Oh my God, he's Bipolar! --- Depiction of Mental Illness in Movies and TV

Fictional TV executive: "Oh my God, he's bipolar! Heavens! Let's make the whole episode about him. Even better, let's do a spinoff! We'll call it "Bipolar Blues!"

While the new HBO movie "Temple Grandin", about THE FAMED AUTISTIC ANIMAL-LOVER, sounds like a thoughtful and non-sensationalized treatment of mental-illness (are you listening Barry Levinson and Ron Howard), I'm waiting for the day when there'll be characters - whether major or minor - who just happen to have bipolar disorder, or another mental illness that doesn't necessarily diminish the person's capacity to be high-functioning.

The only current TV character (I confess I don't watch a lot of TV so my survey may be a little incomplete) I can think of that may fall into that character is the quirky and wonderful Chloe O'Brian, played by the always spot-on Mary Lynn Rajskub, on "24", who may or may not have some form of Asberger's.There was only ever one explicit hint at it, in an episode where Bill Buchanan, the gray-haired, brusquely competent leader of CTU a few seasons back said something to the effect of "please put aside your mental illness, Chloe, and focus on the work."

When the screenwriters wish it, Chloe is priceless at expressing empathy in an unfeeling, and unwelcome monotone, or saying something that sounds superficially empathetic, but is then revealed not to be so, like this priceless exchange:

• Chloe O'Brian: I was unfairly harsh to you a few minutes ago, I didn't mean anything.
• Spenser Wolff: All right. Apology accepted.
• Chloe O'Brian: It wasn't really an apology, it was more of an observation.

(See this list of great O'Brian quotes.)

Of course, no character has a truly stable personality in most American TV. I'm not referring to "stable" in the mental-health sense, but in the tectonic sense: characters' natures are frequently warped to fit a story point. So we have other scenes of Chloe crying, and showing softer passions, when it suits the need of the story.

I can imagine a different sort of TV series - say a political drama, like "The West Wing." Several months into it, the National Security Adviser, on a day of unrelenting tension, starts to behave unpredictably, showing signs of cognitive errors, and asks to go on leave. Later, we see her with a psychiatrist, and she reveals that it's her first border-line manic attack in a few years. Back at the White House, a couple of weeks later, she explains her behavior confidentially to the President, who is of course, in these enlightened days, a lesbian Latina. The President is sympathetic, but that's just about it: the National Security Adviser's illness becomes just another part of her complex, and appealing character, not her defining characteristic.

Gays and lesbians on film and TV are starting to go through this transition. In Ellen, the show eventually became all about her being gay. You might argue that this was a classic case of an established character coming out in a natural way. But the only reason that was written into her character was because DeGeneres was in fact coming out of her own closet. But more recently, you see characters who just happen to be gay, although it's not necessarily revealed at the outset (just as you wouldn't know about a person's sexuality in real life until you met their partner at the company Christmas party.) I'm thinking of Michelle Forbes' Admiral Cain character, in Battlestar Galactica, who unexpectedly got hot and heavy with one of the Number Threes, played by Lucy Lawless.

But is America ready for "normal" fictional characters with bipolar disorder? Judging by the media reactions to some portrayals of the disorder, I think not. I don't recall the name of the movie, but, as unlikely as it sounds, it was a "bipolar comedy." The reviewer - in no less than the New York Times - offensively described the character using the word "crazy" in an offhand way. I think the word "crazy", used to describe someone who is indeed mentally-ill, should be reserved for use only by members of the community of people with mental-illness.

This is, by the way, another parallel to being gay: I curdle when somebody uses "faggot" as an insult, but am quite happy to snark "What a faggot!" about a fellow gay. And only black people can acceptably use the "N" word (although it often seems to be used by other blacks as a put-down - actually maybe you could say the same about my use of "faggot", come to think of it.)

Meanwhile, we those of us who can "blend in" will have to go on starring in the real-world screenplay of our lives, surprising and educating people when they find out, after many episodes, that we have a serious mental-illness.
(g1)

Alfred and Arthur do the Math: a Comedy of Manners, British and Alien.

 

“Next we must compute non-commoditized human rights consumption,” said Arthur in his monotonic, vaguely electronic, fluty voice – rather like Stephen Hawking’s voice box, come to think of it, except for the high-pitched overtones.

Alfred intervened promptly. “You mean ‘rights consumption’, not ‘human rights consumption.’

‘Yes, of course, that is what I said.’ Was there an overlay of exasperation in that alien voice? At this point in the negotiations, I’d begun entertaining mildly hallucinogenic day-dreams to get me through the endless monotony. “Why don’t we start from the toppings?” Arthur was an inexpert, but game user of American business jargon.

“Yes, let’s start from the toppings.” I couldn’t help hide the premonition of intense boredom in my voice. If there were toppings, then there were bound to be bottomings, and an almost infinite gradation of middlings in between. "What is this non-commoditized rights consumption?” I asked.

