Category: Art

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Art Dreams Health Thoughts

Green Light for Recovery

I’ve used this blog as a dream journal over the years, dating back to 2016. I created the blog in 2014 with the express desire to get back into art again. See my recent post Grieving what has been taken for background. I plan now to write a bit more about dreams, but right now I want to talk about creativity and my recovery.

As I mentioned before, it has generally been a grind to work on this blog, and I attribute it to my mental health and addiction history, including the trauma associated with hospitalizations, jail, and losing my sanity multiple times.

This year, I’ve now been admitted to inpatient psychiatric care (mental hospital) two times, for a total of 24 days. After the first stay I completed electroconvulsive treatments. I was doing much better for over a month as a result, but my meds needed to be adjusted and it did not happen in time. As a result I destabilized and needed to be hospitalized again. Part of my despair in the second round of this was the fact that it keeps happening even though I’ve maintained total sobriety for 12 years and have generally taken my meds without fail. I’ve been hospitalized 5 times in that span, and while bad decisions have sometimes played a part, it’s not always been my fault, or not my fault completely. Separating myself from the guilt and shame or having an illness has been a struggle all within itself.

The other component was despair over lack of success in romantic relationships since getting clean, and that prompted a pretty emo post I wrote on the day I got admitted to inpatient in October. I made it private after I got out because I do not, as a general rule, want to include anything that promotes giving up for good. But at that time I really felt defeated, and in clinical terms my mood was very unstable again, so back to the mental hospital!

Continue reading “Green Light for Recovery”
Categories
Art

Do Your Part

Shits fucked they say
Someone should do something
They Say
They Say
Why don’t you

Don’t tell me
I already know
Someone should do
Something Something Something

Someone should do something
Why don’t you
Why don’t you

They say they say
it’s never been this bad
they say the world’s gone mad

I say I say
It’s always been
This way

You want change
be it
live it
do it
yourself

I say I say
use your hands
use your blood
use your sweat
use your tears

fight the darkness
hold the light
don’t live in fear

they say they say
everything they want
to make you scared

they don’t they don’t
give a fuck
about me or you

They say they say
it’s never been this bad
they say the world’s gone mad

I say I say
It’s always been
This way

I say I say
live the revolution
every fuckin day

Categories
Art Politics Religion

Mad Max : Fury Road

I felt it was time to write about George Miller’s most recent Mad Max film now that Oscar season is right around the corner, and there is talk of a special release of the film that will be entirely in black and white. I must admit this film caught me by surprise. I didn’t quite know what to expect based on the trailers. My first viewing of this film was a visceral punch to the gut and brain. The film breaks out of the action movie mold of the last 25 to 30 years and is basically just one long, extended car chase and fight scene. Mad Max completely captured my attention with the sound, the music, and the practical effects (lots of real explosions and stunts and minimal CGI). The thing that most stood out to me after my first viewing of this film, however, was none of that, it was the incredible performance by Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. I had not paid much attention to this movie before it came out, and Theron so completely transformed for this role that I did not recognize her until after the film ended and the credits started rolling. As I watched the film a second, third and fourth time in the theater I became even more impressed by Tom Hardy’s solid job as Mad Max, and I picked up on lots of little things George Miller and the actors put into this movie.  I continued to be amazed by Theron’s performance as well. A trailer may give the impression that this film is just a big, dumb action movie but it is actually quite deep, exploring themes that are highly relevant to the post-modern era.

The major themes that resonated to me were warnings about nuclear war, climate change, and religious and political extremism. The other theme carried throughout the movie is the power of women. There are no damsels in distress in this film. The women in Mad Max: Fury Road are just as ferocious and capable, and sometimes more ferocious and capable than the men.  The redemptive power of women to undo the damage wrought by men through nuclear war, climate change and extremism is one of the main lessons of this film. In that way this work agrees with another one of my heroes, George Carlin, who rightly places most of the blame (but not all) for the insanity of this world on men. That insanity is reflected in this movie, which eschews pacifism and calls for a struggle against tyranny and extremism as the only way to make the world a better place.