Please note, this next blog will explore subjects including marriage, facebook, heterosexuality and has the words Jesus, prostitute and homosexuality in it, although used independent of each other. The following blog is meant as a discussion piece and not an attack on any established and mainstreamed or subculture point of you. However, if you choose to continue to read this blog and you are offended I do not apologize for your reactions and you can a strongly worded email to my email address; I_dont_really_care@hotmail.com. Reader’s discretion is advised.

Facebook has more strength behind it as a social institution than marriage. If facebook and marriage could turn into little kids, one who had the word Facebook written on his shirt and the second with the word marriage written on his shirt, the Facebook little kid would destroy the Marriage kid.

But there are reasons for this… anyone can get a Facebook page, but then again anyone could get married…
Facebook is used as a way with connecting with people who you miss because they are far away , where as marriage is a way of connecting with someone who lives with you.

Facebook is casual, and perhaps, if Kim Kardashian has anything to say, marriage is casual too.

Why do we take Facebook more seriously then something like traditional marriage? Because Facebook is only an allusion… then again whose to say marriage isn’t also.

We can understand Facebook because it relates to the struggles of our generation. In our sense of feeling alone we somehow connect over an aluminum screen to another person who is also alone. Although not together because we believe our experience is the same and our intention to connect to another is the same we feel like we are experiencing together-ness on Facebook by commenting, messaging, posting and event planning, when really we are nowhere near that physical person and we are still alone.

In the olden days, where there were mammoths and we lived in caves and such I’d understand why marriage was so values, so important, something we wanted to be on a deep social and spiritual level. Inuk-shuk (the cave girl) and Bam Bam (the cave man) whoops, no Inuk-shuk is a consenting woman, both respected and conscious people choose to stop rubbing up against everyone else and instead focus their energy time and resources on each other. This makes them a stronger force to defeat as well as it creates a relationship which is the backdrop of what could turn into the family. The family has little humans in it, and one of the parents will feed child and the other will find the food… and as the other cave people watch Inuk-shuck and Bam-Bam they want that sense of closeness and kinship too so they begin to think of others, see others, look for things in others differently.

Wow and we evolve.

Perhaps in the 21st century the institution of marriage has become to predictable, expected and even forced for us to define it in the same way we can Facebook. On Facebook we are 2 or 20 different people all looking to find common ground and ex-friend those who are not there with us. People stick with things which give a meaning to their lives. We SHOULD think of marriage this way, a partnership of common ground an exclusive group that separates us from others. But we don’t, see it that way, or at least in no sustainable way. And that is why one of every 2 marriages breaks apart.

I blame heterosexuals personally. And I can blame heterosexuals because like a black person who can say the word “black guy over there” I can say the word heterosexual and write smack about them as I am also a heterosexual. So to marginalize and blame a group as people today often do with other minorities like, “those blacks”, “those jews” “those hippies”, “those people fighting for rights” “the chinese” I need a catchy word that will target the group which I blame for social problems, quickly and accessibly. The Straights! Sounds like a band.

Down with the STRAIGHTS. The Straights suck!

You see straight people are so expected to get married that I know some of them who do it just to get it over with. I once dated a straight and he used me so all straights are bad people. The straight introduced me to his parents but didn’t really want to hang out all that much. He wanted people to think he was straight, he looked straight on the outside but was empty and not intimate or personnel on the inside. I hate straights, we’re different.

Marriage is like CS! Miami’s violence content, it has no resonating meaning or at least to straight people. If you showed peaceful aliens CSI Miami’s violence, maybe they’d be shocked, but straights are desensitized to marriage. Where as we need a people who have never experienced marriage before to believe in it with cynicism. People desperate, like they were in the cave, show off to others what true commitment, love, respect, friendship honor and bond is. People who will love one other, their entire lives forsaking no other, despite all the obstacles in the world including people hating them, for loving someone commitedly.

The GAYS!

Why didn’t it hit me before!

The gays (aka the none straights) have never been aloud to marry so it has significant meaning to them.

Now don’t get your panties in a knot. This ain’t a pro-gay/marriage blog. But it is a pro Jesus one.
You see Jesus liked marriage but he didn’t like it for people who had been divorced, but only straights could get married EPSO FACTO Jesus was still saying what I’m saying which is Straights are screwing up marriage.