“Solar deprivation ground rights, for instance, both hitherto consumed, and henceforth until our departure” , said Arthur. “All of these rights are considered thusly, by the way.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Payment for blocked sunlight, in your green and pleasant hills, as you British people would say, Our footsteps; our gorgeous billowing capes,” he continued.

I knew enough, by now, that it was no use telling him that not only was this a non-commodity in England’s green and pleasant hills, it was completely and absolutely free.

“I am smaller than you, “ Alfred asserted. “And I kept my gorgeous billowing cape from billowing by means of this convenient little strap, or belt - which I picked up at H&M ... or was it TopShop – around my elegant and shapely middle riff. Shall we say, eight hundred pounds sterling for me, and eleven hundred for you?”

At this rate, the Exchequer was going to be able to reduce VAT any day soon, I thought.

Arthur pursed what would have been his lips, had he not removed them for the negotiations. "You're forgetting, of course, that since your gorgeous billowing cape has darker colors than mine, it absorbs more wavelengths of light. But I'll let that go. Next you’re going to tell me I have to pay more for air consumption.”

“Well, come to think of it,” said Alfred. “I kept my breathing at a shallow register, and did not let myself get excited, whereas you, if you’ll permit me to say, panted rather infamously, whenever we had tea with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England, or when we ascended England’s green and pleasant hills. So yes. I’d say fifteen hundred for you, five hundred for me.”"

Arthur stared at his compatriot for a long moment. You couldn’t help but anthropomorphize the creatures’ expressions, and doing so helped me to keep awake. In this case, I couldn’t decide between long-suffering, affectionate camaraderie, or, more likely, an intense desire to conceal his irritation from us while surreptitiously conveying it to Alfred. But their predilection for saving face avoided further moments of indelicacy. Since they didn't immediately seem to be about to start up again, I took advantage of the silence.

"Why don't you tell me your real names?"

Arthur and Alfred weren’t their real names, obviously, yet they insisted on using them. At first, they’d said we wouldn’t be able to pronounce their real names. Now, I decided to ask them flat out what they were called.

“Our real names are not important,” Alfred and Arthur responded simultaneously, which left me wondering if they’d picked up Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in their gluttonous consumption of what they insisted on calling extra-beamic-radiation. (That is, television.)

“Please, “ I said, “we are starting the last week of negotiations. Would it hurt?”

Arthur abruptly inserted his snout into the wet, black opening on the left side of Alfred’s head, and then, just as abruptly, withdrew it. I tried to ignore the slime that now coated Arthur’s prehensile snout.

“I am Éééààü,” said Alfred, slime dripping off his snout. “And he is Ééééààü.”

French and German vowels had always seemed the most reasonable approximations to the sound of their language.

“Okay,” I said. “But why Alfred and Arthur?"

"Why," said Alfred, "in honor of your noble and stately kings of yore, with ..."

"... with their gorgeous billowing capes," I finished for them. I looked at Afred, with his snout dripping, not exactly looking very kingly, gorgeous billowing cape notwithstanding.

Time passed. Increasingly slowly.

“Have we, err, forgotten anything, by any chance, “ I inquired, innocently, some hours later, as the current round of negotiations wound down.

Arthur froze, but for a short enough moment that he was able to avoid Alfred’s expectantly twitching snout. “We forgot about solar deprivation from our grand and roundly impressive space vehicle, as it ascends, and departs the Sol system,” he said, finally.”

“Not to forget transaction-influenced microeconomic impacts. That is, compensation for the impact of our payments on your economy,” added Alfred, helpfully. “What an egregious omission on our parts. We beg your pardon.”

They both looked at me expectantly.

“Err, pardon granted. “ They continued to look at me. “My fine, well-groomed fellows, ” I hastily remembered to add.

Looking relieved (I suppose), Arthur continued. “These are not facile computations, but, since it looks like we will depart five days hence, shall we set a round figure of eight thousand per day for the lattermost, and eighteen hundred per day for solar deprivation?”

“Whatever you say, “ I said, with a rather shoddy attempt at converting my yawn into a sneeze.

At the end of the hourly break we always allowed them for blowing their snouts, I noticed Alfred by himself, for once, his gorgeous billowing cape now released from its belt. He was elevating in the corner over a table, counting out bank-notes, laying them into neat piles of ten thousand each. I took the opportunity of approaching him to pose a question that I’d been burning to ask. Give him some light banter first, I told myself – to break the ice.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Alfred paused, a wad of what must easily have been a million pounds, clasped precariously in his tiny middle pincer. He extended his snout, and shifted a few piles of bank notes around the table, uneasily.

“I’m entirely rapt with attention,” he said, without looking up.

