The Georgie Gust Exhibit

"Till next time, take care of yourselves and each other." -- Jerry Springer

People expect someone with schizophrenia to cry a lot, stay in bed all day, not moving much, or sounding like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. But schizophrenia isn't always that obvious. Moreover, when depression plays a role, Happy Halloween! People expect someone with depression to cry a lot, stay in bed all day, moping around, or sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. But depression isn't always that obvious. Which brings us to the early morning that is quite often restoring. Thank you for all your comments and discussion.

Update: Facebook Friday, November 6, 2015: 

Dear friends: You will have noticed that my recent online activity has been directed solely at the people in my personal life—here on my compound—a private medical facility otherwise. My family, staff, medical team, and I have reached a boiling point where I fear only the worst from here on in as far as my personal life. I have been as careful as I could by not using names and taking every legal precaution, I can sense things around here have been building up over the last year or so. Blah, blah, blah. But I would like just to ban some of these people from my page that I have never done, ban people, and I am thinking not to, but living in isolation in my 1,200 office/guest house with all my legal rights, money finances and sense of trust have vanished. [... My apologies for wordiness.] I am tired tonight though it is my morning as my sleep schedule has been off for years. I would like to feel comfortable enough to get back to my usual posting of inspirational material and so forth, book promotions, films, and so forth. I hope some of you may write me—anything—there is a contact form on the top of this page; otherwise, all of my info is online. [Passive voice by choice, I write this all in haste, for I am tired.] However, I do not use a phone and am not willing to. Please accept my apologies for spending some days here and there predominately off my game in the meantime, I will continue to post my true feelings, honest, raw, brazen, and uncensored. That is me, and I am, in fact, as many of you know a very deeply troubled and disturbed person. As my buttons continue to be pushed. [... Ah, passive voice.] I'd like to be able to return, return, to my usual, though you should never expect "normal" from me, OK? We all know that is never going to happen. I am sorry if this has all seemed like I have been putting some blame on my audience. My tipping point had, in fact, reached a few days ago. I withdrew from everybody in my personal life that I could and so far all have gone unsuccessfully. All of my life rights obstructed. I remain quietly numb here and there, overall comfortable in my secret weariness here all alone, me versus the universe. I don't know. ... I have no one. I have lost this. Please accept my apologies in general and then of course, for any typos or grammatical errors. I’ll be around. I can't decide if I need a big hug, a large cup of coffee, or three days of sleep. Thank you. —Jonathan Harnisch 

I am a troubled artist today. I do not know what day it is. I am extremely frustrated. Unable to ground and center myself, I feel restless. I am … I am not me. I am not myself today. I cannot recall who that person was. But I know he was here. I understand him. He will resurface again some other time, hopefully soon. I recall the first person. I know of no second person. I need the third person, the person I think I remember, to return. This confusion must be the hyper-reality from some other day, which I wrote about for inclusion my next novel. I recall that something I said on camera was scattered and disjointed and yet was a center point, something to ground me for further writing. I have no censorship today and so far many highlights showing typos or grammar errors and no system overload on the computer. The Internet seems to be back on—online. I don't need the Internet now. I need complication. I need the morning after and to melt away, to manifest the titles for my latest work. Beginning to view these calms me and allows me to see beauty in the abstract. But I know the original images, which flicker on the screen in The Morning After and also Chance Encounter, Emptying His Pockets, and Melt Away, the film I have not released yet. The one I am still working on, just not right now. The rough cut just finished exporting I see, but I need to write, to set aside all film and art but for the written journal. Dear Diary, as I say, in the books, the novel I just published, Lover in the Nobody. But I just need, right now, to write so that I can feel. Not so I can move on. I will, and I will have to. All artistic projects must be on hold now; although the fire in my mind is ever present, I brought it to a halt. I fixed in my mind, my obsession. I paused. I did the right thing. Art is my medication. My early morning thoughts and ventilation that often come out in the shower. I will not run through the documentation of the yesterday that was; I do not recall a yesterday. I recall right now as time continues. I allow myself to become stuck for good reason in right now. I can't move on. And I won't. That's altering time. That's moving along with it, as indefinable as time is: continuous, relatively, or moment by moment. I believe I see it right now, breathing in the moment by another moment, lost in a world of sickening madness Trapped in between the moments I think is where I should be. I once heard that, come to think of it, somewhere, a psychic or something a long time ago. My cats are dying. My writing is a stream of thought. My writing and my art are how I cope, and with the complex issues that bequeath the trash brilliant fiction and film, otherwise the literature exhibiting the real universal truth not to say without the proper vocabulary. Little things. But it is all on hold. Rather, they are done. I manifest what I write, and the chapter names become the chapters in my hours, the 24-hour woman 240 times ten pages. It's complex composite sketching. Manifesting words into life. I had to look it up to find what day of the week it was, and it is Monday. Compulsive about dates, I cannot remember anything about there ever being a Sunday—just that my cats are dying. I chain smoke five to six packs of cigarettes per day and chew two to three cans of smokeless tobacco. Everything included in this transient anti-art was written about too, the slow semi-suicide of the mind. Now the body is coming to die. But I won't, I don't like this at all. My cats are dead from my smoke. I scared off the thought, and I can't stop smoking. I will cope when they die. It's strange. Real. Strange. The Morning After is beautiful. I think that's what it is. But I couldn't tell you. Maybe writing this out a little bit helped, but I am not better. Smoke lingers in the pad, and I want drugs. I can't have any drugs. I can't have any illegal drugs, only prescribed medication for my anxiety and some other things, like schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is also