In many ways we’re too spoiled in our expectations, I could write on Facebook that I’m married to a pony and my religion is cargo pants and that might have more meaning that reproducing a ritual which for many has failed. Facebook has meaning to us because as we understand how to use it we push some of our “friends” away on it and we bring “other’s closer, we are in virtual relationships and we bond with each other in an image oriented way during this, the more image saturated generation ever in the history of humans.

Too be pedantic, Jesus in fact never spent a lot of focus on gays, other people in that book that goes along with his love , but Jesus spent more time focusing on… well on a prostitute. One he deeply honored despite what everyone else thought of him…

…see where I’m going here?

Straight people have no one to blame for their cynicism in the institution but ourselves, despite what ugly politicians say in the states. It’s only straights who’ve had marriages, therefore it can only be us who have screwed it up, our families, our sense of honor or commitment of common bond. We did it not gay people.

When you don’t fight for something you take it for granted.

Jaimee

Any man who gains power by dividing over men, is nothing worse than an evil Shakespeare character like Iago or Macbeath.  With no strength or conviction in character, no balls to demand unity from people who will pray on people’s ignorance and fear of one another and in dividing communities, families, races and companies, make himself feel useful as a destroyer.

Here are a list of men who chose NOT to build from ignorance, racism or classicism.  Men who are intelligent and strong enough to unify people through strong ideas:

Naheed Nenshi

Mahatma Ghandi

Jesus Christ

Dr. Martin Luther King

President Kennedy

Here’s an example of man who further divides people through division, entitled racism and shameful arrogance:

“I think as a Caucasian I have an advantage,” Mr. Leech acknowledged saying on air over the weekend. “When different community leaders such as a Sikh leader or a Muslim leader speak, they really speak to their own people in many ways. As a Caucasian, I believe that I can speak to all the community.”

-Ron Leech

Why is the white community the advantageous one to “speak to all of…”

Guess your white advantage didn’t prove so white, I mean right, after all?

Never let a man of arrogance divide you from a community of diversity. Ever.

Sincerely yours,

A Half White and Half Chinese Woman who kicked your ass out of power.

Jaimee

Hey, y’all, I posted new gigs up on my UPCOMING GIGS page, one in April, and 2 others to be announced…,

I’m not gonna attempt a segway I’m just gonna jump to my next thought.

Am I the only one out there who truly misses Britney Spears?

Oh…  I can hear the cheap shots, I know I know it wasn’t that good in the first place but oddly always entertaining.  I don’t know, she was just such a hallmark of what people loved to hate and now she’s got her stuff together and proper boundaries and doesn’t want to be exploited… oh LE SIGH…..

But at least she paved the way for people who had no talent AT ALL to be famous and sell voyeuristic reality shows of themselves.

Thank you Brit Brit, I know you didn’t know you were doing that but you were paving the way for post modern entertainment.
OH PS new gigs, new gigs, if you’re in Calgary check out this page.

Next blog…. how Higher Ground has become a pick up joint for those in the entertainment industry in Calgary. And for the people with cool hair and leather jackets.

LOVE JAIMEE

Leaders and Followers

I had been driving and I had been a bit tipsy on alcohol 2 weekends ago when I found myself on the side of the road downtown in Calgary.  I wasn’t dangerous, more just sad and pathetic.  Feeling a little lonely I called my friend, we’ll call him Allen though his real name is Sunny (actually Sunny, and he’s Chinese! How unusual)  to see what he was doing.  When I told him I was tipsy on the side of the road, new snow had fallen over Calgary like a familiar blanket, without hesitation and with the due loyalty of a solider, Allen whose real name is Sunny said,

“I’ll come get you the roads are bad tonight, I have to go to a party and you can tag along.”

When Allen whose real name is Sunny came to get me, I quickly gam him a verbal kiss,

“Allen/Sunny, you are such a good person like, I don’t know if I’d be such a good person.”

Thinking more about Allen whose real name is Sunny’s loyalty I asked him,

“Do you think you’d make a good soldier?”

“Yeah”, said Sunny,

“I value loyalty, like a,
a good soldier mentality, I see it in myself, I like it in other people.”

