The title is taken from an inventory of Lowell's medical treatment contained in the biography I'm currently reading, Setting the River on Fire, by Kay Redfield Jamison. This particular entry marked the 9th time Lowell had been hospitalized for mania. There would be 12 more in future years. The first painting didn't seem adequately to capture the manic trajectory, from calm, to mania, to the depression that emerges after intensive drug and shock therapy, to the return of relative calm, so I worked on it some more and it ended up turning into what you see in the second image. I'm not sure if I'm done with it, but I'm also not sure how much more I can think about manic-depressive psychosis.
No comments:
Post a Comment