The music and mental illness thread

I wrote this coming out/theme exploration piece a couple weeks ago

http://www.citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=17927

Wonder if this resonates with folks here, the literalization of music saving yer mental ass. So to speak.

I liked your article. The part about moods hanging around longer for MI people seemed like something everyone who wants to understand MI should know.
The fact that you mentioned the super-distorted guitar clearing the graininess in your life (a really good thing to put in your article) makes me wonder if that's why I like a lot of distorted music myself. I remember describing a few of the songs on Jim Guthrie's Thousand Songs to a friend of mine before. I tried to explain to him how the music really resonates because the anxiety in the melody/sound (I have anxiety issues btw). He had no idea what I was talking about. Furthermore I explained to him how appalling EMO music is. I also mentioned all those nasaly rock singers that are popular today and how their voice alone is a major turnoff for me. Why does this music turn me off? It's hard to put a finger on it but besides this kind of music being bland (albeit hard rock) the emotion portrayed by the singer comes off as fake and overbearing perhaps.

Now back to your article. What was I going to mention? Distorted guitar, check, prolonged mood, check, hmmmm, the article had a good ending, although nothing that blasts your pants off... but how could it? The soloist comparison comes to my mind. Oh yeah, now I remember what I was going to say... I take seroquel too after a suicidal stint which led me to being diagnosed as schizophrenic by a croc of a doctor. That diagnosis never stayed around but the seroquel did. I still take it 7 years later. The path to recovery, or the perfect combination of medicines is annoying and lengthy, I can contest to that. Also, as you mentioned, no one ever really finds a perfect combination. I have a couple stories about friends who don't understand MI and have seriously ticked me off when they downplayed it as much as they did. I for one do my best to never mention my MI since it's nothing most people need to know about and because I tend to convince myself it's not so bad anyways (a relief mechanism...)

If I document my preference in music over the years in relation to how my MI has effected my life (along with how I have matured, coped, and changed my life perspectives), then maybe I would see some sort of mental/medical rationality in my music choices which are mainly prog rock, really good twee, post rock/math rock, and "perfect mix cds". I have taste in other types of music as well but it doesn't seem relevant to my recovery/"coming of age" timeline.

I'm not going to proofread this post so any typos or things that don't seem clear are going to have to just be there. I don't like to proofread all the time.

The focus and mastery of a musical action, say improvising variations on the melody of "If You Want to Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life" on an unplugged electric, can be as good as a klonopin to my nerves.

I remember telling a kind in 4th or 5th grade that "If You Want to Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life" meant a lot to me. Years later I would never admit that because players don't like ugly chicks. Today I am still somewhat superficial about looks - there are leagues that people stay in (I know, I'm a bastard right). But I am in no way superficial about mental illnesses (you have one - I don't care, I only want to help). And I still hit on some ugly girls sometimes so I guess I'm not all that bad.

*kind = *kid

Fantastic article. Truly moving.

x-post
yeah, that was some weird random song to mention, I guess the theme of the article made the connection, and it fit. (not the girl stuff).
It's a melody that lends itself to finger picking with the bass line and chorus. So I grabbed my guitar.

noodling is calming.

yes, and I liked the article.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that my fave genres are all metal in some way--especially post-metal and doom, which I don't experience as gloomy--I mean, I know it's supposed to be all sad and shit but for me it like comfort food, those huge, rolling waves of down-tuned distortion are kind of klonopin-y in effect.

There was a bit of 'news' in the piece--when the doc and I are talking and we realize the safety of music allowing us to go to the scary places--which could be any 'where'--with a cushion of the known. You see this in endless instances such as that in The Soloist and, uh, me.

would you say you often feel rage or at least dark like metal music?

the dopamine connection is interesting to me. i constantly use music to deal with depression and maybe that's why.

What I often deal with is a lot of powerful, directionless energy that can work against me.

So listening to, say, Gojira, Meshuggah or Krisium, I'm not hearing the anger as anger really, I'm hearing that overwhelming energy; listening becomes both cathartic, sort of pays tribute to sundry demons, and give that energy a place to sort of dissipate.

Not sure if that makes sense, but it's sorta how it plays out in my head.

