I Am Doing A Research Paper On Surrealism in Canadian Art History For My University Class And I Learned About My Own Early Art

Here I am coming up the end of the semester in school and I am behind in my commitment in making regular blog postings, so I though I would take a break from my paper and get my blog posting up. Funny how when I first started painting, I was working as a trades person here in Montreal, and here is one of my first painting in a surrealist style, it came from the "magical" way of spiritual freedom of Paul Emile Borduas (The French Canadian Artist behind the Refus Global Manifesto), the magic of my apparition/hallucination from my schizophrenia. This painting on wood was done after having the apparition/hallucination at the bottom of my bed before going to sleep one night, the metaphysical coming to me in my pre-sleep state, I can fall asleep meditating to them some times. All is there in several pieces of art, including the severed body parts that are found in the foundations of surrealism. The metaphysical and creativity is the way I am evolving and always have, it is just what name do you put on schizophrenia, why don't they call us apprentice Metaphysicians. I make my life as I learn in school about the arts, while hospitalized I spent a fair bit of time in the Hospital medical library.

A lot of my first pieces of art are of surrealist direction by definition. Other pieces of my art, that are a form of surrealism, can be viewed in the "Out There" Magazine on the Ami Quebec's website located at , link no longer exsists . I knew nothing about art when I started painting on my own, I called myself an Outsider Artist, I drifted to Urban Outsider Artist as I found myself caught up in city scape as an apartment dweller. Now I am taking a hard look at the direction for my art, I do write surrealist type poetry as well, my very own foundations of my apparition/hallucination metaphysical state assists me to create. It has also helped me on the job in the engineering field as some sort of metaphysical engineer, I do have a versatile background. The severed hand of early surrealism is found on my family crest from Scotland which is older that the surrealist movement in Europe post WWI. What were the Surrealist searching for in there artistic vision, the metaphysical, I found it in my schizophrenia and art. Funny little musing, there is the skull of John the Baptist, the hand of one Saint and the ankle of another Saint buried in the Catacombs of the Vatican, were Surrealists reaching for a metaphysical grave of sort for creative insight.

Doc GM's Political Messenger Vol V Edition I

Here I Am Back In School At Concordia University For The Winter Semester While In Hospital Mental Health Programs

So the New Year rolls in and I am back in school studying how to be an effective writer. Last semester in school ended well and I got a B+ for a final grade, not bad for my first time in school for quite some time and fighting depression at the same time. I really enjoyed last semester, the Professor was really special and talented at leading the students through our creative process! I learned from the Professor how I lack in my writing skills and what to do to improve upon them. At the end of the course the Professor instructed me to start reading more to improve my grammar, spelling, along with my basic writing skills. I enjoyed keeping a journal on my creative process for my portfolio and I told the Professor at the end of the course that I intended to keep up doing the journal on my creative process, which will now include my visual arts, musical inclinations, along with my attempts at developing my writing skills. With the start of the winter semester I went to Concordia's library and got some books to read as advised to do last semester. I chose to continue reading works on a author I got introduced last semester, namely Edgar Allan Poe. I did one critique on one of his prose last semester and I intend to seek out more of his work to read, including some of his poetry. His writings help me to develop my vocabulary with his use of words and I really enjoy his writings.

Carrying on into the winter semester, I took another writing course to help me develop skills in writing academic papers. The course is a prerequisite for getting into a grammar course down the road. So I got my work cut out for me again this semester in school with maintaining the work for the course and reading more as advised from the Professor last semester. The Hospital programs have started up again after the holidays and I am back attending those classes as well. Due to my course at University being on early Monday evenings, I dropped the gym class on Monday afternoons at the Hospital, the travelling home and then back down town or buying supper out would have been too much. The Animatrices of the gym class were sad to hear I would not be attending this semester but I will be back with them in the fall if all goes well with my schedule. Wednesday music group and guitar lessons are still scheduled into my week, along with the Thursday art group with Birks House Artists. I still have my job once a week cleaning the small office building down town and the clients in the building are so friendly with me that I feel really close to them at this point. Sometimes my work at the building got slack when I was fighting off depression and they understood. For the greater part, I have over come my bouts of depression and feeling a lot better about myself over all. It helped with the encouragement I got at the Hospital selling art just before Christmas, along with settling out terms of endearment with my Psychiatrist.

