Kanye West's new 2018 album

Any number of causes I suspect? An increased amount of quacks beating a path to their door, many of which probably inhabit the “candy man” category, and any doctor who tries too hard to hammer home a need for difficult behavioral change can be easily replaced by buying a new doctor.

The Janus face of what poor folks deal with, in some ways.

The fact that typical treatments for bipolar disorder completely fuck with your creative abilities, too. Many musicians I know who've been diagnosed bipolar 2 have gone off their meds after a year of sanity and turned into raging "THE DOCTOR WAS WRONG LOL" people with intense manic episodes

The fact that the dynamics surrounding "being a famous musician" mean such workplace perils as "if the traffic is bad or there's a technical SNAFU and you're three hours late to where you're supposed to be, ten thousand people will upend all the portapotties on site and spray paint FUCK KANYE everywhere and the internet will follow suit"

The fact that being a successful creative essentially involves breaking-a-mold, or at least improving upon it, and makes one resistant to therapy

Not to mention that if you're that successful, you're probably smart, smarter than most therapists that might be around to help you

And that one of the most successful forms of treatment is mindfulness meditation, which is rooted in accepting your failures and being OK with mistakes, which.. isn't really the case when you're in the public eye and millions of fans and the entire staff of Live Nations needs you to not fuck up at any time, or you might face legal action

And that the primary goal of a famous musician is to inspire, and there's nothing particularly inspiring about your fave being depressed, so the situation fuels itself

idk

Every musician over 25 I know cries every time I see them and tells me they're feeling suicidal, I don't know what to tell you

if you're that successful, you're probably smart

can we not

you need to meet some different musicians

I would prefer to continue knowing the musicians I know and doing my best to support them

Eeeeh what you describe seems to be very close to a certain kind of mental health stigma, Goon. One of which is to treat mental health experts as quacks when really you should see it the same way you would a surgeon for a necessary treatment. Sure some of them are not good at their job but really the solution to that is to try to find a better expert, not believe you can possibly have the knowledge and wisdom of a professional with 15+ years experience. The other is to believe that your job comes with a special amount of pressure that other people wouldn't possibly understand when really welcome to the 21st century we are all pressured to death and we are all more or less alienated, any stress situation can trigger a health problem, no matter if you are CPA or successful musicians.

I just think musicians tend to be more open than their feelings, which in turn might be a blessing.

https://pigeonsandplanes.com/interviews/2018/06/070-shake-interview-kanye-west-ye-ghost-town

Kanye finished “ghost town” the same day Ye was released.

I’m quite likely to be “smarter” than a lot of physicians and therapists I’ve gone to over the years and if I fuck up big time on the road or at home I’m also likely to face extremely life-changing sanctions, but guess what, I’m only a little bit special, not THAT goddamn special.

I could run down a massive list of things that put me in an extremely small minority of people, for better and worse (so could a lot of people on this board, i wager) but I really try to take better care of myself these days rather than go with exceptionalism as an excuse. I think we basically agree though.

Imma let you finish, but Hello, I Must Be Going!...

I'm judgmental and unforgiving. That's my fucking superpower.

I know that stoves burn you. They don't cut you. That my superpower.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless

Just what we need
To halt a severe Diplo

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless

― El Tomboto

reed richards' superpower is to do a fucking great guest spot on one mf doom song and then disappear forever

the idea that Tekashi 69 or Bobby Blotzer from Ratt or Justin Timberlake or whoever plays bass for Three Doors Down is likely smarter than my incredibly perceptive psychologist who holds a PhD is really one for the record books

He's so good he's convinced you that all other psychologists are on that level by association.

sh@kedown otm, that's o_O

I was thinking of Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Scott Hutchinson, but ymmv

Another good rap record about mental health issues: Pharaoh Monch "PTSD"

Mind's Playing Tricks on Me

I figured if I brought up Scarface I would get "old man rap head yells at cloudrap" feedback but yeah if you wanna talk mental illness in classic rap records, 'Face is ground zero.

z-ro as well

good call

I was thinking of Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Scott Hutchinson, but ymmv

― nevertheless, he stopped (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, June 5, 2018 8:21 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

perhaps just like every other group some successful musicians are very intelligent and others are not and success in music is tied to many factors outside of how smart a person is

also a therapist job isn't necessarily to be "smarter" than you it's to help you process your feelings and thoughts and also see through your bullshit ways of not dealing with things, one of which may be fancying yourself smarter than your therapist

otm

Starlito belongs to the conversation.

This was a single point in a longer post. I'm not suggesting "successful people are smarter than normal plebes with mental illness"-- if that was implied, then whoops, my bad. I'm not suggesting that therapists in general are dumber than their patients. Or that they need to be smarter.

I'm saying that I've had experience, both as a person whose had (I think) seven different therapists of various styles helping me with my own bullshit, and as a person whose had many friends cycle through different therapists and relate to me their experiences. And I've had experience doing emotional labour for so many fucked up people. And generally, my observation is that people who are intelligent, highly intelligent, are better at constructing more elaborate defence mechanisms to protect themselves against treatment. And that also, highly intelligent people require highly intelligent therapists to be able to assail those defence mechanisms and break the mental loops that are causing them to keep cycling through whatever patterns they've fallen into.