The dopamine thing is incredibly interesting and it's been studied in terms of jazz musicians hitting an improvisational peak in their music--their brains are pretty much flooded with dopamine.

aye aye i grey. And listening to this song by Jim Guthrie is occasionally perfect for me when I feel the need to hear the intense anxiety and incoherent noise that I have familiarized myself with. The next song, I feel at ease with the beautiful weirdness. The song after that touches the "annoyed juvenile delinquent" part of my soul. And the title song of the album became a gnashing but gentle melody that frees my mind.

also subtle hints of sadness or whatever in IDM can just blow my mind. but if they were any more than subtle I might not get that feeling at all because I never had the chance to be absorbed into the song in the first place.

There is a hint of a sort of melancholic resignation in the Autechre piece, isn't there?

yes, hints of melancholy in lots of the music I like (even some in that Jim Guthrie I posted).

This instrumental autechre track (sort of) sounds like (to me) what it must feel like to be a rape victim. The high pitched noise is brutally silenced and there is melancholy too.

Ok, enough of my posts for today. Goodnight and sweet blessings to y'all.

This subject seems almost too sacred to discuss.

Great initial article.

yep fantastic article

great article. i would like to see an expansion!

i use music constantly to ease the depression that has been present, in different incarnations of seriousness, since my mid-teenage years. what is interesting to me is that i now listen mostly to electronic music and dance music, with little-to-no lyrical content, and i've found that certain chords and intervals in these synth-drenched tracks are more comforting to me than others...even if they're stereotypically 'sad' chords or intervals.

for example, Ricardo Villalobos' "Dexter" still makes me cry sometimes, but mostly because it seems the absolute essence of sadness...admittedly, after therapy and much self-examination, i've realized that much of what has caused my serious depressive episodes has been deeply related to the idea of beauty, and beauty itself-- the darkness that comes with observation (aurally or visually or even physically) of something that seems too gorgeous to exist, being trapped in a cycle of 'beauty' and depression. daphne merkin, in her article on chronic depression in the new york times magazine this past sunday, refers to this as the 'sadness' that runs under things; " the fact that there is no way out of the reality of being you, a person who is forever noticing the grime on the bricks, the flaws in the friends." these observations always resulted in sadness and depression in me, but initially came as revelations of the beauty of the 'real' way of things.

the merkin article also shed light on something i've never understood about my most serious bout with depression, which was my obsessive reading of Yukio Mishima's life works. she refers to the "narcotic of reading," and this is what it was, in some ways-- i utilized the books, these sad-sad and utterly gorgeous books, as a sort of palliative, a reducer of my own suffering. music acts in the same way to me even now, when i'm doing relatively well in my emotional life.

anyway, thanks for sharing this with us.

What bummed me out while putting this together is how much stigma still, um, stigmatizes people.

Like, you can be seen sucking crack through a filthy glass dick and that's just rock n roll but god forbid you admit to having an anxiety disorder.

Whatever one thinks of Mike Doughty's music, the guy deserves bravery props for coming out on this. Same with Tiffany Lee Browne.

Indeed, much respect for these folks and thanks mr. grey for making me rethink the relationship between music and my own "deal" (sometimes i think music makes things worse for me, that it's a coping mechanism that i abuse greatly)

Thank you.

While I was putting this together, I posted at some extreme metal sites, asking about MI peoples' relationship to music.

Lots of the posters were teens. No hipster distancing. Very upfront about both the severity of their MI, and the ways metal helped them. What was interesting and really sweet in its guilessnes was how systematic their use of music to help their symptoms is.

Kids today know lots more about MI at the same time shit US 'healthcare' denies them what they need. So music becomes even more important, is the feeling I got.

(sorry about exotic syntax there)

So I'm helping to promote an event which will 'demystify mental illness via the medium of hip hop lyrics' (couple of American neuroscientists / rappers using Mobb Deep etc) and we need a catchy, punchy tagline for the posters and Facebook pages etc.

I'm thinking that ILM can help with this on a Friday afternoon...

Suggestions thus far include:

Mentally Ill Communication
Insane In The Brain
Beats, Rhymes, and Bipolar Disorder
Straight Outta Broadmoor

There's gotta be something punnable in Eminem's ouevre, or from Roots Manuva....

Help me ILM, you're my only hope.

How about "Hell On Earth"?

I like the way Ill Communication works in this context. Doesn't need 'Mentally' at all imo.

i'd just go with whatever songs you think of first. it doesn't seem like there's any potential to offend when it comes to something as trivial as mental health.

haha

Wash your face in my shrink.

Interesting piece in this month's The Wire about sound/mental health and the therapeutic benefits of making recordings at Langdon Hospital, South Devon.

(I realise that's a bit pointless without some kind of link but, anyway, like the idea of people in hospital having access to field recording equipment!)