Jah. Rastafari.

I am a goddamn rock star right here. I am the one not playing the bongos.

Giant Screw

I went to this meeting today for a concentration within the PsyD program for people who are interested in treating those with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness. They brought in a speaker who just blew my mind. His name is Raffael Lomas, and you can check his website out at www.raffaellomas.net .

He's this Israeli who committed himself to a mental hospital in Jerusalem after a suicide attempt. He suffers from severe depression, and one day, managed to make it out in the garden to reflect. When he was out there, he met many others who were similarly afflicted, but who had been committed much longer than he had. They were having a conversation about fearing going crazy. Raffael suggested that since they were already in a mental hospital, that maybe they should all just go crazy instead of fearing that it might happen. So, they all went to bed early, ate very well, and decided to all go crazy at 8am the next morning. When they all woke up, and nothing had happened, Raffael became agitated.

He went for a walk in the garden, reflecting to himself that he was inviting madness in. He bent down to see a pile of screws on the ground, and decided that perhaps one of these screws was the loose screw that had been afflicting him and his friends. So, he bought the pile of screws in the ward, and showed them all around, and no one claimed any of the loose screws. It was from then that he had an urge to create some sort of art reflecting the loose screw.

He created a 10 foot screw out of styrophome and fiberglass. The exact construction is important for symbolic reasons that are all very personal to him, such as the counterclockwise construction of the spiral-in essence, making it impossible for the screw to fit in anywhere. After constructing the screw, he took it on a world trip, from Florence, to Manhattan, to the Ghengis river in India.

The second series of his art consists of wheels that he cuts and bends, rather than welds. He is inspired by the story of Ezekial (Ezekial saw the wheel, and the wheel was made of eyes). Raffael looks at the relationship of the spokes to the axle, and so forth, and many of his bent wheels look like eyes.

What was so incredible to me was how poetic he was in speaking about his own depression. I also suffer from depression, and I am happily medicated, but I have never felt this same urge to express my inner workings onto the outer world and in effect, make my own reality. His art is absolutely stunning, and I admire his unique approach to his illness.

So, I came to a meeting for a giant screw, moderated by a nut. Seemed to go pretty well together.