narcissism

For a long time I took a daily picture of myself. Most were scary. I had an idea of making a giant piece, hundreds, even thousands of little squares, all with a face of mine from a different day. I am not sure how I would make it, but I have decided, at least this week, to resume my habit. My new camera has a remote control so it should not be hard to do. And I have a tripod.

advice

I sent this email to Theo just now. We had dinner last evening and discussed depression and how one deals both with it in one's self and in a friend. Since I have been guilty of posting this sort of thing and then deleting it in a fit of second-guessing (one of my worst pathologies) this time I promise I will leave it here, no matter what.

Hi Thierry,

I have been thinking a lot about our discussion of depression last evening, and how ___________ is doing with regards to advice, etc.

I don't know if I was able to articulate my ideas clearly; I was very tired from my days of no sleep and my brain felt slow. But now I will try. Forgive me if I am repeating myself.

I think it is very difficult for anyone who has not had chronic, long-term depression--lifelong--to understand how it eats away at your confidence, your ability to make plans for the future, your outlook on possibility. My most well-meaning friends are full of suggestions: take a trip, take a class, go out and do things, join a group...and while I can intellectually and rationally see the logic and the benefit in all these, emotionally it can be impossible to take steps in any direction. You become paralyzed with anxieties and fears, and sometimes it is far safer to stay in one place. As much as doing so is just making the depression stay in place, it is often the only choice that is possible.

Does this make sense?

And so you can latch onto the idea of a relationship providing the stability and balance that your own psyche can't provide. While this places an impossible burden on the object of the relationship, it is an idea that is hard to shake off. I know because I have this problem, and I stay in a relationship sometimes for the "wrong" reasons, although for me they seem to be the only "right" reasons.

So _________ may withdraw because he is afraid; he might not want to admit this, and he might not want to seem like he is weak, but he is. I don't mean this in any way as a criticism. He is ill. As am I. The best we can do is try to manage. I know this sounds defeatist, but it is, for me anyway, the conclusion I have reached after thinking/pondering/questioning my depression for most of my life.

I know you are a generous and kind person and I know you mean the best when you reach out to him. Don't be hurt if he can't respond all the time.

Your friend,

Jonathan

A SOUND


Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this.

(Gertrude Stein, TENDER BUTTONS)

my words?

It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

(wm. shakespeare, MACBETH)

me too

premonition/dream

The other day I wrote of my dream about the MacDowell Colony. Interestingly, today I received the quarterly magazine sent to all MacDowell fellows, of which I am one. I thought back to those happy times. The first four summers of my NYC life, I was fortunate to be given fellowships: two to MacDowell, then two to Yaddo. I returned again to Yaddo in winter of 1996. In summer 1996 I had a residency at the Ragdale Foundation. I have never gone to another colony again. Why? In 1992, while at Yaddo, I had one of my most severe depressions, one in which I was practically catatonic and paralyzed. It was terrifying. Then again, at Yaddo, in 1996, I plunged into another hideous depression. And at Ragdale, in August of that same year, I contracted hepatitis--although how remains a mystery--which became so severe after I returned to NYC (I, the ever-stoic, ignored my symptoms until I was hospitalized and came close to complete liver failure). Since those three strikes, I figure I am out, and I would be quite hesitant to go back. All the same, I look fondly on those experiences. I met some unforgettable artists, both famous and not famous, and made some amazing friends. It changed my life, giving me confidence and affirmation that I was a "real" composer. What happened?

today

thinking

wake

I can't sleep.

machinery

The machinery that is my brain is in need of some repair.

heat

I don't like this hot weather. It wears me out. I am supposed to go to graduation tonight, but it will be sweltering and I am afraid I will be utterly miserable. Mabel doesn't like the heat either. She is a snow dog.

hypomania

My first psychiatrist told me that in the days before antidepressants, depression could be treated by depriving the patient of sleep. Lack of sleeps brings hypomania, at least for bipolar people. Last night I barely slept. My allergies were so bad that I could not breathe and I must have sneezed 500 times. So now I am in the grip of a hypomanic mini-frenzy of activity.

