Monk

[Chuck Nessa]

Sorry - this thread bugs the crap out of me. Monk gave you more great music than you deserve! WTF do you find it interesting to dig up his health records.

He gave you more than you deserve. Let it go and thank your god.

[Johnny E]

Sorry - this thread bugs the crap out of me. Monk gave you more great music than you deserve! WTF do you find it interesting to dig up his health records.

He gave you more than you deserve. Let it go and thank your god.

Amen!

btw, where can I find those 70's sessions (especially the ones with the improvised pieces)?

[marcoliv]

Monk was a genius. Period. The rest is secondary.

that's why my life is divided in 2: BM & AM

MCO

[DrJ]

I agree that a post mortem to the degree of searching medical records is twisted.

However, one thing that bugs the crap out of ME is that our society refuses to discuss mental health issues openly. Yeah, there's a lot ot talk about Prozac or whatever the latest "me too" drug is, but when you start really talking about the impact on people's lives, everyone gets all hush hush.

I will say that after seeing STRAIGHT, NO CHASER and other archival film, and drawing on my own experience as a doc, it seems pretty clear to me that Monk suffered from mental illness that seemed to wax in severity as he got older. All accounts I've read indicate he didn't use drugs much or at all, so I doubt that was a factor, and if it was, my guess is it was secondary (self-medication) - that's the usual case, it's an escape route from the terrible anguish people with psychiatric conditions experience.

Is all this relevant to Monk's music? Actually, this is one case where I think it is - primarily because what he did was so different, so individual, and at times, really does sound like the work of someone who was not only a true genius but also had an altered emotional landscape and viewpoint.

This isn't a "tortured genius" thing at all - that's a tired nonsense, and often voyeuristic. Rather, I think Monk's mental illness, while devastating in so many ways, was for many years also a kind of wellspring for his music - or maybe the music was his therapy, his way of exorcising the demons.

I have no proof about any of this and freely admit I could be wrong, but I think I can hear this. Many great artists suffered from mental illness and had the same type of insights colored by their suffering and altered sensorium - Van Gogh being perhaps the best example. Monk certainly belongs in that exhalted company.

In this light, we ought to be celebrating Monk not only for the usual reasons, but for his tremendous courage in letting the world in on the pain and joy of his psychic roller coaster ride for so many years. Once he grew tired of sharing, or wasn't able to do it any more, he simply drew inward and left the scene.

Rest in peace, Thelonious.

[JSngry]

All accounts I've read indicate he didn't use drugs much or at all, so I doubt that was a factor,

I zm very reluctant to recommend anything by Leslie Gourse, but her Monk bio goes into a good deal of detail about this, and sources are credited. I'd have a hard time believeing that this much specificity was totally fabricated, even by her.

Again, this is not an atttempt to dwell on the sensationalistic and/or morbid. If it's true, then it belongs to history, and should be treated as such. My personal feeling is that a genius of Monk's calibre would "find a way" for tht genius to come out no matter what the circumstances of their life. Somehow, and with whatever tools were at their disposal. If Monk's fate had been to have been a plumber, I bet you he'd ahve been the damndest plumber in the history of the world.

[JSngry]

...the work of someone who was not only a true genius but also had an altered emotional landscape and viewpoint.

Monk's mental illness, while devastating in so many ways, was for many years also a kind of wellspring for his music - or maybe the music was his therapy, his way of exorcising the demons. .

Just curious, Tony. Are you unequivically equating having an "altered" (ie - observedly different than the norm) "emotional landscape and viewpoint" with mental illness?

[DrJ]

I like the plumber analogy, that is totally on point.

To take it a step further: Monk was a genius with mental illness, not a genius BECAUSE he was mentally ill. The distinction makes all the difference in the world in terms of why it's important to celebrate his accomplishments, which are all the more remarkable for what he had to contend with. He even took it a step further and turned his suffering into expression that touched a deep chord in so many of us.

