A fragment of the condition

My earliest memory of schizophrenia is in Year 11, I was convinced I was a ghost or everyone around me were ghosts. Everywhere I walked and travelled, all around a shroud of thick blue mist. The mist had a very high chroma, and even covered my body and face. The night before this began, I was drinking strong "short blacks" at a coffee shop on Norton Street. When I couldn't get to sleep, I gazed up at the stars, a few of them became joined up in lines and started spinning around. I was aware then of travelling very fast back through time, even into my genetic memory to encounter, apparently an ancient star gazer from atlantis. Even now when I see a similar shade of blue, I have resonances with the "Atlantian current".

This is just a small example of a type of delusional experience that characterizes my form of schizophrenia, it has taken me 15 years to find the right mixture of medications before things have begun to settle down.

What is it for,why has it happened to me,is it fair? These are essential questions we all ask. For me art making/writing has been a way to recovery, at least in part,and I believe these questions and dialogue are in a small way, a universal song. A love song if you will,that takes us all on a journey,towards identity or death. Sometimes I think I can hear its music, ultimatately sad, but always about the human condition. What we are,why are we here,does the universe really care? Sometimes the answer is not always - "Yes". But today it is, yes, today, yes, yes. At least a fragment of the condition.

A song I will be unable to forget, a song which makes me feel very very heavy.

David Gluskie