Notes from a Drama Workshop ...

Poet and playwright Síomón Solomon 

 discussing his audio drama Hölderlin's Poltergeists 

at Queen Mary University of London (9 June 2023)

  

I.

 

Whilst attending a table read of selected scenes from Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2021) [1], I was struck by the idea that madness often manifests itself as the hearing of multiple voices, whereas, on the other hand, sane individuals are those who listen faithfully (and in compliance) to the voice of reason (or, as it is sometimes referred to, common sense). 

 

In other words, we might define insanity as a form of disobedience, i.e., an inability (or refusal) to turn towards (and heed) the sound of a unified voice (be it of man or God) which speaks the Truth (as an expression of moral logic), and sanity as a form logocentricity. 

 

This perhaps helps to explain why certain philosophers and artists are fascinated by madness and write in favour of polyvocality, straining their ears to hear multiple voices whispering in many alien tongues, where others like to discern but one voice speaking clearly in a comprehensible manner.       

 

 

II.

 

Academics interested in the history (or, perhaps better to say, histories) of mental ill-health are also keen these days to "place the voices of previously silent, marginalised and disenfranchised individuals at the heart of their analyses" [2] - to let the mad speak for themselves, as it were, and celebrate neurodiversity as just another form of queerness. 

 

Whether this is as productive (and as radical) as some believe, I don't know ...

 

For whilst I'm quite happy to reflect on strangeness and listen to psychotic voices - even to the howling of wolves, or the loud rumble of thunder - in order to grasp something of a reality that isn't exclusively defined by human reason, I'm not sure we can (or should) re-imagine our own identities on the delusions of a mad poet calling himself Scardanelli ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written several posts on Síomón Solomon's astonishing drama for voices, a work that is not merely a translation from the German of Stephan Hermlin's radio play, Scardanelli, but an extended remix. Click here to read a selection of such. 

      The table read took place at Queen Mary University of London, in Mile End, as part of a two-day arts and mental health event on the theme of queering boundaries: click here for details.  

 

[2] Those who are interested in this might like to take a look at Voices in the History of Madness, a collection of interdisciplinary essays ed. Robert Ellis, Sarah Kendal, and Steven J. Taylor, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). I quote here from the introduction to this work. 

      I would also encourage readers to check out the following article by Allan Beveridge, 'Voices of the mad: patients' letters from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1873-1908', in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 27, Issue 4, (Cambridge University Press, July 1997), pp. 899-908. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329179700490X 

Loony Tunes

Clockwise from top left: 

Haywire Mac / Napoleon XIV / Jaz Coleman / Siouxsie Sioux

 

 

There are almost as many songs about being mad or going insane as there are about falling in love; so many in fact, that attempting to compile a full and definitive list of such would probably drive you crazy. This, therefore, is simply a short post in which I discuss a few of my favourite songs on the subject. 

 

I'm not saying they're the best four songs ever recorded to do with madness, but they are the ones that have most struck a chord with me. Note that they're arranged by release date and not in order of preference.

 

 

'Aint We Crazy?' by Harry McClintock (aka Haywire Mac) (Victor, 1928): click here to play.

 

"Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / This is the way we pass the time away  

Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / We're going to sing this song all night today."

 

Malcolm McLaren dedicated his 1983 album Duck Rock to Haywire Mac and insisted that I get hold of Hallelujah! I'm a Bum, (Rounder Records, 1981), a remastered compilation of some of McClintock's greatest songs - including 'Ain't We Crazy?' and 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain', for which he is probably best remembered today [1].

 

'Ain't We Crazy?' is a type of nonsense song, in which the singer is the kind of anti-Socratic hero whom Roland Barthes celebrates; i.e., a figure who abolishes within himself all fear of being branded a madman via an amusing disregard for that old spectre: logical contradiction [2]:

 

It was midnight on the ocean, not a streetcar was in sight 

And the sun was shining brightly, for it rained all day that night 

'Twas a summer night in winter, and the rain was snowing fast

And a barefoot boy with shoes on stood a-sitting in the grass.

 

Such a man, as Barthes says, would be the mockery of our society, which subscribes to a psychology of consistency and says firmly that you can't have your cake and eat it. 

 

 

'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!', single by Napoleon XIV (Warner Bros. Records, 1966): click here to play.

 

"They're coming to take me away, ha-ha! / They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha! 

To the funny farm / Where life is beautiful all the time ..."