Perhaps Monk did use drugs heavily, thanks for the info on the Gourse material, but again my guess is that there was some heavy duty mental illness self-medication going on. In my experience, that's the usual case.

[DrJ]

JSngry  Posted: Jul 30 2004, 09:42 AM 

QUOTE (DrJ @ Jul 30 2004, 09:24 AM)

...the work of someone who was not only a true genius but also had an altered emotional landscape and viewpoint.

Monk's mental illness, while devastating in so many ways, was for many years also a kind of wellspring for his music - or maybe the music was his therapy, his way of exorcising the demons. . 

Just curious, Tony. Are you unequivically equating having an "altered" (ie - observedly different than the norm) "emotional landscape and viewpoint" with mental illness?

Naw, but it's a good point to discuss.

My point with Monk and some other artists who suffered from mental illness is that in their peak years, they did seem able to tap into their (for lack of a better term) visions and even more importantly express them in a way that resonated with others.

I don't think one HAS to have a mental illness to have an iconoclastic viewpoint, definitely not. And of course many people with mental illness aren't able to transform their experience into art - that gets to your plumber comment, Monk was just so creative that he was going to be a genius at whatever he did - probably would have transformed plumbing.

All I'm saying is that when I hear Monk's music, I could be reading in way too much, but I believe I can hear him channelling both the highs and lows of his condition into art.

It's worth emphasizing the highs - to me, one thing that is seldom discussed is the tremendous joy and humor in much of his Monk's music. "Childlike" has been used as an adjective for some of these moments, but I'm not sure I agree. Instead I hear some of his use of repeated simple phrases as expression of the moments of great clarity that people suffering from mental illness sometimes experience - e.g. in manic states, where the world first seems in fast forward and then almost seems to fall away and only a divine feeling remains (often expressed as a feeling of invincibility and even Christ-like state).

Likewise, his use of repeated, micro-varied phrases, often played forcefully on the keyboard, sounds to me like an aural expression of being obsessed with or unable to part with an idea and literally "hammering it out."

Finally, consider his mastery of tempo, and particularly his ability to hold together pieces full of long pauses at incredibly slow pace...best evidenced in some of his solo piano work. This is frankly astonishing, I don't believe I've ever heard anyone else who could do this type of levitation so well. This I hear as an altered sense of time, slowed down perhaps by depression - literally, he seems to be moving and playing slower than time itself, yet it holds together because it must have felt right to him.

Again, I want to emphasize I could be all wet. But I think this is an interesting line of inquiry in considering Monk's music. He could have done all the above things simply because he was a genius, and it may have had nothing to do with his mental illness. But something about what I'm hearing tells me otherwise. Probably the biggest support for this thought is that to my ears his playing had more and more of the above qualities as he got older and his mental condition became more severe.

[CJ Shearn]

This whole Monk, mental illness discussion is interesting. I had heard somewhere (can't remember the source) that Monk may have had tourette's syndrome. I never noticed anything with him in the Straight, No Chaser footage that had anything like a facial tick or involuntary awearing, noises, etc (I knew someone with tourettes who had facial ticks) Could maybe having tourettes possibly explain his weird behavior of spinning around? Tony, your points about hearing marks of mental illness in Monk's playing are interesting as well, I don't really think of a musicians' music in those terms, but in the case of Jaco Pastorius, I hear less invention and more relying on licks in his bass passing, post his manic depression diagnosis, but his arrangements and writing still very creative.

[JSngry]

Monk was a genius with mental illness, not a genius BECAUSE he was mentally ill....

He could have done all the above things simply because he was a genius, and it may have had nothing to do with his mental illness.

Excuse the inclusion of quotes from two different posts, but here is the crux of the matter as far as I'm concerned - Monk's mental illness had nothing to do with his music, AFAIC. The "provable" manifestations of his illness came much later in his life, when he became non/borderline functional. Before that, what we got was the genius, pure and simple.

