Oliver....the boy with a secret

Back in the day before there was something called 

''music therapy'' and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy,

I was hired by the head psychiatrist at a very large

''medical/hospital institution'' as a ''music therapist''.

There were a few reasons as to why she hired me: 

she was my best friend's mother, she knew me,

she knew that I was a passionate student of all things

music, and she also knew that I was very interested in 

psychology and mental health.

Whenever my friend's mother was available for a

chat I would take the opportunity to ask her about

all things soul, body and mind.

I can't remember when or why, but I remember asking 

Kerstin(her name) if music was ever used as a

kind of therapy to help troubled people.

Long story short: Kerstin was open to the idea

of using music as a language of communication

and tasked me to make a plan.

Some time later, I was hired as a sort of music teacher(there was

no such thing as a music therapist at that time) and was

given two hours a day with a number of

hand picked ''students'' chosen by general staff/nurses.

It only took me one day to discover that the ''students''

that had been chosen for me were the most difficult,

hard to handle and understand patients on the wards.

Let me give you a brief introduction to my students/pupils:

Theodora, a teenaged girl who never spoke a word but

was quick to laughter. She was never still but spent most

of her days riding her bicycle at full speed all through the grounds

of the institution while shrieking with laughter and delight.

Ben, a person labeled as a boy though born without

any genitals and obsessively fascinated with feces.

John, a middle-aged man who never spoke but found vomiting 

so exciting that he kept sticking his fingers down his throat

constantly and consequently kept throwing up.

Matteus, a young man who never spoke or even looked

 my way until the day when I played the ''New World Symphony''

 by Antonin Dvorak on the record player and he suddenly

and perfectly started to sing along with the melody.

Sugartop, a young boy who was born without a cranium

to house his brain. Due to the risk of injury he was confined

to stay in his bed and the reason he was called ''Sugartop''

he told me one day, was that his head ''looked'' like a sugartop.

Louie, a man born with Down's syndrome. A very strong,

determined and totally sex obsessed man. I was just a skinny

18 year old girl and no match for him so after some commotion

 I had to cease his lessons.

Oliver, a man in his 30's, wheelchair bound and

 afflicted with hydrocephalus(water on the brain).

From the moment I started my lessons with him he would

have a go at most of the instruments. There was something

 special about him although he never spoke. He would laugh,

grunt and make other kinds of sounds but he wouldn't use

his voice to speak. We connected through music and he

especially loved Janis Joplin. Janis would make him excited

and he would wave his arms in the air as if he was dancing 

and when he did, I would wave my arms in the air too.

Then one day something extraordinary happened.

He motioned for me to come close. I leaned in

close to his face and as I did so he whispered

to me:

 ''I can speak, I can even walk, I just don't

do it. You see, I have been here for so long that

it is my home. If they know that I can talk and walk,

they will send me away and I don't want that.

Here I have a safe home and people who look after

me, if they send me away I don't know what will

happen to me.

 I can think, I can speak, I can read,

I can walk and I feel a lot of things but it is my

secret to keep, so please don't tell anyone.''

Dumbfounded I looked at Oliver and then whispered

in his ear that I would never tell anyone.

And until this very moment, I have never told anyone.

What I experienced during my time as a music teacher

 at the Institution,

in hindsight I now realize may possibly make a good

script for a horror/suspense movie interspersed with

moments of hilarity.

There were times when I felt as if I was actually

in a movie because some of the experiences I had

were so bizarre and difficult to make sense out of

that I had to put them in the basket marked:

To deal with when I'm older and wiser.

 

Difficult as it was, with each of my students/pupils

there were moments when I watched something

awaken and come alive in them as we shared the magic

and wonder of music together.

''Music expresses that which cannot be said

and on which it is impossible to be silent.''

(Victor Hugo)

about the image: graphite on paper

title: ''Oliver''

But what is it supposed to be???!! Well, how does one paint emotions?

When I was asked to write a piece on the paintings

in the Rothko Chapel, I was at first quite

chuffed. I mean, the man painted amazing large

pieces of colourful and strangely thought

provoking ''colour field'' paintings.

I don't know what I had expected but from the

outside, the Chapel looked more like a bunker than

 a Chapel. Unassuming. Modest.

As I walked in to the gallery/chapel I was immediately

''touched'' by a wave of something, something

intangible, something that I can only describe

as ''non-specific emotions''.

Placed in the middle of the octagon shaped chapel

were simple wooden benches and on

the walls hung a number of different sized

and shaped unframed ''black'' canvases.

There were no spotlights, only a soft, diffused 

natural light from the skylight.

I did a quick walk around looking at the paintings

and then sat down on one of the benches.

I didn't get it. What was the deal???

Considering that Mark Rothko's use of expressive colours

 and space was what had attracted me to his work, 

I was puzzled as to what thoughts and emotions

 could have contributed to the making

of these huge black paintings.

I decided that I had to try and open my

mind wider, to try to stop all the biased chatter

swirling about loudly in my head and

just allow the paintings to ''speak'' to

me.

