Category: mind-forged manacles

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Have I mentioned Lou Reed's arms?

oh those arms and sinews

Strange, it never occurred to me that anyone else in the audience might be fixated on these two parts of his anatomy but it turns out this predilection is shared by H, whose idea it was to go to see him perform his concept album Berlin in its entirety. And in fact, judging from the larger picture from which the above was cropped, performers as well as audience members shared the interest.

neck

This was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to, possibly the best (although to be honest I go to so few there isn’t much competition, but don’t let that get in the way of how fabulous this was).

Quite apart from the stunning quality of the musicianship it was the physicality of the thing that so enraptured… Lou Reed moving like an ancient and arthritic monkey yet taut as catgut stretched across a violin bridge, face contorted in intense concentration; the swaying of the angelically-gauze-robed New London Children’s Choir; Katie Krykant in her stunning scarlet dress seated quietly while silent then stretched tight, pulling the music out on threads between her hands.

backing singer

The guitarist, Steve Hunter, played on the original album and has been described as “one of the best guitarists on the planet”. I’m not going to argue with that. An extraordinary presence, tall, inexplicably wearing what looked like a black wooly hat, he sometimes bounded around, at others reclined on a stool with one long leg extended out across the stage.

The intensity and rapport between all the musicians on stage (about 30 including the brass and string section from the London Metropolitan Orchestra was incredible. That’s drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith having some kind of out of body epiphany during Satellite of Love (played as one of three encores).

satellite of love

The only cavils I have are minor. The set by Julian Schnabel didn’t quite work for me. It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t really very inspiring. And the presence of what appeared to be an old green sofa hanging against the backdrop was annoying. The back-projected film by Schnabel’s daughter Lola Schnabel featuring Emmanuelle Seigner as the album’s central character, Caroline, was a mimsy spun-sugar confection completely emotionally disengaged from the intensity of the music and narrative it was supposed to complement.

And what a narrative. Emotionally and physically abusive relationships, infidelity, jealousy, a mother having her children taken away, suicide by the blade. Quite apart from my own general history in the 36 hours before the concert I learnt of the suicide of a former colleague and discovered a friend had grown up in a series of foster homes after being removed from their mother’s care because of her repeated suicide attempts. Yes, life is indeed a bitch. However at the end of the performance I was left feeling profoundly uplifted. I’m not sure why this should be so, but guess that it’s partly sheer gratitude for what hasn’t happened and partly an ability now to look at pain without the fear that the mere act of looking will allow it to infect, overcome and destroy.

As for the pictures, I am so happy with them! I’ve long admired Caroline‘s spectacular concert photography but grabbed the long lens pretty much as an afterthought just before leaving the house. I think that given how far away from the stage we were it handled the challenge really well. I shoved the ISO up to 800, cleaned up the Olympus trademark noise afterwards; the tiny size and weight of the lens and camera means less shake, and, perhaps the most significant factor, Mr Reed kept quite still most of the time 🙂

I still really really want the new E-510 though. Can you imagine what my tiny light lens could produce on a body with built-in image stabilisation? and with (at last) an effort by Olympus to tackle the appallingly bad noise their cameras usually have at high speeds? It’s only a few millimeters larger and 85g heavier the the E-400… with the weak dollar I could get it for £400 when I go to NY in September… that’s £150 less than over here… nonononononono… no spending money. Tell me to stop. STOP! DON’T DO IT! NOOOOOOOOO!!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

PS Did you know Lou Reed meditates? He studies with Mingyur Rinpoche who’s a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu lineage. Maybe it’s Rinpoche who’s taught Reed to smile. Yes, there is visual evidence. Lou Reed can smile. Well, after a fashion. Looks like he still needs practice. And he’s released an album, Hudson River Wind Meditations. User reviews are positive. The one music critic I read was, um, savage.

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Cold potatoes and turkey

The former are good for the bowel. The latter is not advisable in the case of anti-depressents.

Why then have I abruptly stopped taking my medication?