Although it's tempting to read traits of the latent/incipient/whatever illness into his work throughout the years, that sets up the unintentional/unfortunate consequence of looking at his life's work through the lens of "clinical" analysis, and I just don't think that that is a good idea. It's not that far a step from doing that to evaluating all creativity from a mental health angle, and that's a really nasty can of worms to open. I know that that is in no way your intent, Tony, but in these days of psychotropic medications being invented and distributed like so many after-dinner mints, it's nevertheless a valid concern, I think. Once society begins to view those who have "eccentric" perspectives, artistic or otherwise, as people who are acting out their inner mental "irregularities" (can't think of a better word, although one surely exists) in a postive/self-theraputic manner, things could get awfully ugly.

Look, I'm no "genius", not by the longest of shots, but I've always been somebody who had one of those "different" perspectives, and who has not been afraid to explore/act on on them, creatively and otherwise. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had my "sanity" questioned, and not just by people who are obviously "clueless". And yes, I've had my "ups and downs" emotionally, but no more so than many people for whom unquestioningly following the same routine every day of thier life, the "normal" routine, is not a choice, but a congenital imperitive.

As far as I'm concerned, "mental health" is a pretty subjective field far more often than not. My personal opinion is that it is something that should be evaluated solely in terms of functionality, not "perspective". Dysfunctionality pops up across the "behavioral" spectrum, as does creative insight, but if there's any direct link between the two, I've yet to see it. Frequent intersection, yes, but I also know a lot of blondes who are truly dumb, so what does intersection have to do with anything? Societal conditioning leading to a pre-ordained result sometimes? Well, yeah. And maybe the same thing applies to those with beyond the norm "creative" skills as well - the dysfunctionality is a result, not a root cause. Sometimes.

Monk really showed no signs of not being able to function until later in his life. Before functionality became a problem for him, what were we getting in his music - an attempt to "keep a grip" or sheer genius-level insight into the multi-leveled inter-relationality of reality expressed in tems of harmony, time, timbre, etc.? I myself have to believe that it's the latter. "No harm, no foul", as they say, and if Monk's functionality was not an issue to others or to himself, all "eccentricities" aside, where's the reason to suspect any kind of "illness"? If mortal tragedy, a car accident, a murder, whatever, had ended his life in, say, 1963, would anybody, including family members, had clinical "issues"? Probably not, I'll say. Why would they? They'd just say that he was a genius with eccentric tendencies. And they would be right, because that's all he was until then!

"Latency" must be classified as nothing but speculation (idle or otherwise) when it comes to stuff like this, I believe. We all are latently mentally ill. This I truly believe, from the most off-the-wall eccentric to the most staid model of behavioral consistently. It's not until we reach the point where we cross the line and become dysfunctional that that illness must be considered and examined as an illness, because that's the time, the only time, that it truly is an illness. Looking for "signs" before it does can turn up anything in anybody. It all depends on who's looking for what, and who gets to define where the boundaries are. You're not sick until you get sick, and anybody can get sick under the right combination of circumstances.

If we want to say that Monk had a uniquely precious tonal/spatial perspective all of his life that became "cloudy" due to various factors, including mental issues, which may or may not have forced him to "work a little harder" to keep in touch with it in his later years, I'm more than fine with that. But if the "argument" is that the way he acted out on that perspective at every point in his career was formed by a mental illness of some sort, then I will have to respectfully but resolutely disagree.

Edited July 31, 2004 by JSngry

[mikeweil]

"Latency" must be classified as nothing but speculation (idle or otherwise) when it comes to stuff like this, I believe. We all are latently mentally ill. This I truly believe, from the most off-the-wall eccentric to the most staid model of behavioral consistently. It's not until we reach the point where we cross the line and become dysfunctional that that illness must be considered and examined as an illness, because that's the time, the only time, that it truly is an illness. Looking for "signs" before it does can turn up anything in anybody. It all depends on who's looking for what, and who gets to define where the boundaries are. You're not sick until you get sick, and anybody can get sick under the right combination of circumstances.

