I have an artshow opening at Austin's Coffee House in Orlando Florida from 6:30pm to 10pm on September 24th, there will be food and live music please come

I have an artshow opening at Austin's Coffee House from 6:30pm to 10pm on September 24th, ther will be food and live music please come

Always wanting to shine at that next art event or poetry reading has somewhat replaced an unhealthy addiction to alcohol, but has come to even overshadow at times the intrinsic value of the music, art or poetry itself. For me this need began early as an only child where I grew up in a small town spending inordinate amounts of time alone with only my imagination to keep me company. My dad who was in a blues band as well as owning his own business, and my mother who was a teenager when I was born, often went to shows and parties , drank excessively and ignored me.

I would build complex invisible worlds complete with heroes, villains, romance and victory. With my nose always in a book, eventually this world came to mean more to me than the real one. The archetypes of my biblical and literate upbringing began to superimpose over real people and events in my life. In time the stage and off it became indistinguishable, fiction and truth were one. It was one method of how I coped with being the “weird” one in high school, in my world I was not strange or unable to fit in, I was unique, creative super-human almost. It was during this time I sought earnestly to connect with the “unseen” force that brought all energy into being, otherwise known as “God”.

The problem is, when these two worlds could not be reconciled depression ensued, the idealistic self was brought down replaced by feelings of inadequacy, failure, and self-hatred.

From my studies in artist psychology, I have coined this: The Van Gogh syndrome.

Van Gogh as I have stated many times before while a talented artist, spent much of his life put down and ostracized by his own artistic community. There are innumerable tales of how Van Gogh was blacklisted, but this only spurned him in many cases to try harder, to paint more. He was penniless, lived off of his brother, and one by one all of his friends dumped him including Paul Gaughin.

From http://www.tracingvincent.com/biography

“Van Gogh rents the now famous Yellow House in Arles to start an artists' community. After two months his friend Paul Gauguin joins him in the Yellow House. Van Gogh and Gauguin have a remarkable friendship. They share each others poorness, happiness, sadness and frustrations. The befriended artists produce a lot of paintings together. Vincent paints the now world famous painting of The Sunflowers for his friend Gauguin. ....

Unfortunately Van Gogh starts to become ill, he experiences a psychotic episode in which he threatens Gauguin with a razor and then cuts of a piece of his own ear. In the next few months Van Gogh is hospitalized in Arles and Saint-Rémy. During his stay in these psychiatric hospitals he continues to paint. In 1890 Van Gogh leaves the hospital and moves to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris.He works hard there, he produces some of his best paintings, but he feels unsuccessful. On July 27 1890, Van Gogh shoots himself in the chest. Two days later he dies from his injuries. Vincent van Gogh is buried in Auvers”

By the end of his tragic life, reality could no longer support Van Gogh’s idealized image of himself, and so he was forced to commit suicide. But as it turned out his idealized concept of himself as an artist was correct and he was merely ahead of his time in the impressionistic movement. While he was alive he only sold one painting.

How hard it must have been for Van Gogh to keep painting while he was being labeled a loser, a no talent, a nobody. It’s easy to keep creating when you have a circle of fans fawning over you, feeding you a line that everything you do is brilliant. Conversely how hard it must be to think of new ideas when you haven’t sold a painting in a long time or booked a show in months. Which artist is more dedicated the one who works with praise or in the absence of it?

That’s when it hit me that I had an unhealthy relationship with my band? I guess when I felt like if I didn’t have a show coming up I would die. I went over to my bassist house, to cry and complain eternally about “the band”. I ignored my child who went in the backyard to pick flowers, and she had left his back door unlocked. After we left, a vagrant, who been squatting in the empty house next door tried to break into his house. Luckily no one was hurt, but it hit me my child could have been kidnapped or worse while she was in his backyard by herself. All while I was obsessed about the “show”. One of my only close friends left could have been robbed and killed and my daughter could have been abducted.

Because as my husband said “performing is more important to you than anything”

After rehearsal that night I really thought, sure I’m not drinking a bottle of wine every night now, but I’ve only upped my addiction to other things. Could this need to “prove” my idealized self almost hurt some of the people I care most about? If I had not had “band” on the brain, I wouldn’t have come over and woken up a man who had insomnia to begin with, or dragged my daughter there either. My friend posed a question to me “what is more important the music or the friendships?” I was not a musician so music was never that important to me, all art forms were a vehicle to “performance”.

I suppose what I fear most is that loss of the idealized self, the fear of every artist of succumbing to the dark side like Silvia Plath, Kurt Cobaine, Anne Sexton, and Jim Morrison. That quest for the elusive Idealized self, the artist’s personal connection with God and the infinite, when not achieved leads to a complete loss of identity. Is it that we ultimately displease the muses by our own vanity and wish ego-fulfillment and so we must be punished with madness?

Are we artists by our very natures, selfish people? We get the closest to God but then he disgusted by what he sees in our hearts, throws us back down to earth to think about it?

“what goes up must come down in this sorry town”, the Sex Pistols

For myself this has been an invaluable lesson, and I’m only glad that no one was hurt before I learned it.

In order for the idealized self to survive it must not be selfish, a true artist must be willing to suffer, must be willing to put others before themselves. Great art comes from great love and great sacrifice and an even greater understanding of what those things mean.

Maybe that’s why Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” is my favorite song.

In the final chapter Alex grows up and viddies that ultra violence really isn't all that horrowshow. He sees one of his old droogs content and married in a tea house. He becomes quite bored with the Korova milk bar drugs and the lifestyle of violence and indolence. In his pocket he has taken to carrying a picture of a baby and by the end (of the real book) he has decided to find a wife and get married and start a family. He decides he wants a life that has meaning and purpose other than merely getting fucked up and hurting people.

Of course this is after he recovers from the brainwashing put upon him at the prison. He goes back to the violent lifestyle because the life of ethical behavior and non-selfish thinking was forced upon him WITHOUT HIS FREE WILL. The primary discussion in A Clockwork Orange is about FREE WILL. One must CHOOSE the better path, not have it forced on him by THE STATE. One cannot be FORCED to be a better person one must by his FREE WILL and ability to LEARN, attempt that path. The idea of personal change and redemption was rejected by the American publishing houses, as it did not jibe with the juvenile American mindset they catered to.

Finally Alex experiences a sense of guilt and remorse for the crimes he committed in the past. For instance, he is ashamed and confused by the raping the wife who died, and the husband who tried to save him then kill him when he realizes Alex is the one who raped his wife. The old lady with the cats who he murders when robbing her house, the disappointment of his parents are all things he avoids thinking about. At last he realizes that part of his mistakes were that he was young and the young are someone ignorant of themselves in a way.

He realizes it isn't the brainwashing that made him feel this way but himself. At 18 he is growing up and seeing the world with new eyes. The state tried to force him to be good but the message is that only ALEX could master HIMSELF. Only when Alex decided HE was ready, would HE decide who HE wanted to be, free from any influence but himself.

By removing the final chapter Americans are asserting that violence was a permanent unalterable state and indeed that being a violent person was better than being anything else.

It also asserts that only the through forced brainwashing can criminals be changed.

The American publishing houses did a disservice to the author by eliminating the intrinsic message of the book itself. By removing the final chapter, they have denied the basic human nature of both GOOD and EVIL; and the possibility self-actualization.

Just keep in mind if you haven't read that final chapter the American publishing houses forced Anthony Burgess to remove, you haven't really read A Clockwork Orange at all.

(anyone who supports the forced truncated version of a Clockwork Orange because they do not like the real message, ultimately themselves supports censorship)

With Love,

Sandra Monday