No pills for a week, a chemical half-life of 36 hours. This means 94% of the active ingredient has left the bloodstream. So far I’m not noticing any obvious changes other than noticing that I’m noticing. No SSRI discontinuation symptoms popping up, no worsening of existing “symptoms” which also fall under discontinuation effects.

So far so good, but arriving at this point without conscious planning is, now it has my full attention, a bit strange. I’ve been told several times by different medical types that it’s unlikely I’ll ever not need at least a “maintenance” dose and I’ve been quite untroubled by the thought of life-long medication. Far, far, far rather that than illness.

I wonder whether it’s my experience of the efficacy of mindfulness and meditation which is behind this. Not as blissed-out alternative to reality (although the very rare moments of samadhi, blissful ultra-reality, are a fantastic incentive to keep going) but as a toolkit for living, weathering the “stings and sorrows” of life, as this NYT article memorably terms them.

Or of course it could be driven by something as trivial as the desire to lose weight, in which case a healthy dose of exercise would be a far better option.

Today was the first day when I consciously didn’t take the pills rather than apparently simply forgetting. I’m interested to see what happens next. But they’re still safely in the cupboard (so the cat, who finds the rattling noise they make irresistible, doesn’t play with and accidentally ingest them) ready to be popped should the need arise.

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Picking

Now the sun is out the white marks show up more clearly against the tanning skin, a landscape of negative freckles.

I’ve been reading about the psychology of relationships a lot recently because of the dawning realisation that I don’t know how they work. Just as one acquires language as a child so one acquires social, interpersonal and emotional skills. Unfortunately if the available vocabulary of the latter is severely limited then the subsequent ability to communicate in these ways is concomitantly crap.

Research, observation and modelling the behaviour of others helped me immeasurably in the mission to acquire parenting skills which are, after all, a very specific set of relationship abilities. I’m still crap at it, but, thank god, it’s clear that I’m not as crap as my mother was. Mainly I suppose because I’m not as ill as she was. My travels through wikipedia in search of insight brought me to attachment theory, from there to reactive attachment disorder and complex post traumatic stress disorder.

Such a lot of long labels and phrases. Words, words, words. And yet. And yet. It’s deeply, viscerally shocking and upsetting. To be taken back to the obsessive gouging of flesh, pulling at the layer beneath the skin, tearing away as the white vacancy fills with bright red sting and tang of blood. The sight and the smell and the taste (sucking the blood, sucking the blood hard to pull out the venom of badness, one day, one day if I do this enough maybe it will be gone, the invisible stigma, the evil that must lurk, must be exorcised, excised, and then look at the white bloodless flesh and the red seeping in again).

I used to do this every day.

Sometimes I still do.

Apparently a characteristic symptom is “belief that one has been permanently damaged by the trauma”. How can this be merely a belief when the evidence is there, carved indelibly across the surface of my being in marks of tan and white.

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Madness redux

I went to the Madvertisement photoshoot. “It’s been manic here” said the man overseeing operations, without showing the faintest trace of being aware of what he’d just said.

I went in my best mutton dressed up as lamb juicy street duds but with a smart outfit as requested in the e-mail. The lamb’s fleece did not impress the arty people – most other people had turned up with max street cred it seemed.

“The set’s really retro 50s, flying ducks on the wall” I was told. “Well”, I ventured, “I have got a vintage 50s outfit with me since you asked for both casual and smart”. This turned out to be just what the shrink ordered so I retired to the nearby toilet and emerged as mutton dressed as mutton.

Those shoes, though, they’re worth a picture of their own one day. Bought in 1988 from Emma Hope‘s first London store they are black suede, called “jabot” and have a wavy crest running up the front worthy of the greatest crested newt in existence.

The photographer’s assistant used my camera to take a picture of the photographer taking the picture. Using a mac, of course.

it's been manic 1

I assume, judging by the image on the screen, that the official angle is more flattering than the unofficial. But why, I wonder, have a modern digital radio on the sideboard.

And in other madness news, the mental health charity, Mind, is inviting all mental health service users and survivors to send in their art for an installation to celebrate 60 years of the charity. M.A.D. art – Making A Difference. I’m going to print up some photographs.

