Upstairs in the Crazy House: Touched by Fire, second floor at the Gladstone Hotel

Let’s go back three weeks in time. The day began the same as any other- my eyes pop open just before seven. The orange cat hogging the pillow begins to purr when he feels me stir. And I roll over and wish I had one of those coffee machines you start up with a remote control.

But I don’t have one of those, and so I throw back the blankets and the cat flies toward his food bowl. That’s when I noticed that colour had crept back into the paintings on the wall and the patterns on the blankets. Cautiously, I looked all around. The world was breathing and pulsing with life. And that’s how I knew that nearly half a year of the dead, defeated, hopeless hell they call depression had come to a complete halt.

These are the kind of days I make full use of. Alive days, I call them. I have my share of hope and reason and relative confidence. Sure, my moods veer dramatically to and fro on any day, but generally they waver about within a larger framework of either melancholy or inspiration. Though my black spells can last much longer than six months, this time calling it melancholy was putting it mildly. This last spell was so intensely dark I didn’t know if I would ever believe in anything ever again. It was a crippling grief at betrayal by everything, including my most beloved friends, and my own mind. Everything was dead, including God.

On a day like today, I can handle the burdens of grief I carry for the dead and walk with head high. I can accept the petty feuds that fuel the social circuitry, the misconceptions, the missed connections, and accept them with grace. I can feel my own heartbeat, and know its part of the pulse of the larger puzzle.

On a day like yesterday I was explaining all of this once again to a lady in front of me and to the men behind the mirrors. It makes me laugh how the universal voice of the shrink is sort of calm and breathy. Do you ever hear intrusive thoughts that aren’t your own? they always ask. Voices telling you to hurt others? I do actually chuckle, and they make notes about that. Never, I say. My mania is all mine, when it comes. I tell them I don’t hear voices- I just have a zillion ideas all at once. I start a thousand things and don’t finish them. I thrive, fly, full speed ahead. Most of this is wonderful, except when too many things later end up under an umbrella of “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” It’s all fabulous, except when I appear impatient or distracted and I’m actually really interested. I tell them about the t-shirt my friends wanted to get me: it says, I’m Talking, and I Can’t Shut Up.

That may be, but I didn’t really feel like talking at that particular moment. Sure, I’m ‘working’ on my issues. Always have. It’s just that there are a lot of ‘em. And though I like therapy, I really do, it is an exhausting commitment. And on ‘plateau days’ when I’m normal, and not up or down, I can’t see a great deal of need for it. There’s that feeling that maybe the black dogs won’t come back, and maybe the chaos and flurry of dreams and nightmares won’t come back, either. I can do without the meaningless despair years just fine, thank you very much. And because my thoughts aren’t racing right now, I’ve got some handle on how to get it together from here on in, and don’t want to answer all the questions over and over again, ever again.

Still, the most important part of therapy just might be the group. When you hear the stories of others, you find coping techniques. You compare notes. You make jokes that the world at large might not get.

I killed a few birds with one stone yesterday (what a horrible expression! who wants to kill birds with stones?). I’m committed to not missing therapy appointments, but I used the chance to swing by and visit a friend who’d recently been formed. (To the uninitiated, that means ‘admitted’ or ‘signed in’ or ‘committed.’) Believe me, it’s not the first or the last time I was upstairs in the crazy house. The only surprise is that I’ve only been a visitor. I guess there’s a bright side to this stuff running in the family: you already know you have it, so it doesn’t broadside you in the middle of a normal existence. You never really lose it, because you lost it a long time ago.

So on a day like yesterday, I wasn’t all that surprised to run into a number of old acquaintances at Touched by Fire, an art show presented by the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario. It’s amazing how many coworkers, colleagues, and relatives you run into at various meetings, clinics, and associations. While I’m pretty upfront about my lifelong struggle with depression, being an artist and all that, not everyone else is so vocal. But don’t be surprised: we are everywhere. And last night, we were all at the Gladstone Hotel, where more than forty ‘mentally ill’ artists exhibited a stunning array of painting, sculpture and photography. (I always feel trepidation describing a way of being as a ‘mood disorder’ or an ‘illness’ because in all fairness, it’s those who think the world is running smoothly who are delusional. It’s those who are well adjusted and feel no pain who are possibly sociopathic.)

The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario is an incredible resource for people who experience depression, social anxiety, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, and so on. They are also a resource for families and for professionals. They have ongoing support groups that include peer support, education and self-care, and recreation. They have speakers on mental health, an extensive reference library, campaigns for specific outreach endeavours, and every possible kind of help and hope a person on the brink might need. One amazing feature the MDAO has is www.checkupfromtheneckup.ca, which helps you anonymously determine online whether you might be experiencing any mental health concerns. They also have an annual subway campaign debunking stereotypes and myths about mood disorders. (One of the prominent myths is that mental illness is rare. Don’t kid yourself. Mood disorders are very common and you know all kinds of people who are struggling with them right now.) The MDAO supports a number of paradigms on mental health, and so they offer information about a wide variety of treatments from traditional to alternative. Educate yourself, or find a lifeline by visiting www.mooddisorders.on.ca.

Touched by Fire is an ongoing initiative of the MDAO, “a program to stimulate and celebrate the work created by artists with mood disorders.” It shouldn’t be news to anyone that a world without crazy people would be a world without art. No Van Gogh, no Mozart, no nothin’. After bipolar artist Rebecca Burghardt committed suicide, her father and others in the aftermath sought to build not just “a memorial, but a road forward against mood disorders.” Touched by Fire is an ongoing online exhibition (www.touchedbyfire.ca) and an annual gala that showcases creative contributions by artists with mood challenges.

