I hear Taylor Swift is very popular.
re: Shostakovich [and he may well already have these], I think the Kirill Kondrashin recordings of the symphonies have been reissued.
Also, Ruth Palmer's recording of the Violin Concerto is very good.
I would guess "Before Frank" refers to Sinatra, given that the location is the Sands. Whether "before" refers to before he performed there, or whether he sat in with them in that session, changing its focus, I wouldn't know.
It isn't classical, but I'll pass along a recommendation that I recently received for an unusual recording project (I got a copy, I haven't really had time to listen to it, but I think it's definitely intriguing).
I promised I'd tell you about a CD I got in Edinburgh. A friend praised it; I bought it. Some of it is stunning. Here's an article from '12 about Gerry Diver and his Speech Project:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/mar/01/speech-in-song
Try listening to "Music For Tape Loop" featuring Shane MacGowan (of the Pogues):
http://speechproject.bandcamp.com/track/music-for-tape-loop-feat-shane-macgowan
Then read how it came to be, here:
http://spellbindingmusic.com/gerry-diver-music-for-tape-loop/
There's a well known album of Sinatra at the Sands, with Count Basie as his orchestra. I'd guess that the sought-after album is one of Basie's performance before Sinatra hit the stage.
I have nothing at all to offer.
Shostakovich 8 is hard-core.
Maybe Janáček's string quartets? Emerson recording is OK. His Sinfonietta is something that I really like, not sure it fits in this list though. Supraphon recording with Neumann is the one I know.
If older count Basie, then maybe older Duke Ellington. He recorded a bunch on Brunswick before 1930. I like those, if I drive, they help keep my commute free of homicidal thoughts.
Thank you ttaM and Nick!
Moby - stepdaughter regularly finds his pop choices hideously unhip, could be fun to roll out some T Swift when she's in town, except she might demand I schedule a dementia diagnostic appointment for him ...
I am (unsurprisingly) an enormous fan of the Eleni Karaindrou Trojan Women.
The audio quality of the Basie recording is gorgeous, great original recording, master clearly in decent nick, and labor of love in the current issue. Tremendous musicality and energy, very highly recommended.
I don't know who thus Gioia dude is, but some if the picks on this list are good so perhaps others worth exploring: http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2014.html
Does nobody else have similar gift finding difficulties??!?? I feel so alone ....
11.last: the trick is to wait until the last minute, buy a mediocre gift, and tell yourself you could have done better if not pressed for time.
Ha! Clearly hg kindly putting this up did for my good intentions expressed on the other thread!
Ted Gioia writes well about music, in listening to his suggestions, even the ones I don't like are worth listening to.
The list linked in 11 is super-intriguing. I've already listened to bits of the Dave Douglas/Uri Caine Shape Note/Jazz album (with cover art by Bread & Puppet!) and the David Lang/Anonymous 4, and WANT.
Do you have the complete Shostakovich? If not, I'd recommend moving on to the last four quartets, which are breathtakingly bleak. Also, the Bartók and Schnittke quartets, if you're not familiar already (I like the Takács and Kronos recordings respectively). Also, Sibelius' symphonies 4-7 have fascinated me lately.
Being the very basic music lover that I am, I like lots of songs on pop radio. Lately I love the "Take me to church" song a whole lot.
You know, if Dave Rawlings Machine (which includes John Paul Jones) would record their version of Going to California, it would be a great choice. Send him an email, maybe he's got a soundboard recording.
Besides the obvious route of getting any Shostakovich and Mahler that you don't have, since he has a taste for 20th century classical music, I would also look at Berio's Sinfonia. I like the version by the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
For Shostakovich I'd go Symphonies 4 and 5 (Previn/Chicago Symphony), or the violin and cello concertos.
Not sure which Mahler Lieder you got but the obvious ones to cover are Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Songs of a Wayfarer. If those are already covered then you're left with the symphonies, basically any of them.
I second the suggestion of Bartok. Benjamin Britten's stuff might also be worth a try.
16: Hozier's album did make Gioa's best of 2014 list. One of the few albums on his list I'd heard of.
16: Also -- that is not crooning. Right?
Well, I do like his voice, so it must be crooning. Tautologically.
But no, he doesn't do that distinctive low singing in the head voice thing.
For Mahler I like old recordings. I got the boxed set of Klemperer's New Philharmonia recordings, which has 2, 4, 7 and 9. The tempos are so slow as to be disconcerting, but when you adjust they're terrific.
For the songs, I go for the earliest I can find. Look for the Wayfarer with D. Fischer-Dieskau backed by Furtwangler with the Philharmonia. He's still in his 20s there, and sounds right. For the Wunderhorn, Janet Baker and Garent Evans from the 60s. For the Kindertotenlieder, and the other Ruckert's, Kathleen Ferrier with Bruno Walter.
He got the complete set of Shostakovich quartets last year (pacific quartet, we love it, and fantastic cover art), so I'm kind of not going back to that well again, but excellent recs! I'd add the Amsterdam Sinfonietta's "deluxe" recording of a Shostakovich quartet or two and a Weinberg piece as it is on its own great, and includes a bonus DVD with a film about their creative/rehearsal practices that we all found completely gripping.
Heebie, we definitely listen to pop! But I resent autotune, it makes everyone's voice sound like it came out of an extruder so that makes much of contemporary pop sad for me. Hopefully it's a phase.
23: Totes. Turangalîla hooray!
Also, Hugo Wolf lieder. The Hyperion recordings are terrific.