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Mindfulness

[ACT] is also similar to many eastern approaches (particularly Buddhism), and the mystical aspects of most major spiritual and religious traditions. ACT did not arise from these related areas directly — it is the result of a 25 year course of development inside Western science — but it arrived at a similar place which is interesting in and of itself.

…trying to change difficult thoughts and feelings as a means of coping might can be counter productive, but new, powerful alternatives are available, including acceptance, mindfulness, cognitive defusion, values, and committed action. Research seems to be showing that these methods are beneficial for a broad range of clients. ACT teaches clients and therapists alike how to alter the way difficult private experiences function mentally rather than having to eliminate them from occurring at all.

When we have been depressed, we dread it coming back. At its first sign, we may try to suppress the symptoms, pretend they aren’t there, or push away any unwanted thoughts or memories. But such suppression often does not work, and the very things we tried to get rid of come back with renewed force. Mindfulness takes a different approach. It helps develop our willingness to experience emotions, our capacity to be open to even painful emotions. It helps give us the courage to allow distressing mood, thoughts and sensations to come and go, without battling with them. We discover that difficult and unwanted thoughts and feelings can be held in awareness, and seen from an altogether different perspective – a perspective that brings with it a sense of warmth and compassion to the suffering we are experiencing.

One of my favourite suppression mechanisms was counting. Walking to work, sitting in front of the computer, lying in bed. Clinging to the thumping beat of internal articulation, of predictable serial progression, loud in the skull, to drown the terror, beat the fear into submission, impose a veneer of order over the chaos. Putting my fingers in my ears and screaming “la la la la la”.
It’s like running away. Moving from one continent to another, for example, merely provides a different backdrop for the same mindscape.
It’s impossible to tell objectively the individual significance of the different factors in the discontinuous/simultaneous equation of drugs, psychotherapy and meditation. However experientially my perception is that meditation has been the most helpful of the three, both long- and short-term. I would go so far as to say it has changed my life. Completely.

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Proud to be mad

A childfree weekend stretches ahead and I hadn’t sorted out anything to do, other than housework. Then this fell into the mailbox:

We need your help!!

We are filming a short film this Sunday (20th May) for Creative Routes, a mental health charity. The film will be screened at Bonkersfest! a free public festival in Camberwell on the 2nd of June. The film aims to broaden the awareness of mental health issues to the public, and to challenge the stigmas attached to those who suffer from mental illnesses.

For the film we need lots of different people of all shapes, sizes, ages, races and appearances to have their portrait taken, and that’s where you come in. You won’t need to act, just look straight into the camera for a photograph. We will need you for no more than an hour and a half in total in a location on Commercial Street near Liverpool Street Station and Aldgate Station.

If you can help us please email to confirm with your name, phone number and if you would prefer to take part in the morning or the afternoon to this address: waddiloverobert AT googlemail DOT com

We will then email you on Saturday with a more specific time for you to be there.

Please bring with you if you can 2 outfits, perhaps a smart and a casual one, including different layers with jackets/coats. Any accessories would be great also i.e. glasses, hats & scarfs, jewellery or your favourite hat.

Please please help us. It won’t take long and is for a good cause. Please also forward this on to all your friends.

Thanks a lot, Jack Cole, Sarah Tonin and Bobby Baker

LOCAL TRAVEL INSTRUCTIONS ­ Saturday 19th May & Sunday 20th May 2007
Artsadmin
THE COURTROOM¹
Toynbee Studios
28 Commercial Street
London E1 6AB
Toynbee Studios is part of the Toynbee Hall complex at 28 Commercial Street
near Aldgate East in London.

Transport Links
By tube:
Aldgate East – District/Hammersmith & City lines – approx. 2 minutes walk
Aldgate – Metropolitan/Circle lines – approx. 5 minutes walk
Liverpool Street – Metropolitan/Circle/Central/Hammersmith & City lines –
approx. 10 minutes walk

By bus:
Number 67 stops on Commercial Street outside Toynbee Studios
Numbers 15, 25, 115, 209 & 254 pass the bottom of Commercial Street along
Whitechapel High Street
Numbers 40, 42, 78 & 100 stop at Aldgate
Numbers 8, 26, 35, 43, 47, 48, 78, 149, 242 & 388 stop on Bishopsgate
Numbers 11, 23, 42, 133, 141, 214, 271 & 344 terminate outside Liverpool Street Station

Since I’d spent some time last night moaning to an unfortunate involuntary interlocutor about the continuing stigma attached to mental ill-health and since I’m almost professionally mad it would be bonkers not to go. If you see what I mean. And there’s the added excitement of dressing up!