One benefit of my treatment over the years is that I recognize my moods for what they are. Hypomania can be somewhat dangerous for me, and I have to watch what I do and say. But in terms of productivity it can't be beat. So far today I have brought my car in for repair, read the newspaper in fits, cleaned both my air-conditioners in the apartment thoroughly, vacuumed everywhere, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, did more laundry, and paid some bills. All done in a kind of madcap way. Mabel looks at me like I have lost my mind. And writing this I can barely type fast enough, and I am a very fast typist from all those years of piano playing. But I feel physically exhausted, and the fact that it is a sweltering inferno outside does not help. So I am sure that soon I will collapse and sleep, or at least I hope that I do.

shaky

shaky me

me

This is me, twenty years ago. Do you know what I was doing?

wilting

I am wilting in the heat. And I feel glum. I should be at a party. It is the end-of-year party for my department, but between the heat and my lethargy I cannot bring myself to go out. So here I sit, feeling blue. It is a vicious cycle: I want to be out doing something, anything, to take my mind off of myself, yet I am paralyzed to go out and do the things that will take my mind off myself. Swimming seems to be the only thing that motivates me, and that is solitary and not particularly social. But at least it is good for my health.

not guilty

I just heard the verdict read in the Michael Jackson case. I was moved by hearing the repeated "not guilty" findings on all counts. As a musician I have always been in awe of Michael Jackson's genius. I have also felt that he probably had a terrible childhood and that, as an adult, he lived in some kind of bizarre fantasy world, possible because of his tremendous wealth and probably a necessary mechanism for coping with the fact that he never really was able to be a child. The trial, and the charges themselves, seemed ridiculous. But in the poisonous atmosphere of present-day America I was half expecting him to go to jail, which I believe would have killed him. Thank god the jury had sense and reason.

dream

Last night I had a dream that I was back at the MacDowell Colony, where I spent time the first two summers after I'd moved to New York. My studio was at the ocean (an impossibility; MacDowell is in land-locked New Hampshire). I stayed there and worked. I was not writing music though. In my dream the nature of my work was vague and seemed to consist mostly of looking out at the dark water and fending off the occasional interloper. After several weeks I realized that I had not shown up for any meals (breakfast and dinner are served in the Colony Hall, and one need show up there to eat. Lunch is delivered to your studio). My studio was so far from the rest that lunch was not delivered. I did not eat in my dream. Finally it dawned on me that I needed to go to see if I had any mail. When I showed up, numerous artists greeted me. There was a note in my box from Rufus (Rufus Wainwright, whom I don't know) with a copy of his new book (but he is not a writer). There was also a cat waiting for me. In the dream I felt glad when I was greeted warmly, although people were perplexed as to why I had been missing for so long.

photographs

Nghiem posted a set of pictures of himself, tracing his 30 years. I was looking at them, touched and fascinated at how he evolves and how some things are so constant in his expression. So I started thinking whether or not I could post 42 pictures of myself. And I realized that entire chunks of my life are "missing." I hated to have my picture taken and would not willingly allow it. I have only one photograph from four years at Vassar; my friend Meredith had taken some of me, standing smoking outside the music building, but I lost them. My high-school years are largely undocumented. My father used to take lots of pictures of me and my brother and sister, but after he left that stopped. So now I try to remember how I might appear in a photograph from age fifteen, or seventeen, and I don't really remember. Or twenty-one. Only in recent years have I had an interest in taking pictures of myself, perhaps to document who I was and who I am, before I disappear forever.

heading home

My car is old. The air conditioning was not working on my trip, and it was sweltering. At least coming home the sky was leaden with clouds, so I did not mind it as much. Mabel was not happy though, panting in the back seat.

again

clarification

Just to make things clear, I am also sick to death of complaining, of writing about being depressed, of talking about being depressed, of being depressed. Maybe I will try to ignore being depressed.

gazing, longingly, toward something

Their house is filled with great light and little enchanting tableaux, and many many rooms. I loved taking pictures there.