“You have to be a really good follower to be a good leader.”

“F*&k no.”  I said, like an angry charismatic sailor, “I’m a really good leader and a horrible follower! I lead people all the time, I gain their trust readily, I’m good as a leader but I sucked in any follower role. I constant get fired as an employee unless my job is fairly independent and I called Brownies a cult when I was little, I only managed to earn a pupettearing badge!”

I continued…

“Everytime people look the same, act the same, become a group mentality I get completely uncomfortable, I feel, “sea sick” I can’t described it.  I’m a rebel, I’m a radical.  It’s sometimes frustrating and honestly destructive, but it’s authentic, it means you think differently, and only off of constantly questioning can you meaningfully come up with a new idea people respond to and follow.”

Sunny, I mean Allen looked at me as though I was wallpaper, like my words didn’t have a meaning behind them. Failure to compute.

“Yes we are very different” He said.

“Every time there is conformity I will make a B line” I said.

Sunny looked at me passively like I was monkey.

We get to the bar, Broken City, a bunch of hippy dippies and cultural elitists danced ironically to 90s night.  A couple of very lost and confused old dudes fresh from divorces were trying to scope out some tail.  If you’ve been to Broken City you’d know they came to the wrong bar.

Sunny whose name is actually Sunny and I have a common friend Bob-bert.  Bob-bert is awesome and recently got kicked out of his living situation because the girl whose parents owned the place wanted to hang out with him and be Bob-bert’s friend because he’s awesome.  She was a vegan and hand made everything.  Self-righteous in her veganism, she clamed to have kicked him out because “He wasn’t doing enough in the community.”  But the real reason was that she felt hurt that Bob-bert didn’t hang out with her all the time.  She had little going on, awkward social skills and masked it as having a cause. Her name was Merie

“I hated Merie from the second I met her. I knew she was close minded but no one would say that about a home-made hippy who looks like a Raggedy Ann.”

Sunny looked at me.

“So what did you think of me? When you met me?”

“That you were a buff Asian guy, I said that to your face, remember?”

“You know what I thought of you?  Man this girl says shit, she just she wears her heart not just on her sleeve but on her mouth. Now I have to say Hi to the birthday guy Lee, he’s over there.

Immediate Sunny went left and I darted right, I had no idea where I was going I kind of just wanted to look around scope everything out. I didn’t follow him, I wondered if what he said was true, to be a good leader you have to be a good follower?  No… because soldiers never question what they do, and leaders always question everything, I thought.

I walked to the other side oft he bar.

“Hi, A girl says behind me.

“ I’ve been following you.   I have to go to the bathroom are you going to the bathroom?”
Refreshingly candid in a bar and drunk I felt a kindness to her.
“ No actually we’re at the bar not the bathroom, the bathroom is over on the other side.”

“Oh” she said, candid and a bit humbled.

“Do you know how to get there?” I asked.
“NO.”

“Alright I’ll take you.”

“Are you sure?” one strange girl said to another

I grabbed her by the hand a led her to the bathroom.  Lead as in leading, cuz I’m a leader.

I returned back to where Sunny had left me.  A humble, not amazing looking dude starting talking to me, I simply was too tired to entertain the impression that I cared, Sunny returned.

“Where’d you go! I thought you had followed me!”

I looked at Sunny in amazement.

“Sunny I don’t follow I don’t know how, or when I don’t get it, but I did lead a girl from the bar to the bathroom because I’m a god leader and despite my tongue a good person.   What were we just talking about!”

“I was going to introduce you to those people, you didn’t have to stay here and be alone.”  Said Allen whose real name is Sunny.

I wonder what my life would be like if I could just follow orders….

If you can’t follow the crowd, lead another one.

As anyone who reads my blog may know I am a very articulate, usually inaccurate and overly passionate writer of words. I also moonlight as a songwriter and spy.  Did you believe the spy part?   Yeah, no eh?   But the songwriter part is believable yes?

I have had a songwriting career for the past 7 years, or should I say I’ve been struggling as a songwriter for the past 7 years.  With no money but all the imagination in the world I have written well over 50 songs and 12 of them from my compilation album, Songs written between Calgary and Montreal are available for purchase on Itunes.  To find me you just need to put into the search engine Jaimee Lee-Baggley or Songs Written Between Calgary and Montreal.

