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.