Very good points, Jim.

I tend to say that what we call mental illness could be viewed as one type of behaviour "accepted" by society in case you are too frustrated by life and want to step out of your way and still stay inside your social context - at least as long as you are not treated in an institution. I can't help but think about Lucky Thompson as another highly talented musician so dedicated to his art he had to be frustrated by the business.

I totally agree that it is a very individual thing - this is confirmed by every diagnosis of mental illness I witnessed.

[mikeweil]

It's worth emphasizing the highs - to me, one thing that is seldom discussed is the tremendous joy and humor in much of his Monk's music. "Childlike" has been used as an adjective for some of these moments, but I'm not sure I agree. Instead I hear some of his use of repeated simple phrases as expression of the moments of great clarity that people suffering from mental illness sometimes experience - e.g. in manic states, where the world first seems in fast forward and then almost seems to fall away and only a divine feeling remains (often expressed as a feeling of invincibility and even Christ-like state).

Likewise, his use of repeated, micro-varied phrases, often played forcefully on the keyboard, sounds to me like an aural expression of being obsessed with or unable to part with an idea and literally "hammering it out."

Finally, consider his mastery of tempo, and particularly his ability to hold together pieces full of long pauses at incredibly slow pace...best evidenced in some of his solo piano work. This is frankly astonishing, I don't believe I've ever heard anyone else who could do this type of levitation so well. This I hear as an altered sense of time, slowed down perhaps by depression - literally, he seems to be moving and playing slower than time itself, yet it holds together because it must have felt right to him.

While I can follow your thoughts as seen from the psychiatrist's point of view, the features you described can tell us something entirely different if seen from an ethnomusicologist's point of view.

All these musical features are common practice in African music - the African influence on Jazz as an important aspect of Afro-American culture is still heavily underestimated, IMHO. While these features might sound "childlike", this is only if seen from a European musical cultural viewpoint. We project our musical expectations to African cultural elements, where they have different importance and functions. This lead generations of social scientists to categorize African culture as childlike or close to states of madness (if you think of trance phenomenons in ritual contexts) - and it still does!

This also applies to Monk's mastery of rhythm, which is the most important feature in African musical practice, and here African music has developped far beyond European music.

I think your points are totally valid on their own, but should be enhanced by an intra-cultural African-American point of view - I think this applies to any discussion of jazz, BTW.

[king ubu]

Fascinating discussion, Tony and Jim!

Not that I really have a lot to add, but - with Foucault somewhere back in memory - the point Jim makes is perfectly sensible: "mental illness" or "madness" is not something we can define generally, but rather something that can only be defined context-wise, meaning: we can talk about what was considered "mentally ill" at a given point in time and at a given place. Then, those who define it are usually not those who are considered being "mentally ill". It becomes, in this perspective, a question of power - the power to exclude certain parts of society from society itself (the same mechanisms apply to criminal issues, by the way).

Thus, we could maybe - without wanting to get too close to you, Tony - describe Tony's view as one being stated by part of the "power apparatus" that is currently in western societies "defining" what is "mentally ill" and what not, while Jim's perspective is the "subversive" one of a functioning, and generally accepted social being, who does understand quite a bit about this "power of definition", and thus is able to question it outside of a medical context, but rather in a social one.

I hope this is more or less comprehensible. No offense meant at anyone!

ubu

[brownie]

Fascinating discussion, Tony and Jim!

Absolutely!

Monk made sense.

We're the insane ones!

Edited July 31, 2004 by brownie

[couw]

Fascinating discussion, Tony and Jim!

Absolutely!

Monk made sense.

We're the insane ones!

you maybe, but not me!

certainly not!

[king ubu]

Fascinating discussion, Tony and Jim!

Absolutely!

Monk made sense.

