July is Mad Pride Month, so Icarus, never much following the linear calendar of the rest of society, is celebrating with an October-November Mad Gifts Week scheme of actions and inspirations around the country and beyond. Collaborators near and far are putting together all kinds of plots and happenings, so the Icarus crew figured a road trip was definitely in order.

The gathering mad storm began to pick up speed at Bluestockings collective bookstore in the East Village of NYC, a frequent gathering place and launch pad for things anti-authoritarian, Mad Pride, and Icarista. Madigan was invited to present impressions and memories from the recent trip she, Will, and other companeros took to Chiapas for the Encuentro Intergalactico. Slides and stories evoked jungle images of rebellion and community from the Mexican highlands, where more than 2,000 people from 40 countries gathered to shake a collective fist at neo-liberal global capitalism and continue incubating alternatives of mutual aid and local community solidarity. Joining Madigan's travelogue to the 40+ various and sundry audience dwellers were other two presenters, with tales of Great White Sharks and the Oregon Country Faire. It set a suitably inspiring and surreal tone for things to come...

It being only 11pm and it being New York, an Icarus away team headed uptown to planet New York University, landing at the Broome Street dorm building apartment home of Bradley Lewis.  Jonah, Mads, Will, and Sascha were joined by Gregory of National Public Radio, who was gathering audio for a radio show on the tour, Brad's wife, and their son, who played with Legos on the floor (when Will wasn't keeping them to himself). Brad is a psychiatrist, professor at NYU, and post-psychiatry author, and has been scheming with Sascha and Icaristas on the NYU organizing and plans for Campus Icarus across the country. Amidst shiftng paradigms and Big Pharma trend-spotting, Brad shared a sinister flyer he received about cultural competency in psychiatry -- a conference training professionals on how to get people of color to take their medication (!). Perched above the electric buzz of Greenwich Village we discussed the bizarre cultural and political terrain of mental health in the US, 5 years of Icarus organizing, fundraising as a nonprofit versus The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, organizatonal structures that promote inclusion and democracy, and the upcoming new publication on wellness and creating Mad Maps.

Past 2:30am and the conversation devolved into crackpot schemes to market Sustain, the first in the line of Icarus Pharmaceuticals, 100% placebo to reduce stress and prevent activist burnout, available through our website and packaged in cute little red & black pills. And those pills, it turned out, were waiting for us in the dreamtime, when we headed over to Punjabi for late night snacks and discovered bottles of Shulajit on the shelf - filled with red and black pills to 'retain' youthful vigor. A sign of the general synchronistic weirdness often floating around the Icarus energy field, and a harbinger of the archetypal forces gathering for our tour.

The next day was a busy self-organized work swarm at our Fountain House office, and as we passed around the red and black pill bottle, Gregory followed us around with his tape recorder and we got our publications and other details put together. Alicia Ohs, Michael Gennarelli, Lauren Russell, Montana Queler, Mike  Crowley, Todd Baratz, NYU interns and local NYC organizers showed up to make it all happen, as well as spin discussions about future planning and group decision structures and how to craft effective radical mental health messages. Will did a Drupal website tutorial and set up security on our wireless network (which had been providing free interne access to twelve New York city blocks), and we all talked with Alyssa Court, journalist and author of Branded: The Buying And Selling Of Teenagers, on how pharma marketing is colonizing our minds and bodies. Will got news he's going to Buenos Aires to facilitate mental health groups for Mental Disability Rights International, and Sascha just had piece he wrote published in Briar Patch magazine. Boxes full of the new Icarus / Freedom Center Coming Off Drugs Guide arrived from the Oakland printers at the last minute, and at dinner Jonah showed up with the I Ching.

The official start of the tour was our arrival at 42nd street in Times Square for a late night showing of the unofficial Official Most Loved Film Of The Icarus Project, Blade Runner. Some strange years-later tweaking meant a new 'director's final cut' was in the theaters, not to be missed. We almost rioted by the Disney Store when we found out our advance purchase tickets were for a showing that wasn't going to happen, but fortunately we relocated theaters and averted civic unrest (probably a good thing, because Somebody -- or Something -- was at the Carlton Hotel and the sidewalk was cordoned off by hyper-miltarized NYPD in full body armor and toting automatic weapons).

Finally setting down in the darkened theater, we let out a cheer when the first fireball erupted over the dark Los Angeles cityscape of Blade Runner's opening sequence.What do you say about this brilliant, compelling, generation-shaping film? Sascha fascinated with implanted memories, growing up inside popular meta- culture glued to the tv; Will ranting about about missing real animals and Rutger Hauer becoming-animal, who are the slaves, who are human, the line of normal and abnormal, and the witchunts against machines that have more emotion than anyone else; Madigan reciting "all of these moments lost, like tears in rain." A diagnostic machine, Have you ever taken that test yourself? Skyline dominated by a geisha pharmaceutical ad, an off-world kick murder squad. Talk about beauty and the beast, she's both. And these accused killers running underground through it all, holding together the film's only scrap of community or family.

These are my friends. I made them.

Finally our caravan with Madigan, Will, Sascha, and Neil, along with journalists Gregory and Pearl arrived in Richmond just in time to start (late) our event at the Flying Brick House, a venerable activist center, amazing library, and collective household that has rocked this Virginia college town for years. 30 people, turned out to watch Mel's Evolving Minds video and Ken Rosenthal's 10 minute trailer for the Icarus film-in-progress of interviews with Ashley McNamara and Carey Lamprecht, Crooked Beauty. Highlights of the discussion that followed included comparing ideas on what our warnng signs are, the way taking care of ourselves can become an oppressive and limiting "wellness prison," seeing old friends who've been relying on Icarus for support for years, and plotting with a nursing school student on how to bring radical mental health into her school.

Next stop? Virginia Tech... stay tuned...

-- Will

Blog Post playlist:

Ennio Morricone, The Gossip, Cocteau Twins, Ruby, Mecca Normal, Niles Barkeley, Toni Childs, DJ Spooky, Tom Waits, Sophie Wallace...

Link to Mad Gifts Forum
 

What We're Reading: