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PART IV: “Sometimes we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time”

March 7, 2019 — leslie dean brown

When they eventually did return our phones, it was under a strong proviso. We had to sign a type of non-disclosure agreement/contract before we could even touch them:

Absolutely no photographs under any circumstances, and especially not of anyone or their face (they made that explicity clear); no social media use at all; and finally not reveal anyone other patients’ identity to anyone, not while inside or even after being released. The nurse eyed the high-dependency ward as they explained the importance of adherence to these additional set of rules and regulations. Non-compliance meant there would be no second chances… no further privileges… privileges revoked… I even think they explained that to us too… I still managed to pop off a shot or two of my bedroom when no one was looking…

And so they are in complete control. It was around this point that I realised that there was literally nothing I could do about my situation. That I was not in control anymore. And that I simply had to accept where I was. From this point on, I think I was more concerned about eliminating this great sense of underlying boredom that I was feeling more than enacting any of my suicidal thoughts.

Even so, I was in such a state of shock, that for several days I didn’t even realise there was an art therapy room! It adjoined the main room, located right next to the kitchen. It was always locked and we had to ask for it to be opened (on the inside, you had to ask for everything). It was very rudimentary, but it was an extra space I could go. I could not look at the acrylic paints (too brightly coloured) or the paintbrushes (mangled), but the coloured pencils were more than satisfactory.

I discovered this beautiful artwork buried under a mound of papers. This was the best art in the whole establishment! Clearly this is someone who is very creative, very talented. This artwork inspired me in a big way. I would very much like to know who drew it.

I started by sharpening all of the pencils because about half of them were blunt — all except black, because there was no black pencil. One day, I began to draw with the pencils. I was drawing on the shittiest paper imaginable. It was more like the paper that you use to wash your hands with after going to the toilet. Yet it felt so good to be finally doing something constructive.

I could feel myself becoming more creative. I mainly drew things that I had drawn before. Because I didn’t have any references to go off (no internet). I drew in little patches. Over the course of three days I added more and more. It had nearly finished and there was a small empty patch at the top left.

The next day they took over half of the pencils away! So I felt like I wasn’t able to finish; I couldn’t, because only half the pencils were left! The thing is, artists like their colours. How can they leave us without the red, blue and black?! Two of them are primaries!

I was forever asking and asserting for them to return the red and blue pencils because there was no red and blue ones left. “The black I can sort of understand because they were not here to begin with”, I proclaimed. A male nurse who was sitting with me said I was getting “agitated” — “I’m not agitated, I’m frustrated”, I quickly contended. I mean it’s a bit like asking a musician to play a guitar that is missing three strings! Isn’t it? He just didn’t seem to get it at all. He told me that it wasn’t a university equipped art room. I knew that. Of course. Still, it bothered me.

It occurred to me later that maybe I could learn something about myself from this encounter. I mean, it seems to me that art is very important to me. For others, it is clearly not. So I realise now that this –art– is something I care about, something I’m passionate about, much moreso than your average Joe.

It dawned upon me that the illustration shown above is a beautiful piece of art –although it only has four colours in it. Well I already knew about using limited colour palettes in art, but not in the sense of having half my palette inadvertently taken away from me. I started thinking about using the tools at hand. I’ve seen popular TV shows where professional photographers are forced to use the crappiest cameras imaginable. And they invariably still come up with fantastic photographs. I was also reminded about something my dad used to say: “a poor workman blames his tools”. From then on, I pretended that the lack of available hues was an intentional choice; for my next drawing, I used just three colours.

Was I being an OCD wanker about the pencils? I don’t know. You tell me. It’s totally okay now though because it made me more aware of what is important to me, my passion, my aptitude, my creative ability, my drawing skill. Some people care, other’s don’t.

One item they returned sooner than the other [electronic] ones was my Illustration book written by Andrew Hall. I was extremely glad to have something like that to continue reading. I guess they don’t see books as any kind of danger to mentally ill people?

One day, I forget which one, I took two packets of biscuits at afternoon tea time. Because there were only three biscuits to a pack! And I thought six biscuits was a fairly reasonable number to eat. One of the security nurses saw me and told me to put it back. I hadn’t even sat down. I swooped around and back it went – back into the same bowl from whence it came! The whole time, they were eyeing us like hawks. This is what I had to endure…

After about four or five days, I had talked to all but one of the patients at length. Mainly because the nurses were essentially too busy for more than a 5 minute chat. At first I didn’t know whether they were violent patients or not. So I was curious about that (for my own safety). But it turns out that they were all such a great bunch of people. All of them.