 

Written and performed by Jerry Samuels (aka Napoleon XIV), this curious record was an instant smash in the US and UK and I loved to sing it to amuse myself and entertain friends as a child [3].

 

However, I very much doubt it would be made, released, or played today, living as we are in an era that is far more sensitive to issues surrounding mental health. Indeed, even at the time several radio stations stopped playing the song in response to complaints about its content. Predictably, the BBC also refused to play the record.  

The joke reveal at the end of the song is that it is not a departed lover who has caused the song's narrator to lose his mind, but a runaway dog ... 

 

 

'Happy House', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, single release from the album Kaleidoscope (Polydor, 1980): click here to play.

 

"This is the happy house / We're happy here in the happy house [...] 

It's safe and calm if you sing along ..." 

 

I was never a big Banshees fan, but I used to love to hear this song on the radio back in the day and as it was a Top 20 hit - peaking at number 17 in the UK Singles Chart - one heard it fairly often.    

 

I assumed at the time that the title was a synonym for an insane asylum - like funny farm, or loony bin - but later read in an interview with Siouxsie - who wrote the song with Steve Severin [4] - that, actually, it refers to a conventional family setting; to home, sweet home and the madness that unfolds therein beneath the veneer of normality and domestic bliss. 

 

It's interesting to note that the follow-up single, 'Christine' (released in May 1980 and also taken from Kaleidoscope), again dealt with the theme of madness; the lyrics being inspired by the story of a woman who reportedly had 22 different (often conflicting) personalities [5] - which explains why she is referred to in the song as a banana split lady (i.e., it has nothing to do with her having a sweet tooth).

 

 

'Madness', by Killing Joke, track 6 on the album What's THIS For ...! (E. G. / Polydor Records, 1981): click here to play the 2005 digitally remastered version.  

 

"This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness ..." 

 

This track, despite the title, isn't actually about madness in general, but, rather, about Christianity as a very specific form of religious mania; the product of sick minds in which there is a need to believe in a dead God and life itself is interpreted as a sin. 

 

It is, if I'm honest, quite a challenging listen and will appeal only to a few. But then, as Nietzsche might say, to appreciate this track, the listener must be honest to the point of hardness so as to be able to endure the seriousness and intensity of Jaz Coleman's passion [6].

 

Th-th-th-th-that's all folks! [7]

Notes

 

[1] One of the very earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark - 5 May 2013 - was on Haywire Mac and his hobo vision of an earthly paradise (i.e., the Big Rock Candy Mountain): click here. 

 

[2] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1998), p. 3.

 

[3] The song was re-released in 1973, when I was ten-years-old, and that's probably when I remember it from - not 1966, when I was still singing nursery rhymes. However, I was a fan of at least one pop song released in that year; 'Yellow Submarine' by the Beatles.

 

[4] Guitarist John McGeoch (previously of Magazine) and drummer Budgie (previously of the Slits) also play no small part in creating the distinctive and atmospheric (post-punk) sound that makes this track so unforgettable.

 

[5] Christine Sizemore (née Costner) was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with what was then termed multiple personality disorder, but which is now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her case was depicted in the book The Three Faces of Eve (1957), written by her psychiatrists, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. The film of the that name, directed by Nunally Johnson and starring Joanne Woodward, was based on this work. Readers interested in hearing the track 'Christine', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, can click here. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing from Nietzsche's Preface to The Anti-Christ (1888).

 

[7] I have borrowed this closing phrase and title for the post from the animated short film series produced by Warner Bros. between the years 1930 and 1969, starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, et al. 

      Readers might be interested to know that the famous Loony Tunes theme was actually based on a crazy-sounding love song written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin entitled 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down': click here for the version by the American jazz pianist and bandleader Eddy Duchin, with Lew Sherwood on vocals. And for an additional treat, courtesy of Larry David, click here.

 

Ghost Variations: Notes on the Madness of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 

German Romantic composer, critic, and madman

In the season two episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Jacket' [1], George has a catchy tune from Les Misérables stuck in his head which he can't stop singing: Master of the house, doling out the charm / Ready with a handshake and an open palm ...

Jerry warns him that the ninteenth century composer Robert Schumann went mad after just a single note earwormed its way into his mind and he involuntarily heard it playing over and over again. Obviously, George doesn't find this story very reassuring - Oh that I really needed to hear! - but is it true?