What do I sound like?  Well it’s been described as Tori-Amos, Fionna Apple, Regina Spektor or Dresdan Dolls, I like to think of myself as Elton John but less well supported and more of a heterosexual female or Feist without her anti-depressants.

Songs Written Between Calgary and Montreal is a compilation album.  You see my life completely feel apart 3 years ago and moved back from Montreal to Calgary, but I had made a lot of recordings and played with a lot of different people so in no particular organized process I collected all of my works from the various band outfits, got them mixed and mastered and put out the album.   And I here are the things I wrote about.

Specimen:  the strange objectifying and non-intimate or sensual nature of a long distance relationship.  The feeling that you are with a person but only in a virtual sense not in a real sense and the overwhelming feeling the whole relationship is a scientific relationship in disguise.

Vegans and Green Tea :  My utter disgust at the temporary, superficial and vacant nature of people who do yoga, drink green, talk about inner peace but are exceptionally materialistic, vain and egotistical  rather than reflective wise or compassion about their own lives and actions.   I wanted to point out the hypocrisy I’ve noticed of rich trendy people who are intolerant of non vegan,non yoga people,  or non-hippy people.  The narrow minded-ness of a group of people who remind me in many ways of “narrow minded Christians” or “narrow minded old white guys” or “you know narrow minded other people who we people criticize unfairly”  but who aren’t seem that way because their cause is popular, though not at all morally stable.

Ophelia the Great- The way I imagine my mother saw me when I was growing up

Fairytale- A song meant to “rant” about accidentally dating someone who was way too in love with himself to be in love with me which inadvertently creeps out all other dudes.

Baby Unknown- The song of a male friend of mine who I went to music school with.  Warning this song deals with the loss of an unborn child but it is an a-political song.  The friend of mine felt so scared he didn’t know how to talk about his loss, which I mean to point out was not one of his own choosing, so I wrote him this song called Baby Unknown, and it talks about his relief and his remorse.  It is meant to tell the story of someone who had to live through something everyone else thinks they have the answer to.   I defend my work with this song and to the truth of a human experience and not hide it.

Bonnie- I wrote this song at the beginning of realizing my band of 7 people was getting ready to kick me out of it

Blue Skies- I wrote this song in the middle of realizing my band of 7 people was getting ready to kick me out of it.

Keep in Touch- I wrote this song at the end of realizing my band of 7 people was getting ready to kick me out of it.

Asian Cowboy- This is classical piano song with no lyrics, it’s very pretty but guys like it a lot too, it’s written for my dad who is Chinese but lives in a city that’s defined as a cowboy city.

We Are Stars- I wrote this song before my band of 7 people was getting ready to kick me out of it.  We all loved each other at that time and treated each other like a family, we were working hard to one day get discovered, tour and be rock stars.

Please help support my musical and writing efforts and purchase my songs or at least give them a listen, all music isn’t for everybody, but I am very good at what I do. I’ve studied many years of music and now I feel it’s time to share what I have learned.  Thank you for lending your ears and even your hearts

Jaimee

• I support John Hamm, Kim Kardashian is an idiot. She represents people who get famous for other people's need to watch desperation and sex #
• Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are high class prostitutes they get through life based on their looks not their abilities #
• I support John Hamm, Kim Kardashian is useless other than being pretty. I support John Hamm #
• I support John Hamm, say no to idiots on TV. I support John Hamm #

CTV recently aired a piece where they framed both actors John Hamm and Daniel Craig for bigotry when both actors separately remarked than Kim Kardashian is an idiot.  In the exceptionally biased and lame broadcast they showed clips of John Hamm’s character John Draper talking down to January Jones and putting her in her place and then quickly associated that with his  twitter comment where he criticized the lack of any integrity or talent of reality TV stars, including Kardashian.  Kardashion shot back that she was good for something, though was vague about what this was and faked a tone of intolerance.  Then CTV chose to air some no name sycophant blogger or “celebrity commentator”  who, stated, well… she’s too easy a target.

CTV used a smart and talented person’s decent to fake some story that Kim Kardashian is just some part business woman/artist/ feminist who doesn’t want a hard time.

