John Lennon, Richard Nixon, and Presentism in Our Discussion of Mental Illness
So I'm reading a new book about Richard Nixon and it's got me thinking about presentism in how we discuss Richard Nixon's mental illness(es), and, because I have Beatles brainrot, it's also got me thinking about whether this same mentality could affect how we talk about John.
Both Nixon and John's lives were heavily influenced by their lifelong battles with severe, persistent mental illness, but understanding the historical context of that battle and how it was fundamentally different from what a person might experience today seems to be largely ignored.
We tend to talk about Nixon in particular as if a) he or someone around him had identified that he was exhibiting symptoms of depression, paranoid delusions, and (most likely) psychosis, b) that he or someone around him understood these conditions as so-called "no fault" illnesses that could/should be treated, and c) that this treatment would have been effective.
In other words, we still understand Nixon's mental deterioration as if it had happened today.
Now, to be clear, a LOT of people in Nixon's inner circle described behavior that they personally found unsettling, and the Pentagon had stopped taking orders from the White House by the end of Nixon's presidency because they were so disturbed by his degree of disconnection from reality. So I'm not trying to argue that his condition went unnoticed -- rather, we can reasonably say that almost no one in Nixon's inner circle believed he was "normal."
(I mean, he literally screamed at God and had conversations with portraits of former presidents. It wasn't subtle.)
But the entire conceptualization of mental disorders as legitimate illnesses that can/should be treated was nowhere near as prevalent during Watergate as it is today. Even if the people around him recognized that Nixon was "acting crazy", it's not realistic to project our own ideas about mental illness onto them and assume that they conceptualized that behavior as an illness that Nixon could not control and had not chosen, believed that it was possible to treat that illness, or even had any desire to see that illness be treated.
(Incidentally, the only significant medical intervention in response to Nixon's illness was to start dosing him with anticonvulsants, resulting in significant memory loss.)
It's less clear whether Nixon himself was aware that he was losing touch with reality (my guess is "kinda"), but even if he did have insight into his mental condition he almost definitely didn't have deep familiarity with terms like "PTSD" and "psychotic break" that might help him understand what was happening to him. We can also assume that, if he did have some inkling of what was happening to him, he likely felt an even greater sense of self-hatred and revulsion at his own condition than a person might experience today.
I know there's still a huge stigma around "bad" mental illnesses, but I also know I'm incredibly lucky to have experienced a psychotic break in 2014 and not 1974. Mental hospitals were still sometimes referred to as "snake pits" because they were so horrible, and the average person did not consider someone with severe, persistent mental illness to have any future or hope whatsoever. I'm not a doctor, much less a doctor from the 70s, so I truly don't know what the prognosis for someone like Nixon would have been. But Nixon himself most likely would have believed it was very poor.
To put this another way, Nixon’s ability to have insight into his own illness was impaired by the lack of insight in the society in which he lived, and the way he processed his own experiences would have been more heavily rooted in confusion, shame, and hopelessness. Also, the degree to which we can hold Nixon to blame for failing to manage his mental illness and pursue effective treatment definitely isn't zero, but it's certainly not on par with what you could expect of a person today.
Now I'm absolutely NOT saying any of that to give Dick a free pass for the horrible things he did and said (any more than I think we should give John a free pass). Nixon was a monster in many ways. But I'd rather understand a monster within their actual context than within an imagined one.
TL;DR I think it's worthwhile to ask ourselves whether we're looking at one of the defining factors in Dick and John's lives through a distorted lens, and, if so, how that distorts our perception of them as human beings.
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suicide cw
look i have been in this area before mentally. it sucks and i wouldn’t wish this on anyone. but, and this is going to sound callous, but i don’t feel any sympathy for james somerton. even if i hope he’s like. not dead. But thats all the amount of goodwill im willing to give him. The more i think about this really, the more angry i am.
ngl this entire situation is another example of how white people weaponize their mental illness to avoid consequences. Im seeing it in real time.
this man has a continuous habit of using self-harm as a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. in both of his apologies, he has worded his supposed attempts in ways that were clearly meant to guilt people who displayed his plagiarism and overall horrendous history of racism and misogyny. i say supposed because, while i’m not saying those are lies and this would he such a fucked up thing to lie about that i don’t want to think he has, unfortunately, it’s been proven again and again that his word can’t be trusted, as he’s known to lie to try get out of consequences. Hes a proven liar. him lying about this is actually the best case scenario, because no one should go through this entire situation, wouldnt wish this on anyone, but you can only do this so often before people stop sympathizing with you. is this callous? Yeah, but like. I’m actually fucking angry he cant straight up take no as an answer. that this is how he reacts realizing he cant be one of the Cool Kidz™️ on youtube anymore. he acts like he DESERVES a career, like its not a privilege hes lost due to his own actions.
