I've been having what I think is some kind of unhealthy mental state which is hard for me to identify. My symptoms are not classic ocd symptoms (and I've had plenty of those in the past). The best way I can describe it is as a kind of over enthusiasm or being over sentimental about things. Just to give a few examples, I've lately been enthusiastic about digitizing old family photos. Recently I found an interesting bunch at my mom's that I've never seen or don’t remember seeing. It included skate photos of me and my brother, a few local newspaper articles that I was in which I hadn't seen since I was in middle school, etc. I stayed up until 2am making an Instagram post with all those photos and wrote a long sentimental commentary about the photos. I mentioned how I had given my mom a ride to the bank that day and how on the way back I asked if we could look into her house for old photos, etc. A few days later my wife read the post and had me immediately delete the commentary (at this point all my friends saw it), and instead just write ("photo archives"). She had been laughing hard at what I wrote, and I myself now am laughing about it.
Another example is how I've been wanting to write a bio (or make a documentary) of a man I used to know who owned a skatepark in the area in the early 90s who died in 2009. I'm not a professional filmer or anything and was doing this as a hobby . My goal was to gather as many photos as I can, interview people who knew him, etc. Some people met me with enthusiasm, and I've learned a lot of interesting things about him. Others have been reluctant to talk with me and may have thought that I am a bit eccentric. While it has been fun to work on, there has been this kind of feeling that it's something I must do, and that by telling his story (which is in a way a cautionary tale) I can help others.
I feel like it's kind of like a delusional feeling I have that this story can make such a big impact- everyone already knows from thousands of other examples the lessons from the story- his dad left for a younger woman, he ran away and started selling drugs, he succeeded in other aspects of his life like go cart racing and opening a skatepark, etc. In the end, when facing financial problems in 2009, he sadly slipped back into drugs and died of an overdose in his go-cart shop. Everyone already knows divorce can hurt kids, etc. Yet I feel this need to tell the story, and I've even lost lots of work hours doing it, as if the one in a million chance will come true that a significant number of people other than the people that knew him end up reading the story or watching the video.
Tomorrow will be the last somewhat warm day maybe for months, and I am taking the day off to film skate videos since it will be my last chance to do so. While in some ways this is a healthy choice, there is also a sense of compulsion here that I have to do a trick on film that will be inspiring to others. Over ambition might be the word- I have the ambition of a little kid, but my ambition makes me forget I have a 16 year old daughter and bills to pay, and at any moment I can injure myself on the board and not be able to skate again.
Does this sound like an unhealthy mentality? If so, does anyone know what this might be? What could be causing me to be like this? Sometimes I think it might be me trying to overcompensate for things in life I feel guilty about (which a couple of my other posts speak to). Or, it could be that I just feel like I'm getting older and am obsessively trying to accomplish whatever I can while I have energy. Maybe it's just I'm burnt out from my work. Or it could just be that I'm delusional and can't sit still and just be happy with a book or going for a walk or some other simple pleasure in life (which used to be sufficient for me at times).
The philosopher E.M. Cioran, who wrote, in The Trouble With Being Born, you should “live with as few desires as a solitary elephant” and “Love to be unknown”, which is said in the Imitation of Christ, is the only precept which makes us happy".
I wish I could live like that, but I find myself lately caught in attention seeking. I justify it by telling myself that I’m involved in art which is about inspiring others, but when it gets obsessive it only makes me look awkward and doesn’t give me anymore happiness than what I could get from doing something quietly by myself that no one will see.
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Quite honestly, I have no wish to be like a solitary elephant! Anyway, I think they live in groups. It's perfectly natural for us to want company, want attention (not too much) and to have desires.
It does sound as though once you get involved in a project it can rather take you over. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with that, as long as you leave room in your life for day-to-day tasks, relationships and other stuff.
Try not to overdo the sentimentality and the oversharing detail - it comes across as funny rather than touching for other people, as your wife pointed out! A few details of when and where about the photos is really enough.
Continue to work on your biography of the skatepark man if it interests you but don't pursue it as a cautionary tale, but simply a sympathetic but not over-sentimentalized project about a man who interests you. People don't really respond to cautionary tales - at least not if they're formulated as such.
Try to focus on doing things in a way that satisfies you, rather that on what might inspire others. Inspiration is a tricky thing, as each of us discovers it in our own individual way - setting out to inspire is likely to misfire.
