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Post by thepretender on Jul 2, 2007 20:55:24 GMT -5
You are right Provi... You can't let people go around spreading misinformation. That is an interesting story. Do you really think they were just being kind or were you asking the wrong people? I say this mostly because everyone's tastes are different and if what you wrote was well written but it didn't float their boat, yet they could imagine that it would float someone else's boat than what would the right answer be? I have read stuff that I know is good but I absolutely hated it... If I had been around Ayn Rand when she was writing about John Galt and she asked me for advice...I might have told her that all of her characters were just too streamlined and predictable for me and had she listened to me... she wouldn't be as famous as she is today! Did you know that McCammon won't allow some of his books to be re-issued cuz he is super critical of them. So I have to scour every bookstore to find these gems and don't you know that what he thinks is not good...I just absolutely love. They Thirst especially. Nothing like a Vampire novel set in LA ...the fact that he even mentions the La Brea Tar Pits just blows me away.... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits
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Post by thepretender on Jul 2, 2007 22:21:54 GMT -5
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Post by ProvidencePortal on Jul 3, 2007 7:24:41 GMT -5
Did you know that McCammon won't allow some of his books to be re-issued? I had read that in a couple of his own letters and interviews, and I don't know what to think about it. The selfish part of me thinks, yeesh -- they were good enough for you to sell, the printer to print and for me to buy and read more than once. So now that you proclaim them crap, who's the asshole? [Excuse the language.] But the other part of me feels like everyone -- maybe especially artists -- have a right to reinvent themselves and to move beyond their work ... to have eras.
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Post by thepretender on Jul 3, 2007 8:30:09 GMT -5
well, I know he was happy with them at the time... I remember writing on the board that it was censorship...by the author himself! It was a funny exchange (or I thought so anyway) especially since there are folks out there that try to ban Boy's Life. :-( Kind of like a ban placed by the author himself. I love McCammon and so no matter what he does I look up to him for it.
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Post by artisticdarkness on Jul 3, 2007 12:00:37 GMT -5
In a way everyone reinvents themselves, some to fit in, some to find happiness and some to just get through life. I have not reinvented myself but I have reinvented the mindframe I was living in to see the better in life, I still see the bad, just not as strongly, I have learned to cope through multiple things, not just donnie darko. It hurts in a way to be accused of not having a disease I have been diagnosed with, I suffer from this disease, perhaps not as often as I used to but I still do, I was tested and events in my life led me to have this disease, not a brain chemical imbalance but a box my life has created around me. I seek not for your sympathy, any of you, but I just ask you to believe that a movie though it does not cure, can help. I want you all to know, no matter what I will have this disease and the only thing helping me through is my mind and pills. Being an artist has nothing to do with changing or reinventing, everyone can do that, but being a human being who can see when there needs to be change, not everyone can.
ArtisticDarkness
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Post by greedy on Jul 3, 2007 17:56:02 GMT -5
it's no more fake than religeon god and the bible Here's the thing about "why couldn't this movie be the turning point -- it's no more fake than Jesus" ... thinking about Jesus can't cure clinically depressed people either. It's a chemical imbalance. It requires medical treatment supported by psychotherapy. The great sadness of depression is that it's a me-alone disease: while in its depths, you're surrounded by people who tell you to "snap out of it" and offer all sorts of ideas for things that could "turn it around" for you ... like a new romantic partner, a change in job, a move, a renewed focus on a religion, etc. These people are well-intended, but their perspective is terrifically painful for the person who's depressed. The depressed person is likely to feel many of the same feelings -- "shouldn't I just be able to change this with my mind? Why can't I just decide to feel better?!" -- which compounds the effects of the disease. If you had the blues, were down, had had a bad few months, were sad, etc., etc. -- then, yes, a movie or a book or a conversation might be the thing that helps you shift your perspective and look ahead again. But if you were clinically depressed, no amount of any of those things will alter your state of mind -- that's the insidiousness of the disease. So I am troubled when people perpetuate the idea that one can just "snap out of" clinical depression with an uplifting song or fun TV show. Not only is that not true, it hurts -- probably kills -- depressed people to be told it, to internalize it, to agonize over it. It further alienates them from their loved ones and isolates them from the world. all this is very true however differnt stimulants release differnt chemicals in ones brain and the bopdy naturally know that these are good for in and there fore will push more toward such stimulation creating a pattern of better feeling than before like manic depressives who learn and trigger there mania almost habitually
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Post by twinkle on Jul 3, 2007 23:01:11 GMT -5
i think a movie or a musical group or a book or a person can be a lifeline, a reason to hang on and not go under. none of these is a "cure" or a "turn-around", maybe not even a stepping-stone on the path to recovery, but each can be something that "gets you through the night" (w/o doing more damage). it really can be many things, working together, that brings one all the way through. therapy and drugs can be most helpful to many (it is difficult to imagine progress w/o professional involvement of some kind), but not all, and these are only part of the whole picture. supportive people who LISTEN are vital; amateur analysts who "know" what MUST be done are worse than a waste of time. personally, a big step occurred when i stopped seeing myself as a suffering victim and saw instead someone who could, and would, live beyond the depression as something that defined me. i can look back, however, and recognize that innumerable events, both big and small, went into getting me to that place. (thank you God for The Velvet Underground! ;D )
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Post by greedy on Jul 10, 2007 2:24:59 GMT -5
very well said twinkle but i can't help but feel some of us are going jim and others going donnie sorry twinkle didn't mean to mess your name up
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Post by thepretender on Jul 10, 2007 8:49:38 GMT -5
"some of us are going jim and others going donnie " That is so true Greedy! here I go quoting Dar Williams again from The Mercy of the Fallen There's the wind and the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say they have no claim to know what's right There's the weak and the strong And the beds that have no answer And that's where I may rest my head tonight I think that song just talks about the comfort of being around folks that don't act as tho they have all the answers after all each of us have been dealt different questions to deal with....