Kim Kardashian is a virtual prostitute, known largely for her large posterior and frontier she is not someone who works hard, is well educated has suffered failures and successes and learned from them and she has no integrity.  The reason she gets attention is because of her appearance and the manipulative , machievalian and greedy attempts of her -the best pimp ever- mother, Kris Jenner to exploit her youth and lack of devotion or commitment to anything.

It is said , someone whose good at everything is said to be good at no one particularly thing, Jessica Simponson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are good at nothing and particularly not good at not one particular thing.  Th Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are the lacking stock of feminists and men, which is why feminists hate them, because they are more valued for their sex appeal and their ability to TRY everything and fail at everything rather than succeed.  And they aren’t even well spoken or articulate.   they are the products, with the acception of Hilton who likes to exploit herself of power hungry parents who will treat their children as valuable commodities to be sold instead of productive human beings who work hard at the things they are good at.

SHAME ON YOU CTV. I hope you apologize to Hamm and Craig instead of trying to be nice to Kardashian. CTV just because Kardashian is prettier than you, doesn’t mean she’ll be your friend if you just suck up to her, your a news network not a lame kid in High School, grow up!

Kids, just say no to idiots on TV!

Love Jaimee

Before anyone else says it.  I SAID IT. The 60s are back in vogue in terms of fashion, hair and design.

Well as vintage was heralded in the new Millenium as being the catch all style which would be worn by socialites like Mary Kate Olsen, Zoey Deschanel and Micheal Cera (in an ironic boyish way) we had to sit through a lot of funny fads.   80s was the focus 5 years ago and the re emergence in street style of dark rimmed sunglasses, neon tank tops with sayings on them and tight black pants on men  who claimed to play in bands was glaring suggestion that the windswept long hair of 90210 and Jordan Catalano and everything Doc Martin-ed and Claire Danes-ed about the 90s was back.   Musicians such as Sandro Oh of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs drapey clothes and drapey hair and even Feist’s minimalistic pant suit, bang hair cuts and pale, thin body brought us into the 70s.  We’ve been kind of confused as to what vintage style we’re in depending on the artist or celebrity whose championship the style.   SO before some Starlet who has no clear skill set or talent but a lot of attention focused on her weight gain or loss in the media claims “randomly”,  “It’s all about the 60s” and it will be a generic declaration like “it’s all about…”  I sit here with my sweatpants, unglamorous life and guinea pig telling you first- that the 60s in back in style.   How do I know?

1st cue the vogue of bangs Dark eyes, bangs to keep things girly and light hearted, all that’s missing is long sleeved short hemmed dress with knee-high socks

2nd lounge decor and lounge music from the 60s, Low key jazz from was the thing in the 60s, Sergei Gainsberg and Ellen Birkin, Etta James and the 4 tops.  Okay I have no idea when the artists came out by place them in the same land as Jefferson Airplane.  All musicians which embraced low key, intellectualizing, rebellion and romance.   In the 90s the idea of cabaret style jazz singer became  lame when Cameron Diaz pretended to be a cabaret singer in the movie, the Mask, remember that movie?  Pretty Women, Julia Roberts was the last girl to make out with a dude on the private piano in the private room while he played soft jazz and her on the piano.  It died in the 90s to be replaced with alternative rock and bubble gum Pop,   But as Pop music developed into something completely un-human (auto-tune) upbeat, and on ritalin and alternative rock faded into emo-metal and other sadness genres, low key, soft sultry and very french jazz returned.  It seemed to be the Goldy Locks of music perfect for something soothing, low key and requiring some talent to perform it.  Low key jazz Sushi Bar date night, why don’t you come back to my apartment night with corporate young guy and awkward business hotel lounges. “Long

3rd clue post war political climate

There are still a lot of wars and talk of the Apocalypse because it’s 2012 and bla h blah blah but, we’ve gotten out of the BUsh years and war and now we are exhaling and very tired.  We want the chill atitude of free spirited-ness and relaxed approach to very stressful political times.

4th My own obsession with 60s style Baby doll dresses dark colors, tights, with baby doll dresses, bangs, cat eyes and frosty pink or red lips. I’m so excited about this trend because I actually have the body type to fit it’s clothing.   This is a blog and I have no intentions of pretending that I am unbiased or objective.  But what I do recognize, in a very logical way is that if I’m into a trend chances are others are into the same trend of thought.