Simple pleasures are all very well, but they include being creative. It's good that you have found your creative impulses. Each one of us has the desire to create. Most of us want to be noticed in some way. But the best way to get noticed is to do things that interest you, to your own satisfaction and to the best of your ability.
How about getting involved in a group, or a community project, if it's others' approval you crave? Or go about learning the techniques that will make what you do as good as possible?
Thanks for the great advice! I enjoyed reading you perspective.
A couple related ocd type questions: The man I’m doing the project on has some graphic details about his life. I am worried if I tell them it may trigger other people- especially people with drug addictions and could potentially cause them to relapse. He was respectable in the he started a skatepark that so many people benefitted from, but he also sold large quantities of drugs. If I keep the drugs out of the story I wont be telling the truth, but if I leave them in it may make some people who are sober want to go back to using/swlling- especially if they see someone who was so respected did it. Is this more ocd?
Another thing I obsess about (which will spumd silly as well), is I like the movie clockwork orange and wanted to use its theme song in a skate video. I worry that someone might then watch the movie and be inspired to do something violent since there is a lot of violence in the film (it’s not intended to promote violence, but some people could maybe still be wrongly influenced).
This sounds like OCD scrupulosity! The project about the skateboard man, if you are to tell his story honestly, should be a rounded picture of his life and activities. Like many people, he appears to have had great virtues and great faults, and it's possible to do justice to his virtues while detailing the wrong things he did.
Other people are responsible for their own actions, and if they choose to take drugs it isn't your fault. The story of a drug user isn't really likely to trigger someone to take drugs or relapse - on the contrary, though I don't think you should make his story a cautionary tale, the discussion of drug taking is part of the wider debate about drugs and could actually make someone think twice about taking drugs or going back to doing so.
As for the movie soundtrack, by all means use it (check for copyright in case you infringe it). From my memory, Beethoven was used quite a lot in it - and he's out of copyright and not likely to trigger violent impulses!
I do think movie makers have a responsibility not to promote unhealthy attitudes, but apart from extreme instances, it's difficult to police in a free society. I have concerns about a lot of porn, as from what I gather, most of it is about the degradation and abuse of women, and promotes unrealistic perceptions of what people's bodies (male as well as female) and sex should be like.
But a skateboarding film isn't likely to involve any of this! And many people won't recognize where the music comes from.
Clockwork Orange centers around a violent group youths in London (the movie is played by 20 years olds). The leader of the group loves Beethoven. The movie shows how multi-faceted people can be. It's not intended to promote violence, and has deep meanings. Nonetheless, some people misunderstood it to promote violece and actually went out and did violent things after watching it (I've heard that at least). Was the author, Anthony Burgess, wrong to have written a book that influenced crimes, even though it inspired others in positive ways? I don't know the answer and it's a complicated question for me.
I do think that people have to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame the films they watch or books they read etc. I've read a lot of literature, some of it extremely violent - Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote some extremely violent plays. That doesn't mean they're bad plays or that the authors were trying to incite others to commit violent acts - quite the contrary!
Romeo and Juliet is also about violent gangs. One has to ask: is a book or play or film a good piece of work? Is it well-written? Does it ask serious questions? Does it make us feel and think? (Not all great work has to - some is there just to make us laugh!)
Of course we're influenced by the things we watch or read. If that doesn't let writers and filmmakers off the hook of responsibility, then at the very least we need to take responsibility for how we are influenced. It's not good enough to say, 'That film made me do it'.
It is a complex question, and not just for you! There is a conscience inside each of us, and a capacity for reason. People have to take responsibility for how they behave towards others, but on the whole, not for how others behave.
On the other question - it does sound as though you're one of these people who immerse themselves wholly in anything they take an interest in. Some might call this 'obsessive'. It can be - but it's good to be enthused about a project, and if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well and being absorbed in something is pleasurable in itself. As long as you leave room for your family, your friends and other interests and duties, it's all right!
"Of course we're influenced by the things we watch or read. If that doesn't let writers and filmmakers off the hook of responsibility, then at the very least we need to take responsibility for how we are influenced."
Did you mean that when, for example, a writer includes violence in their writing, like in Shakespear's plays, the writer is not off the hook if it influences others to commit violence, even though the author did not have this as the goal of the story? Or did you mean the writer can't have their hands tied and not be able to write something creative just because someone else, who is not the writer's responsibility, may misunderstand their writing and do something bad?