Thursday, November 5, 2015

The Brutal TruthbyJonathan Harnisch

I am an artist, author, and filmmaker who lives with comorbid schizoaffective disorder, as well as a range of other mental health conditions. In The Brutal Truth, I reveal my schizophrenic world with all its terrors and wonders. The book offers a raw and candid glimpse into the rarely told and poorly understood reality of living with schizophrenia—where “the only place where my dreams become impossibilities is in my mind.” The Brutal Truth is a collection of essays that brings together material that was written for my online community dedicated to mental health. I have over 100,000 followers on Twitter, as well as a popular Facebook group dedicated to mental health advocacy. This 25,000 word volume is written for others living with severe mental health conditions, as well as general readers interested in understanding the nature of psychosis. I am the author of the semi-fictional and semi-autobiographical novels, Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography and Second Alibi: The Banality of Life. I am also a controversial mental health advocate, podcast host, and filmmaker.

Synopsis: The Brutal Truth Jonathan Harnisch is an “artist, dreamer, man on a mission, and human being just like you.” He is also “a deeply troubled and disturbed person,” who lives with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder. He is committed to sharing his unique life online in order to help others. Through a relentless, direct encounter with his schizophrenic self and thoughts, Harnisch offers a rare insight into this often misunderstood disorder. Extraordinarily, the message is one of resilience and hope, finding rare wisdom through enduring and learning to understand his psychotic episodes. Rather than retreating into his own troubles, Harnisch journeys inside himself in order to understand the humanity that he shares with others: “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of the world but those who fight and win battles that others do not know anything about.”

For all its fearless honesty, The Brutal Truth is throughout an affirmation of life. As Harnisch says, “I write and publish what I want and what I feel, no matter what mood or state of mind I am in, but I always do my best to keep things positive.” After all, he knows that he is “a legitimate, loving, grateful, and spiritual human being who deserves to be loved and accepted and who deserves to make decisions, to make mistakes, and to be forgiven.” The Brutal Truth shows that it is by acknowledging the schizophrenic experience that we can come to understand and deal with it. Harnisch’s essays offer daring descriptions of what it is like to live—moment upon moment—with schizophrenia. These essays are written to help others undergoing mental disorders. They will also help those who want to better understand what their loved ones are going through so that they can help them more effectively and more compassionately. But these essays are not just for those affected by psychiatric disorders. All readers will feel enriched after spending time with Harnisch in this extraordinary and too often untold schizophrenic world. As Harnisch says, “We schizophrenics, through our psychosis—our delusions, our hallucinations, our reality—create or develop a story.” Seldom has the schizophrenic story been told with such unflinching honesty and truth. Outline: The Brutal Truth

The Brutal Truth consists of 13 essays that shed light on the day-to-day experience of living with schizophrenia.

I Have Schizophrenia, but Schizophrenia Does Not Have Me

Even though we all have our battles and our bad days, this does not mean that we have a bad life. Harnisch describes his realisation that the ultimate goal that he is striving for, as a person living with acute mental disorders, is independence. He refuses to be controlled by his illness.

The Brutal Truth: Where Am I?

Of the things you lose as a schizophrenic, it is the mind that you miss the most. Harnisch describes his search for solitude, walking away from life to find peace but being unable to escape the past or his day-to-day problems. The truth must be spoken, however savage that may be: “You do not want to feel what I feel.”

Thanks

Here Harnisch thanks his readers, especially his online mental health advocacy community, which has proved to be his “trapeze net” on his schizophrenic flights.

Getting Through an Episode

Harnisch is an unemployed artist with “a life that, in terms of conventional reality, doesn’t actually exist.” And so he creates a “double self” made up of his delusions. This double self allows him to experience a reality that substitutes for the uncomfortable truths he prefers not to acknowledge. It allows him to not be himself.