After speaking to an older, wiser nurse for almost 15 minutes, I was able to turn the experience around and look at it for what it really was: an acute rehabilitation center. She recommended trying to take what you can from the experience, to ask “what can I get out of it?”.

The next meeting was my third assessment, with two psychiatrists present, one of them new. Number three psychiatrist was a female and I really opened up to her about my childhood. I was to be released “either tomorrow or the day after”.

By this stage, I was talking to new people and slowly improving (my psychologist had previously told me I was too isolated). I was going to bed and waking up at the right time. I was eating a wider range of foods than before. But most importantly, I was talking to other people who shared the same views as mine. I was not alone. In fact I decided to stay a few extra days.

All in all I stayed a total of eight days inside that pyschiatric hospital ward. Others had been in there anything from one day, to one month (and in one case, five months). Towards the end of my penultimate day, the same porky pyschiatrist came into my room and asked me the exact same question, just like he had asked me the week before. This time, I answered ‘no’. No I wasn’t suicidal.

The good news is that I do feel more optimistic upon exiting the facility. My motivation level is improved. I haven’t had any further suicidal thoughts. Maybe the lesson here is that we shouldn’t be so quick to make generalised assumptions about how our future lives are going to turn out?

No one came to pick me up from the hospital, but I was well enough to catch the bus home. I must say that my newfound sense of freedom felt very strange after being locked up for more than a whole week. I was waiting at the bus stop and wondered whether to buy a snack for the journey home. In the end, I decided not to. Just knowing that I could buy something without having to ask anyone anything made me smile.

I did some further reading about that place a few weeks later. And it turns out that no one has ever died in that facility. Not for any reason. So maybe Mister PorkFace was right after all? Maybe it was a safer place to be after all, if only temporarily?

And when you said that no one’s listening
Why’d your best friend drop a dime?
Sometimes, we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.

Let’s talk about the Qantas corporate identity.

May 10, 2018 — leslie dean brown

Should I say it? Should I say it? I’m going to say it.

Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2018. All rights reserved.

See, I think this is the problem with *some* big corporations. They spend so much on graphic design to make their corporate identity/image visually impeccable (which is good) but then they go and do totally nasty shit like this to ordinary hard-working people. My question is, why risk jeopardising your consumers’ perceptions of your brand?

It’s not like the passenger had a crystal vase in her luggage, is it? Your airport ground staff ran over her bag with the airport vehicle! It’s not fair to expect people to take out travel insurance when they are YOUR mistakes. If it’s your fault, fix it!

Absolutely shocking customer service! It’s not acceptable at all. Would you have treated someone in 1st class this way? I think not.

Designers take years or even decades to finetune their skills, and yet your customer service staff go and ruin most of the hard work that everyone else is doing to make your brand appear fantastic! Sorry, but it’s not right. It’s not right at all and it has got to change.

For me they have betrayed not just their customers but their designers as well. You know, we try so bloody hard to improve a brand’s corporate image. Don’t we? We study for years and years and years to try and work out what works best. But if companies are going to treat their customers this way –like shit– well, more people are eventually going to see straight through the design façade. And the worst thing that can happen is when customers lose their sense of trust with a business. Thoughts? Or are most designers simply too scared of losing their own clients to say it like it is?

“Great design is like a powerful antiobiotic which helps to ward off the disease of nonprofessionalism; the mistake that even the largest corporations make today is to forget that to rely on design alone will hasten the disease’s immunity, rendering the drug ineffective. Without the aid of fantastic customer service, no matter how big you are, customers will see you as an amateur.” – leslie dean brown

Quite apart from the whole quality/benefits issue, the whole reason people trust the larger bands in the first place (rather than dinky little mom and pop stores) is because customers know that most of the time they can get refunds or exchanges on their merchandise.

It just makes designers’ lives more difficult when they act like corporate bullies… eventually consumers will see straight through the ‘design’ factor and it won’t be a ‘cool’ brand anymore.

I’m not afraid to say that in this case, you are operating like little Ferengi: “Once you have their money, never give it back”. I travel Qantas. But this is just not cool, Qantas, not cool.

Why am I a minimalist?

March 31, 2017 — leslie dean brown

I am a former materials scientist. The first question I always get asked is: “what is that?”.

Materials science is the study of mostly synthetic materials such as metals, polymers, ceramic and composites. We study their physical & chemical properties and how they are extracted from the Earth.

I am telling you this because I think that people need to start listening to scientists. More people need to listen to more scientists.

That’s a two way thing. I think that more scientists should start their own blogs (and other mediums communication like that).

Right. So I am a former materials scientist. And do you know what I now think about materials? What I now know?

