Monk

[JSngry]

Well, ok, all well and good, but you've not yet convinced me to consider the possibility that the traits in Monk's earlier music that you hear as signs of his supposed battle/coping/whatever with mental illness are anything other than genius in action. "Sundowning", depletion of coping skills and stuff, yeah, sure, no problem. But does it follow that when those coping skills erode and the person gets a bit wacky that they were ALWAYS mentally ill, just an accident waiting to happen? I don't think so, dude. That's kind of like saying that Roy Campanella was always a cripple and that the car accident reduced his coping skills to the point where he needed the wheelchair. Just seems to fall into the "hindsight is 20/20" category, as well as assuming a causal link between creativity and/or eccentricity and mental health that might be tempting to pursue, but to what end?

Taking the Campanella analogy from the absurd into the practical, there's also the factor of the heavy drug use possibly triggering the erratic behavior. The stories in the Gourse book are of indicriminate pill popping - lots of speed and stuff - alpng with coke and stuff. All things with neurological implications as well as behavioral ones. Don't think that there's any question but that that's as likely a source as anything else for the eventual problems. You take a tightrope walker and subject him to repeated gale force winds, and sooner or later he's going to fall.

I have no problem with the notion that Monk eventually became mentally ill. I still have a deep distrust of the notion that he was always mentally ill to one degree or another. On that one, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Bland, but effective, eh?

Edited August 3, 2004 by JSngry

[Chuck Nessa]

Monk is dead and he gave us much more than we should expect. Let this shit go. Nothing is gained.

[Dan Gould]

Jesus, Chuck, now you gotta tell other people what they can and cannot talk about on a bulletin board?

Do you do this in bars, too? Walk up to people arguing over something, tell 'em the discussion is out of line and to shut the hell up?

Enjoy your vacation, and while you're driving around, think for a few minutes about the purpose of an internet bulletin board.

[Chuck Nessa]

Thanks Dan. I will do that.

[mikeweil]

Well, ok, all well and good, but you've not yet convinced me to consider the possibility that the traits in Monk's earlier music that you hear as signs of his supposed battle/coping/whatever with mental illness are anything other than genius in action.

And both of you have yet to convince me that African cultural patterns and the way other, non-African-Americans perceive them do not play an important part of this!

[JSngry]

Well, ok, all well and good, but you've not yet convinced me to consider the possibility that the traits in Monk's earlier music that you hear as signs of his supposed battle/coping/whatever with mental illness are anything other than genius in action.

And both of you have yet to convince me that African cultural patterns and the way other, non-African-Americans perceive them do not play an important part of this!

I'd not try to convince you otherwise, Mike. I agree with you.

[DrJ]

Well, I WOULD try to convince you otherwise, Mike...Monk was not born or raised in Africa, and while I'm not 100% sure I doubt his parents were either. I honestly believe that it's an irrelevant point in this case. While I'm sure that some of the musical devices Monk employed were in fact passed down from ancestral Africa, that's neither here nor there as the stuff I'm talking about don't fit in that category.

Jim - your analogy with Campanella makes no sense at all. An acute, unexpected, traumatic injury in a car accident is one thing, while a medical condition that is known to typically become manifest in early adulthood (and this statement is not based on "20/20 hindsight" but rather data involving 1000s of people in prospective, longitudinal studies) rather than springing from out of nowhere in middle age or later is totally another. Comparing them is an utter nonsense.

Also, as I stated before, the drug use/mental illness thing inevitably gets into chicken and egg debates, but it's pretty well established from longitudinal research that usually the mental illness precedes the drug use, seldom does drug use "cause" mental illness - medically, that just don't happen but once in a blue moon, despite popular folklore and family stories designed to hide the stigma of mental illness - except in the case of very specific drugs that Monk never took (e.g. some of the synthetics developed later that can cause Parkinsonism) OR in the case of tremendously heavy, chronic use of other drugs - which I guess is possible, but I doubt it (it would be hard to account for that type of drug use in the face of Monk's early productivity as well as his longevity - Bird held it together for a while but died real young) and even then it would still be a far less likely scenario.

