The world seems to be changing so rapidly in one sense and not at all in another. We are hyperlinked and mass connected. Every wave brings us images that are so urgent, so real, so scary. We suffer from lack of touch, dinner tables without feet, friends who live thousands of miles away and nobody next door. It seems to me, we shouldn't be so surprised that intimacy and caring is exploited by technology, that DID is on the rise, along with too much sugar, too much SUPER-sizing and too little love.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is featured in Living Here Now due to close association with a few suffers, no, not your ordinary Geminis. We should fight to keep art in our schools and in our lives. Many times art, which research states impacts health and wellbeing, is the only avenue of expression for a pent-up soul, the only thing that keeps the sun from sinking too low.
"Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. . . ." The condition was once known as multiple personality disorder. At least two split, distinct, enduring personalities or dissociative states take turn controling a person's behavior as well as forgetfulness--- beyond the ordinary. Up to sixteen alters have been observed.
The feature story of Living Here Now includes the 26 Unusual Paintings by Ray Caesar-Surreal, Weird and Disturbing, as quoted by some. Many of his images feature figures with porcelainized complexions, tentacles, elaborate costumes . . . hybrid characters with sprouting tails, one foot in the past, the other way into what we hope is not the future.
Ray Caesar, who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, uses his art as an outlet to express trauma. Born in London, England on October 26 1958, he now lives in Toronto, in a brick house with his wife Jane and a dog. He worked seventeen years as a medical artist and photographer at the Hospital for Sick Children. He chronicled everything "from childhood abuse to reconstructive surgery to the heroic children" dealing with life's hardships and challenges.
When Ray Caesar turns his computer off, he is still haunted by the images created and "the fact that the space . . . we live in . . ." today "might not be all that different," and that's some of the scary part.
Try to see his images as he does, calming and without fear. It is said that because we fear, we hate. Where we might see pain and suffering, Ray Caesar sees with a "unique knowledge tried by fire," living in the hidden rooms of his memory. Choose, with care, what you see.