“Well, paper comes from trees you know. Then there’s the ink, of course. Those notes must be included, surely, in the rights consumptions?” I put a smile on my face to let him know I was joking, a smile that was a waste of time considering Alfred's absorption in the counting, which he presently resumed.

“We fabricated them ourselves in our grand and roundly impressive space vehicle.”

“I see. You know that’s not exactly good form, don’t you? I mean, I wish I could print my own banknotes, but there’s a reason we don’t.”

“That was covered under transaction-influenced microeconomic impacts.”

“But isn’t that kind of circular. I mean you pay for the effects of your … counterfeiting … on our currency flow, but then that’s more money being printed, and then you have to pay for the effects of that. It’s rather ad infinitum, wouldn’t you say?”

Alfred snorted. “It’s a diminishing series, and our computation takes the limit.”

“The limit.” I didn’t have the foggiest clue what he meant. “Anyway, I was only pulling your leg.”

“We do not have legs,“ said Alfred, matter of factly.

This conversation was proving decidedly non humorous, so I decided to just come to the point.

“Why did you land in England?” I blurted out. “I’ve been dying to know. Why not America, Or even China?”

Alfred finally looked up from his counting. I could swear there was a flicker of a smile showing in his forward eye arrays.

“I thought you’d never ask. In the first place, it was your lovely and traditional English manners. Also, that ruled out America. As for China, Mandarin is, well. I say this for only your own private ear - it's a somewhat difficult and inharmonious language, particularly in our vocal register. But, may I tell you, none of those are real reasons. It was because of the Doctor.”

“Ermm, doctor," I repeated. "Doctor who?”

“Exactly. We have tried summoning him from our home planet, with a hyper-intertemporal beacon, but our efforts failed. As we approached Sol, we scanned for temporal disturbances, but could not locate his Time-and-Relative-Dimensions-in-Space space vehicle. I do fervently hope the Daleks didn’t get him? Or perhaps he’s on holiday in Gallifrey? No, no, I forgot. In this reality, both Skaro and Gallifrey are no more.” He looked woebegone as he contemplated the irradiated wastes of the famous home of the Time Lords. Then he seemed to perk up again. “Is he in America, with his Time-and-Relative-Dimensions-in-Space space vehicle inoperative?”

He looked at me questioningly. "It does seem to break down a lot,” he added as an explanation.

“We say TARDIS. It’s a lot easier.”

“We like the sound of Time-and-Relative-Dimensions-in-Space space vehicle. It has a certain ring to it.”

“Well you could at least drop the redundant “space” at the end.”

Alfred ignored me, and his snout began to quiver. He looked around to make sure Arthur was out of hearing range – which wasn’t very far, given their tiny little ears placed just behind their cavernous black, wet communication ports. He beckoned me closer.

“If you know where he is, I’d … how can I say this delicately … compensate you privately for this information. I have a secret pocket.”

While his meaning began to dawn on me, he added “Got my money in my secret pocket,” with a meaningful stare. As if in explanation, he said conspiratorially, apropos of nothing, “I’m convinced the Doctor secretly shares our passion for Miss Nana Miskouri.”

He tweezed out, for a tantalizingly brief moment, the edges of an inch thick pile of thousand pound bank notes from a hidden folder in his gorgeous, billowing cape. My eyes boggled.

“I could stage a crash-landing near his location, if his planet is on our way home. And let’s face it, in hyperspace, everywhere is on our way home.”

I eyed the slight bulge of banknotes now returned to the “secret pocket” underneath his cape. But mother would be very disappointed, I reflected. Not without hesitation and regret, I declined the bribe. I didn’t want to burst his bubble, so I simply said, “Location of Dr. Who unknown at this time.”

Alfred’s snout drooped noticeably, but before it could start to run, here was Arthur shimmying over. “Come, Alfred. It’s time for the next round of negotiations. Compensation for emotional disturbances, “ he added for my sake. “We know your British people really do feel emotions, despite what they say.”

The only emotion I had left in me, at this point, was good old British stoicism. Is that even an emotion?
(g1,x1,h1,w1)
(g1,x1,h1,w1)

Surprising Myself: my First Public Reading as Author

Well, it's all finally over and done with. I did my seven-minute reading of an excerpt from my book, at the huge Barnes & Noble, at the Grove, in West Hollywood, as part of IWOSC Reads Its Own, yesterday afternoon. I never expected to be any good at this, and it's been on my mind now for weeks as something to worry about. In particular, I worried that I'd be depressed on the day, and incapable of being myself, something which is a big enough challenge for me to pull off in public speaking when I'm feeling fine (unless I'm slightly manic - something which is vanishingly rare for me now - in which case I'm fearless.)

But my class the other day gave me enough self-belief that I was capable of doing this. Moreover, I didn't have any doubts about the excerpt itself - I knew it was a compelling few minutes of prose. And you know what, I pulled it off.