I am no longer part of the writers group that I was part off last year, due to breach of trust and what they did with my pen name Doctor Goober M.... in a publication. I was lied to and deceived being published in a chap book with the writers group. They took out a copyright on the chap book that I am part of and I am not even on the copyright registration with my pen name. It is illegal and I went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over it, contacting the department that handles the Federal Copyright Act. This department of the RCMP has enough work on their hands as it is, they did not need another case to handle such as my complaint but shit happens and that is what they are there for! I have an old friend that is a writer and we have been in touch over the holiday season, we agreed that we could work together and legally put out a chap book together with both our works of poetry and prose. I have another friend that knows of some other writers group in the city and she is trying to track them down with a contact phone number, hopefully I will be able to become part of this new writers group and not have the complications I had with the one I was involved in last year. So I am starting the New Year on a positive note and no longer having little bouts of depression that hampered my life, the World is before me still and I intend to kick butt and make something of myself to increase my monthly income and do away with my welfare subsidy on my disability pension. Here is to one and all in the New Year and stay legal or you might get busted by people that like honesty!

(January 24th 2008, with help from the RCMP, the writers group is going to put me on the Copyright registration so all will be Kosher!)

A Doodle I Did Waiting For My University Class To Start, For My Up Date On My Situation

Well here I am trying to find words for my posting as the end of November 2007 is approaching, at times I still do not know what to make of it all. I do not want to write another rant about the stupidity of my treatment but I will end up touching up on it in this posting. Over all, the school semester has gone rather well and I really enjoyed the class. Next week is the last class of the semester and I have to hand in my portfolio on my creative process I have achieved over the last three months. I learned quite a bit about writing and the process that is involved, which led me in new directions in my writing process. I got somethings down on paper that have been in my head for a while, along with learning what my weakness' are in the writing process.

As for my follow up at the hospital, well that is as stupid as usual. My Doctor and new Nurse want to increase my medication levels again, it is like they can not accept me for who I am and a change of medication level is going to make the difference to my personality. Either increasing my medication or adding another prescription, like they did, is going to do nothing but slow me down and make sleep more. It is like as if ,I fart the wrong way in front of the Doctor or Nurse, I get more medication prescribed. My parents find no problem with me, nor do the people I deal with on a regular bases. Other than my ensuing anger with the Hospital ruining my life when I stood up for the Canadian National Building Code, when I came across gyp rock being installed over old plaster illegally. I used to earn a living from $14/hour to $18/hr, now I am reduced to Provincial Welfare levels.The Hospital will not admit they pumped me full of drugs unnecessarily because mobster type people said I was delusional about my claim that the gyp rock over plaster style of renovation is wrong and should not be done. The biggest joke at my session at the Hospital last week, was getting a laugh out of the Nurse, when I said the Hospital should teach patients how to masturbate themselves to sleep, instead of the Psychiatrist always prescribing sleeping pills. All this was over the Nurse being pushy towards me regarding the will of the Doctor to medicate me more. It was even mentioned to medicate me to the point where I no longer have my apparitions/hallucinations, all that would gain is making me lose more of my life and I would not be able to get A+ or A-, like some of my marks in University that I have achieved this semester. Psychiatrists should prescribe more music therapy, art therapy, cogitative therapy, stress management, gym class and going back to school to prevent patients from becoming pill popping couch potatoes. I could really make a rant over it but it is not worth it, the Pharmaceutical Companies get rich with the Psychiatrists over prescribing at the expense of Provincial Welfare budgets! Never mind psychiatric patients that work under the table on medical certificates, I always made ends meet being a legal beagle and I am the first to admit it is really hard to make ends meet on Welfare, but I always invested in myself to get off the Welfare budget!