You can find out more about the organisation at Proud to be Mad.

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Moooooo!

Due to a forthcoming engagement which just might be an opportunity to tout for work I made some cards via moo on flickr. Choose a picture or selection of pictures to appear on one side of the card, define one set text for the other. Simple.

I should have known, having seen other people’s moo cards. I should have known, having helpfully been informed of the dimensions of the cards several times during the process. But still it came as a surprise. It’s like looking at pictures through a letterbox. A particularly narrow letterbox.

Although initially disconcerting, this turns out not to be a bad thing. Before you finalise the order each picture chosen is displayed on a page with a thin rectangular template over it which you can wiggle around, rotate or make smaller (ie zoom in on a detail of the picture).

It’s really interesting to see what ends up in a narrow slit in the middle of each picture. Sometimes it’s just never going to work but most times there’s a very pleasing, and rather surprising, new image to be seen. I’m not going to want to give them away.

And in non-bovine, listed, news I was sent a haiku by text message yesterday. Such a surprising and delighting thing, I’m still polishing it in my brain and smiling when I think of it. A new mode of transmission perfectly suited to this venerable form. And what an amazing thing to think of doing.

Secondborn announced this morning “my breath smells like a colobus monkey”. I asked how he knew this and he said he had many tiny noses on his tongue. When I explained that it wasn’t the method of detection so much as the colobus I was enquiring about he replied airily that he’d sniffed them at the zoo. And they smell? horrible.

Returning to the vexed subject of dog treats (Pedigree dentastix for small dogs are more expensive, per kilo, than parmesan cheese), I was further incensed to notice on a recent trip to the supermarket that Pedigree dentastix for unfeasibly hugely mutantly massive slobbery dogs are about half the price, per kilo, of those for small-but-perfectly-formed gorgeous dogs. So my clever compromise, although it pains me to be handing cash over to this wicked company which discriminates against the companions of sensibly dimensioned canines, is to by a box of the huge ones and cut them in half. Thus reducing the dog treat bill from £13 to £4 per month. Ca-CHING!

And finally, as they say on all the best lists of news, Curious George is excellent and exceedingly cute fun for all the family. And, not being a colobus, he doesn’t even smell.

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Finances

My word, but it’s so exciting. Not only am I now a meditation zealot I’m also a spreadsheet convert. Single-handedly, fuelled only by beer, Mr Hg has performed a miracle. I merely watched in awe (also fuelled by beer which explains why there are two bottles of each brew).

This is the “before” picture. They are carefully arranged, by Mr Hg, in order of strength. Apparently this allows one better to appreciate each flavour since the less alcohol there is the more delicate the savour.

finances - before

For the first time in my entire life I have an overall grasp of my finances. This is of course a shameful state of affairs, never having had even the most palsied plucking at the matter previously, but as with so many things it is better late than never. Spreadsheets are really really useful things, I’ve discovered, with their clever “add up all the numbers” functions.

They also demonstrate all the essential bits of gorgeousness that make life worth living readily dispensable expenditures where savings can be made. (“Do I really have to cancel the Tate membership?” “Yes” says Mr Hg sternly. I didn’t tell him about, and he didn’t discover, my shameful coffee secret which, I have just this moment worked out, actually cost the same as ten Tate memberships over one year. Does that have to go too? It does? Sigh.) What also became clear was that therapy, at a staggering equivalent of six Tate memberships each month is my biggest single outgoing. Get well before going bankrupt seems to be the moral of this spreadsheet.

