My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition by Bez
Watching someone else’s holiday photographs is surely one of the most excruciating activities in the world – and I suppose one of the few blessings of social media is that people now simply put such pictures on their Facebook and you can ignore them. But what it makes it so terrible? Sure, those people and places have no meaning to you. But what’s worse, they have no meaning to them. It’s just some stuff they passed through on their 17-day organised trip through Java and Bali. Maybe they have a few nice memories, maybe there are three good anecdotes to tell, but otherwise, these photos are just patches of light.
It’s different if someone shows you their carefully curated photo album, maybe one of long ago, and tells you why these photos matter. It’s still somebody else’s photos. But by having someone explain their meaning, a little of that meaning can rub off on you. The photos becomes little windows into someone else’s life.
And of course all this is very different from watching a photo exhibition in an art gallery, where the photos themselves must carry the meaning. Vivian Maier is not there to explain her street photography to you; and of course there is nothing to explain, in a sense. She’s just an observer, just like you.
With this classification in mind, we can state that My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition belongs squarely in the second category. Its exhibits are not meaningful in themselves, but also not just random pictures of the world. They are meaningful to Bez, and he is going to talk us through them, explaining each piece, and stringing them together in a narrative about his mental health breakdown and his long, long journey through mental healthcare. It’s very personal. And if at the end it’s still somebody else’s photos (notebooks, stickers, toys, and so on), at least they’ve all been made into little windows that show us Bez’s life.
The period that Bez tells us about was really, really tough. It starts with – some reviewers say a suicide attempt, but I think it was – strong suicidal tendencies. of course we know that Bez didn’t commit suicide, since the game exists, but I was nevertheless glad that the game quickly diffuses some of the tension. This piece is not meant to shock us with big emotions or unexpected horrors. It’s talking to us. It doesn’t want to make us uncomfortable, or comfortable, it just wants to talk us through a period of a life. We get to know something about Bez, and something about how transgender people are treated, and something about how the US health care system works (and doesn’t work, but overall the vibe is relatively positive), and something about Bez’s family… but it’s not a didactic or activistic work. It doesn’t have a message. We’re just here, and Bez is talking to us.
I liked it. It wasn’t super powerful as art; but it wasn’t really trying to be art. It was us being there and Bez talking to us. Showing us some stuff. Giving us an update. Being honest. Some parts are more interesting, others are less interesting, but you know, being interesting isn’t really the point. The point is being real. Creating those little windows, and showing us something of that life.
On a personal note, I’m really glad that Bez is doing all right. I saw a little bit of the despair leading up to this period on Twitter, where we were following each other, and I thought more than once the impotent thought: “I really hope there are some people actually there, with Bez, who can take care of him.” Thank God there were.
And talking about God: the most shocking thing in the piece for me were the early passages where one of the reasons that Bez doesn’t commit suicide is a fear of Hell. I mean, I’m really glad they didn’t commit suicide. If the fear of Hell had that effect, thank God for the fear of Hell. But in every other respect: let’s all get rid of this most evil, most depraved, most horrible of all thoughts that human beings have ever had: the idea that a good and loving God would create a place of eternal punishment. It’s an affront to God (and I feel this even though I don’t really believe in God), an affront to man, and an affront to logic. I highly recommend the book That All Shall be Saved by David Bentley Heart, a respected Christian theologian. In the meantime, here is George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, on what a blessed person in Heaven would do if there were still someone in Hell:
Which, shorn of the theology, seems a pretty good message to take from My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition, even if we are all so limited in the performance of this universal duty.