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The Common Loon
The Common Loon
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"In the northern lakes the mournful cry of the solitary loon penetrates the frosty air for miles. Those who hear stop to listen. It is said that once you hear the call of the loon, your life is changed forever. The common loon dives deeper and stays submerged longer than any other bird."
What is life like inside the mental institution? This is a question we have rarely asked and even less often wanted an answer to. The prospect, we feel, is too horrifying, too bleak. In The Common Loon, I portray the reality of patient life on the inside. I show that mental patients have unique and creative perspectives, and character and integrity like anyone else. They have a depth of humility wrought from profound suffering, the kind of which is not seen except here, where people are severely and chronically ill and separated from their freedom and from anyone who might care.
The Common Loon is based on a life of forty years having experienced mental institutions from Portland, Oregon, to Honolulu, to San Francisco, to L.A., to Denver, to New York, to London. It is the story of the sadness and the beauty and humor of so many lives that I have had the good fortune and honor to be able to know across the years and across the boundaries of culture, class, and privilege. It is an account of the walls that break down in the face of this devastating but powerful illness that allows, that indeed invites the transcendence of ordinary reality, and catapults one into an alternative and most extraordinary experience of life.
What is life like inside the mental institution? This is a question we have rarely asked and even less often wanted an answer to. The prospect, we feel, is too horrifying, too bleak. In The Common Loon, I portray the reality of patient life on the inside. I show that mental patients have unique and creative perspectives, and character and integrity like anyone else. They have a depth of humility wrought from profound suffering, the kind of which is not seen except here, where people are severely and chronically ill and separated from their freedom and from anyone who might care.
The Common Loon is based on a life of forty years having experienced mental institutions from Portland, Oregon, to Honolulu, to San Francisco, to L.A., to Denver, to New York, to London. It is the story of the sadness and the beauty and humor of so many lives that I have had the good fortune and honor to be able to know across the years and across the boundaries of culture, class, and privilege. It is an account of the walls that break down in the face of this devastating but powerful illness that allows, that indeed invites the transcendence of ordinary reality, and catapults one into an alternative and most extraordinary experience of life.
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