Delusions

#2 Delusions of reference – A neutral environmental event is believed to have a special and personal meaning. For example, a person with schizophrenia might believe a billboard or a person on TV is sending a message meant specifically for them.

Ever since I can remember, I have had vivid dreams and nightmares.  When I was 11-12 I would have a dream at least once a week for a year where I was simply at a location talking to Alec Baldwin.  We would just sit and talk.  He would talk about his children, his wife, life, acting...whatever we wished!  I never had a crush on him, simply not my type, and we had never met in person.  But I swore it was really happening.  That I knew way too much detail about his life for not to be real.

When I first began to have the intense schizophrenic negative symptoms (around age 30-31), my main auditory voice Nathaniel, to be discussed in a later post, led me to a connection to Matthew Bellamy.

If you don't know Matt Bellamy, he's the lead singer, songwriter, guitar player for the band MUSE.  It was through their music that I first began to feel the intense feelings of connection through time and space to another whom I had never met.  I believed they were saying the things I had been thinking, delving into the spirituality that I had experienced, feeling the deepness of love and pain that I was feeling.  In short, Bellamy had been and was where I was!  We were unique souls on Battlefield Earth and somehow we were connected through time and space.

This feeling is no more exemplified than in the lyrics of their song, Space Dementia.  There in lies complex emotions, hidden and secret depth that I believed to have been unique to my situation.  They lyrics are as follows (minus his vocal oohhs and mmms):

H8 - is the one for me
it gives me all I need
and helps me co-exist
with the chill

You make me sick
Because I adore you so
I love all the dirty tricks
And twisted games you play
on me

Space dementia in your eyes and
Peace will arise
And tear us apart
And make us meaningless again

You'll make us wanna die
I'd cut your name in my heart
We'll destroy this world for you
I know you want me to
Feel your pain

Space dementia in your eyes and
Peace will arise
And tear us apart
And make us meaningless again


All words, especially poetically created expressions of ideology, are up for interpretation.  That being said, I understand these words.  The concept is seemingly simple.  Space dementia is a hypothetical mental condition in popular science fiction astronauts are said to sometimes experience when they're in space.  And H8 is a term that both refers to NASA's supercomputer, and the eventual processors in our microcomputers.  Bellamy's explanation of the meaning of this song given in an interview: "Space Dementia is the term NASA Used for what happens if you're left out in space for a long time, because if you truly conceptualize the situation of being there and looking back at Earth, it can drive you mad, The song's about a person who's quite important in my life and who gives me space dementia when I look at them. It's about being intensely engrossed so that you become obsessive and almost nasty."

The story of schizophrenia is the story of the astronaut or of Icarus if you will.  You go beyond the borders of Earthly life.  You experience things you believe to be so big, so grand, so God-filled that looking back onto Earth makes you feel even further away.  You are never able to fully comprehend what you are experiencing because we are not provided with enough brains (microprocessors) to understand even a moment with God.  As we approach God, we become more isolated from others and less able to cope with what occurs in everyday life.  A peace washes over us, and individuality is lost.  We will do anything for this love, and begin to see signs everywhere that God is present and ready to interfere with our daily life.  Eventually you are alone.  A satellite, a mirrored globe to reflect the light of God and to have his name imprinted into our hearts, his love burned onto our souls.

This song isn't about Bellamy looking into the eyes of someone Earthly "important in his life" that causes him to become so engrossed, obsessive, and nasty.  It is about traveling through the dark night of the soul through all trials and tribulations to the edge of the precipice and looking into the face of God hoping not to be burned or blinded by the deadly flames of immortality in the near impossible hope of gaining a shred of the understanding of "who am I and why am I here?"

And I knew this.  Not because I know Bellamy in person, or anyone who knows him personally.  But because I had felt every syllable said and note played through my own experiences as a satellite in space.

I didn't believe he was talking to me personally, but a group of unique people that included me.  I believed he was experiencing the same things through thousands of miles of time and space as I was, and that because he was, that validated my experiences.  It even validated consciousness, and sometimes, God itself.

Bee Brain

Bee Brain

11"X14" Framed Acrylic painting on paper

Artist: ME!  Eli

Theme:  I didn't realize it at the time, but this is a self portrait.  My thoughts come quickly and buzz in my brain, working away, becoming obsessive until a new thought comes along or I've gone too far.  I am also concerned with what is inside.  This applies to all aspects of my life.  What's inside my body, what's inside that box, what's inside that liquid sitting on the counter?  I imagine the worst, and to me that's biological.  Some bees escape, and I am revealed.

Today's obsession:  Shaun/Shawn/Sean.  Shaun is a character in my life who I have been obsessed with for over a year now.  It's not so much that I want to be with him in any capacity, it's that he is the unique.  He came into my work as a customer.  6'5", tattooed, tethered to 2 metal walking canes, needing my help.  He tells me he was in a motorcycle accident, and lost his ability to walk due to a spinal chord injury.  I say, But you're walking?  and he says, It's a miracle.