He lied about apologizing and forgiving people, he lied about giving the money to hbomberguy to give to ppl he ripped off (yknow, instead of doing it himself), he lied about the jessie gender situation and rewrote the narrative to make it so he isnt the bad guy, and hes the victim all along actually!
you can’t tell me that supposed last message of his isn’t meant to be a 13 reasons why esq attempt to deflect the blame “look i’m going to kill myself and it’s all YOUR PEOPLES FAULT for not letting me achieve my DREAM of being filmmaker IN PEACE!!! I just wanted Nick’s (the guy who I have thrown under the bus again and again) portfolio up!! Im just being a good friend dont you all FEEL BAD” he refuses to take ANY ACCOUNTABILITY of any of his actions and he IS STILL trying to shove the blame over to other people again.
it’s also pretty ironic people are like “uhhh well hbomber’s fans harassed him!!!” like hbomber outright told people NOT to HARASS JAMES!!! ALSO acting as if james doesn’t have a very real documented history of STRAIGHT UP sending his fans to harass and threaten smaller creators, more notably women, trans, and bipoc creators. especially after he’s stolen typically very personal anecdotes so he could profit from them. so why can he do it but the second people are like “hey this guys an actual piece of shit.” and he can’t handle it suddenly people are trying to white knight his shit? like no he doesn’t get that. he doesn’t get that at all just because he couldn’t handle the consequences of his actions.
what? were supposed to stay quiet about a man profiting off of other minorities because he wanted to be the spokesman for all gay people? people tried to solve this on a smaller, more private scales for YEARS and he kept doing it. it was clear that the giant public video was the ONLY way to get people to notice. HE WOULDVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH STEALING 87 FUCKING THOUSANDS WORTH OF DOLLARS. HE CANT HANDLE THE FACT HE CANT GET AWAY WITH IT.
am i supposed to feel bad for the guy who basically threatened a trans woman with the police? i don’t care what anyone says, it’s so fucking obvious that he threatened jessie by implying he was getting the police involved in their conflict. what am i supposed to act like that didn’t happen? are we supposed to pretend like he didn’t glorify nazi’s and outright said that gay people made up a good chunk of the nazis? That he didnt say america joined ww2 bc they were jealous of the NAZIS. WHAT WOULD POSSESS YOU TO FUCKING SAY THAT. but then? He gives women (not even women most of the time, he misgenders nonbinary ppl constantly) shit for writing mlm. are we supposed to act like he doesn’t straight-up sees himself superior and better than people of color and steals their works to put himself on a pedestal? Are we supposed to act like he didnt spit on our elders by saying “only the boring gays survived aids” like man! Fuck you! He BLANTANTLY MAKES UP HISTORY TO PUT HIMSELF ON A PEDESTAL!! HE ACTIVELY TRIED TO REWRITE LGBT HISTORY TO SUIT HIS FUCKED UP NARRATIVES!
yes this sucks ! no one deserves this but no one should be making him a martyr. Thats what he fucking WANTS! He wants to be immortalized as a victim!! (again, supposedly, it was reported hes alive but its not confirmed).
The shit he got isnt near the amount of fucking callous behavior hes done again and again. Again, to drill this point, EVEN IF HE DIDNT CALL THE POLICE HE THREATENED A TRANS WOMAN INTO THINKING HE DID!!! The fact he tried to use a head injury to justify years of the outright ghoulish shit fucking astounds me. Why the fuck did anyone in his life thought it was a good idea to let him TRY to come back. in the end, he had options. he didn’t need to try to make a comeback. HE DIDNT NEED TO FUCKING LIE OR IGNORE THE SHIT HE WAS CALLED OUT ON the reality is, he wanted to come back thinking he could shove it under the rug, was told that no dude, you’re not allowed to be a youtuber anymore. you’re done. you need to move on and went full nuclear. it’s not on anyone’s hands but his own. HES BEEN DOING THIS TO HIMSELF!! But nah man we cant call his shit out bc hell may or may not kill himself. Fuck the other minorities who have the same issues but worse and sometimes BECAUSE of him. This is going to SUCKKKK so bad when other ppl, specifically white gays, are going to weaponize this shit to get away with their stuff.