I have a friend who endured a crushing rejection by a man he was in love with and had had a six month relationship with. What followed was two years of obsession, construction of elaborate narratives, and the spreading around of accusations of "narcissism" and such things around our mutual friend group. This man is the smartest person I've ever met. Whenever I tried to get through to him, to help me deal with the root of his problem-- dealing with rejection and accepting it-- rather than sublimating his pain into other projections, it felt like I was playing a game of chess against a grand master, and losing badly. He had built up so many defences and rhetorical narratives that it was impossible for me to make him understand.

In the cases of people who I mentioned, and Kanye himself, all of whom I assume are/were blindingly intelligent, and in a position (famous comedian/musician) that it's hard for anybody-- friend or therapist-- to truly understand or empathize with, I am simply stating that I would imagine (probably correctly) that finding a therapist who was good enough (and smart enough) to break through whatever neural loops were terrorizing the individual would be very difficult.

Whenever I tried to get through to him, to help me deal with the root of his problem-- dealing with rejection and accepting it-- rather than sublimating his pain into other projections, it felt like I was playing a game of chess against a grand master, and losing badly.

oooof I've dealt with this a few times and it's a real thing, working for hours at a time to sort out the insight they'll accept, knowing you may not be able to reuse it again later, like you're training a virus to defeat medication.

fgti is otm imo. It's what Lacan called 'les non-dupes errent'. Those who can't be fooled are in error. From what I gather it's a rather well-known phenomenon in psychology, especially when it comes to something like addiction - smart guys see through the platitudes of the 12 steps program and refuse to hand over their destiny to 'a higher power'. There's a brilliant portrait of this type of guy in Infinite Jest, I think it's Geoffrey Day.

I also would not be surprised if the kardashian machine discouraged him from seeking treatment (no treatment = no storylines) or even had it in some contract

er treatment = no storylines, you know what I mean

Haha wow I would definitely be surprised! But it's possible.

Also, pertaining to my last post, rethinking the mindsets of the famous content-creators that I know, I think it's less of an "these people are probably smart and thus hard-to-treat" issue, and more of a "requirement of their position to have an unshakeable belief in one's own importance and goodness" that would create difficulty in penetrating their psychological world, or pointing out erroneous or delusional modes of thought

What you are describing seems to be basic cognitive dissonance and I would expect any good therapist/psychiatrist to be professionaly trained to deal with that, with ease and habit. Now maybe that is not the prefered way for INTx50 succesful musician to work with their issues, different shrinks for different kinks I suppose. However, the further you describe the situation of your peers, the more it reminds that some people just do not have the humility to get the necessary help, which relates to Kanye and the new record pretty well, but has nothing to do with conventional definitions of success (I see that stuff in all workplaces, all social levels).

Controp but I think if you’re looking for mental illness records that are authentic I wouldn’t look towards most rap
Barnett nailed it on her new one

peak

Key - most. Kendrick and haze rule obvs

smart guys see through the platitudes of the 12 steps program and refuse to hand over their destiny to 'a higher power'

yeah this is wrong. the higher power in cases of AA or whatever is not necessarily God but whatever is holding power over you, whether addiction to a substance, or a toxic relationship, or destructive tendencies, etc. if these things are holding you down yet you continue thinking you've got it under control you are not outsmarting the therapy, you are merely lying to yourself. i will agree getting treatment is mostly about accepting you have a problem in the first place. but to think that some people are too smart for treatment is absurd.

fwiw the modern desire to say "Just work through your problems" as if finding the right therapist who will of course be able to cure you provided they have the proper training is fucking hilarious. also the idea of connoting success with intelligence also fucking hilarious.

the higher power in cases of AA or whatever is not necessarily God but whatever is holding power over you, whether addiction to a substance, or a toxic relationship, or destructive tendencies, etc.

sorry this is wrong, you are conflating the "higher power" that will help you overcome addiction/dependency/whatever with the power of the addiction/dependency that you admit you are powerless under

one's higher power in 12-step does not have to be god but it would be v weird to say your higher power is you addiction or dependency. the higher power is a positive force that you rely on through the twelve steps

sorry to be a 12-step pendant but i got family in this thing

*pedant

reed richards' superpower is to do a fucking great guest spot on one mf doom song and then disappear forever

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Tuesday, June 5, 2018 12:26 PM (yesterday)

also one King Geedorah song

lol for a second I was like "they give out pendants? I want in"

"What we have instead is the most insular and impenetrable album from a man whose art has always gloriously been dedicated to the self. ye, as its cover makes clear, is his most bracingly personal album, a documentation of his increasingly public wrestling with his mental health and corroded life. (It’s also a nearly instant one at that—West claims he scrapped an entire album to record ye in the last month.) He has also never felt more distant; locked away in self-created prisons in Calabasas and Wyoming, the rapper whose relatability made him a cross-demographic superstar now has problems and solutions that are almost completely unrecognizable to the common man."

https://www.spin.com/2018/06/kanye-west-ye-review/

that review is OTM

idk if its been linked but i also like rawiya's review in fader

nice work by j0 tho, v dense read

Ah, is that ILM's "J0rdan"?

(er, sorry if I wasn't supposed to use full handle on same page as link, or something)

anyway, great writing

it's fire