I think that everything that you buy kills some part of the world somewhere else. The metals in the electronics that you are buying come from mines and natural spaces have to be destroyed to get them. I think we have to realise that and remember it every time we go to buy something. We need to think about that whenever Apple tries to sell us some new product. Do we really need it? What is the environmental cost?

My view now is that the things that we buy have to come from somewhere. Ask yourselves where. Most plastics [polymers] in use today come directly from oil. Uh oh.

All metals that aren’t being recycled are mined. Mines are always built in the natural environment (just look what happens when they are not –like with coal seam gas– people complain their heads off and usually get their own way).

But the problem isn’t just big banks and mining companies. Because I think 99% of adults have simply forgotten where they get their stuff from. [Read more…]

The principle of “the five whys”.

March 5, 2017 — leslie dean brown

It’s called “the five whys”. And it’s one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal.

I think more people should use this technique so that we can improve society. What is it? What does it entail?

It was ‘invented’ at the Toyota corporation as a method of determining the root cause of something unwanted. You keep asking the question why, a bit like a bratty little kid who first figures out the true power of the word ‘why’.

The central idea is to keep on asking ourselves the ‘why’ questions — we keep asking ourselves why something is so, even if we might not like the answers.

For example, if we apply the principles of the five whys to depression, we may discover the true cause of depression (at least in some people). Scientists have got to the point that they can determine whether someone is depressed based on their brain chemistry. Right, but do they then ask the further question: what causes those brain chemicals to be different? One line of research will lead to a ‘cure’. But the other will lead to ‘prevention’. Which is better? I already know the answer.

It’s no good knowing about brain chemicals if we don’t know what factor change the chemicals in the first place. Otherwise we will never prevent depression, we will only have a ‘cure’. So I think asking the five whys in terms of depression is a simple but effective approach. I think that is part of the success of the very simple approach to holistice medicine.

And this is why I think psychology is a very powerful and underrated tool. Because psychologists, unlike psychiatrists, get to the root causes. Psychologists are already three steps ahead of the scientists studying brain chemistry. Because first of all, psychologists have already figured this out. Secondly, they are already asking the five whys. In fact, they are asking a hundred or even a thousand whys. And they already know that depression has triggers. It’s their job to look for the triggers.

The triggers in my case are a mixture of genetic and environmental. They are genetic because I’m told that I have the ‘melancholy’ or inhereted type of depression as opposed to aquiring depression. That’s all I know.

I can tell you right now what causes my depression, what triggers it. I’m going to do this in point form:

Firstly, seeing concrete everywhere. I believe that it’s a horrible ugly material. It’s overused, it’s grey and —unlike nature— it’s very prone to being sprayed with graffiti.
Suburbs. Yes. suburbs. I generally find suburbs ugly and therefore depressing. Particularly places that have been either not well designed or overdesigned. That includes all forms of urbanisation, land clearing and ‘development’.
I generally find any place without trees quite literally depressing. So in my opinion, if you’re a town planner or an architect, and you’re reading this, the best thing you can do is a) design around existing trees b) plant more trees (and not just in a hole in the asphalt, because as one person put it: “a tree is a community”)
Cars with exhaust pipes. Because I have known for some 25 years now about global warming. It’s time to stop producing fucking internal combustion engines already and build more electric-powered cars.
Grass. I find the patch of mono-specific grass to be unnatural and therefore depressing. I think back gardens need to look more like meadows. That would attract bees and other insects like dragonflies.
Lately, mowers. Why do we even mow grass? Really, what for? If we don’t like long grass, why did we put it there to start with? Depressing.

Today, that’s all I’d like to talk about. But in future I will return to the subject of the five whys, but next time it will be applied to GMOs.

Eco conditioner review

February 20, 2017 — leslie dean brown

One of the things I’d like to do more of is product reviews with an eco focus.

I‘d also like to make this more of a video blog. Why? Because I don’t always have much time to write good articles and it is a relatively ‘quick’ way of generating content.

I say ‘quick’ because even a five minute video like this one takes about two or more hours to upload.

With all the depressing news lately, I believe it is very important to give credit to people who are trying to protect our environment. Not enough people do.

So without further ado, here is eco review #2!

If you are a manufacturer, markerter, retailer or distributor and you’d like me to do an eco focused review, I’m happy to do that. You may not get five stars, but you will get some free exposure!

Also, if you have suggestions for other eco product reviews, just drop me a line.

I often read reviews about eco products and reviewers often blindly miss the point. Particularly when reviewing electronic devices.

Such is the case with my next review: the Marley XLBT headphones.