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been trying to figure out what exactly it is about aventurine that feels perhaps relatable, or what it is that makes me want to study him like a bug...
and camr to the thought that he's pretty pessimistic for am optimist...but also ob the other side of the same coin, he's optimiaric for a pessimist. kinda both at the same time,.or depending on the day or how you look at him maybe.
he's an optimist becuase he knows he's going to win. he always wins. he has always won his gambles. he knows it will happen again and again. his luck, or gift, or blessing, or whatever you want to call it ensures that. but he's also a pessimist becuase he knows that "win" also always comes with some kind of suffering for him. he wins all his gambles, but at what cost? a lot, actually. so is it really a win? he knows he will win, but he also knows he will be used, abused, sacrificed, broken, or in pain. he expects those to be a consequence of his winning luck, to the point of making sure it happens and becomes self-destructive because of it. he acts calmly like it's ok and is the outcome he wants and calls that a win because it's what he plans and expects. he bets on it and it happens.
but at the same time, he's slowly breaking and seems to want it to end. he tests the limits of his luck to see if it's a real "gift" or if it is all a coincidence and has an end. he probably wants to meet the end to end the pain and suffering, but knows his "luck" won't allow it. he wants to be against the luck and see if he can win. a whole contradiction it itself. his luck kept him alive so many times and continues to do so. it will always do so, unless perhaps his end is the goal. what if he bets on losing this time? bets in meeting his end? he needs to get lucky enough to achieve that goal. flip his lucky fate by turning his luck around, make his end the final lucky win.
but it seems like he either lost for once and didn't meet his end....maybe his luck truly does intend on keeping him alive...or he changed his mind in the end and got lucky enough to get out of meeting his end once again...
he's still a bit of an enigma to me and i'm not sure exactly what happened. but he's for sure a complex and amusing character (even if I still want to put him into a snow globe and shake it as hard as I can) and this whole penacony story is too complex for my soggy trashcan brain lmao but i'm enjoying the ride
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Alex Turner opens up about The Car, Arctic Monkeys' 20th anniversary album
The frontman of the British band that performs at Primavera Sound, in São Paulo, invests in more abstract lyrics in new album
Published October 16 2022, by Rodrigo Salem
Alex Turner is not satisfied with the lighting in the room chosen as the setting for our interview. It's a small, cozy hipster hotel in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of those above a cafe with tables occupied by young people at the computer, and no lines at cash registers that don't accept cash.
The frontman of Arctic Monkeys, the biggest rock band to come out of the UK in the last 20 years, flips the switches until he finds the perfect balance of light. "Is this okay for you?" he asks, but doesn't seem to care too much about the answer.
Turner likes to have complete control over his environment. "Where do you want to sit? This will be the best place, right?" he asks, coffee in hand, already standing in front of a small beige table below the lamp that insisted on not emanating the adequate light.
Shy to the point of never completing a full sentence, as if his mouth didn't keep up with his fast brain, Turner is acutely aware of his obsession with control and attention to detail, something that has only grown bigger in the last few years at the helm of the band. But the singer, guitarist and songwriter lived something different in the creation of The Car, the group's seventh album, which will be released worldwide this week.
After composing the piano demos alone for much of the pandemic, he was reunited with the rest of the band over the summer of last year, in a secluded house that was part of a 12th-century monastery in Suffolk, on the east coast of England.
"We hadn't done that since the first album. I had extra film rolls and I took my 16mm camera to film everything and keep myself busy during the recording. At first, I just wanted to record the memory, but it seemed to help in the work environment, because I stepped out of the process a bit and gave everyone more space," he says.
"James [Ford, record producer] was delighted, because I wasn't looking over his shoulder all the time and being a twat."
The musician's hobby as a filmmaker was not the only novelty in the three weeks of work in the makeshift studio, complete with a piano borrowed from a resident there and the technological arsenal brought in from London. The period was essential for Arctic Monkeys to remember that they are still a rock group formed by friends.
"We had a lot of laughs and watched the Euro Cup together. It was important to have that band energy again," says Turner, revealing that Body Paint, The Car's latest single, only took its final form because of this camaraderie. "The distorted guitar at the end just came about because I wanted to do that solo with them. It sounds obvious, but being together changes the dynamics of how I play."
