(He Lost Heart)

After realizing that I was now officially a “survivor of suicide”, I began to look into suicide statistics and patterns. What I discovered truly surprised me.  There is absolutely no correlation between more challenged socio-economic groups (other than American Indians, whose rates are extremely high) and suicide rates.  Just because you are poor, struggling, or economically disadvantaged, it does not make you more likely to commit suicide.  The lowest rates are actually in the black population.  Suicide rates are increasing among Baby-Boomers.  Suicide rates are rising among older white men and teens in general, and white women are three times more likely to commit suicide as black women. There could be several books written to just to unpack and analyze all of the implications from those pieces of information. 

However,  according to research there IS a greatly increased rate of depression, manic-depressive illness, and suicide in eminent creative people, writers and artists especially. The incidence of mental illness among creative artists is higher than in the population at large.    My late husband was a musician, songwriter and writer.   We all know of the prominent creatives who chose to take their own lives – Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence of INXS and even The Singing Nun(!)    These statistics don’t even take into account the countless others artistic types who fall into drug or alcohol abuse in order to numb the pain of disappointment or emptiness and eventually fall victim to the addiction, which I believe is a form of suicide in slow motion (see Jackson Pollack, Marilyn Monroe etc).   

Somewhere in all of these statistics, one might deduce that those who have high expectations for their own lives and for the world around them are more likely to feel a sense of failure or disappointment that then draws the person into depression.  In other words, if your family, your social group, your education and training, or even just your own nature (as an idealist, dreamer or striver) creates in you certain aspirations or expectations that you need or want or feel compelled to achieve, and you then fall short in your own mind, there could be a higher tendency for the dark, black hopelessness to set in.  In my mind I call this the Icarus Syndrome.  

In Greek Mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. The main story told about Icarus is his attempt to escape from the island of Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son.  Daedalus tried his wings first, but before taking off from the island, warned his son not to fly too close to the sun or to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness and exhilaration that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea in the area which today bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, a small island in the Mediterranean.  

So it can be dangerous for those struggling to fly higher and higher, either metaphorically, artistically or with  chemical assistance. Those high aspirations can contribute to one’s own downfall. Seeking after the bright light can sometimes be fatal.  I GET Icarus.  In creating this piece, the image of bedraggled, disintegrating wings was primary.  First off, I see winged hearts everywhere now.  On jewelry, on t-shirts, the backs of leather jackets.  The uplifted winged heart is an iconic image that seems to have been adopted by bikers, rockers and romantics alike.  It’s rebellious and hopeful at the same time.  But for my context, it seems that a broken-winged heart is a much more truthful and powerful image.

For my Icarus, as his apparatus began to fail, he eventually lost heart to continue, rather than to adjust his course.   Initially, the heart cavity I created from plaster was empty.   The hopes and dreams were gone, the vision he was striving for had vanished altogether.    The weight of the world (the ball and chain or gravity if you will) was pulling him down too quickly for him to recover.    

But then I contemplated the fact that anyone who departs this earth, either willingly or unwillingly, always leaves a piece of themselves behind.  Sometimes their essence is retained via photographs and memories held dear by those who loved them, or in the case of creative types they leave behind a tangible piece of themselves in the form of their work, their music or their writing.   In Jim’s case, a screenplay he had worked on for nine years prior to his death came to fruition and was shown at film festivals almost exactly two years to the month after he died.   Hence the single feather inside, and the bird’s nest with eggs. A little sign of the life that was here and that something was left behind, hinting hopefully that there could be even more to come.

I’m adding a sky as background and will also add a narrow strip of the sea.    I remember this painting (below)  from childhood.   I loved that Icarus was so tiny, (in the bottom right corner) and all you could see were legs in the water.    

As I was working on the visual image, I could hear words, almost like a chant from a Greek chorus on the sidelines urging on the player on the field – rooting for him – “Fight Fight!”   A call and response if you will, and then a concluding commentary and lament.

ICARUS HAS FALLEN – He Lost Heart

Narrator:    Empty Boasts

Fly too Close

Chorus:      Height Height

Light Light

Feathers Falling

Help Me (Calling)

Fight Fight

Flight Flight

Ego Melting

Axis Tilting

Right Right

Up Right

Lost Intent

Slow descent

White White

White Fright

Engine Stalling

Icarus Falling

Cut to Night

Lost from Sight

UNISON – HE LOST HEART
HE LOST HEART

ICARUS HAS FALLEN