Jeanette Winterson writes in praise of the crackup.
And I am reminded of a year-long project when it seemed imperative to celebrate the creativity born of madness. (Or the madness born of creativity?).
Sometimes madness must be justified. Sometimes - because every effort to weed it out has failed and it remains rooted, in my case, in the deep, dark ringed eyes of my mother who stared at me mournfully across the breakfast table whilst she feebly pushed a slice of toast around her plate - it must be celebrated.
For what else is there? It remained soggily in residence anyway, saturating her every sense and by cold, seeping association, mine too.
It's there. That's that. Acceptance is good, acceptance is a start. But often it isn't enough.
To seek some redeeming quality, some bright little spark, amongst the dead-weight indifference of Depression is essential to coping with it.
Putting Up With It.
And so, at some point in my life, when acceptance of Mum's illness was beginning to fray to complacency, when my reading about sick minds and what ails them had stalled and when my patience was at a low ebb, it seemed necessary to elevate tolerance to something akin to salutation.
Something like Counting Your Blessings.
And so I decided, one day in November 2003, to demonstrate - if only to myself - the proximity of madness to genius. Literature, I decided, should be the medium of explanation. Why? Why was it important to undertake a seemingly pointless task - after all the connection had been proven many times before? Because I needed to reassure myself that mental chaos was not objectionable. Because I needed to prove that mad doesn't equate with ‘bad'. Because I needed to substantiate an argument I was trying to describe: that dismissing those who live with the spectre of mental illness (one which presents its shadowy self in many guises: depression, bipolar, psychoses) is to reject the gifts that frequently come with it.
Because I needed something to do?
Whatever the reason, the excuse, when I was 38 (bittersweet irony: the age mum was when she first succumbed) I was overtaken by a passion to understand mum's illness better, to ask questions I had never asked before.
The first person I wrote to on a list I compiled of Those Who Have Written About Their Madness was Lewis Wolpert. His book - Malignant Sadness - was the first book Mum recommended I read about Depression; I felt as if somebody had taken me by my hand and led me so close to the experience of the illness I could feel the intimate chill of Its skin.
Over the next few months I contacted more than thirty writers. Some put me in touch with others; writers spreading the word. A literary chain reaction. But the celebrity of those I wrote to was not nearly - as time passed - as overwhelming as their incredible generosity or their honesty or their unswerving support. They told me their stories, they offered - tentatively and kindly - advice. We discussed the importance of a frank, unveiled ‘kitchen sink' approach to mental illness. One writer reminded me of the importance of courage, humour and ‘above all, irony'. I wondered (aloud, in the silence of an online discussion) whether those with whom I corresponded would forfeit their creativity, their literary talent, their genius in order to be relieved of the ‘madness'. 'Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death', said British Psychiatrist R D Laing. ‘Perhaps', replied one, ‘it is romantic to suggest all mad people are creative geniuses, but I doubt if there are any creative geniuses who are entirely balanced. Besides, it's a great comfort to all of us who are definitely on the verge of madness to believe we are harbouring creative genius, and we should not be denied that.'
We discussed, in the comforting, liberating anonymity of our cyberspace cocoon, that the phrase mental fragility should supplant that preferred by the experts: mental illness. Indeed. For perhaps without the fragility of her mind, My mother's intellect would not be as fine. Perhaps without her vulnerability she would be without her astonishing astuteness, her zest for the written word, her gentleness, her generosity, her compassion and her courage, her extraordinary wisdom, her enormous insight into the souls and psyches of others.
Perhaps you can't have everything.
Perhaps without the one flaw, the brilliant bits would not be as bold, would be blunted by a cloud of complacency, perhaps the cracks heighten her awareness of her world?
Perhaps I tell myself these things because it makes the difficult times easier to bear.
Perhaps that's the best I can do.