We're the insane ones!

you maybe, but not me!

certainly not!

Gotcha!

Crazy or not? Should we have a poll?

ubu

[paul secor]

I find most of what's been written on this thread insulting to Monk's memory. I doubt that anyone who has posted was personally close enough to Thelonious Monk to write anything worth reading about his life or medical history. That makes it all speculation, and speculation can easily turn into rumor, which can, in turn, become "fact". The music is there for all of us to listen to, enjoy, and learn from. That should be more than enough.

[JSngry]

Paul, I see your point, and agree with it to a certain extent, but on the other hand, now that Monk has passed from us, it is inevitable that he will come to be treated as the historical figure that he was, and that means, for better and/or worse, biographical investigation/speculation.

The Gourse biography gives some pretty vivid quotes re: the drug use, sources cited IIRC. But if my memory also serves, it's perhaps relevant that such indulgences on Monk's part didn't really begin in earnest until the 1960s, long after his "core" work had been done. This is also the time when the mental "issues" began to surface. Draw your own conclusions about that, if you like.

Is any of that relevant at all to the brilliance of his music? No, of course not, and I share the distaste for any attempt to link the music itself to such matters. Like all genius, the work speaks 100% for itself, and is really all that matters. But the nature of history is to look beyond the work and into the person responsible for it. That often turns up uncomfortable facts/speculations.

Personally, I think that it's incumbent upon the serious listener/fan/scholar/whatever to keep the biographical facts seperate from the actual work, except when a direct correlation can be proven. In Monk's case, I've yet to be even remotely convinced that such a correlation exists.

[John L]

Even before his later years, Monk was clearly an eccentric. Intensely creative people are often eccentric. Monk and his music were one. Which was the cause and which was the effect is unclear.

[DrJ]

Great comments - sorry for my absence over the weekend, things were hectic.

I don't disagree with anything anyone's said, really. But I do hold to my interpretation.

Much of the discussion has veered into the cultural definition of mental illness - and that's an interesting but somewhat different topic. Sure, mental illness is ultimately culturally defined. There's a whole burgeoning area of study of what are called "culture bound" syndromes, which are mental conditions that are only found/diagnosed in specific cultures. We create as a society what the psychiatrists call "normal" and "abnormal" for sure.

But as I alluded to above, all of that really misses the point. The points as I see them were:

1) Monk was born and raised in Western culture, not Africa, so I think it's totally reasonable to discuss his condition and behavior relative to Western cultural norms.

2) Eccentricity is not mental illness. No argument there, and never had any (as I mentioned at the start of my reply to Jim, there are plenty of iconoclasts and eccentrics without mental illness - most of them, in fact.

3) I believe that I can see in clips of Monk and also hear in some of his recorded music more than just genius and eccentricity - I see and hear instances where he seems to have veered over the line into what most people in Western culture would deem as behavior consistent with mental illness. Again, it's not really salient to the discussion whether he would have been considered mentally ill in another geographic region - that goes without saying, but the fact is he lived in the U.S.

4) I respectfully disagree with the overly simplistic notion that Monk's early years were any freer of mental illness than his later years. Rather, I 'd say that it's likely his reserves ran shorter in the later years and he wasn't able to channel and keep at bay the demons as successfully any longer. His music showed these differences in reserve. Nearly all mental illnesses begin in early adulthood, and it's not unusual for severity to worsen later in life. Few develop past middle age. I've seen this whole thing played out in one of my own relatives - youth is a time of amazing energy and psychological and physical reserve, but the signs are always there if anyone cares to look (or, as is often the case, look back for them).