Slowly the chatter diminished in volume

and I felt a kind of stillness come over

me.

In the stillness I suddenly remembered

something Mark Rothko once said:

''A painting is not a picture of an

experience, but is the experience.

I'm interested only in expressing basic

human emotions.''

Emotions. The word reminded me of how

I felt when I came home with my freshly

acquired book of Mark's work.

It may seem ridiculous, but although the

paintings were not ''real'' but mere

photos of the paintings, each image I

looked at flooded me with emotions.

I decided to have another look at the paintings

in the chapel but this time, I was going to

allow my emotions to do the ''looking''.

While my eyes were gazing back and forth 

across one of the large black paintings,

I suddenly noticed that I was overwhelmed

with emotion and in that moment, the 

painting ceased to be black.

It became an experience.

Sometimes it can be hard to verbalize

our emotions and perhaps there may even

be emotions for which we don't even 

have words.

Standing there in the chapel,

filled with emotions I had no words for,

it dawned on me that perhaps this

was the very purpose of the chapel.

A non-denominational chapel/space for people

to visit for their very own

reasons:

 for reflection, meditation, prayer,

mourning, comfort, solitude, peace.....

to find themselves, to go beyond themselves.

When I finally walked out of the chapel

and into the sunlight I felt

as if I had traveled.

Traveled into, out of, and through....

Somewhere,

 I never before had traveled.

If you don't know who Mark Rothko is/was,

I recommend you to look him up.

Here's a little taste:

''Mark Rothko (1903-1970) belongs to the generation of American artists who completely revolutionized the essence and design of abstract painting. His stylistic evolution, from a figurative visual repertoire to an abstract style rooted in the active relationship of the observer to the painting, embodied the radical vision of a renaissance in painting. Rothko characterized this relationship as "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker. Nothing should stand between my painting and the viewer." His color formations indeed draw the observer into a space filled with an inner light. Rothko always resisted attempts to interpret his paintings. He was mainly concerned with the viewer's experience, the merging of work and recipient beyond verbal comprehension.'' 

 

(This is my feeble attempt at doing a colourfield

painting. It's just a small painting on paper.

And it's only to give a little clue to what it is.)

What is important to know about colourfield 

paintings is that they are REALLY hard to do.

They look easy but they are not.

It takes a deep understanding of how colours interact

 with each other and it involves numerous layers

of thin paints. 

But most of all, it's about painting something

intangible such as an emotion.

The above image is made on a pad just as an illustration

for the story.

I just imagined having visited the Rothko Chapel

in real life. Sadly, I have only visited it artificially.

If despair your way comes, ignore bumper-sticker solutions.........

 

The above image is a photo(edited in Elements) I shot 

of a very large sculpture. So large actually, that I was able to

 walk around inside of it.

(I'm not sure of what kind of metal the artist used to make the 

sculpture but my guess is

that it is made of some kind of treated bronze.)

 I guess I can now say with ''authority'' that I have actually 

been inside someone's/a ''head''?

Despair,

 I have noticed, is a word that when used

often seem to have the same effect as when someone 

yells: FIRE! 

In my opinion it is a loaded word, a ''dangerous'' word 

because I believe it connects us with very heavy emotions

that most of us prefer to avoid having anything to do with.

Despair, may I suggest, although not contagious

or visible, somehow still ''radiates'' something

that makes us feel uncomfortable in the

company of it.

Which is unfortunate because for a person who 

is experiencing despair and utter ''darkness'',

a kind gesture my be that little spark of hope

 that helps to turn the ''light'' back on.

As far as I can ascertain, despair is not something

that ''one falls into'', despair is the result of an accumulation

of a number of different emotional states experienced

over an x amount of time.

Although we may all deal with difficult/traumatic/challenging

 events in our own way and all have differing

points at which we may become overwhelmed,

I believe that there are some difficulties

that people experiencing despair have in common.

 

Such as:

Financial difficulties, chronic illnesses, loss of

any kind; a job, an animal, a beloved human, property,

relationship problems, workplace problems, to mention a few.

Like the lyrics of many a blues and country tune laments: 

''Feeling so down, all time blue,

 coz I lost my job, then my wife, 

and then my dog died too.''

Despair, although a very difficult emotional state

to go through, in my view is not something

a person can ''snap out of'', it's not the same

as being sad, miserable or ''negative'',

it is a very legitimate and valid emotional state.

Minimizing a person's emotions/feelings with

bumper sticker slogans like: don't be so negative,

look at the bright side, things could be worse,

at least you don't have.....etc. etc.

 rather than ''pep'' a person up often tends to

invalidate that person's emotions.

Two words come to mind that I believe

may be useful/helpful to offer someone

who is going through despair:

Support and Understanding.

Two acts that come to mind that I believe

may be useful/helpful to offer someone 

who is going through despair:

Listening and Compassion.

''Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope.

Despair is good.

Despair can be the nadir of one life

and the starting point of the ascent

into another,

better one.''

(Dean Koontz)

about the image: Photo, some editing

in Elements

Title: The face of Despair