Media shlock and other perceptions

chhhhhssssnnnnnnnnnfffffffffffffffffffffffffssss
ssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttssssssss
Listen
asssttttttttttttttttcchchchchchchchchchchchsssss
ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttcccccccccsssssss
what???????????ssssssssssssssschhhhhhhhhhc
huh// huh//huh////? sssssssssssssssschhhhhhhhhhtttt
Dat were me eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ta huh ta huh okay okay okay okay
Not that again.
too much too much too much too much
Misinterpretation shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Film. Acuity of method. Round about. Hurt flash into
Those that think that... that perpetuate that tttttttttttt
SHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
But not that, not that not that, not that but access.

Sound poetry. With a hyperlink to a documentary film I'm in, recently out.
Oh, and you just thought I was going bananas eh?
I'm an artist, not a court room case! And if you really are a judge, lose your prejudice, and reserve your judgements and harsh sentences for your job!
So I can get back to my sound poetry.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cchchcaha haha hhahahah
Beings, book, beings second happenings and things
Expressions outside the range of understood sense
And getting into expressing the feeling, the sensory,
the society sense, my percipience of that I pick up,
Add up, look up, get, don't quite get, want to question,
Toss and turn at, worry I've stepped over a boundary,
Crash and burn the crap thrown at me, hurt, but,
Hardening, sshhhhhshshshtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
Watching hours of YouTube comedy when work,
work work is nagging to be done, but the back of
My mind is saying, no way, there is no way I want
You to think of anything but the laugh for a while.
But I look up 'stand up comedy' and it's all men. So,
I look up, 'Stand up comedy women' and men are
Sprinkled in, not that I mind men's comedy,
it's just that for the moment I've had enough of listening
to their dick opinions that cunt me
And why they get the focus when I'm looking for women.
Too serious, too angry, too hurt, get away from it
And CHCHCHsssssssssssstttttttttttttttttttt out hhhhap.
You don't know what you do, society, society, society,
That echoes within where verbal abuse bruises
To shuttersssssssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttttttputt
Putt out eventually. I know it will eventually. These things
Must run out of their false esteem grime sheeeeeeeeeeem.
Whatever you do, don't post it. They'll think you are
um... you know, not gnawing the maul, like most glue.
Wha? I'm fine with myself, with everyone else
Just sometimes, what to say what's on my mind
Without thinking about how you might perceive it,
How you might think me wrong, weird, crazy, eeediot!
See lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssounnnnnnnnnnnndddssssss
as AM sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppsssssss. You know I need to be out side the range of your sense
to get my sense of humour back and stop beating you
Over the head with my angry little blogging flogging grrr
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, you
should know that............ heee hah ha h a h hahah ha ha!

Laugh, laugh at that time I was dragged off screaming
people did, but they didn't realise, they did not realise,
that psychiatry is horrific, or they did and were glad
it was not them being taken in... 
the memory of what they did overbearing,
the emotional memory
is a bear, or lion eating my face off... as bad as that,
and then people have the gall to tell me I'm lying!
I fear the pain of what psychiatry has done to me,
As much as I fear the pain of some animal eating
My face off... and that's my perception, so,
make it funny, make me laugh that off, drag it out into a routine, make me beam that you've done a triple twist
on my painful memory, so that psychiatry
will stop their regime that threatens and harms
and never ever understands art or laughter, just diagnoses it.
The emotional memory hurts me when it gets triggered.
Yes, emotions, they hurt somewhat, but the pain,
The pain is my body saying: see this thing that happened,
Do something about it so society doesn't perpetuate it,
So they get it. People won't get that it's as bad to you,
As being mauled by hungry animals that just think
Of you as sustenance, except maybe in a picture... or
except maybe someone who's understanding
like your beautiful lover. Talk, make sounds, nonsense
even, until the consensual sense is thrashed out.
How to communicate with them, them, them, that cage
And hate my livid wrecking ball on their psychiatrist.
I'm talking stuff, but I'm far away from being lost
In alienation, far away from being lost in parallel
nightmare thinking, because I'm connecting, thinking,
getting stuff. And if I only get the sense of communication,
the sense of adding up sensory intake, that percipience, 
into sound expression, at the start
that should be okay; if it's only a scribbly image to start
that's okay, because, no one is ever perfectly clear
and succinct to everybody. Product is not there straight away for everyone. Besides, there is always someone
who is looking though their tints and veils
And Ned Kelly mask logos to fit you into them,
To say, yeah but... me, identify with my iconography!
Even if you find them unfitting and aahhhhhhhh
Shhhhhhhhhhfttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
Goooooooooooooooooooow awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahy
they expect you to be the, because they think that they
they are the cream and when you say you don't eat
cream, that it's too rich, too sickening, they say,
don't you get the metaphor? and that's when I'm thinking
okay creamy pie endless factor in lies pill popper sty,
you talk metaphors, I think you're into poetry
so you might be into listening to the white noise hssssss
ssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttchcccccchchhhhhhhwr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry you
feminismmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
of sound sense sound sense sense censor reason
seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 