To do an effective public reading from your book - particularly a memoir - you have to, in effect, put on an acting performance. It's really no different than method acting. You need to "get into character" - that is your own character - specific to the time about which you're narrating. Since my excerpt described an extremely intense, once-in-a-lifetime few hours, this getting into character meant I had to connect with the manic, exhausted, desperate person I was for the night I spent in LAPD lockup at the height of the weeks' long episode of mania that earned me my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, three-and-a-half years ago.

I have taken acting classes on a couple of occasions, and despite an ardent desire to be good at acting, I was rather wretched - at least initially. I took a couple of semesters of method acting at a local theater in Philadelphia, then got a fairly large part in a small gay play which was to run for three nights in a local arts festival. I was cast as a young lawyer (although the playwright, Gary L. Day, tried to encourage me to also audition for a one-man play about a guy dying of AIDS - I was incredibly skinny in my early twenties.)

I didn't really "get" acting until the second night of the run. All of a sudden, my nerves vanished, and I felt the audience's attention. There was a sense of power in learning that your words and actions were giving rise to emotions in the members of the audience - that the bond between actor and viewer had been sealed. Unfortunately, the only reviewer - from the Philadelphia Gay News - attended the premier, and wrote "Keith Adams stood woodenly throughout ..." (I'll never forgive you, Victoria A. Brownworth.I see your an author now. I'm sure there's a market for lesbian erotic vampire fiction. Somewhere.) One of the weirdest things about doing the play, by the way, was that we rehearsed in the dungeon basement of the local leather bar, The Bike Stop.

I haven't done much acting since then. T he closest I came was when I got interested in film-making, during my mid-thirties, and took a class on improvisation, at the American Conservatory Theaterin San Francisco, hoping it would teach me how to do a better job of directing actors. (It didn't.)

At Barnes & Noble yesterday, thirty seconds into my reading, I looked up to find all eyes in the audience on me, and I could tell that I'd reached that moment of emotional contract with the audience. Although I was reading a piece that described a brutalizing experience in jail, I felt simultaneously exhilarated at finding that connection for only the second time in my life. And I even did a little improvisation (or editorializing, as one poet described it - apparently it was the part of my reading that didn't go down well.)

Afterwards, other readers and audience members came up to talk to me about the reading and my book, and today I received a couple of emails too. It was one of those moments of self-activation, which - for me at least - come around rarely: something to celebrate. And I was profoundly thankful that Ben, and my closest friends were there as my cheering section.
(g1,w1,x1,r1)

Saving the World Several Viruses at a Time: Important New Antiviral Developed at UCLA ( by my Boyfriend!)

In a press release today, UCLA announced the discovery of a "a broad spectrum anti-viral" - a chemical compound that may be effective against many viruses both known and unknown. The press-release disclosed the publication of the first paper leading from the study, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

(Dr. boyfriend Lee, wearing the psychedelic blue shirt in the center of the pic, and his might team of anti-virus warriors - at least the ones who work in his lab. Note: they are not always drunk, like this.)

UCLA Medical School researcher Dr. Benhur Lee (full disclosure - he's my boyfriend) was the lead P.I. on the project, a collaboration between scientists from the University of Texas at Galveston, Harvard University, Cornell University and USAMRIID (the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases), as well as from UCLA.

What makes this announcement particularly important is that the fight against dangerous viruses, those malevolent "creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water" (H.G. Wells, "War of the Worlds"), at times seems like a battle against an evil army of orcs and goblins whose creature-power is perpetually renewed in the fell underworld. Not only do known viruses mutate, defeating the efficacy of long-developed treatments, but wholly new - or more likely previously undiscovered - viruses erupt into the biosphere regularly. So a compound that can target viruses by a means that is not specific to one class of viruses might become one of the most important weapons to be deployed in the War of the Viruses.

The reason the compound seems to be so effective is that it targets something that every strain in one of the two broad categories of viruses possesses: "enveloped viruses", which have a membrane used by the virus as a platform for its base attack on the genome of the host cell. Although LJ001, The compound developed by Dr. Lee and his collaborators, can also attack ordinary bodily cell membranes, this tiny molecule has a peculiar preference for metabolically inactive membranes - that is, the membranes of viruses. And while the body's cells can repair themselves after their encounter with LJ001, the viruses have no such mechanism to repair damage to its membrane. You might describe them as being hoist with their own petards.

Although the molecule has been shown to interfere with virus membranes of 23 distinct pathogens - many of which are so dangerous that they can only be studied in BSL4 (Biosafety Level 4) labs - the precise form the attack on virus' membranes takes is not yet understood by the researchers. I expect to see not too much more of Dr. boyfriend Benhur until the full mechanism is laid bare to science.

It goes without saying - though this was not part of the press-release - that Keith Adams was as proud as punch of his supersmart boyfriend.