The short answer is yes: Schumann did go insane and have to be institutionalised; and he did hear a persistent A-note at the end of his life as well as other increasingly disturbing auditory hallucinations.

Thus it was, for example, that on one cold winter's night in February 1854, the composer leapt from his bed and began feverishly attempting to set down a melody that he believed at first was being dictated by the very angels of heaven. By morning, however, he was convinced that what he actually heard were the hideous cries of demonic beasts.

Whatever the true source of his inspiration [2], the melody became the basis of the six piano variations - known today as the Geistervariationen - that were the last thing he wrote before his final crack-up. They thus occupy a unique (and somewhat disturbing) place in his body of work - as, indeed, in the history of classical music. 

On 27 February, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine. Rescued by a passing boat and taken home, he requested that he be admitted to an asylum for the insane. Here he remained until his death, aged 46, in the summer of 1856. During his confinement, although his friend Brahms had permission to visit, Schumann wasn't allowed to see his wife, Clara, until two days before his death.

The cause of his death - just like the cause of his madness [3] - is something that has been endlessly discussed ever since; was he schizophrenic or syphilitic? Did he have a bipolar disorder or were his neurological problems the result of a brain tumour of some kind? Was it pneumonia or mercury poisoning - mercury being a common treatment for syphilis at the time - which finally did him in?   

I suppose we'll never really know. But what we might do - and should do - is resist the urge of some commentators to regurgitate the romantic vomit and tired narratives regarding the genius and madness of artists ...

The view that creativity is rooted in or fatefully tied to madness is such bullshit. Artists may well think differently from most other people - that is to say, they may be neurologically divergent and able to experience the world from a wide array of queer perspectives (to delight in paradox, inconsistency, and even chaos), - but it's banal (and mistaken) to reduce this (or their heightened sensitivity) to mental illness.       

Ultimately, I return to Michel Foucault's conclusion in Madness and Civilization: the onset of madness marks the point at which creative work ends; a moment of abolition that dissolves the truth of the work of art [4].  

Notes

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Jacket' [S2/E3], dir. Tom Cherones, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, (first broadcast 6 February 1991). Click here to watch a clip from the episode on YouTube.

[2] Sadly, Schumann's mind had deteriorated to such a degree by this point, that he was unable to recognise that - far from being the work of angels, ghosts, or demons - the melody was in fact one of his own, written several months earlier.

[3] I'm taking Schumann's mental health issues - evident from a young age - as a given here, but, interestingly, there are critics such as John Worthen who vigorously challenge this idea. For Worthen the composer's tragic deterioration was rooted in a physical condition (syphilis) and was not a form of madness per se. See: Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (Yale University Press, 2007).

[4] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization trans. Richard Howard, (Vintage Books, 1988), p. 287.

Psychoceramics (Clinical Notes on Cranks and Crackpots)

We are the psycho-ceramics; 

the cracked pots of mankind.

A friend writes to complain about my use of the pejorative term crackpot:

"You use this tabloid-sounding term far too often as a lazy, rhetorical dismissal of people you don't sympathise with and whose views you frequently fail to understand. And, ultimately, isn't everyone's pot a bit damaged in some manner?"

To be fair, he might have a point; maybe I do use this term too often and maybe we do all have idiosyncrasies and mental health issues to deal with.

However, I borrowed the word crackpot from an Adam Ant song rather than the popular press, and I like to think it functions within my text as a specific critical and clinical term to refer to individuals who have an abnormal understanding of what constitutes factual evidence and thus enter into anomalous and sometimes sinister relationships with reality and what is generally accepted as the truth (e.g. the earth is a spherical object that orbits the sun).

Such individuals - often known as cranks as well as crackpots - are invariably people of faith; that is to say, they hold firm and fixed beliefs rather than ideas that are open to interrogation, thus rendering rational discourse impossible. Once they make their minds up on any given subject they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Thus the crazy often resemble broken records as well as cracked pots; endlessly repeating the same thing over and over, forever stuck in a groove.      

In 1992, American mathematical physicist John Baez came up with an amusing checklist, known as the Crackpot Index, that was designed to help identify cranky individuals and the way their minds (mal)function and I would encourage readers to check it out by clicking here.

Baez, like others who are interested in this condition, demonstrates that all crackpots share certain traits, characteristics, and obsessions. Perhaps the key feature is overestimating their own knowledge and ability, whilst underestimating (or dismissing entirely) that of leading experts.