 

Outrage in Australia!

OIA! publishing is seeking expressions of interest.
Submissions welcome.
Please send writing or pictures for the 2013 book about experiences  of psychiatrism, psychiatric abuse, or anything close to that theme.
Submissions for 2013 close June.
Send to your work to notachemicalimbalance at gmail dot com.
Payment, if your work is published in this book, at this stage, will be with a free copy of the book.

Like OIA! on facebook

We are not crazy. We are not mad. We are outraged! And we do not want to be subject matter in future science experiments conducted via psychiatry, just because we have unusual coping mechanisms for grief, crisis, trauma etc.

Meeting psychiatry half way

Idealism. Who is going to have to cross the river? Not the protesters! Been there and done that after being abducted, drugged, threatened and brain-washed… Besides, they're boring over there, very little understanding of art and healing.

What should be happening to meet half way? People with lived-experience should be included in crisis-assessment and certainly there is a major right being violated when a person with lived-experience is not included on the Mental Health Review Board. (Which at the moment is utterly biased. Totally on psychiatry's side of the river.)

What? Does society actually think we're not capable? Recovery is more than just possible. It is something that would be happening more than it is, if we were not drugged and denied recovery. And, people with lived-experience are generally more understanding of others in crisis who are experiencing an altered state of consciousness, because they've been through something similar themselves. People with lived-experience have a vastly better understanding of coping mechanisms, and, I know it would've calmed me down immensely, when I was in a crisis state, to know there was someone who was meeting me on my side of the river.

What does DSM stand for?

Diagnostic Statistical Manual of psychiatry’s disorder

It’s a…

Disastrously Stupid Manuscript,

Drop Sentence Mistake,

Drug Selling Masturbate,

Damn Shit Milker,

Deadly Shock Murderer,

Deviously Stealing Monies.

With…

Denting Synopsis Mildew

By…

Dopey Snobbish Mugs

Distancing So Much.

Used by…

Disgusting Sexist Manipulators,

Damaging Salacious Misogynists

With…

Derogatory Sadistic Machination.

So…

Do Sue Medicine’s

Doctored Senseless Manoeuvres

Diminish Several Men

Because of their…

Damaging Sickening Mandates’,

Depressing Soporific Medications

That...

Debilitate So Much.

We must…

Ditch Stupid Muck

That has…

Deluded Society’s Many.

And…

Imagine – the DSM VI with 7 billion plus pages… all blank, reinforcing the understanding that thinking is individual and everyone’s life has unique constructs. With a sentence on the last page: Listen to your client and stop judging them, lest they judge you!

 Please sign our petition to stop psychiatric abuse

 

Oh, and am really liking the Whitaker website Mad in America, with all its contributors, including this one. http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/02/dsm-5-how-the-emperr-got-his-clothes/

 (NB: If you get too angry about the memories of torture and incomprehensible injustice of it all, create some protest art or a book. That’s what I do to feel like I’m doing something to stop the monster. And remember, change is in the air. It is happening. Civil rights are occurring!)

The Stables Studio: the end of a decade of rehabilitation

For around a decade I went to a place called The Stables Studio. This never received government funding, but Prahran Mission (Uniting Care) sponsored it.