If You Are Going Through Hell, Keep Going

If you hang in there long enough, things will change for the better. In Harnisch’s case, a severe psychotic break was required for him to finally get the right help. Whatever our hand in life, we must discover our worth: “what we give to the world and what the world gives to us.” Harnisch cannot escape schizophrenia, but he can make it his friend. By altering his perspective on suffering, he learns that even though he still struggles, he no longer suffers.

It's Coming to Get Me: The Voices of Paranoia

If you are afflicted with paranoia, you know, wholeheartedly, that these are not delusions. People areharassing you. People are jealous of you. By now, Harnisch is able to see that his paranoid beliefs are “only the schizophrenia,” but “it’s for damn sure the truth and as frightening as all hell.”

Living with Psychosis: Living in Shame

Nothing is more terrifying than battling your own mind every day. Harnisch’s accounts of his psychotic episodes are evidence of his resilience and ability to survive. But he asks people who don’t understand the first thing about him and his delusional reality to stop expecting “normal” from him: “We all know it is never going to happen.”

People with Depression Cannot “Snap Out of It”

It is difficult to be told that you “inspire” others so long as you remain depressed. Harnisch knows that hewill get out of this depressed state. But it won’t be right now. People with depression cannot “snap out of it.” But they can know hope.

Addiction and Schizophrenia

Facing an addiction is a scary encounter with the self—especially if your reality is schizophrenic. Quitting smoking is a battle that Harnisch knows he must fight peacefully. He is a warrior and a survivor. He should be able to do this. It is a common enough struggle, but there is nothing common about how this feels.

The Delusional Thinking Process: To the Victor Go the Spoils

Harnisch describes his latest episode of delusion and paranoia, seeking to demystify what has happened in his mind so that he can learn how to cope even better next time. As he digs more deeply into “the vulnerabilities of psychosis,” he discovers that his delusions are for the most part rooted in a grain of truth.

When Delusions Are Real: The Schizophrenic Experience

How can people diagnosed with psychotic disorders get people to believe their truths? After all, once you’ve been diagnosed as being psychotic, your credibility is never the same. Harnisch reveals what his illness has taken from him, including recognition for his accomplishments. He puts together pieces of the “shattered stained glass” of schizophrenia, attempting to describe what is usually dismissed as “indescribable.” He explains the often mystical schizophrenic experience of reality, which those who seek to help them need to understand.

When Things Get Better

In this essay Harnisch calls for positivity, love, and gratitude even as he struggles “through the minefield—the deep darkness and confusion—that is schizophrenia.” It is by embracing even our darkest experiences that we are able to strengthen ourselves for the journey.

Writing Therapy: Easy Does it

Harnisch describes the metamorphosis that led him from the pursuit of fame to using writing as therapy—to heal. Through writing, he fights for his mind every day and is able to come to a clearer perspective on life. “We all have problems, but let's not kid ourselves! It's how we deal with them that makes the difference.” "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't know what I want to see. My world use to be worth living for, and now it's hard enough just to be me." 

— Jonathan Harnisch, Author

To Dance with Depression | Finding Light in My Darkness | Jonathan Harnisch | Thu Nov 5 9-07 54 AM-HD

Jonathan Harnisch Page

Sometimes you just have to sit back, look at things objectively, smile, and laugh at the f*cked-up-ness of life. 

— Jonathan Harnisch #Inspiration #TheBrutalTruth

Being Myself-HD

Envision a blend of a mentally ill mind with unsurpassed resiliency and fiery intellect and your result would be the brilliant Jonathan Harnisch. An all-around artist, Jonathan writes fiction and screenplays, sketches, imagines, and creates. His most recent artistic endeavor is developing music, a newfound passion with visible and of course audible results already in the making. Produced filmmaker and published erotica author, Jonathan holds myriad accolades, and his works captivate the attention of those who experience it.

Manic-toned scripts with parallel lives, masochistic tendencies in sexual escapades, and disturbing clarities embellished with addiction, fetish, lust, and love, are just a taste of themes found in Jonathan’s transgressive literature. Conversely, his award-winning films capture the ironies of life, love, self-acceptance, tragedy, and fantasy. Jonathan’s art evokes laughter and shock, elation and sadness, but overall forces you to step back and question your own version of reality.