I think that filmmakers, writers and artists must be free to create. That doesn't come without a certain amount of responsibility, but it doesn't absolve audiences and readers from responsibility either. It's not an 'either-or' - and there are checks and balances. Apart from anything else, there is law - there are laws against inciting racial hatred, for example.
Art involves exploring things, and trying to create art (I mean creative work generally) in order to point a moral generally backfires. Didactic art is rarely good art. Good art, on the other hand, may well point up contradictions and ask questions without giving answers. Artists may be constrained by rules, or use creative ruses to get around them, or just break the rules.
But readers and audiences are responsible for their own actions. It's no good censoring yourself in case someone takes it the wrong way. In any case, the likelihood is that the incentive to violence is already in them.
Consumers of art - readers and audiences - must decide for themselves how to interpret art and how to behave.
I'm going to give an example from my own experience. A book called The Little Red Schoolbook, originally published in Denmark, was translated into English and published, and promptly banned by the authorities as likely to 'deprave and corrupt' young people. Aged 12, I got hold of a copy of it and I and my friends read it avidly. The bulk of the book was about rebelling against the school system, which made me think hard about education. Chapters on sex and drugs dispelled myths and gave basic information without telling young people what to do. The section on drugs had a profound effect on me - it made me decide categorically against taking them. And I haven't. The intentions of the book were good and moral (though the authorities didn't think so) , and far from 'depraving and corrupting' me, it made me think.
Interesting ideas. I hadn't heard of The Little Red Schoolbook, but I just looked it up and read that Soren Hansen (or his publisher) was prosecuted for writing it! It looks like a unique book.
"I think that filmmakers, writers and artists must be free to create. That doesn't come without a certain amount of responsibility..."
Can you give an example of what it mean to come with responsibility? Did you just mean that artists must not break the law?
Not at all! Laws are needed, and on the whole it's best to stick within the law, but laws do occasionally need breaking if they're bad and oppressive. Responsibility is much broader and deeper and wider than merely obeying the law - and taking responsibility may mean breaking the law. For example, many South Africans deliberately broke and challenged the immoral and oppressive laws of apartheid, and without that, the injustice of apartheid would still be there.
I don't think art has to didactically point a moral to be morally sound. It often involves challenging all sorts of authority and breaking all sorts of rules. Or it can stick to conventional rules, but in a subversive way. Or it can just be beautiful.
This is such a huge question - and I can't answer it in a few paragraphs. I'm not sure I can answer it at all. It's for each of us to ask questions and muddle our way along the best we can. The best guide is, to my mind, one's conscience - but don't be over-scrupulous! And don't go thinking, 'Supposing someone knifes someone else because of my choice of music for a skateboarding film'.
On The Little Red Schoolbook - already a rebellious schoolgirl, it helped me to think seriously about the educational system, power, authority and the class system. And it kept me off drugs - not by telling me not to take them, but by giving me sound information and letting me make up my own mind. All this - from a book that was banned for being a corrupting influence. Authority needs questioning - one must ask who has it, how they came by it, what right do they have to it, how it is exercised.
Thanks- I know that this now is probably reassurance seeking, so after this I wont keep asking questions about the same theme! When you say artists must take responsibility my mind starts to think that you mean that they should not create anything that would inadvertently cause someone else to do something harmful. The essence of your post though is that artists can't be straight jacketed out of fear of what some ignorant person will do who misunderstands the art. So, I don't think you meant what my mind is thinking, but am not sure what else can be meant by "taking responsibility" lol. Please clarify. I appreciate all your help.
That's right - artists shouldn't be straitjacketed but that doesn't mean they haven't got a responsibility. But quite honestly, that responsibility is no different from the responsibility each of us has. And no one should claim that a work of art 'incited' them to do something wrong.
There's a story that Nazi soldiers broke into Pablo Picasso's studio, where he was at work on on 'Guernica', one of his greatest works of art, which is a response to the Nazi bombing of a Spanish town. Apparently they said, 'Is that your work?' He replied, 'No, that is your work.'
Rather of reversal of what you were initially saying - in other words, atrocities incited art, rather than art inciting atrocities.
Each one of us, whether we claim the name of 'artist' or not, must make decisions, choices and balance our duties, responsibilities and rights. Each of us has rights, and it can be a moral act to claim those rights, because in claiming rights for ourselves, we may be claiming them for others.
