Extraordinary and unusual. A book of surprises, insights, commentary on recovery, and a celebration of life. I felt as if the author was talking directly to me as if he was just chatting about beautiful light, and dark experiences. Sangrid Hauser Author and art therapist. Oslo.
Initially I thought not another memoir from a senior citizen regurgitating an unexamined life. The back cover of this remarkable, fearless book does not do it justice. It is a delight to read, the text and the striking images are cross referenced in footnotes and endnotes. It was a bit like a detective novel, piecing together what the author is revealing and not showing. Some of the poetry is gut wrenching, some heart melting and all supported by simple zen like imagery. Maive Absolym author of The Way of Mind - a journey through image abstraction 1999
I don't know where to place this book in my library. It's a therapy book for sure, the subtitle gives that away. But it's so much more than a guide to being honest with oneself. It reads like a gift to the author's children and grandchildren. Who was this guy, they might ask, and this is his revelation of a private self. The author also wrote a book of autobiographical fiction about recovery from, I assume, a traumatic childhood. This book seems like part of that process. I found the combination of elegant ink and crayon drawings, supported by a poem on the facing page, at times quite moving, often wise. I highly recommend it to artists and writers who are developing their own language. Gloria Edelsen Fleischmann University of Prague, Author of Dramaturgy - finding the playwright's voice in performance 2012
This work belongs in several genre's - memoir, phenomenology, psychotherapy, sociology. I'd like to add fiction. The author himself acknowledges any personal testimony repeated more than twice will be assisted by fabrication, the tendency of the mind to add features not able to be corroborated. Even the camera lies, human memory is prone to error and is made up of many contradictions and conflicting points of view. And that's just the beginning of my problem knowing where to put this book. In the end I decided it was a prayer, maybe a loquacious suicide note, and even an epitaph. Maybe that's too dark a take on it, but that's how it sits with me after 2 readings. I was deeply affected by his voice. I have not heard the gentleman speak but somehow, he has placed himself in my mind. I can hear him like the narrator of a social documentary. This phenomenon has something to do with the relationship between his poetry, art and his experiential history, as if my brain must traverse a labyrinth he has drawn in my mind, and in doing so has installed his voice. Would it be possible I wonder to achieve this voice with machine learning. The author has produced an instruction manual on his art/poetry method with the help of a Chatbot. Whilst this throws my search for a genre into further disarray, it also strengthens its relationship to fiction. So far AI cannot produce this complex transaction between left and right brain and lived experience, I hope it never does. Argen Smith. Lead Clinician, The London School of Freudian Psychoanalysis & Author of Being into Nothingness 1996
