Health of an Artist

News is re-circulating of the artist-subject's status. To review: he was struck from within, hospitalized, and now that he appears physically capable, the other part, which is manifesting in bad behaviour. At present he is in a public hospital's geriatric psych ward. Because he is disruptive (rude to patients and staff, a flight risk, etc.), he has his own room and is costing the Province upwards of $1000 a day as they concoct a "stable drug regime" for this most unstable of patients. 

The line "a stable drug regime that would allow him to make better choices" sounds like something Nurse Ratched would say in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962). It should be noted that Nurse Ratched never favoured the frontal lobotomy, believing that psychotic behaviour could be modified through in-group social interaction and meds. It is Nurse Ratched, not Randall Patrick McMurphy, who is the greater character in Cuckoo's Nest, a novel that walks the line between (ludic) genius (McMurphy) and (evil) madness (Ratched). 

What the artist-subject is displaying is consistent with a past self that has been cosseted and indulged since 1968, when his then future former in-laws settled on him as an escort for their daughter's grand tour of Europe, and after that assist her in her quest to realize herself, become an artist like him. The artist-subject's is a life that has never been challenged nor negatively sanctioned. Who will trust the artist-subject to take his meds? Who will enforce it? Is the underwriter retained by the Society where the artist-subject has lived for almost fifty years betting on or against him when it comes to fire insurance.

It is clear from what I am hearing that the artist-subject has been diagnosed with psychosis and as such it has been suggested that he take an anti-psychotic whose side-effect only makes him unfamiliar with himself, and therefore reactive. In short, a pickle. Shorter still, any takers?

Painting: Maxwell Bates, Yellow Reception (1972)