(g1)

The Big Day; My First Public Reading of my Book: at Barnes & Noble

NOTICE: Free copies of my book, Broken Whole, if you agree to review it on Amazon!!!

For a couple of months now I've been simultaneously dreading and anticipating this afternoon's even at the huge Barnes & Noble in West Hollywood, where I'll read a seven minute excerpt from my book.

(Self-portrait on night train from Paris to Venice, 2004.)

I wrote recently about the class I was taking on being yourself in public readings. On Thursday, I had my first live class (as opposed to brief classes on the phone), and, for the first time, read an excerpt - a very intense excerpt - from my book to a class of about nine female authors, and Melanie, the bubbly teacher, full of spunk and vitality.

As a Brit, raised not to express emotion, I'd been a bit nervous about baring myself in such a way, even for the small class. I was particularly worried about the expletives. I had to yell: "F&(% You!" I prepared them beforehand, so they wouldn't be surprised. But it was going to be difficult in other ways. How to say lines like "I felt my sanity slipping away," and have them sound real, and meaningful?

I'd contemplated all manner of substances to take to prime me for the performance, but in the end settled on beta-blockers. And I totally surprised myself. I was pretty darned good! I'd never have expected it. I couldn't have done it without the earlier classes, since I'd had no idea at what level to pitch the emotional content. But I really got in touch with the material, and connected with the listeners. I even managed to make persistent eye-contact without losing my place in the reading.

Here's my reading from the class, edited to remove flubbed lines, and a few directions from Melanie.

(Direct link, if embed doesn't work for you.)

I've been woefully remiss in getting ready for today's reading. Since I've been so busy recently, I only finally chose which seven minute excerpt to read last night, and have only practiced it a couple of times. I have a couple of hours to practice, but then I have to make the all important choice of "What should I wear?" I want to look sophisticated, worldly, hip, definitely not crazy, and subtly sexy (for the gay men in the audience.) I'd love to wear my Gucci leather jacket (one of the best purchases of the crazy spending I did in the midst of high mania). It's just about only the one undeniably hip, sophisticated and subtly sexy items of clothing I own. But I'll probably burn up in it. I need a stylist, damn it!

Not to mention a publicist. I haven't been heavily publicizing my book since I want to wait for the paperback. I have no idea how many copies I've sold. About six or so people whom I know personally have bought the e-book (the book is only available on Kindle or as a PDF right now.) And one of them was my boyfriend. Please rush out and buy it right now! Actually, you don't even need to rush out, you can do it from the comfort of your homes. :)
(g1)

Falling Apart on the Day my Book was Published on Amazon

You'd think that on the day, a week or so ago, that I found my book listed (only on Kindle for the moment) on Amazon, would be one of the happiest, most meaningful days of my life, wouldn't you? I mean, all my life, I've had the idea that I'd like to write a book, but, until my manic episode of three years ago, never knew what to write about, and seriously doubted I'd ever even write a book.

(Photograph, "Writing in Chicago", winter of 2008, by Keith Adams.)

So why did I find myself crying that evening? I never, or extremely rarely, cry, apart from at movies, particularly on airplanes. Of course, I cried in buckets during the crises that came with my episode three years ago. But I've returned to being as dry-eyed as I've been for most of my adult life. I didn't even cry at my mother's funeral, even though she was a lovely woman. Nor did I cry when I read my deeply felt personal vows at my commitment ceremony with Ben, over four years ago.

My distress started that afternoon, at home. My software work was a bitch that day: tasking, stressful, and rather overwhelming. And in the back of my mind were thoughts of all the stuff I had to do to publicize my book. I've made an eight page - and counting - marketing plan, and I was getting next to nothing done. Depression's worst stepson is apathy, and I'd look at the huge list, not know where to start, and feel like I was drowning. So I'd go and play my chief online diversion, online bridge (the card game), at Bridge Base Online.

Honestly, I was beginning to have dark doubts that my book would be a flop, the Kindle version at least. Without publicity from the author, books are almost bound to fail. I'd made the decision to invest most of my publicity efforts into the paperback version, due out in a few monts. I didn't want to get in the media, online, or in a radio station interview, or even a book review, excite peoples' interest (hopefully) about the book, only for them to find they couldn't actually yet buy a print version. I didn't want to have two big rounds of announcements to my friends, most of whom I haven't even told about the e-book. Despite all this, the fact that almost nobody was noticing my book, the 97,000th best seller on Kindle, was distressing to me, piquing my sense of the possibility of failure.

I had this feeling of oppression - so much to do, so little time. That evening, I started to tell Ben how I felt, and all of a sudden I found myself crying. I was astonished at myself. But I began to recognize that there was this huge fear of failure, which had been lying almost hidden inside. Along its side sat a correspondingly large belief that I'd had a lot of failures in the last ten years.

