, reminiscent of Broadcast) that post-punk is, well, dead. For now, at least. It’s spirit will always be alive but all of its chess moves have been laid bare, its finiteness made plain. This is subjective, of course. Anyone who hasn’t heard a lot of post-punk will enjoy years (if not decades) of fulfillment. But I feel that my time is up. And I’m not sure where I’m going next because I know my recent rediscovery of blues in particular can only go so long and so far.

Blues travels well as an art form, but, similar to theatre, it can be stifled in certain environments. Its strength is its fragility, but you can’t inorganically manufacture fragility, which is why most blues recordings don’t do anything for me. Like jazz, hearing blues live is best, but that’s assuming the trio or solo artist you’re seeing is in command of their art (or, say, isn’t just there for a quick paycheque). I guess what I’m saying is that I can see the end of this journey on the horizon (not that I’m not going to enjoy every highlight I can find; I’m currently learning Freddie King’s Hide Away on guitar, which is a great introduction to Texas blues).

I suppose the worst case scenario is that my playlists become even more disparately populated by genre than they currently are. To be fair, if I’ve done any mourning for my relationship with post-punk, I’ve expressed it within my next novel, Radioland, which I’m hoping will find a publisher in 2020. Sometimes writing a novel is a way to process change, and sometimes the novel itself sets me off on a fact- (or feeling-)finding mission to explore that change. Welcome to the artist’s life.

Share
Proudly powered by WordPress