All Sky, Mirror Ocean is for everyone looking to understand the complex issues around mental illness and healing. Combining autobiography, research-creation, poetry, and creative philosophy, Brad Necyk uses art and words to uncover and tell new stories about trauma and recovery. Necyk weaves his own histories with bipolar affective disorder and childhood medical trauma with those of other people dealing with grief and loss: head and neck cancer patients in Edmonton, psychiatric inpatients in Toronto, and communities in Iqaluit stricken by suicide. Punctuated with art, these lived experiences intertwine with scholarship on arts-based research, neuroscience, collaboration, and psychedelic altered states to reveal the understanding and acceptance that comes from acknowledging our deep connections—to ideas and emotions, to our environments, to art, and to each other. Showing great compassion and wisdom, All Sky, Mirror Ocean is a model for research-creation and artistic fieldwork.
Authors
- Pages
- 248
- Published in
- Edmonton, CA
Table of Contents
- Front cover 1
- Title page 4
- Copyright page 5
- Dedication 6
- Contents 8
- Alternative Table of Contents 10
- Foreword | Loveless 12
- Acknowledgements 16
- for sha : on writing 20
- Introduction 24
- Alberta #3 28
- Iqaluit, Nunavut 44
- Telling Stories Otherwise 50
- Edmonton, Alberta 54
- No Trespassing 58
- Cancer 62
- A Research Meeting 68
- Being 70
- Healing 72
- World Gone Wrong 74
- 1987 78
- The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario 80
- Unwell 84
- Stories and Worlds 86
- Worlding 90
- The Open 94
- Morning Light 98
- Death #1 102
- A Dry City 104
- Spaciousness 108
- Knowing 110
- An Arts-Based Workshop 112
- The Abyss 120
- For Mom, For Dad 122
- The Origin of the Work of Art 134
- Visionary Art 140
- The Visionary Artist 144
- Distant Early Warning 146
- Self-Showing 150
- North Bay, Ontario 152
- Unthinkable Stories 156
- The Behaviour of Art 160
- Knowing Otherwise 162
- Creation-As-Research 166
- Co-creating Cancer 168
- Waiting Room 170
- For My Grandma 172
- For Jesse 176
- For Ellie 178
- For Him 180
- For Mary 182
- The New Girl 184
- Co-creation 186
- Default-Mode Network 190
- Entropic Brain 192
- Psilocybin 194
- For Derek and Luanna 196
- ECT 200
- A Sermon 202
- Psychiatric Room 208
- Music Room 214
- Into Mania 218
- For the young girl next to me, who is still with me 240
- Death #2 244
- Life 252
- For Candace 254
- Notes on Conditions 262
- References 292
- About the Author 297