Prone to paranoia as well as megalomania, crackpots also invariably subscribe to conspiracy theories and claim that their unorthodox views and revolutionary discoveries are being suppressed by mainstream science, big business, the government - or sometimes all three under the control of alien overlords. Or the Jews.  

And so, whilst I'm grateful to my friend for taking time to write, I think he should allow me my continued usage of the term crackpot and, further, I would suggest he investigates the work of Josiah S. Carberry, the leading authority in the field of psychoceramics.

For whilst I agree that it's pleasant and proper to be foolish once in a while, insanity marks a loss of conscious integrity and the point at which creativity terminates. And so, whilst a work of art or theory can reveal the presence of unreason, there are, technically, no mad scientists or mad poets.  


Note: the image above is of Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (dir. Miloš Forman, 1975); a film based on a novel of the same title by Ken Kesey (1962). The paraphrased line is from Pt. III, Ch. 2.  

On Lunacy

The Moon: lovely to look at but ineffective

Still, today - even in Parliament - there are people who subscribe in all seriousness to the so-called lunar effect. In other words, they believe there's a magical correlation between the Moon and human biology and behaviour. As above - so below, as those with a Hermetic leaning like to say ...

However, a considerable number of scientific studies have found no evidence to support this belief. Thus, despite the insistence of poets, occultists, filmmakers, and various lunatics, it seems that the light of the silvery Moon does not make some individuals go crazy and others become excessively hairy.

Nor does the Moon control menstruation in the same way it controls the tides and Camille Paglia's claim that a woman's body is "a sea acted upon by the month's lunar wave-motion", is laughable. For whilst it's true that women's bodies are (like men's bodies) mostly water, so is it also true the Moon only affects open bodies of water - not water contained in bodies (and even if this weren't the case, there'd be an issue of scale to consider).

So, sorry Camille, but moon, month and menses are not synonymous and do not refer to one and the same phenomenon. It's simply coincidental that the menstrual cycle in women and the lunar cycle are both 28-days in length - and, in fact, even that's not quite the case; for often the length of the former varies from woman to woman and month to month, whilst the length of a synodic period is actually a consistent 29.5 days.

If it's surprising to find Ms. Paglia perpetuating lunar mythology in relation to female sexuality having built her model of feminism upon biology and constantly stressing the importance of hormones, it's no surprise to discover D. H. Lawrence was a great exponent of such baloney, believing as he did that the Moon is "the mistress and mother of our watery bodies".

Lawrence also upheld the popular belief that the Moon is somehow intimately related to questions of madness and suicide, particularly with reference to modern individuals who have, he says, lost the Moon. For it is the Moon which governs our nervous consciousness and soothes us into serenity when we are mentally agitated or disturbed:

"Oh, the moon could soothe us and heal us like a cool great Artemis between her arms. But we have lost her, in our stupidity we ignore her, and angry she stares down on us and whips us with nervous whips."

Thus, according to Lawrence, it's the the angry Moon which is responsible for young lovers committing suicide; "they are driven mad by the poisoned arrows of Artemis: the Moon is against them: the Moon is fiercely against them. And oh, if the Moon is against you, oh, beware of the bitter night, especially the night of intoxication."

To be fair, even Lawrence knows that this sounds like nonsense. He insists, however, that's because we're idiots. If only we opened ourselves up once more to the cosmos, then we'd understand that the Moon is a not just a dead lump of rock with an iron core, but a "globe of dynamic substance, like radium or phosphorus, coagulated upon a vivid pole of energy" and that there exists "an eternal vital correspondence between our nerves and the Moon".

Break this relationship, says Lawrence - though I'm not sure how one might do so, anymore than one might counteract the pull of gravity simply by refusing to acknowledge its reality - and the Moon will have her revenge, like a cruel mistress.

The problem is that whilst Lawrence's lunacy sounds harmless enough, Quentin Meillassoux has shown how such correlationism has crept into and corrupted all post-Kantian philosophy making objects conform to mind - something, ironically, that Lawrence loathes and fights against elsewhere in his work.

Ultimately, it's not a question of wanting to disconnect or come out of touch with the universe; rather, it's about acknowledging the latter exists without us ...


See: 

D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

D. H. Lawrence Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980).

Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude, trans. Ray Brassier, (Continuum, 2008).

Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, (Yale University Press, 1990).