Ironically, the album's main theme seems to circle around characters that don't seem to fit the environment they're in. In Body Paint itself, which wouldn't be out of place in one of George Martin's orchestrated productions for The Beatles, Turner sings that he's "keeping on [his] costume and calling it a writing tool."
Jet Skis On The Moat, played on a sultry guitar and with a broken rhythm reminiscent of U2's The Playboy Mansion, brings a Hollywood psychedelic mood—"jet skis on the moat / they filmed everything in CinemaScope, but this is the last time you will ride them, though".
"I was imagining this perception of us living like rock stars in a fantasy castle on a mountain, riding jet skis, disconnected from everything," says Turner.
In I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am, he seems to describe a strange trip on a luxury yacht off the coast of France, a country where he usually goes with his girlfriend, French singer Louise Verneuil, since he moved back to England from Los Angeles. "I spend less time here, but I love this city. It's where I have my friends," he says.
Extremely protective of his privacy, Alex Turner does not confirm any theories that could refer to his life beyond music. However, he admits that feeling like a fish out of water is one of the themes of the record. "I've definitely written this time about someone who doesn't fit in," he says as he pulls out of his green jacket two folded sheets of paper filled with his lyrics and assorted notes.
I question the reason for keeping this material around and the singer lets his guard down. "I think that this way I can have these conversations more easily, and stay on the same level as other people. You've read the lyrics, listened to the record, and I thought I should do the same to meet you in the middle," he says, soon bringing back up his good-humored defenses. "And it also serves to intimidate people."
Not that he seems to want to intimidate anyone. Turner can barely look up, more concerned with focusing on some object and finding the right words for his answers. Keeping the lyrics in your pocket serves to rediscover the words of the songs.
One of the most brilliant songwriters of modern British rock and someone who has managed to portray the yearnings and feelings of an entire millennial generation, he says his lyrics come out of the space between the conscious and the unconscious.
In The Car, they seem even more abstract. "I love leaving space for lyrics not to be fully understood and to become more interesting as the years go by. I like to explore things that are difficult to talk about."
Does that mean that Alex Turner, who, two decades ago, rehearsed in a garage with Jamie Cook on guitar, Andy Nicholson on bass, later replaced by Nick O'Malley, and Matt Helders on drums, in Sheffield, is finally noticing the inevitable passage of time?
"Funny, it's hard to accept that it's been 20 years," he says. "But we're alive and active. That happens a lot when I'm singing the old songs now. I remember something, not necessarily the lyrics, but the environment, a person and the sensations of the past."
A rich past, we must add. Arctic Monkeys have gone through several phases in these two decades. It began with the confessional hip-hop-enamored rock of the first two albums, a formula that propelled the group into the stratosphere of fame. It gained weight with the stoner rock of Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age on 2009's Humbug and the stadium hard rock of 2013's AM. And it culminated in the journey away from Earth in 2018's jazzy Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
The Car continues the sonic exploration of their previous work, but brings guitars back to the songs and a Turner interested in using his voice as an instrument. "I don't know if Alex from 20 years ago would like this sound," he wonders. "Secretly, I wanted something along those lines then, but it wasn't within my reach at the time. On second thought, I think he would like it. But if he wouldn't like it, then fuck it," he jokes.
He admits that he changed his way of looking at music and even composing. On previous albums, he wrote the lyrics and then thought of the melody. The music now comes first.
"I made an effort to put the lyrics in sync with a melody that gives me permission to use certain words," says the musician. "I didn't focus on that in the past, I think it started on AM, when I started to change the lyrics as I was influenced by the sound in the studio."
Back on stage since a few weeks ago, Turner believes the pandemic has changed the relationship between band and audience. "The first time we performed was powerful," he says. "There's a new energy that encourages me. I'm trying not to behave the same way on stage. I think some of that comes from the younger crowd."
Brazil is going to feel this in a few days. Arctic Monkeys closes the first day of Primavera Sound, in São Paulo, on November 5th, already oiling the show with a new repertoire. "When we arrive in Brazil, I want to test two new songs and leave some old ones behind," says the singer, who already says that the next album may come out faster than expected after the long gestation of The Car.
Unable to play shows, the group spent a year polishing up the album in post-production. "We had more time to work on the record and I like to think that this had a positive influence on the final result, as we had more space to hone, think and fight for certain ideas", says Turner. "I love the idea of doing something different, like writing, recording and releasing in a week. Maybe it's a fun idea for the next project."
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