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Post by ProvidencePortal on Jul 11, 2007 10:51:54 GMT -5
Ah ... but being certain that noone can be certain is still being certain. (Blek -- my own brain just soured at that.)
Having questions and looking for answers is a funny thing, I guess, for all of us. Though an appreciation of beautiful music may not be hardwired into our circuits (thanks again to Twinkle for that conversation), a need to see patterns does seem to be intrinsic in us all. But it's funny how it plays out. Churches and I were mutually exclusive for most of my life. And for most of that time, I thought it was their fault -- all the bad, hypocritical, selfish, aloof, unwelcoming people in those congregations, you know?
Then, as most of you probably realized far sooner than I did, I came to understand that getting all finger-pointy at the congregations was just projecting my own fear of alienation. Lo and behold ... I can learn from people with whom I may initially disagree! Lo, lo and behold, those are usually the people I learn the most from!
Silly, I know. Who takes years to realize that? *Sheepishly raises hand.* And of course it wasn't all me (a lot, but not all). There really were grumpy-frumpy folks who really did make me feel unwelcome -- people who didn't want to add to the membership and diminish their feeling of specialness.
It's one of the reasons I have such respect for our church now. The doctrine is essentially defined by two polarities: it's a question church, not an answer church. And it's a journey church, not a destination church. The point of view there is, "we're all in this together. We don't know much, but we do know it's better if we realize it's about the questions and the journey more than the answers and the destination."
edit: deleted a word
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Post by thepretender on Jul 12, 2007 8:23:35 GMT -5
Having been brought up Catholic I know that I will always feel comfortable there and I know that while I am not pleased with all of the answers that they have...most of the people there are in the same boat as me... I remember trying to have my son feel comfortable somewhere...we went to a midnight mass )my idea that singing Christma carols would be fun)when he was about 8 and the old man next to us got all grumpy at him for not kneeling. (hmmmmph) I had to have a conversation with an 8 year old that not all people who go to church have the same idea about church that I do. How many other people have to rationalize their beliefs that way to someone? How many do it to themselves? There is so much that can be right about a church and then it can have so much wrong about it too...
A journey church....sounds wonderful...it sounds like the one I would belong to in my neighborhood. It's a United Christian Church (part of the United Church of Christ) and they voted to be an open and affirming which means they welcome everyone including gays and lesbians which makes total sense to me because we are all god's children after all. They still have the sign up that says "Don't place a period where god has placed a comma' I'ts weird because just yesterday someone was telling me that they know someone who wants to be a catholic and in order to do so he needs to get his ex wife to sign something that says that they were never married.
Of course...the ex wife is having a hard time with this... sometimes these rituals just seem so backwards to other folks and even beginning to explain them to people is the hardest thing to do. Just the same, I know so many Catholics who would balk at the idea of basically getting someone to lie in their heart to say 'they really weren't married before God" when they feel that they surely were. There are a lot of Catholics who balk at a lot of the things tht the church believes, such as their stand on birth control and the use condems to protect people from aids... but they still feel most comfortable there and leave those oddities at the door when they leave every Sunday.
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Post by choaslight21 on Jan 26, 2008 17:40:55 GMT -5
I like the feeling of depression it makes me feel alive .
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Post by thepretender on Jan 26, 2008 18:23:51 GMT -5
I like the feeling of depression it makes me feel alive . I can see a lot of truth in your small statement. I think it is those experiences that make us appreciate happiness even more when it finds us... What I find hard is to be in the middle of a really depressing situation and just snap myself out of it no matter how much rationalizing I can muster up. Last time I was sad I just let go, curled up and cried. I didn't change a thing but allowing myself to experience the weight of it really was helpful
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