A Speccy Man has a Breakdown - day 3

Read online (with audio).

<< Day 2

A couple of you mentioned, very gently, that you’d wondered about the name, Speccy. So I’m glad that I raised this, and explained it.

I’ve also concluded that it’s maybe no bad thing if a derogatory flavour hangs around it, because self-hatred, frankly, was very real at the time.

I wanted to add: Michael, who inadvertently invented the Speccy name, saw yesterday’s email and posted something warm and generous on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t have had any of that – the gentle questions, the new insights, Michael’s generosity – if I’d called the book A Gentleman with Spectacles Has a Breakdown.

(I’ve gone back and added your comments, and Michael’s link, to the previous post.)

I haven’t yet mentioned something important: not terribly long after I came out of hospital I was invited to take a selection of my drawings into workplaces and speak about what had happened to me.

Those talks had a remarkable effect – on people in the room, and on me. I’ll tell you more about that soon.

I could simply plonk those same drawings in the book, add captions along the lines of what I said in the talks, and leave it at that. But I’ve been thinking about why that wouldn’t work.

In the room, there’s instant rapport. People could see me – a person standing in front of them, visibly alive and functional, with a bit of a history. And I’d been invited, which gave me a certain credibility.

But a stranger picking up the book won’t grasp that. There’s a real risk that the drawings will seem to be just – well, some rather fragile bloke in a psychiatric ward, drawing wonky pictures. Which is not nothing, but it’s not the whole thing either.

Why should they care, these readers? What do they need to know about the man in hospital, drawing?

Well, he was a little boy, once:

Golden hour, Kensington Gardens, 1970s.

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👉 If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.

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