It was a place where artists who had some kind of psychiatric diagnosis could do art. No religious pushing. It was amazing. A decade ago, I had only just found out about Prahran Mission’s Second Story program, that ran rehabilitation, via Job Supply (who the clinic had recommended). I said I could possibly work doing framing and they said Second Story did a program in that, which is not offered anymore. I was thinking it might help the metaphorical framing I wanted to do too. So I went there, found I was okay, but not accurate enough to work in the industry. Then The Stables Studio started and I was asked if I wanted to join. It was different from all these other programs, there was no structure, artists were free to create what they wanted and there was space to have an annual solo exhibition. But you had to be interviewed, have a folio and ability to work on your own and a huge love of visual art.

            The Stables Studio, gave me enough space to create a six-foot by eight-foot canvas and a life-sized papier-mâché crocodile and so much more. I was inspired and I really needed to get the visions in my mind outside myself.

Every year there, I thematically changed my approach to art. Highlights were my found objects exhibition that allowed me to express the way I linked things together in my mind and an abstract exhibition called, ‘But, what is it?’ I also got to do an intense recycling project called, ‘Containers’. For a whole year I threw nothing in the rubbish. All my paint water was put into papier-mâché and any dried left over paint was peeled and attached to some object I was making. My dead television got gutted and recycled into many things. Cunningham Dax bought one of these ‘Containers’ projects. Other things I made got bought as well, but I have many works still in storage.

            I was given a sketch pad at one stage when I first joined and I then began sketching all the time, relieving myself of unwanted emotions by putting them into spontaneous images. I dubbed this ‘The Automatic Hand’. It was a type of drawing where I had no idea what was going to happen on the page, but I trusted my intuition so much my hand tapped into my visual part of my mind and came up with the wild image conglomeration associated with the emotion.

            The people who worked in the office and organising things were fantastic, empathetic, but often over worked. They were all amazing artists, some of which had a history in creating iconic Australian sculptures and sold-out exhibitions.

            I got to do my first protest against psychiatric practices in an exhibition called, ‘Crowds and characters’.

And then there were life-drawing sessions…

But this year I felt I needed to move on. I hadn’t fully recovered my visual part of the brain from the bombardment of psychiatric chemicals, but my partner was encouraging me to paint landscapes with him and I was studying art therapy… I felt I didn’t need to be in rehabilitation anymore. And that urge that I had for ten years of going to a space daily to paint had dwindled.

Over the years the Stables Studio has moved three times. It was originally in an old dairy in one of Prahran’s side streets, that’s where it got its name, ‘The Stables’. Then it moved to a warehouse in South Yarra. This was the best place and individual spaces were built. But then due to costs of the warehouse, the studio moved again, to a church in Burke Road Malvern. It will continue to be there for the rest of this year, but after that, next year,  the whole project is being sized down to a small room at the back of Prahran Mission in Chapel Street.

I went to the Prahran Mission’s annual exhibition at Chapel Off Chapel this year, 2012, and all the Stables artists seemed really in shock. I know I would be if I was still in that stage of my life where I really needed the human contact of other artists, encouragement to create and space to do so, while at the same time the freedom of an unstructured program. But it just wasn’t financially viable apparently.

The Victorian government has put in changes to the way funds are allocated for mental health rehabilitation programs. The participant gets to choose where the funding goes. That sounds all good in theory. But I’m worried that there may be a tendency for psychiatrists, who are in control of things like CTOs, to point out what programs the psychiatrically diagnosed have to do in order to get off the CTO. Psychiatrists are very good at coercive control. They’re also very good at promoting their pockets. This may mean people never get access to programs that help people to express themselves, gain confidence, learn what is an isn’t okay for ‘friends’ to do, and, via their own explorations in things like visual art, writing and music, that they might not really have a disease causing a chemical imbalance and might not have to live as a zombie the rest of their life, that there is hope and ways of becoming what you love.

Here's the link to the Stables Studio (they even have a picture of my 2010 exhibition, 'Crowds and Characters' in their chapel gallery space.) http://www.prahranmission.org.au/stables-art-studio.htm Please visit, I'm sure there are some fantastic artists selling up for bottom dollar prices now they don't have any space to store their art.