So why is it that despite the pleasure I can take in certain things, when it passes, I am left with this horrible horrible feeling of emptiness, one that is getting so overwhelming sometimes that I can hardly stand it? My well-intentioned friends tell me to go back to the therapist, and it seems useful. That is, it does until I start to think that, no matter how many times I go over the past, no matter how many useful litanies I chant to myself about my value and my worth and the people who care about me and who needs me and what I have accomplished...nothing makes more than the slightest moment of peace. That is why, now, sitting here, I feel that my existence is a sentence of some kind. I would be better off if I were someone else.

Today I thought about how I should go somewhere, take a trip, try to find a nice place to be, and then I thought that it does not matter, because wherever I am, I still feel the same. No change of location, no new setting, will change my brain.

Sorry to be so fatalistic and down. I am just being honest, because if I can't be honest here, writing this blog, I can't be honest anywhere. And face it: there are many situations and places that I find myself in that I can't be honest. It would give too much away.

colors

The colors of the garden yesterday were so beautiful. The dense humidity in Philadelphia is heaven for plants, if hell for humans like me who dislike the hot weather.

I must watch my step...

explosions

Last night, at 9:30, for no reason that I can ascertain a barrage of fireworks lit up the sky outside my window and made the most horrendous noise, scaring Pomona and Tuna and freaking me out a bit too. I hate fireworks -- not visually, but sonically -- and find them unsettling. But the sky looked quite dramatic all lit up, although my hands were too shaky to get good pictures.

one sees, one does not

perfect

Mimi's orchid.

perfect

I received this comment from Lodgerlow. I could never have said it so well.

Well, I was going to quip in and add some Useful Advice for the Depressed, but f*ck, I am in no position to offer wisdom. Like you, it is this incessant up-and-down that erodes one's hope. Things go Up and so you think "That's it, I now know how to get rid of this black fog"... but then... it wilts... and you are back where you were before. Only this time slightly more frail, and slightly less hopeful than the last. Good luck from a fellow sailor of stormy seas.

yesterday

My friends in Philadelphia have a big old stone house just yards from the Schuylkill River, and a wonderful garden.

for Y.

Remember?

cute

Tuna is very very cute. I always am a little worried leaving him alone. I will be gone all day, to Philadelphia. But I will come back tonight because I don't want him to have to sleep alone.

Guidelines for the Depressed

1. Schedule your days in detail. Unscheduled time is dangerous.
2. Try to sleep only at night.
3. Don't drink alcohol. It will make you feel worse.
4. Exercise a lot. It empties the mind. The endorphins pick you up.
5. Remember to eat even though you probably don't want to.
6. Make lists of things to do and try to do them. Don't give up.
7. Talk a lot, to yourself if necessary.
8. Don't look in the mirror.

That's all I can think of, for now.

the sea (oil on canvas, 24" x 18") 2005

I wish that I were here...

mabel

mabel
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Mabel is not feeling well. The hot weather upsets her stomach. She should adjust to it soon. Right now, she is tired and not really into eating. Poor thing :-(

traveling

Two of my friends are leaving today on trips. One to Italy, one to the California desert. I sigh. I so badly need to go away. Yet I am not sure I could travel alone. I used to do it gladly. I went to Europe solo, with one small backpack, and wandered unabashedly around France; I still remember arriving at the Gare de L'Est, not knowing (or even being concerned about) where I would stay, and walking and walking until I found a small street near the Jardins de Luxembourg (I had arrived in Paris from Luxembourg, where my Icelandair flight had dropped me) and got a room. I was excited and unafraid. In later years I would travel, to San Francisco, other places, by myself. And then on one trip everything changed. After a particularly harrowing sequence of events -- severe illness, a breakup, an assault -- I took another trip to California, alone. And I was, after a few days, gripped by a panic so severe that I could not leave my hotel room and spent my time frantically trying to book an earlier flight back. The hotel was being renovated and while I sat in that small dark room the sound of hammering and drilling, enormously loud, pounded in my head. And yet I could not even muster up the courage to leave and go sit in a café somewhere to escape it. Ever since then I have been fearful of solo travel. But tomorrow I will drive to Philadelphia where I will spend the day with my oldest and best friend and her partner, in their wonderful old stone house by the river. This is hardly like a trip to Italy or the California desert, and I will have Mabel along for company. But it is better than nothing.

many years ago...