Some things are easier than others to let go. Why, for instance, did I feel weepy when cancelling the two papers and one comic a week we’ve been having delivered for the last several years? I can only speculate as to how I shall feel when the last capsule of coffee is in the machine. Maybe it will be fine and I shall embrace the neglected stove-top pot without a backward glance.

It is extraordinary, and I find it shocking, that even at the cheapest outlet Maizy’s favourite dog treats cost £13.00 per kg compared to, say, parmesan cheese which weighs in at a mere £10 per kg. However rather than giving her cheese I could always try the snacks-for-humans produced by the same company which are a mere £3.50 per kg.

And the beer? Mr Hg, who is very tall and has hollow legs, got through all five of the different brews. I, who am neither tall nor hollow, managed three out of five which was pretty good going.

finances - after

The Abbot ale was rather disappointing after the Bateman’s XXXB which was delicious. The Brakspear Triple was truly nectariferous as well as being loony juice at 7.2% ABV. I drank mine the next day and had to go for an extended rest afterwards.

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An unordered week’s worth of list

  • Purple and red. Both very bright. Both very together. Why have I never seen this before?
  • Snowing downdrift of chestnut-coloured plane-fluff on titian curls.
  • The view of Canary Wharf from C’s window last thing at night and first thing in the morning.
  • There are many paths but only one mountain.
  • Using whiskey then, when that doesn’t work, a glowing match to remove a tick results only in the strong reek of flambéed fur. And has no effect on the tick. In fact it might make the tick cough crap into the dog. Tweezers are recommended. And don’t crush the arachnid using any unprotected part of your anatomy – the crap might get into you too. But how come, I wonder, my brother and I were de-ticked every evening in the bath when we were in the Isle of Man using neat whiskey?
  • “I am feeling more stable and happier than I have done for years.” Me, out of nowhere, to my father.
  • Penny Serenade has to be one of the most excruciatingly bad films ever. His Girl Friday is much better, one of my all-time favourites, but I fell asleep.
  • Dead Man, on the other hand, is one of the most brilliant films ever. And, serendipitously, is on offer in the Virgin megastore.
  • The smell of incense and the sound of sirens while meditating in a central London church.
  • “Why is it that we regard positive sentiments and phrases describing happiness as trite while misery and suffering is seen as more ‘real’?” Thought-provoking question indeed. Maybe another manifestation of Milton’s Paradise Lost v Regained syndrome.
  • Champagne. First Moët then Nicolas Feuillatte (I still have the corks). Later in the week a palette of champagne cocktails chosen and given by a friend: the pale pink of champagne, cointreau and cranberry juice with a delicate spirogyra of orange peel in a poinsettia; glowing orange-yellow of a Bellini (champagne and peach juice, the cocktail of Venice); the golden russet of a vanilla champagne cocktail.
  • Leap and the net will appear: Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, lent by a friend.
  • Second-born: “I thought I was going to have a nightmare last night, but I thought of something lovely, a happy time, and it went away”. Astonished mother, knocked sideways by this step-change in the aforementioned spawn’s unremitting negativity: “How fantastic! And what was the happy time that you thought of?” “Our camping holiday in Cornwall.”
  • Cooking for friends from Delia’s vegetarian book.
  • Hospice at Home charities and the fund-raising party a friend had to honour her mother who died, at home, a year ago.
  • Comforting a friend’s child after he fell over when she wasn’t there. Loving the trust and depth of our relationship that allowed me to hold him and calm him and wipe away his tears.
  • The crashing to the floor onto a metal object of my camera and splintering of glass… the fall destroyed the filter and left the lens unmarked.
  • Pale dry sherry and cheese-and-chive pretzels. Powering this post.
  • Loop. Again. With a loyalty card. A fabulous pattern for looooong fingerless gloves (buttercup armwarmers) in pure silk Alchemy Pagoda yarn which I’m making in Pablo’s Solace (aka purple) which was 50% off in the sale. But I’m going to modify the pattern a bit and make a thumb and thread a red ribbon (see list item number one) round the wrist.
  • I *am* a dirty old mystic. A term of abuse coined by the ex. Ok, I’m not dirty, but I’m an old mystic. And I love it. I absolutely love it.
  • Great minds. Great Minds.