Lithium-Group Project

My collaborative team includes myself, Alison, and my friend Andrew Goldman who is currently studying in London, England.

This project will once again include the book 'An Unquiet Mind' by Kay Redfield Jamison. I was assigned to do a book report on this book in another of my classes, and I felt I would like to do another project with it.

This book is an autobiographical description of life dealing with manic-depression. Lithium is the drug of choice for those with severe manic episodes. It is very hard for a person with this illness to give up the high of mania in order to fore-go the lows of the depression that inevitably follows.

The basic schematic is this. I will pick out a few passages from the book, of her diary entries, and those of her therapist. I will record myself speaking them and send the recordings to Andrew, who will then compose something using the text. Hopefully he will have time to write a flute line, me to record it, and then send it back to him to enter into the piece in a recorded context. Or maybe I will do it live, not sure about that. When the piece is finished he will send it to Alison, who will record herself dancing to it. She has also suggested performing live along with the video of herself dancing-essentially creating a duet with herself.

So thats the plan!

Here are the passages I recorded for the work:

"There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting starts, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are fas too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality."

"7-17-75 Patient has elected to resume lithium because of the severity of her depressive episodes.

7-25-75 Vomiting.

8-5-75 Tolerating lithium. Feeling depressed at realization she was more hypomanic than she believed.

9-30-75 Patient has stopped lithium again. Very important, she says, to prove she can handle stress without it.

10-2-75 Persists in not taking lithium. Already hypomanic. Patient well aware of it.

10-7-75 Patient has resumed lithium because of increased irritability, insomnia, and inability to concentrate. "