I tried to explain all this to Ben, but he didn't react with his characteristic, caring empathy. Instead, he blew up at me. He told me to "snap out of it", a phrase which is ordinarily anathema to people who regularly experience depression (which is not something you can voluntarily snap out of.) I attempted to explain my feelings, listing my perceived failures of the last ten years: abandoning film-making after a major disappointment; a brief dalliance with interior design; a significant endeavor to become a gay-marriage planner, into which I'd invested much time and not a small amount of money; a failed website offering gay tours of LA; at least three years of pursuing photography with the idea of making money from taking photos of models; and, of course, the numerous things I dropped after I departed mania, at the tail end of 2006, and crashed back into depression.

"What about our relationship," Ben cried. "Is that a failure?" True: that is one area of my life I'm truly proud of, that despite a wretched history in relationships with people who weren't really my true peers, I'd not only hooked an amazing, one-of-a-kind man like Ben, but had built, with him, a fun, deep, strong relationship filled with conversation and intellectual curiosity, which I expect to last for the rest of my life.

Ben's anger at least prompted me to stop crying. He reminded me that many of the efforts of the last few years had begun during lulls at work, where I'd had nothing to do for months on end. And they'd "failed" only because I had gotten swept into demanding projects which allowed next to no time for extracurricular activities, not only due to the work itself, but almost weekly business travel. For the same reasons, none of my attempts to get involved in volunteerism had panned out. People want you to be available as needed, and not vanish off the radar for months at a time.

And what about the other so-called failures? Didn't you make two short filmss? You seem pretty proud of those, right?" Ben continued. "You have a fulfilling, creative highly paid job in which you're respected. You have a great physique. We own a house in the Hollywood Hills. And, for God's sake, you have a book published on Amazon.com - how many people can say all that?"

"But what if the book only sells a hundred or so copies?" I said meekly.

"You know as well as I do that it's difficult to get books noticed. You told me the other days that over 80% of published books sell less than that number. Your book has been online one half day at Amazon - what exactly are you expecting to happen so quickly?"

I could only recognize that everything he said was the truth. Somehow, I was allowing the distorted perspective that comes with depression to revisionistically rewrite my life as one of failure, when it was, in reality, a successful, well-lived life.

"And you did all this despite coming from a poor background," Ben went on. "And you have had three chronic long-term illnesses as an adult. And you wrote and had published your book in the three years after being diagnosed with a serious mental illness. And despite your depressions."

I had to bow down to the truth of what he was saying, and my perspective got shocked back into alignment. I now felt, of course, foolish and ... weak, for having broken down like that. But the next morning, my depression departed, a condition which happily remained stable for the next few days. I looked through my marketing plan and realized how ridiculously ambitious it was, given my tough job, with its long hours. For instance, I was planning to develop an ongoing website devoted to serious bipolar science, and had even bought the domain. How on earth did I expect to keep that up?

Feeling much better, I went through my marketing plan, and prioritized everything. It all suddenly felt much more manageable. I thanked Ben that night for rightly getting mad at me. It showed me once again the strength of his personality.

It wasn't really until the middle of this week that it suddenly struck me: I have a book published - not self-published - and it's on Amazon. I'd achieved a long-standing dream. I don't think it had really sunk home until that moment.

(g1,w1,r1,m1)

On Being "Big" - my First Public Reading as an Author

Be bigger, said Melanie - louder than life herself - over the phone line.

So I launched into my reading one more time, throwing everything into it this time, feeling slightly foolish, and remembering how bad I was in acting class decades ago.

I'm not normally a very "large" person. I don't particularly gesticulate - unlike Ben with his semaphoric arms. I generally speak in a level tone, without undue animation. It's the way I've always been. In fact, it's me. So the one-on-one class I had the other day was a bit of a challenge. It was a twenty minute class, on the phone, with a woman who specializes in helping authors express themselves in public, whether when doing a book reading, or in a radio interview.

(Photograph at the top by Keith Adams, in the Met, I believe. I liked the "circuit boy" pose.)

Melanie promises to show you how to be real to yourself and the listener. Now, the hardest thing to do, when you're depressed, is to "be yourself". Everything is suppressed, and flat; you can't think of anything to make conversation about; your sense of humor is almost completely gone. Luckily, I've staged a bit of a recovery these last few days, and I hope it lasts until the class on Thursday, where I'll have to do two one-minute readings in front of complete strangers.

The phone session went surprisingly well, even though I was indeed depressed at the time. When I first did the reading, without any initial reaction, I thought I did okay. But, obviously, I ended up with a totally different conception of what to do by the time the session was over. Being so open and outward like that doesn't come at all easily. But it makes me wonder, yet again, if I wouldn't benefit from being more like that - without the bigger histrionics - in my day-to-day.

