Klang-a-Laing

My last post got my thinking about my former interest in RD Laing. I think I originally got into him due to a namecheck of Knots on Siouxsie and the Banshees' The Scream (on Jigsaw Feeling*)(yup, I briefly had a Munch picture on my wall as well). I can also recommend The Divided Self. Oh, and Sanity, Madness and the Family is good too. All this led me to eventually conclude that therapy was rubbish and we should concentrate on changing society instead. It's funny that I'm in quite intensive therapy now myself...

Anyway, I was looking around on the internet and found this website about one of the organisations he set up. I currently live rather near Kingsley Hall (although it's just a community centre nowadays) which they describe as:
"a melting pot, a crucible in which many, assumptions about normal-abnormal, conformist-deviant, sane-crazy experience and behaviour were dissolved. No person gave another tranquilisers or sedatives. Behaviour was feasible which would have been intolerable elsewhere. It was a place where people could be together and let each other be".
According to the website, they also have launched a fundraising appeal so ... why not support them...


* Jigsaw Feeling:
Send me forwards-say my feelings
But all the signals-send me reeling
Jigsaw Feeling

One day I'm feeling total
the next I'm split in two
My eyes are doing somersaults
staring at my shoe

My brain is out of my hand
there's nothing to prevent
The impulse is quite meaningless
in a cerebral non-event

Five fingers do my walking
ten toes unravel 'Knots'
Amorphous jigsaw pieces
falling into slots

So I just sit in reverie
getting on my nerves
The intangible bonds that keep me
sitting on the verge...
of a breakdown
of a reaction
of a result
(defeat me...)..Complete me...maybe...defeat me
(Jigsaw feeling)

Lyric: Severin Music: Severin/McKay