So bring out your 60s …. ughhh stuff.

Demi Moore.  Poor Demi Moore.  Currently in Cirque Lodge struggling with addiction and eating disorder issues.  I’m not a psychiatrist but I am really wise and have a really big mouth so here’s my thought.

Poor girl, but the drugs and eating disorder create some normalcy some pleasantries in a chaos.  None of truly have control, but when everything around you is in flux, maybe, superstitiously we need to believe we have it or we can’t go on.  Also drugs and eating disorders are tangeable problems.  They are physical, weigh-able, found in financial statements, they are proof we have a problem. And anyone who expresses so many physical problems on the outside I’ve always felt cannot seem to contact peace on the inside.

Typical to write that right?  But wait, in facebook, inst-fame-Canadian Idol, Kim Kardashian world of image over substance, writing that inner health is more important than appearance of success is a bold thing.  It’s novel, it never used to be.

People used to be famous for accomplishments, for what they DID what they achieved and not for WHO they are.  These days we want jobs who express ourselves, we want people to see WHO we are, because no one listens long enough perhaps to hear about all the great things we’ve done.

I’ve always liked Demi Moore’s acting.  I thought she tool on interesting sexual characters and wasn’t shy about it.  GI Jane-whatever! She’s also plaid a woman who got an abortion a married woman who risked her marital happiness for one night of Million Dollars with Robert Redford, a vindictive business woman and a persecuted American woman, who lived during those persecutional times… today? no not today?  Umm yesterday McCartneyism, ummm. nooo puritan times.  Yeah.  That.  She has a great voice and a great stare.

But since her comeback she’s seemed pretty desperate to appeal to us as a cougar.

Dumb Dumb dumb dumb cougars. I’m so SICK of cougars.  Sick Sick Sick.  Yes sex with women as they age is good, but sex with woman at any age is good.

Cougars bug me, not because they are powerful and sexual and older, I like that, but because their claim to fame is being younger men and I consider a form of pandering.

You’re 50, I would hope that the best thing in your life isn’t having a 20 year old boyfriend.  After you go dancing, what do you talk about? Are controlling the other person?  And young guys as sexually virile as they may be… are babies.  They’re confused, you remind them of mum.  They’re filled with energy but like a toddler often not enough experience to have any kind of wisdom, strength, balls, experience or intelligence.

All I’m saying is that I’ve had sex with 20 year old men (eww) and I can hope that at 50 my accomplishment are greater than just bragging about that.

Come on be authentic, stop trying to be young.  Being young is fun on the outside, but it’s a hard and selfish time too.. a lot of lessons.

I feel perhaps this sad karma for Demi. Yes I wrote that.  Because if she wants to act like she’s in her 20s or 30s just so she can prove that she looks young, she also has to go through her 20 s and 30s again… which is exhausting!!!

When I read in People Magazine (yes I read it) that Demi was fine with cheating but not if she looked like the jilted wife I could empathize, but come on Demi on deeper level, didn’t you just, not want to be cheated on for  your own sanity, not other peoples?

A following article continued, “Demi is turning 50 and doesn’t know who she wants to be or what’s next in her life”.  I thought age taught you how to trust your wisdom, your thoughts and your conscious more.  Yes drugs and eating badly are very unhealthy things, but what’s more sad is 50 year old very successful woman who can’t get in touch with what she truly believes and is still listening to outside world to define her.

We all have an inner voice, some of us have many (Haha), but if we listen to our hearts we know where the next direction is to go or we at least know what’s the next direction to avoid, which is just as important, often however, we let others voices speak louder than our owns.  They are a distraction and when we are young we think that is we do what others want us to do, that we will be loved for it.

For personalities of the media, entertainers who are used to making themselves and their identities flexible for the bread and butter on their tables or homes in Belaire, sometimes they let those voices triumph and drown out their inner voice.  It’s not actually a lapse in morality or just a superficial ego thing.  It’s that the media has made it so easy for them to define themselves from the outside in, magazine’s tell stories, TV hosts compliment them on appearances.  They can just get on a website and have their whole lives and identities written out and read like scripts on wikipedia.   But their own life isn’t a script.  Life’s more complicated than a role that lasts for 2 hours on celluloid, (romantic as that identity is. They see other’s reflections of their lives without including their own voice.