This is all in preparation for my first public appearance as an author, where I'll join other writes who are members of the Independent Writers of Southern California, in a group reading at a big Barnes & Noble in West Hollywood on the 31st. I haven't yet decided what to read. It's a difficult choice. I want to choose something exciting and entertaining, and that means using something from one of the manic crises. Yet the events I describe in the book, some of which sound implausible, will require much animation: I'll have to "be big". In doing so, will I run into the danger of seeming truly manic, and scaring people off?

Speaking of larger than life, I just googled Melanie, and, according to Wikipedia, she "appeared in the October 1981 issue of Playboy magazine as the Breast of The Month." Well, I suppose given some of my former online activities, I shouldn't throw stones.
(g1,w1,h1)

Catching Up Late to the Origins of Consciousness (The Bicameral Mind)

I probably shouldn't be reviewing such a profound and renowned book as Julian Jayne's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind after reading just the first few chapters, should I? It's almost as bad as writing an article called Ubermensching Nietzsche, dishing Nietzsche's epochal Also Sprach Zarathustra after skimming the back page while driving down Wilshire Boulevard. (In my defense, I was manic at the time. So what's my excuse now, you may ask? At least this time I'm not adding a scandalous self-portrait photograph to the essay, unlike for the Nietzsche piece.)

(Photograph Keith Adams, inside the Basilica in Budapest, summer 2009.)

The book only recently came to my attention after somebody recommended it, and it was a surprise to look it up on Amazon.com and find so many reviews, most of which followed the lines of saying it was vastly intellectually stimulating, but not necessarily convincing in its attempt to solve the "problem of consciousness." Bloggers seem to agree. On the erudite blog "The Universe of Discourse", Mark Dominus writes:

Nearly everyone seems to agree that this is either a work of profound genius, or of profound crackpottery, and also that they aren't sure which it is.

Since, of late, I've been reading comfort food in the form of the 21-book-long series of "Aubrey/Maturin" novels of Patrick O'Brian for at least the eighth time (see here for a good introduction), and a Star Trek novel called Sarek, I thought it was time to read something that might give me blogging material. Besides, I've long had an interest in consciousness, and have written lay blogs pitching my own home-built theories (most recently in An Infinity of One). I was surprised I'd never heard of the book, let alone his theory.

Since I started reading the book, last weekend, I've found I can only read a chapter or two at a sitting, since it's so dense, and every page offers startling new ideas to think about. But already I find myself getting pissed off. It's a common trick amongst science and philosophy writers to breeze through the proofs that set up their argument hoping you won't notice their gross generalizations and inadequately proven principles. And Jaynes, to my mind at least, is proving no different, using a sleight of hand in reducing the definition of consciousness down to a point where it's slim enough to slot neatly into his infamous theory that consciousness (as we understand it) wasn't necessary for early civilized man.

But the very shock of making a claim like that is somewhat reduced when you see how he redefines consciousness to be virtually nothing but the ability to attribute your internal conversation to your own mind rather than to the utterances of the Gods. An early chapter suffers consciousness to die by a thousand cuts, or rather a series of provocative questions, such as "Do you need consciousness for thinking?" (apparently not), or, my favorite, "Do you need consciousness for reasoning?" His "proof" that the answer to the last question is no, is based on the eureka moments in the shower, where scientists suddenly find the answer to a problem has come to them, unbidden. It's not conscious thought that conjures these miracles of reasoning, and therefore consciousness is not necessary for reasoning, QED.

The thing he seems to want you to miss is that only a vanishingly small percentage of reasoning takes the form of eureka moments. And even those eureka moments are actually almost always the consequence of hours of deep thought and reasoning hours or days earlier. But then, I forgot: consciousness not necessary for thought, either.

I'm positive there's nothing new I'm saying here. After all, the book was written decades ago, and the guy's long since deceased. Since then, there have been astonishing developments in the understanding of the brain from the scientific viewpoint. Although that doesn't necessarily invalidate his arguments, since he's presenting a philosophical argument, not a scientific one, you have to ask yourself why his ideas are not part of the normal discourse on consciousness. It's presumably because mainstream thinkers on consciousness (I guess they actually don't use their consciousness to do this thinking on consciousness, if we're to believe Jayne) have never accepted his ideas.

Maybe he's the lone man shouting the truth in the darkness? Maybe. But something tells me he's going to be shouting in the darkness for a long time. At least the book is proving to live up to its reputation as being intellectually stimulating.

(If you want to read more on consciousness, I'd suggest the blog The origin of consciousness.)
(g1,x1,w1,h1,m1)

Mentally Ill - Broken or Fixable?

It's conventional thinking that the recent years, in which affective mental illnesses such as depression have been routinely considered alongside non-mental ("physiological") illness, instead of as a character defect, have helped to reduce stigma. A very interesting article in this Sunday's NY Times Magazine ("The Americanization of Mental Illness"), raises the uncomfortable supposition that the reverse is true, and cites several studies that seem to show a decrease in the percentage of the U.S. population who'd feel comfortable associating with somebody who is mentally ill (in this case, schizophrenic.)