So I have a sketch of myself in this posting image, the little man and the natural magic mushrooms in my genetic make up, that give me my religious apparitions/hallucinations, that the Hospital calls just mere hallucinations. Well, I am happy having such a source of inspiration for art and writing and I am not hurting anyone, nor am I delusional over my approach to the subject matter. The Hospital Medical Science really has to go back to school like me and learn to accept the science of Theology. Theology has become a science with carbon dating of ancient scrolls etc and I have studied some Theology at the University level. Psychiatrists and I will never find a common ground, they will always insist on medicating more than necessary and I will always fight back to be the person I enjoy being, at my reasonable accommodating medication levels.

(Note: The population of Montreal for 2007 is 1,039,500, with 1% of the population being persons with schizophrenia, 1% say are bipolar, that makes 20,790 mental health consumers between the two diagnosis. Lets say 10,000 hold down a real job, volunteer work or are in a mental health program, that leaves 10,790 that need some form of follow up treatment between English and French Hospitals, to get back working somehow either in a real job or volunteer work. Lets say 790 are dysfunctional or are Institutionalized. I can assure my readers there are not 5000 mental health consumers in the English Hospital system actively enrolled in the rehabilitation system, so how many pill popping couch potatoes do we actual have? I heard my apartment building has quite a few! It would be something else to hear the actual statistics! Detox patients are not calculated in these approximate calculations and there are always new people entering the mental health system)

I Am Going Back To Concordia University September 2007

It has been quite sometime since I studied at the University level, this September I will be returning to school after having not been in University for years. When I first came back to Montreal back in 1985, I took a couple of courses at the University level while I was finding a new direction to my life. I first enrolled in Concordia University's English Literature program back in '85 before I took other courses in the Engineering field at the CEGEP level in Quebec, Canada. Now that I more or less left working as a trade person to earn a living, while pursuing my artistic endeavors, I decided to return to school to enhance my educational back ground in the arts. This fall semester I will be taking a creative poetry course to strenghten my writing skills around poetry and I plan to take another course during the Winter semester as well. I started saving money from my monthly disability allowance to prepare for going back to school. During this time period that I was saving my money, I came across information that the Schizophrenia Society of Canada was giving out bursaries to persons with schizophrenia to return to school. Taking the bull by the horns I tracked down the Schizophrenia Society of Canada on the Internet and got them to send me the bursary application. After much ado with the application, along with getting my Psychiatrist to fill out her section of the application, I faxed it off before the dead line and waited for the response. By the end of July 2007 I got my bursary cheque in the mail and all is set to return to school this coming September. The bursary will cover the cost of a course and books during the fall 2007 and winter semester of 2008 and it gives me time to prepare for my schooling come September 2008. I started with taking one course this fall to help me get back into the grind of studying again and evaluating how I do in school. I am really looking forward to starting school and learning again for I felt that I was stagnating a bit while on disability pension. I lacked my mental challenge that work used to give me, hopefully being in school at the University level will give back the every day challenge that I miss. Grant you I am only in school one evening a week but to produce and get good grades will be a challenge all the same. The social structure of interacting with other students will also be good for me, for I do spend too much time by myself. The summer will soon be coming to a close and it is back to the grind after Labour Day weekend. The Art Group at the Hospital will be starting up again after Labour Day as well, I was only off from my music group at the hospital for the month of July with the Music Therapist being on vacation. So as it goes I continue to forge out a career for myself in the arts with skill development. The music lessons at the Hospital, the Hospital Art Group and returning to school all lead to me bettering myself in the arts so that I can improve my artistic capabilities so that I can make something of my life again through the arts.