Being schizophrenic has its advantages.  A miracle in my mind has the full impact that the word should imply.  People use the term loosely to describe a nearly impossible situation come true.  I think of it as divine intervention.  That God had chosen this man to walk because he needed him to be, or needed him to overcome gravity.

We talked.  About cars, art, life.  I helped him to his car, and nearly tripped while going out the door.  Despite his inability to help, he asked if I was ok.  He genuinely was concerned over my well being, and stated that he could always get new stuff if ruined, but I was not replaceable.  While at his 1960s black mustang we talked more, and he gave me my first tip in my line of work.

That time I thought about him every day for about 3 weeks.  I wished and willed him to come back in.  Just one more moment.  The bees were busy and I was ready with the honey that would flow if I could just have the chance to see him one more time.

It was 6-7 months before he came in again needing help.  I had mentally moved on to more unobtainable obsessions, and was caught by surprise by his presence.  He was stronger, needing less assistance with walking, and had moved on to a simple cane.  He was as beautiful as I remembered him being.  I was flustered, giddy...manic.  I helped him, we talked about life, and he even stated that "I enjoy spending time with you."  I even met his mother who was visiting!  It took me 30 minutes to get to a point where I could talk without the manic button being pushed.  I prattled on with the next customer telling them that I had such a crush on that man, that man who was just here.  You couldn't miss him.

This time it took me 3 months before I awoke not thinking about him.  Again wishing and willing him to just call, need my help, just want to see me as much as I want to see him.  It has again been 6-7  months since his last visit, and today I am wanting him just as palpably as I did the day after.  I am obsessed.

ob·sess

 [uhb-ses]

verb (used with object)

1.

to dominate or preoccupy the thoughts, feelings, or desires of (a person); beset, trouble, or haunt persistently or abnormally: Suspicion obsessed him.

verb (used without object)

2.

to think about something unceasingly or persistently; dwell obsessively  upon something.

Why I believe I've gone insane

They say that if you think you've gone insane, then you are probably sane having had the thought to begin with.  But what if after 36 years of visions, voices, manic creativity, and flights of fancy that you believed to be "you" turned out to be what doctors are calling schizophrenia?  How would you have separated that which is your experience every moment, having known no other, from that which is termed sane reality?  This is my purgatory.

Having come to terms with my logic, having always been slightly off that of the average person, and seeing these things that I think and feel in the light of a chemical disease, I am not sure that I am a better person for it.  I have refused medication at this point, knowing that my functioning levels are high.  In this society where everything needs a scientific label, a categorization that allows us to deal with an idea through a further categorized system of language, I am reduced to a chemical process that causes patterns of thinking.  In olden times (not that I was there per se) the visionary was termed an artist, a dreamer, an eccentric.

When I first began telling people that I believe I may be schizophrenic,  the general consensus was that I was "ok."  That I was and have always been different, a melancholic artist who sees the world through different glasses.  I laughed, because even though their view was just as valid, even how I learned of my schizophrenia was by following one of my insane visionary trails down the rabbit hole!

I wanted to write a book about a serial killer who got away written from his point of view.  In my vision the killer is a paranoid schizophrenic whose particular paranoia centers around religious themes.  I study esoteric subjects, and had been reading Alexandro Jodorowsky's book on the Tarot. While describing The Hermit, I came to realize that the energy behind the image had parallels to the story of the temptation of Saint Anthony.  A man, who believes he is touched by God or entrusted with something sacred, must hide in the wilderness away from those who wish to harm him or cause him to sin.  Whether real or delusional, the man believes this to the point of complete isolation.  I imagined this man in modern times, and realized that this is schizophrenia.  I have a friend who has been officially diagnosed, and have worked with low functioning schizophrenics briefly in a work capacity.  I began researching the specific visions and delusions through reading books and articles about schizophrenia in order to build up my characters profile and possible motives for my book.

And there, in proverbial black and white, was my schizophrenia.  All those thoughts and beliefs that I had held dear, those experiences that had enriched my life, and the battles with depression mixed with manic creative euphoria, were reduced to a word, an idea, a scientific certainty that can be "controlled."  I didn't know I needed controlling, but worse, I didn't ever want to know that I wasn't special.  I want to believe that I am unique, and yes, touched by God, in a way that allows me to glimpse a world most don't even dream about. 

They say that eventually if untreated that the odds are that I will  be hospitalized at least once in my lifetime for this "disease."  Before I am modified, I would like to share my world with you, even if just for a little while.  I am not a champion for changing hearts and minds about the negative perceptions of schizophrenics.  I am only an artist, a dreamer, and a visionary.