And trying to tell your own story is far more of a struggle.  It’s also not a lapse in moral or ethical judgement that leads celebrities to do this, we all do this.  During times of great stress we tend to default to what our professional identity or education is i.e.  If we are psychiatrists it’s easy during stress in relationships to “shrink” and “interview” the other person instead of engaging with them ( i know it happened to me). If someone is an engineer sometimes they try to fix the person like a machine instead of listening to them.  If we are entertainers and the date IS NOT going well (not that this has ever happened to me), entertainers tell a joke or make ourselves look like the fool, impress with a song instead of revealing the boring happenings of the day to day.  And if we nurses we tend and we care and run around taking care of others instead of necessarily doing something solitary, imaginative or something where we are taken care of .  The soldier fights, the teacher preaches, the student over analyzes  and the actress… oh the actress, well she waits to see what her audience thinks about current performance so she can figure out who to turn into for her next role.

Change is good, this year, the year of the dragon, change is happening and it’s all significant.  It is good Demi has accessed help.  It’s sick our society hasn’t.  Chance is good when it authentic, comes from the inside out and is not done out of a need to impress people but a greater courage to become a different person.  We can’t have expectations on the change our else it will be another vain performance.

I think our north american society which is drastically changing could use a little listening to it’s inner voice instead of watching American Idol voice (No offense and props Steven Tyler I love you) But FAME does not cure us our problems.  It is not an actual accomplishment but and illusion.  And Fame does not reveal to us our true identity, it is not a lifestyle and most often is more of a distraction.  Creating our own identities, even if no one ever sees them on Facebook is a greater act of courage and it leads a to a greater lot of happiness.

Internal successes no longer matter as much, ridding yourself of deserved pride and feelings of actual achievement courage and success.

There is a Bell Mobile Campaign  “Let’s Talk”  which is currently running in Television adds and Billboard posts around Canada.  The add which I can think of off the top of my head features athlete Clara, large grin, Hughes talking about her 2 year battle with depression.

When I first saw the add and campaign I thought nothing of it, I figured it was just a recognizable, respectable and modest Canadian celebrity doing a spot for Telus. – Keep in mind our Canadian celebrities are that way because they are respectable and modest- (see Pam Anderson and Alanis Morisette under ex-pat celebrities who are too outside of the box for Canadian fame).

I was somewhat shocked that she then spoke the words, after some blab about her successes, “..but what you may not know about me is that I battled depression for two years…” .  It’s taboo in this culture to talk about mental illness.

In north American Society it’s more socially acceptable to be photographed without panties (I’m talking about you guys too) then it is to be represented as mentally unbalanced.  Ironic since, the girls who pose for pictures without undies, become mentally unbalanced the next day.   See Britney Spears with the Umbrella picture.

Mental instability was something glamorized during the the 19th century, Freud and psycho-analysis, opium dens, Beethoven music all kind of brought on a passionate affixiation with our own imaginations as well as our own navels and the gazing that could go into a navel.

It’s not that mental illness is “kept in the closet”  by no means.  It is often depicted that child serial killers like the Columbine killers or that Korean kid that went nuts were all a little, “mentally unstable.”  Bad guys like the Scandavian Racist who went and stormed a murder scene on his own youthful fellow Scandanavians was seen as a mad man, painted in the media as a political mantra driven lunatic, whose megalomania had no boundaries to it.

Bad guys often are mentally unstable, and for that matters, the good guys too.  Watch any recent Timothy Robbins movie or A Sean Penn flick, any of the Batman movies, Guy Pierce from Momento, the Borne Identity films, you will see that all of these strong male protagonists all have on things in common.  They can’t get over something that happened in their past and live in present day reality.   The initial incidents of the stories which form their character, Batman’s parents’ murder, Borne’s crisis of conscious and sabatoge and Momento’s protagonists memory of his wife’s rape and murder not only create the character of the heroic man we see but the motive behind his need for justice.