Closer than she Appears by Susan Strachan Johnson

Last night hundreds of visitors flocked in to see amazing works by artists like Susan Strachan Johnson, Pat Moffatt, Michael Yee, Xenia Vakova, Sunny Crittenden, and more. Of course, I was there for my longtime partner in art crime, Joey DAMMIT! whose influence on my own artwork is obvious to everyone except the blind. He was exhibiting Shirley Temple Black from a show he did about depression called Only Happy When it Rains.

Joey DAMMIT! with one of his favourite works

I have to admit that my fear of crowds nearly caused me to run screaming before entering the sardine-packed room, despite my eagerness to see Joey’s disarming smile. My heart was racing in terror at the sight of zillions of fortysomethings sipping fine wine and the idea of somehow making space for myself among them. Then I thought about the other people who might be terrified to be there. Knowing that tonight I wasn’t the only nutbar in the house made it a little easier to enter, that, and the free wine and guacamole and smoked salmon.

Now Sunny Crittenden was also terrified by the scene. She wrote about her apprehension on her website (www.sunnycrittenden.com). I was immediately drawn to the chaos (and the tampons) in Sunny’s assemblage, Mania in the Key of Psychosis. There was an instant recognition factor in the dense, hurricane layers of ideas and objects. Often I create art with a similar vehemence, a whirlwind of objects and images and textures. Often I create more than one piece at a time- up to 20! But then there are other times when my work is much calmer or streamlined, or slow, depressed, nonexistent.

Viewers of Sunny’s Mania piece were astonished to see the sweet, calm simplicity of her other works. If this isn’t a window into the mind or the mood, nothing is. Sunny said that Mania in the Key of Psychosis was something she made just before a major break with reality- you know, psychosis. It was frantic and urgent, and every little detail inside had a direct emotional significance. She’s only selling the piece because she’s ready to part with that part of herself. It’s a ritual in it’s own way.

I understood right away about the layers of details and their loaded meanings. My own works may seem random, and they are. Yet the most personal ones are endless layers of very significant symbolism. Every word or image in my furious collages might have meaning in my manic universe.

Sunny sure didn’t seem psychotic. A very bubbly and creative young woman- very…well, sunny. On her site she writes very openly about her shyness, her ‘illness’ (remember, I hate to use that word for what is to me just reality. It’s like calling a tidal wave or a volcano an aberration. It’s just nature.) But I know too well how hard it is for other people to think good ol’ fearless Lorette is actually crippled with shyness. You may view me as very open and gregarious. But that’s what wild mood swings are all about. It’s all true. It’s just another part of me.

Mania in the Key of Psychosis by Sunny Crittenden

I was also really taken with Xenia Vakova’s No Public Parking. A simple geometric map painted on found wood, with the title stenciled in. Too bad the piece was already sold! I like maps and shapes, a semblance of order in disorder. Xenia says, “While I was in Halifax, provinces away from friends and family and unable to find a therapist/counsellor, depression hit me in a big way and I was forced to quit school for the time being and return to live with my parents.  During that winter, I continued the series by painting this same map onto a sign I found downtown, which said ‘no public parking.’ It is common for me to start a series and get only through one or two pieces before I lose interest.  Perhaps one day I will return to the shapes of the original map, or make a new one using the same principles.” Xenia’s only 21, and already a veteran of art and of the mind games mood ‘disorders’ play. Her art wouldn’t be the same without them.

No Public Parking by Xenia Vakova

The textures and the kind of storybook-macabre illustration powers in Closer Than She Appears, by Susan Strachan Johnson, were also stunning. A photographer I’d spoken with at length upon arrival

Dragonfly 6 Escher by Ralph Martin

snapped it up. I’d first met Ralph Martin at one of Joey DAMMIT!’s art shows, and I’m blown away by his photography (www.ralphmartinphotography.com). He photographs doors and windows, and close-ups of nature, revealing exquisite patterns and shapes in the world around us.

I was sorry not to run into Pat Moffatt. I was intrigued by the intense light and shadow of his paintings, with thick brush strokes. I will not be the first or last to compare his work to Van Gogh. The subject matter of Pat’s oeuvre is also the momentary landscape, a tree, a flower, perspective of a room. The Canadian Arles. In Moffatt’s statement, he said he worked quickly and intensely until finishing, just like his great teacher.

I wanted to break all the rules of gallery etiquette and touch the paintings. Perhaps a greater writer could better describe the intensity of these works. In that intensity, the rapidness of their completion, the immediacy of the ‘wet-paint’ feeling they evoke, there is tremendous beauty. This is not what I was referred to when I said I woke up three weeks ago and saw colour infused back into patterns, breath inside of life. But it IS what I will see when the scales tip and I start to “go up.” The vibrancy and intensity at that time is so gorgeous that every single pain and grief I’ve borne is worth it, in spades.

The Fishing Shack by Pat Moffatt

There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium! The highest degree of delirium! Plunged in burning dementia!
Jean Dubuffet

Lorette C. Luzajic is the author of The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. She is a food writer for Gremolata Magazine, a voracious reader and reviewer, and a dedicated follower of Cosmo Kramer. Visit her at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Our Long Goodbye by Lorette C. Luzajic

Depressed by Lorette C. Luzajic