5) NONE OF THIS IS A JUDGEMENT, and NONE OF THIS IS MEANT TO SUGGEST THAT MONK WAS ANYTHING LESS THAN A FULL ON GENIUS - that's the part that kind of bothers me about what many have posted in reply. The automatic assumption is that by calling something a mental illness, I have somehow automatically stigmatized the person and have taken away credit for what they achieved. While it's true that such stigma does exist in some quarters in our society, that was way far from my intent. People jumping in frantically trying to "defend" Monk's genius and his personhood strikes me as a manifestation of a society that still has a long way to go in its acceptance of mental illness as a commonplace state that NEEDS, no DEMANDS to be acknowledged and considered in the full light of day.

6) To reiterate, I submit that what Monk achieved is actually if anything ELEVATED when one acknowledges the demons he had to confront and content with. That he did so in a highly public manner for so long is nothing short of astonishing. No wonder he was ultimately exhausted, emotionally, creatively, and physically.

[JSngry]

4) I respectfully disagree with the overly simplistic notion

Thank you, Senator.

[JSngry]

4) I respectfully disagree with the overly simplistic notion that Monk's early years were any freer of mental illness than his later years. Rather, I 'd say that it's likely his reserves ran shorter in the later years and he wasn't able to channel and keep at bay the demons as successfully any longer. His music showed these differences in reserve.

And I will respectfully disagree with this overly simplistic notion.

[John L]

4) I respectfully disagree with the overly simplistic notion that Monk's early years were any freer of mental illness than his later years. Rather, I 'd say that it's likely his reserves ran shorter in the later years and he wasn't able to channel and keep at bay the demons as successfully any longer. His music showed these differences in reserve.

And I will respectfully disagree with this overly simplistic notion.

I imagine that the distinction between being "freer of mental illness" and having enough "reserves" to "keep at bay the demons" is one that only a professional could understand. The rest of us always run the risk of falling victim to overly simplistic notions.

[JSngry]

indeed!

[DrJ]

JSngry Posted on Aug 2 2004, 03:16 PM

  QUOTE (DrJ @ Aug 2 2004, 10:51 AM)

4) I respectfully disagree with the overly simplistic notion that Monk's early years were any freer of mental illness than his later years. Rather, I 'd say that it's likely his reserves ran shorter in the later years and he wasn't able to channel and keep at bay the demons as successfully any longer. His music showed these differences in reserve. 

And I will respectfully disagree with this overly simplistic notion. 

I know you were kind of funnin' me here (and a well deserved swat on the nose it was, sorry for the tone of my first message, was more than a little, shall we say, HAUGHTY) , but I also have to say that the notion I've posed is not simplistic at all.

I simply meant that with aging the brain and body lose all kinds of reserve...in the most tangible example, that's why when you were 20 and you went out and drank all night, you could jump out of bed without much of a hangover the next day, while now you feel like you want to die. Ditto for heavy exercise, you could be totally out of shape at 20 and go out and play soccer all day and have nary a sore muscle, but most people at 40 can't, and at 60 you'd need a body cast.

Pneumonia in an 80 year old is a WAY big deal; sure it can be too in a younger person but if they are otherwise healthy, it seldom is.

Same thing happens with mental reserve...all kinds of studies show that normal older people do have more trouble with "mental stress" types of tests like repeating long strings of digits from memory than younger people. This is associated with all kinds of tangible, real problems, like the tendency of otherwise normal older people to become disoriented or even frankly psychotic (it's called "sundowning" and is extremely common) when admitted to the hospital with an illness (even a relatively minor one) - they lose their normal cues and all their defenses/reserves are fighting off the illness, and they go ga ga temporatily. Same thing can happen in younger people who have medical problems that make them physiologically "older."

So we lose reserve and when we do, medical problems that were present in youth but more or less compensated for can become more of an issue. Now I ask you, why should mental illness - a misnomer in the era of molecular biology and genetics, since these disorders are every bit as "medical" as heart failure - be any different?

It's an important point, not really a very technical one. I think it explains why a lot of artists who contended with mental illnesses were able to be quite productive and keep it together early in their lives, while later on their productivity went to hell and they became withdrawn or reclusive.

Edited August 3, 2004 by DrJ