Wrecking ball

 

I wrote a song called ‘Wrecking ball’ mid-2010. It was a thrash song about wanting the Junction Clinic St. Kilda, to be demolished. I dreamed that some renegades brought a wrecking ball to it in the night. And they needed me to cloak them with a song, so they wouldn’t be detected.

Lots of bar chords, gravelly voice and the feeling that every time I sang it I was getting closer to stopping the atrocities that were still happening to others and threatening to happen to me again.

I guess I’m like anyone who has been abused in a place, the building then becomes an icon of horror and hatred. We want it gone.

I was then forced to spend over a year going back to the Junction Clinic, for depot injections later that year and until the end of 2011. Forced to expose my butt and act like I thought it was all good for me. Then thank who ever put that sickening horrible stuff inside me, after they did it, in hope they’d eventually take me off the CTO and the violations would cease.

My menstrual cycle stopped. I slept 20 hours a day and still felt tired. My face drooped, my body twitched. I couldn’t retain information or read for very long. I couldn’t stand up for long without getting dizzy and falling over. Every day on those drugs was death.

I had to be so careful. I stopped playing songs of rebellion. I didn’t have the energy anyway. I exposed my butt for them to stick their pricks in. And said, ‘I have an epiphany. I realise now I was wrong. You are right Dr. I need to take neuroleptics the rest of my life, I just feel because I’m of a small build I don’t need as much as you’re giving me and I would be able to get up in the morning, rather than the afternoon, so I can get a job, if you lowered my dose a little…’

This affirming of the psychiatrist’s status and demands and nagging paid off eventually. I was let off the CTO in Sept 2011, but kept seeing the psychiatrist, knowing he could put me back on it in a snap, until he felt ready to discharge me to a GP in 2012.

The Junction Clinic moved recently and the place has been converted into apartments. My partner pointed them out as a bargain. And I said, ‘I would live anywhere with you, even live in a tent with you, but if you chose to live there, I’m sorry, but I could not be with you.’

 

In my imagination mid-2010, after the wrecking ball destroyed the Junction Clinic one night as I sang the song to back up the rebellion, people created a memorial on the site, to all those who had died at the hands of Melbourne psychiatrists and illegal government legislation that allows the torture of so many people. I thought that was all that could be made of that building.

 

Anyway, here’s the song I wrote mid-2010. It isn’t sexy, it’s a hard protest song. The word kiss in it, is more like the slang term ‘Scottish kiss’ and the love is just the love of seeing a monster destroyed and a people saved from its eyesore. I think the trouble with any kind of dream of destruction, it lends itself to looking violent. I didn’t want to look at all, in any way scary or threatening to anyone after being put on a CTO. I was sorry for existing, for asserting the need for things to change. I was being condemned for every tiny thing I did. I knew singing a song like that was evidence of me being wrong Being condemned for protesting against psychiatry and society’s cruel acceptance of the regime, meant I had no way to defend myself, for fear of being condemned and punished more than I had been with higher doses and other torture procedures such as electro-shock, which they called and still call ‘therapeutic’.

I realise now that, there were many other things I misdirected during 2010 including talking absurd parallels, making accusations that were incorrect, and while they were poetic truths, they were not direct truths. ‘Wrecking Ball’ actually had a focus, that was reasonable. I had been repeatedly violated in that building, of course it made sense that I felt the need to wreck it, as it had wrecked me. And I only did it through song. So what was the huge problem? Well, the Junction Clinic was, not me. But I got blamed for the upset it caused me.

I may have a recording somewhere, but I may not have recorded it being performed. Still remember the tune of the chorus though:

 

Wrecking ball

© Initially NO

Blast and damn blast and damn

Where are you now

I had you in my clutches

Now I’ve lost you in the mist

You’re being kissed

By a wrecking ball

By the wreck of all those things

You love to destroy.

And taken into sound

Of what people seek

When they’re in love

With the smashing energy

Of a building crashing down.

It was never meant to be

Never meant to exist

It’s smashing down

It’s smashing down

That building’s smashing down.

 

Don’t bleed me again

There’s no love in it

Only love in destroying it

That building’s smashing down

That building’s smashing down

Blast and damn blast and damn

Where are you now

I had you in my clutches

Now I’ve lost you in the mist

You’re being kissed

By a wrecking ball

By the wreck of all those things

You love to destroy.

Blast and damn blast and damn

Where are you now

All gone away

All gone away

All gone away.

 

When there are so many things going on that are wrong, it is hard to recognise that doctors can be wrong too. We want to trust someone. I broke my left pinkie while playing football at 18 and told the GP it was broken ,and he said, 'It's just a sprain'. It wasn't but for a month I believed him and it healed crookedly, according to the hospital staff that x-rayed it. So, after that, I took what arrogant doctors said, with a grain of scepticism.
           The heroic Sinead O'Conner has come to a similar conclusion about psychiatric diagnosis and drugs. I felt she would eventually, she didn't seem to altogether 'Wax' with them in other years. But then, she had so many other issues in Ireland and personal life to think about, that recognising malpracticing doctors would've been too hard to deal with. It's hard when those who are meant to help, are doing outrageous harm to you.