Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Schizophrenic Artist / Schizophrenic


These videos are about mental illness. One depicts the work of a schizophrenic artist, the other, a schizophrenic. We as a society have benefitted greatly from those whose work has been fueled or inspired by their mental illness - artists are the first to come to mind, just to name a few- Gogol, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain - people we look up to and are inspired by. It can be easy sometimes to think of mental illness as a wonderful window onto another world where taxes, time and boredom don't exist. But reality can be a fragile thing, no mental disease I think illustrates this fact more than schizophrenia. It would be nice to romanticize mental illness and think of it as a vacation one can take and return from at will, but it isn't. The first video is pretty breath taking in my opinion, but the second is a sobering scene.

~Al

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