Scripts, screenplays, and schizophrenia are defining factors of Jonathan’s life and reality—but surface labels are often incomplete. Jonathan is diagnosed with several mental illnesses from schizoaffective disorder to Tourette’s syndrome; playfully, he dubs himself the “King of Mental Illness.” Despite daily symptomatic struggles and thoughts, Jonathan radiates an authentic, effervescent, and loving spirit. His resiliency emanates from the greatest lesson he’s learned: laughter. His diagnoses and life experiences encourage him to laugh at reality as others see it. Wildly eccentric, open-minded, passionate, and driven, Jonathan has a feral imagination. His inherent traits transpose to his art, making his works some of the most original and thought provoking of modern day.

Jonathan is an alumnus of Choate Rosemary Hall. Subsequently, he attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he studied film production and screenwriting under Gary Winick and David Irving. During his studies at NYU, he held internships under renowned producers Steven Haft and Ismail Merchant. He is best known for his short films, On the Bus and Wax, both of which boast countless awards, including five Indie Film Awards and three Accolade Awards, and Ten Years, which won the Best Short Film and Audience Award in the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, to name a few.

Despite his impressive formal education and awarded honors, Jonathan is your normal, down-to-earth guy. Meditation, Duran Duran, vivid colors, Patrick Nagel prints, and rearranging furniture are some of his favorite things. Vices include cigarettes, Diet Coke, inappropriate swearing, and sausage and green chili pizza. He enjoys irony, planned spontaneity, redefining himself, and change. Jonathan lives with his beautiful wife, their three dogs, and seven cats in the unique desert village of Corrales, New Mexico. — at Harnisch Productions, LLC.

Synopsis: The Brutal TruthJonathan Harnisch is an “artist, dreamer, man on a mission, and human being just like you.” He is also “a deeply troubled and disturbed person,” who lives with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder. He is committed to sharing his unique life online in order to help others. Through a relentless, direct encounter with his schizophrenic self and thoughts, Harnisch offers a rare insight into this often misunderstood disorder. Extraordinarily, the message is one of resilience and hope, finding rare wisdom through enduring and learning to understand his psychotic episodes. Rather than retreating into his own troubles, Harnisch journeys inside himself in order to understand the humanity that he shares with others: “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of the world but those who fight and win battles that others do not know anything about.”For all its fearless honesty, The Brutal Truth is throughout an affirmation of life. As Harnisch says, “I write and publish what I want and what I feel, no matter what mood or state of mind I am in, but I always do my best to keep things positive.” After all, he knows that he is “a legitimate, loving, grateful, and spiritual human being who deserves to be loved and accepted and who deserves to make decisions, to make mistakes, and to be forgiven.”The Brutal Truth shows that it is by acknowledging the schizophrenic experience that we can come to understand and deal with it. Harnisch’s essays offer daring descriptions of what it is like to live—moment upon moment—with schizophrenia. These essays are written to help others undergoing mental disorders. They will also help those who want to better understand what their loved ones are going through so that they can help them more effectively and more compassionately. But these essays are not just for those affected by psychiatric disorders. All readers will feel enriched after spending time with Harnisch in this extraordinary and too often untold schizophrenic world. As Harnisch says, “We schizophrenics, through our psychosis—our delusions, our hallucinations, our reality—create or develop a story.” Seldom has the schizophrenic story been told with such unflinching honesty and truth.

Hello again friends and fans! Working on BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARE was primarily influenced by challenging myself to be okay with the gifts of imperfection, artistic imperfection, to be more precise, leaving some intentionally undone otherwise perfectionistic creative choices; my goal was to not overdo or over produce the film or soundtrack edits on this particular project. I completed this short film on Valentine’s Day 2015 feeling rather incomplete at the same time extremely satisfied and proud. Aside from THE MORNING AFTER in late 2014 which within its first 3 weeks upon upload tops my all time most popular films on Vimeo Pro, I have borrowed some footage from the vault of 2 of my Academy qualifying films, WAX and ON THE BUS, both featured on international television, and with the slightest hint of THE MORNING AFTER in the background in order to produce a rather creepily but intentionally disordered dream, if you will, of my past successes in cinema, while incorporating themes as parallel lives, masochistic tendencies in sexual escapades, and disturbing clarities embellished with addiction, fetish, lust, and love while evoking a dancing laughter at the past in order to come to terms with it, and bring it back, incorporating a perhaps occasional “neonic shock,” but more so evoking heightened elation and sadness. Once again, my hope overall is to force you to step back and question your own version of reality. I am an artist of many media, namely film, experimental music, and literature and I suffer from a rare comorbid form of schizophrenia, which has blessed me with many creative gifts. I hope you enjoy this example of inherent beauty in BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARE. I never forget those who have inspired me over the years and I am eternally grateful, learning who I am and what I believe in and stand for lately with the films I have been competing on Vimeo Pro over the 5 or so years past now. Thank you, with love, from Jonathan Harnisch.