"The Catastrophe--Spalding Gray's brain injury" by Oliver Sacks

[Dr. Richard Grossman]

Hi everybody,

There’s a terrific/heart-breaking article in this week’s (4/27/2015) The New Yorker written by Oliver Sacks on Spalding Gray entitled:  “The Catrastrophe—Spalding Gray’s brain injury.”  The article looks at Gray’s brain injury from a car accident and how it affected his emotional health.  But also (especially for those like me with a family history of suicide), the article brings attention to the issue of the connection between genetics, psychopathology, and creativity (Robin Williams also comes to mind...).

Well worth a read, IMO.  (I believe The New Yorker has changed its policy such that non-subscribers can read individual articles…)

All comments are welcome!

Richard  

[lighter]

That was so sad, it takes the breath away.

It sounds alarm bells, Doc.

Lighter

[Dr. Richard Grossman]

Thanks for the read/response, Lighter.


For the most part, I don’t watch television (that’s a whole ‘nother topic!), but I happened to see Robin Williams doing standup comedy a year or so ago.  He was completely different from his old self—the emotional pain, which he used to cover up with all the zany, larger-than-life routines, was so apparent.  It was as if he had been stripped of all of his defenses, somehow revealing a completely alone, miniscule person.  On stage was the least likely place for such a person to be.   I told my wife that I was concerned that he was going to commit suicide, and it was not long after that he did.  So much of successful comedy (and creativity in general) comes from artists having unadulterated access to pain, the human condition stripped down to its bare essentials.  And those who have access are always at risk—particularly if the genes from a parent who committed suicide have been passed along.  I often think of the poet John Berryman in this regard.

And now, after Sack’s revealing article, Spalding Gray as well…

Richard

[Hopalong]

My gosh, Doc G. I can relate to this.

I saw Anne Sexton read very shortly before her suicide, and after that
reading I had a deep kind of "massive anxiety attack" in which I had
visions of suicide but felt no intent toward it at all. I told the old poet who
 ran the grad program about it the next day, because I was worried I was going mad.

She killed herself a few days later and he called me in to say, "Dear girl,
you are not crazy. You had a premonitory experience, that is all."

I think her intent conveyed to me so powerfully through her expression,
body language, or something ephemeral. I sat closely in front of her and
felt extremely open to her, as I were unfiltered emotionally, in a way. Afterward
when I met her I remember pressing a poem into her hand and saying kind
of urgently, "Take care of yourself, please take care." Which felt odd.

So I trust and believe that you felt the signals coming from Williams as his
intent was building within him.

What a horrible loss. (He was my favorite comedian, I could relate to both
his manic side and his pain, I think.)

Hops

[Dr. Richard Grossman]

Hi Hops,

Yes, caretakers of the world like you and I often have this curse!   We see through the last layers of protection and then feel surprised that no one else worries about others as we do.  But the best artists must have a limited amount of protection around them, or else they would not directly perceive the suffering that goes into both humor and drama.  Forest Hills Cemetery, where Anne Sexton is buried, is one of my favorite places to take Beau, my Golden Retriever.  We stop by the graves of Anne, and E.E. Cummings, and Eugene O’Neill—and then Beau goes for a swim in the pond as both of us, in our own way, enjoy the peace, quiet, and beauty of the solemn surroundings.

Richard

[Hopalong]

And thank god for our "Beaus" -- who can sense our pain just as vividly (likely moreso)
as empaths sense others'.

You remind me about the comfort of nature. I need to get out in it more.

thanks,

Hops

[ann3]

Thanks for the article, Dr. G.
I loved Spalding Gray, he was such an original artist.  His insights were so acute.

Sometimes, I think it's better to not have acute insight, better to be obtuse & feel/see less.  Better to be less sensitive.  IDK. 

[Dr. Richard Grossman]

Hi ann3,

Sometimes, I think it's better to not have acute insight, better to be obtuse & feel/see less.  Better to be less sensitive.  IDK. 

Yes, in our generation many have moved from “The unexamined life is not worth living” (attributed to Socrates) to “the examined life is no picnic”  (Fulghum).  Certainly easier not to look!  But some of us are unable to close our eyes…

Take Oliver Sacks, for example.  While I suspect Sacks’ figurative eyes have both been open all his life (his literal eyes are another story…), he has led a very difficult life, marked for much of it by aloneness.  He recently published an autobiography, On the Move: A Life, which is likely his last book.   From Wikipedia  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks):

“Sacks has never married, and has lived alone for most of his life.  He has declined to share details from his personal life, other than a relationship, since 2008, with the writer Billy Hayes, but he acknowledged in a 2001 interview that severe shyness—which he described as "a disease"—had been a lifelong impediment to his personal interactions. He addressed his homosexuality for the first time in his 2015 autobiography On the Move: A Life.
Sacks swims almost every day and has done so for decades, especially when he lived in the City Island section of the Bronx. He discussed his work and his personal health problems in 28 June 2011 BBC documentary Imagine. He has written about a near-fatal accident he had at age 41, a year after the publication of Awakenings, when he fell and broke his leg while mountaineering alone.
Sacks has waged a lifelong battle with prosopagnosia, known popularly as "face blindness", which he discussed at length in a 2010 New Yorker piece. In 2010 he addressed the loss of his stereoscopic vision due to treatment, nine years earlier, for an ocular melanoma in his right eye, then expanded on it in a book, The Mind's Eye, published in October 2010. In a February 2015 New York Times op-ed piece, Sacks announced that widespread metastases from the ocular tumor had been discovered. Measuring his anticipated remaining time in "months," he expressed his intent to "live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can." He added, "I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight."

Richard

[BonesMS]

In a sense. Oliver Sacks almost sounds like an Aspie.