Many years ago, when I was living on East 13th Street, in the bad days of the East Village, when prostitutes and crackheads roamed the streets, my friends and I would hang out at the Great Jones, which back then was a seedy bar. My friend Catherine was the bartender and she would feed us drinks; I was broke back then so I depended on her generosity. We would get trashed and sit out on the junked cars that littered the corner next to the bar--there was an auto repair shop there--and sometimes we would go to La Bamba, which was a transvestite bar on 13th St. My friend Sally used to dress like Jackie O. and the drag queens would always admire her effect. So long ago...I miss it sometimes, the kind of carefree and yet angst-driven nihilism of being that young and seemingly endless...

vessel

Am I empty? Half full? Half empty? Hollow? All of the above?

shell

I have had this shell since I was six years old.

a letter

I wrote a letter. I posted it here, on my blog. That was yesterday. This morning I read it again. I deleted it.

Self-censorship? Absolutely. I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings, although mine are hurt. But I do not believe in "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." "Turn the other cheek" is more apt for me. But I am not a Christian. However, in this one regard, perhaps I am.

my life is changing in so many ways
I don't know who to trust anymore
there's a shadow running through my days
like a beggar going from door to door

(Neil Young)

il pleut dans mon coeur

Tuna

four nightmares

Last night I had four nightmares. I would wake from one, fall asleep again, and a new horrific dream would overwhelm my sleep. I cannot go into the details here. It's too scary. But now I feel exhausted, as if I had not slept at all.

A List

John Berryman
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
Robert Lowell
Virginia Woolf
Ernest Hemingway
Vincent Van Gogh
Arshile Gorky
Mark Rothko
Kurt Cobain
Elliott Smith
Spalding Gray
Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Primo Levi
Susannah McCorkle

jagged

I am feeling like I am barely skirting the jagged edge of some unidentifiable danger. But I feel calm, just apprehensive.

what happens to my dreams after I wake

the colors of my dreams

the past

It is colorful, but clouded in haze.

Yesterday I was telling Matt that what I really need is to go to one of those very posh mental institutions like McLean in Boston back in the days when Robert Lowell went there. I see myself sitting on a rolling green lawn, dressed in white, sitting on an Adirondack chair. I will not have to think about work, bills, obligations of any kind except that of figuring out how to control my rampaging psyche.

But real life intrudes and I can't imagine that such a thing is possible, at least not as the benign scene that I envision for myself.

"The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges"

Key Redfield Jamison writes, in THE BENEFITS OF RESTLESSNESS AND JAGGED EDGES:

"I have often longed for peace and tranquility -- looked into the lives of others and envied a kind of calmness -- and yet I don't know if this tranquility is what I truly would have wished for myself. One is, after all, only really acquainted with one's own temperament and way of going through life. It is best to acknowledge this, to accept it and to admire the diversity of temperaments Nature has dealt us."

I agree with the latter part. I do, however, envy that kind of calmness which I rarely know.

counting

In the midst of a bad period, my friend Matt emailed me. He reassured me that there were a lot of people I could count on for support and help with my problems; his words reassured me and made me feel that I was not alone. But then, this morning, thinking about it, I realized that there really were very few people I could count on. Partly this is my fault; I keep my situation very much to myself and many people don't realize that I struggle with this bipolar illness pretty much all of the time. And I realize that I am optimistic, that I feel I can count on friends. But people slip away. It happens. I guess people need each other for different things, and when a goal has been met, there is no need anymore. I am not sure how I feel about this. Sad, I think. And lonely too. But not self-pitying, more just realistic. This is how it is. I cannot change it.