As Thomas Paine observed that 'My right as a man is also the right of another, and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.'
It's not always easy. For example, back in my 20s, I was seconded from the large office I worked in to be secretary to a project that had the intention of streamlining the organization. That meant that jobs could go. A close friend and fellow trade union member wanted me to pass on information to the union. I refused, and we had a big row about it. I felt guilty and torn - I had duties to my union and fellow workers, but also a duty to act fairly by my boss, whom I liked and who trusted me, though our political opinions were very different. I did not betray my boss, but I did ask to be moved back to the main office. Did I do the right thing? I don't know, but I did what I thought best.
So act in the way you think best, don't be over-scrupulous - being too scrupulous can paralyse you and stop you from doing much - and don't beat yourself up about what someone else might do by thinking it's your fault.
I've been enjoying this conversation - feel free to reply - but don't think that you need my reassurance or anyone else's!
Neat story about Picasso. It's true that catastrophic events and adversity can inspire art from what I've seen, and I wonder why that's the case (maybe it helps the artist cope).
I've been enjoying discussing these ideas with you as well. Thanks for all your help!
I think it's great that you are finding creative outlets that excite you and that you are enthusiastic about over a long period of time. Following through on creative thoughts is the most difficult part, and you are following through, which is impressive.
As far as the mania question goes, I think it's good that you are aware of feeling a bit more "up" than usual. You'll want to monitor that. I don't know if you're on meds, but sometimes the body can cycle into hypomanic or manic states from certain meds, or you could be having a hypomanic episode that's idiopathic. Keep track of how long you have been feeling this way, and if you have a therapist or psych doc, definitely mention this to them so they can be aware.
The most important thing is your sleep cycle. If you begin to lose sleep or not sleep at all, you may become truly manic. If you go without sleep for more than a few days, please see your psychiatrist. Mania without sleep can very easily turn into a psychotic episode. I don't mean to alarm you, but these are things to watch out for. Maybe mention to your spouse these hallmarks, especially if she hasn't had experiences with people who are manic. Many people don't realize how serious these episodes can be, and will simply urge the person to "get some sleep."
Alot of the questions you are asking yourself about the documentary are the same questions that all filmmakers wrestle with while they are shooting a film. Many of them you won't be able to answer until you get into the editing stage and then decide on the tone you want the film to take. It's quite usual to debate these questions with yourself and with fellow creatives. If there's a local filmmakers' group that meets, you might enjoy checking it out. You'll find lots of people going through the same cycle of questioning, etc. I'm sure there are online forums too where the ethics of documentary filmmaking are actively discussed.
Definitely don't let the OCD do a number on you with the questions about drug use. This issue is easily handled with cards at the beginning and end of a film warning of drug use and then giving the number for a helpline. So too with the music--you can use whatever you want as a temp sound track, but if you actually release the film, you'll need to pay to get the rights to use the recorded performances of any music. That's a long way down the road, so don't let it become an obstacle at this stage.
Thanks for your response. I hadn't before ever looked up any information about what mania actually is (it's just a term I heard), but just looked it up now. The example of many given on the health website is:
"For example, you could be extremely excited about an idea for a new healthy snack bar. You believe the snack could make you an instant millionaire but you’ve never cooked a single meal in your life, don’t know a thing about how to develop a business plan and have no money to start a business."
I can see elements of me in there lol. It's good to see an example like this from the side to put things I sometimes deal with in perspective.
I used to get so into ideas I would have and enthusiastic about pictures and things but it was more so when I was late teens early 20s before I was diagnosed with ocd. I would write them down never to be looked at again but i think its entirely an honest artistic thing you are trying to do. It's very easy to fall to our obsessive tendencies without realizing though. So if you find yourself fitting that category be careful. If you cant take your time or leave some stuff out on your Instagram for fear of not getting it all out there you might be having some issues. Could be a mania episode but it depends how you exactly are feeling and only you and you psychiatrist would know based on your history and what's normal for you. Best of luck!Rachel
Thanks Rachel! This makes sense. I did do some reading today on what mania is and it was helpful for me to see some examples and put things in perspective (see the snack bar idea from my response above).
Without knowing the details I couldn't say- even if I did know the details I don't know enough about mania to say. However, I think being aware that the condition exists and how it manifests may be useful to keep things in perspective for you.
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