I went to this seminar/talk session last night about the role of art in mental health. It was rounding out this wonderful project that's part research, part artistic installation that had rolled a couple of months back. Basically, dancers trying to embody various afflictions like schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.
Anyway, this anthropologist said something that stuck in my head last night, he said,
Even people who seem out of it, for whom connection with the world seems to have severed, as long as they're still creating art, it means they're still reaching. Because when you make something, you're inviting an answer (whether an actual response or a reaction or impression known only to the individual, it doesn't matter). And as long as you're still reaching for that interaction with the world, it means you're not done with it. Even when you seem (both to yourself and others) lost.
I thought it was a wonderful thing to say, and beautifully in tune with the picture I'd chosen. See, there was this thing where they'd scattered pictures from the dance installation on the chairs inside the hall, and when you went it, they encouraged you to look around and sit where you resonate with the picture.
I like the idea that as long as you're still creating, still making things, making art, you're still holding space for dialogue with the rest of the world, even if you feel torn and alienated. I love that.
It made me think of many artists I love, many of them with tragic endings, alas. Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots I loved, but is hard to listen to because it seems to me that through so many of his songs he was just so desperate for someone to help him somehow. There's so much black-on-white warning in his music saying I can't hold it together, I'm going to disappear if someone doesn't save me. And he did.
And obviously, you can't "save" someone. I watched the film Beautiful Boy the other night and loved this quote,
I don't think you can save people."
"But you can be there for them, can't you?
In our attempts to "save" other people, we often take a brutish, military approach. Like we can physically pick them up and put them right side up again just like that. I think we get very frustrated when that doesn't work.
It's important to remember that even as they topple over, they're still reaching in their own way. And that saving someone sometimes isn't about putting them right side up at all.