(Photo by Camilo, London, 2003.)

Before getting into the argument, I should mention that this was not the main thrust of the article, which was, instead, the idea that American/Western views of mental illnesses as more or less discrete categories that can be pigeon-holed, is sweeping around the world, overwriting local, culturally based interpretations.

At first, I found myself not quite buying the author's central thesis, since he (Ethan Watters, of "Urban Tribes") seems to focus almost exclusively on what might be called "hysteria" based categories of mental illness, such as anorexia; forgotten, historical "contagions" such as " hysterical leg paralysis"; and culturally-specific syndromes such as "going amok" in parts of Southeast Asian. In the latter case, amok is indeed covered by the gold-plated DSM manual, but only tucked away at the very end, in a category confined to local cultures.

The argument seems to say, essentially - and this is not unconvincing - that if you don't have an American mental-illness, you're on your own. His initial concentration on hysterical illnesses (false pregnancy is another example, although not mentioned by the author) inevitably leads to the question in the reader's mind, how does this apply to disorders that are clearly neurological, and less "provincial", such as bipolar disorder (about which I have an understandable interest)?

To the author's credit, he does mention schizophrenia in this strand of the argument, and admits that it is not, obviously, strongly culturally mediated, but I was initially left wondering how much this diminished the power of his argument. As a side note, however, it is very interesting to learn that schizophrenic recidivism is much higher in the West than elsewhere, and the author argues, again convincingly, that part of this may be explained by other cultures not regarding such illnesses as having "broken" the sufferer, and that during the times the person is well, he returns to a full, unrestricted role in society.

This brings Mr. Watters to the issue of stigmatization, in the second half of the article, and it was from this point in the article, that I began to appreciate and concur with his argument more enthusiastically. The idea is very simple: in the movement to promulgate - for commendable reasons - the notion that mental illnesses may be classified as being physical disorders and illnesses, the side effect is that the mentally ill person begins to be perceived, by the average person, as permanently "broken". In earlier decades, when people routinely held the view that, say, a depressed person was responsible for his condition, and should somehow "snap out of it", that person was considered "fixable", and therefore not so different from the average person.

This was an interesting idea to me. I went through 15 years or so of unipolar depression before my one and only major manic episode at the age of forty-one. Whereas, when I was in my depressive years, I could accept, intellectually, that depression was a disease not a character defect, there was always shame associated with it. If I returned to therapy and admitted I'd fallen into another cycle of depression, I'd feel - however wrong-headedly - somehow as if I'd failed.

In contrast, although I wouldn't wish bipolar disorder on anybody, there was a measure of relief in receiving the diagnosis, since the disorder is so clearly and experientially neurological. And indeed, the nature of my depressive cycles has changed: the months of mania somehow burned out a lot of the old neuroses that frequently triggered depression: jealousy, abandonment, etc. Now, the depressions are never situational, but feel, rather, distinctly organic.

To quantify this for my own situation, I'd have to say that my life is better than ever right now, and both fulfilling and exciting, given how much I'm enjoying my current software project, and, more importantly, given the recent publication of my book - what you might call a memoir of mania - Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos. And yet I remain stubbornly in a depression that began in June. I never thought I'd reach a point where I'd no longer need therapy, but I see myself as having arrived at a point of balance where I don't have any major issues, such as self-hatred, amenable to talk therapy treatment. Yet depression routinely and rudely returns, as the dominant partner of bipolar disorder.

In my blog, in which I write often about depression and bipolar disorder, I've made a frequent point to help raise awareness that depression is often a neurological condition. I thought that in so doing, I was not only helping to remove the stigma of depression, but also making clear that I wanted to be treated as if I had any other illness - say, Parkinson's - that is clearly identifiable as physiological, and not, somehow, my fault.
I don't, actually, expect to go back on my own argument, since it's an important part of my self-identity: I think of myself as having merely an illness - albeit a serious one - called bipolar disorder, that doesn't define me, and doesn't make be broken. However, the article provided a lot of food for thought.

I'd be interested in hearing from other people with mental illness: have you accepted your mental illness as being a physical malady, not a character defect? If so, how has this helped you cope with your illness, and how as this affected your sense-of-self? Do you feel more accepted by society, this way? Please comment.
(g1,x1,m1,b1,r1)

A Perfect Winter Day in Hollywood

We've been blessed with the most astounding period of winter weather here. Since early December, the daytime temperature has rarely been below 70, and we've scarcely used our central heating at night. Today, we drove the ten minutes over to Runyon Canyon with the dogs. The blue sky seemed to stretch to infinity. Life is good.

 

 

 

(g1,x1)