Spun a different way these men don’t seek justice they destroy things out of revenge.  But trust Hollywood to present only the heroic side of the character.

No matter the heroic man’s morals, there is always some “ONE MEMORY” which is the center focus of the character’s psychology, and justification of everything he does from that point on.   Such obsession on just one particular thing  would be considered a little crazy yes, if not perfectionistic and absorbed.

It would be anti climactic is Micheal Cain and his puppy dog face looked over at Christian Bale just for Christian Bale to say to him, “Ugh… you know.. too much of this seeking revenge thing might be a little obsessive.  My brain hurts it’s time for a break I need a nap right now and really good book.  Just want to chill out be normal for a bit.”

Mental illness in imaginary people, people you hear about on the news, people who are characters in books, they can be mentally unbalanced, we can imagine they’ve struggled with suicide otherwise why watch them battle to live.

But with these new Telus adds the media has pushed us one step further into associating real life people,  people who have accomplished big things with being unstable.

So here’s my theory.  Why not just add to your campaign Telus what I have been telling everybody I know about my own self.

Mentally stable people don’t have the imaginations to be something grandiose! Mentally stable people are boring no one pays attention to em.

On American Idol, or any one of those a good audition in singing = fame shows people are encouraged to be talented and themselves.   Well, sometimes, if you are ridden with nervousness as you take step one to the first step, step two to the second step and third step onto the stage, your confidence should be shining but instead all those horrible voices of self doubt and for some of us, abusive taunts flood into your mind talent is the last thing on your mind.  The first thing on your mind is the fear of opening your mouth expressing your voice and being persecuted, hated, mocked or misunderstood…. really… to be a good singer, you better be mentally unstable, anyone who is stable would never choose such a thing.

When I was depressed I described depression as someone who sat on me everyday and intead of saying, get off of me.  I thought about the “sitter’s perspective, I justified his motives for sitting on me and instead of demanding he get off of me, I instead, tried to make myself a part of the floor.

Depression and I have divorced but sometimes, he creeps his wake back into my life… sometimes I let him in willingly, mostly when I was working at crappy jobs or was around bad friends, but I have started a new life for myself without his presence.  But when depression and I lived together.  He was my everything.

Depression and I have had a long history together maybe one of the best most long lasting relationships I’ve ever known.  Depression knows me well, he knows how to calm me down, he knows my most secret thoughts and intentions.   Depression knows how sensitive I am in his control of me he also oddly protects me.  I feel lonely without him.  Depression may not be nice, but he is reliable and not much in my life has been reliable.  That and singing…

See, people with mental illness have had lives people who are “stable” can never imagine.  I’ve already lived through a sort of marriage and a sort of divorce, though I’ve never actually married in the waking world.

Get where I’m going with this? Athletes and artists are so self involved, I say this because I am one,  we have an interesting way of looking at life.  It’s nearly redundant for Telus to equate successful people, artists and athletes, with depression, successful people and depression may go hand and hand yes, but it is the depression that often gives the depth to the artist, the courage to speak up not out of civil duty to Telus  but out of the  deep painful need to self- express ourselves out of our own minds. Depression should not be equated with normal well adjusted famed people, but with extraordinary people, people who have different experiences with normal.  People who’ve made abnormal their normal.  Interesting people.

Now Clara Hughes is appealing, that big grin and red hair of hers is very personable but interesting…? Mathew Goode who added in his image and story of his struggle with bi polar disorder is a step in a better direction.  He’s way  intense and he’s got uite the inner world to express.  I just wish that some Angelina Jolie for Canada, maybe Estella Warren, model/actress, jail bird would be up there… someone whose disgraced herself a bit and has gone through some serious transformation.   Someone whose embarrassed, paranoid, beautiful, vulnerable, super scary and most importantly  not as a normal!

I want and idol whose pulled themselves out of horrible things and gotten into amazing things.  Anyways my point is most artists and most likely most intensely highly dirven athletes are mentally ill but they’re also amazing, mental illness should not be associated with sympathy or closed doors and friendly faces.

Mental illness isn’t a handicap, surviving mental illness is the achievement, that’s why people affected with it are able to achieve in other parts of their life.

Mental illness is not only something that people should shy away from talking about.  It’s something they should be inspired to be.

Jaimee