apropos of everything

This could not have come at a more appropriate time. Please read.

monochrome

Lately I have become more and more obsessed with making monochromatic paintings. My paintings used to be colorful, some more than others, but I have lost interest in this way of working. Greys, black, white; these will mingle on my canvas. I wonder...

light/heat

the window at midday...

heat

Today the sun climbed high in the sky and the heat, which felt good outside, made my top-floor apartment something of a sweatbox. I had to turn on the AC. I don't like summer weather.

But what I really don't like is that I feel so down and so stressed and so when I walk outside and see people strolling, people who look carefree, people who are laughing and chatting and dialing their cell-phones and hopping into their convertible Saabs and flipping their sun-bleached hair, I feel even worse. And so I go back in and ride up to the top floor and go back into my air-conditioned apartment and work on my painting. This is a dark painting: greys and black and dark blue-black. Almost a void.

angel

messages in bottles

I send my words and images out into the world like messages in bottles, never knowing if they will be found or read or looked at. But it is the hope that someone will find one, or two, and not regret it, that keeps me doing this.

my current painting, in progress, in flux...as of yesterday. already it has changed.

quiet, empty

lost

hole

turn to the right

Leaning out the window looking right...

ledge

Leaning out the window--staring at the wall across the way--

down

Leaning out the window looking down.

"I said it all. I've said too much." (who said that?)

cycle

Well, I might have known. As the day progressed yesterday, a bit busier than I had anticipated, my mood grew more and more irritable and ragged and while I felt energetic and talkative I was bristling and starting to spin out of control. Then in the early evening I had to go to see the doctor. I had a long wait in the waiting room during which I grew increasingly anxious and agitated; the doctor saw that I had lost weight, six pounds since my last visit two months ago, and that my liver was enlarged again. So another round of tests to worry about, although by now I don't worry so much. So I left and walked to the Fifth Avenue stop on the R line to go home. I bought myself some chocolate, since I had to starve myself yesterday prior to the appointment because of the blood work that would be done--you can't eat after late morning in order for the results to be accurate--and so, after a full day including swimming, I thought I would pass out.

I ate my chocolate during the interminable wait for the subway. Maybe the wait was not that long but in my state it seemed endless. After arriving in Brooklyn I stopped at the grocery store and bought a huge carton of cat litter that weighed a ton and had to carry it home. At home a large box was waiting for me from UPS and so I staggered upstairs with both. Yoshi had come to walk Mabel and make dinner (very nice of him) and so I knocked on the door so that I would not have to fumble with the keys while balancing the boxes but he did not answer so I ended up dropping the box and by the time I got in the door I was in a foul mood. I could not really eat the dinner he made because he used kim chee and it was very spicy and my stomach has been messed up and the doctor told me "no spicy food" (damn) and so I was irritated and hungry and he seemed distant--perhaps because of my irritation--and then the unfortunate subject of his previous night's dinner engagement came up despite the fact that I had vowed to myself I would not mention it, and in my state I made a sarcastic remark and so that drove things even further downward.

So Yoshi went home and I took a shower and took a lot of trazodone and a klonopin so that I would fall quickly into a deep sleep. But waking this morning I just feel irritable and hyper and think that I had better keep to myself today or else I might regret things.

It is clear that my cycle is so predictable: depression for four days or so or a week, a day or two of normalcy, then the gradual upswing to hypomania. The normal days are wonderful. The other days are not so wonderful at all.

day two

Day two: feeling "normal." I am not depressed, nor am I feeling manic. I can actually sit and thoughtfully complete the things I need to do. I am not paralyzed by gloom or hyper-energized and scattered. I am so thankful (to whom?) when I feel like this.

self-analysis, part two

Maybe this worked. I woke up feeling fine this morning. No cloud over my head (figuratively, at least; I like today's grey weather), today is a great improvement over yesterday's gloom.