Drug use in the context of mental illness is, then, generally a form of escape or self-treatment FROM the mental illness, OR (as some recent work has teased out) is a totally independent disorder (e.g. there's no cause/effect relationship between drug use and mental illness in EITHER direction in many populations, but rather there could be an underlying psychoneurologic deficit that puts the person at risk for both conditions).

Also, even if I give you the possibility that drug use caused some type of acute mental illness or "breaks," they usually clear up once the drug use is stopped. So that doesn't easily explain the long-term decline.

Anyway, while I don't agree with squelching the discussion as Chuck has seemed to ask us to do, I am pretty much over it myself. I'm really kind of surprised at the resistance to this idea of mental illness being a largely life-long struggle, why it "matters" so much to people. Jim, you asked:

assuming a causal link between creativity and/or eccentricity and mental health that might be tempting to pursue, but to what end?

It's not to any end, dude, I'm just trying to bring in a different viewpoint, one that is certainly not based on any personal knowledge of Monk but one that IS quite well informed in regard to the causes and nature of mental illness. Also, your quote misses the point again - I'm not trying to assert a link between mental illness and creativity, I said that before. That would be stupid. I'm saying that I think you can hear in this one man's music evidence (at times) of mental illness, primarily in the later years. Period. Don't read so much into it.

Since nobody here knew Monk, I think my views are at least as valid as any other viewpoint - and as I said several times up front, I could be wrong. There's no goal or end, except maybe (as I mentioned already) to elevate Monk's genius and achievement even just a bit higher than they already were.

[JSngry]

What's up with all this longitudinal research without any latitudinal research to balance it out?

BALANCE!

[Jim R]

Wow, I think I got here before couw...

[DrJ]

There's a dot out of place on that second graph, Jim - BOGUS DATA, BOGUS DATA, BOGUS DATA!

OK, OK, I'll let it go - you don't have to hit me over the head!

[Tom Storer]

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.

[...] what Monk achieved is actually if anything ELEVATED when one acknowledges the demons he had to confront and content with.

I think it's kind of ironic that Western mental health professionals in the 21st century still equate mental illness with possession by demons.

[mikeweil]

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.

[...] what Monk achieved is actually if anything ELEVATED when one acknowledges the demons he had to confront and content with.

I think it's kind of ironic that Western mental health professionals in the 21st century still equate mental illness with possession by demons.

If taken literally this is pretty close to the way traditional African cultures view this phenomenon.

[king ubu]

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.

[...] what Monk achieved is actually if anything ELEVATED when one acknowledges the demons he had to confront and content with.

I think it's kind of ironic that Western mental health professionals in the 21st century still equate mental illness with possession by demons.

If taken literally this is pretty close to the way traditional African cultures view this phenomenon.

Now can't you stop bugging us with your f****ng african culture?

[DrJ]

Tom Storer Posted: Aug 10 2004, 03:04 AM 

QUOTE (DrJ @ Aug 2 2004, 04:51 PM)

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.

[...] what Monk achieved is actually if anything ELEVATED when one acknowledges the demons he had to confront and content with.

I think it's kind of ironic that Western mental health professionals in the 21st century still equate mental illness with possession by demons.

Tom it was a figure of speech. It's not like I prescribe exorcism for people with mental illness. I just got through explaining at length that I view mental illness as a medical problem, one that deserves the same type of careful assessment and treatment and lack of stigmatization. I'll assume you read that all carefully and were joking.

One other point: outside of "the West" there are very few to no "mental health professionals." So your statement is a nonsense in that light. It's the rest of the world that often invokes demons/posession to explain mental illness, in the absence of a satisfactory scientific base. Totally understandable, but let's at least get the story straight, shall we?

Edited August 11, 2004 by DrJ

[JSngry]

On the other hand, I think the matter of "residual Africanisms" (my phrase) is a very valid one, and not just for jazz, either. Cultural "habits" don't die away, they morph. They do like the people who have them do - change form, acculturate, assimilate, etc. But they don't just vanish w/o a trace.The only way that happens is through a total immersion in/absorbtion of a different culture. And even then, they might take a generation or two (or more) to really disappear.

And I don't think that Thelonious Monk of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA took that route...