Early sign our relationship was heading places was overlap between our record collections, despite his being vastish and mine miniscule, with near complete duplication on the K Ferrier front. He couldn't match me for coverage of Ian Partridge or The Butthole Surfers, tho.
"Extruder" is a disturbing word I've never heard before, which makes me think of prolapsed private parts.
Further to 8: The Hagen Quartet's recording of the Janacek quartets has been in and out of print but looks to be in print now. It is wonderful.
Lots of things (heat sinks in electronics, construction materials) are made from extruded aluminum, which would be a terrible name for a metal band.
It's been a terrible era for pop, mostly because of autotune, and I'm on team Taylor Swift is OK. It's been even worse for rock, though, which is now dominated by earnest nice guys who play mandolins and wear sweaters. Basically rock has been so wussified it hardly deserves the name anymore. The past 5 years have been fucking fantastic for metal though.
"Dad, I'm prairie-doggin' it!"
- the kid from Rat Race, a movie I find super funny.
Pop music I like lately: Sam Smith. The boom-crash-sound of my heart song, too.
Not sure which Mahler Lieder you got but the obvious ones to cover are Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Songs of a Wayfarer.
And Das Lied von der Erde! But....weird Christmas present. The long, final movement "Der [?] Abschied" god I hate grammatical gender in German anyway "D* Abschied" is so devastatingly bleak I try not to listen to it more than every few years though I find it endlessly beautiful. If that makes it sound like a great stocking stuffer, though, there are a number of wonderful recordings including Maureen Forrester and Tenor Whatsisname under Fritz Reiner or Ludwig/Wunderlich/Reiner.
29: Ooooo that sounds like it's worth a good snoop through the lps, if it's been out of print I could skip the headache of going through the cds (he's been double, triple and more filing them to save space so have to open multiple jewel cases total pain in the ass) and the impenetrably organized server...
TRO agree re earnest sweatered ones, but spill re your recs for metal!
34 second instance of "Reiner" s/b Klemperer
I know nothing about metal, but there's an interesting and extensive list of 90s metal here (which might or might not be of interest to any of the members of Judas Priest).
Because everybody loves Hogan's Heroes.
Judas Priest has been around longer than the Eagles. Isn't the shtick getting old for both of them?
||
Oh oh, Smoking Gun coming up with a lot of stuff about that Ferguson witness with the weird racism diary entries, including identity.
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Will do a metal list sometime later today though I'm not exactly a scenester and my tastes are pretty mainstream, I think neb and Ned are more plugged in to proggy metal stuff that would be interesting to a 20th C classical fan. Listening to Lord Mantis in the car right now, which will totally rip your face off and eat your face.
Speaking of 20th C music, I learned yesterday that Warren Zevon was a pupil of Stravinsky's. Z's Dad was a bookmaker for James Ellroy-era LA gangster Mickey Cohen and set him up for lessons with S.
And Das Lied von der Erde! But....weird Christmas present.
Good point. Try Kindertotenlieder.
41.2 - best Stravinsky story ever.
42: Mordant ha!
40: I'm reading that now. It's actually much worse than I figured it would be for the story of someone who would have written that journal entry.
This is pretty fun.
Shostakovich >> Kronos Quartet Performs Alfred Schnittke: The Complete String Quartets
Vessel >> the new Swans album, or Glenn Branca Symphony #2
38: yep! Werner Klemperer was Otto Klemperer's son.
I was attempting to minimize high culture by pointing out just how many more people know Werner than Otto.
And I was joke-ruining by explicit-making.
We had this conversation before, and it turns out that Hogan's Heroes was almost fully staffed with people connected in one way or another to actually fleeing or resisting the for-real Nazis. It's if there was a network multi-camera sitcom about a wacky, bumbling group of ISIS executioners and their clever, wisecracking hostages, with a cast made up mostly of Iraqi refugees and relatives of 9/11 victims.
I wish when high culture was minimized you could still see the ikon on your toolbar.
I'm checking out The Speech Project now, it's making me think variously of L Anderson's fascination with the similarities & differences in my sister's and my voices many years ago, and of the Lomax recording Singing In The Streets, which I LOVE.
You guys are all so awesome, now i just need a hypnotist to put better half into a state where he answers questions re all these great suggestions but never remembers...
51.2: Hypnotism! That's my specialty!
My wife tells me exactly what to get her, and after I hypnotize her, she's totally surprised by her gifts! It works every time!
49:
And the ones who weren't emigres, like Bob Crane and Ivan Dixon, are also interesting, albeit for different reasons. Crane's story is well-known, but Dixon had starred in the amazing Nothing But a Man the year before, with Abbey Lincoln and the very young Yaphet Kotto in the cast.
52.2: Dad for the early years of Mom's illness had Mom pick out her own gifts, trying them on for fit, and by Christmas, she'd forgotten them. He thought it was very convenient, in a black humor kind of way.
49: Yep, earlier this year; starts about at this comment when a member of Judas Priest becomes enlightened. Further downthread, I linked an interview he had with consummate ass, Pat Sajak.
I am working my way through the list of Bach cantatas we don't have yet for the umpteenth gazillion Sundays after Trinity and the like, I'm not completely mad.
It's just the horrible uncertainty that for the off piste surprise I've picked something that he bought, listened to AND THEN REJECTED. Not a good feeling. Also, admittedly, that I've occasionally been wildly successful, like the Zdenek Liska film score for The Mermaid he'd never heard of. Hard not to aim for that every year.
Yaphet Kotto may be the awesomenest name ever.
the Lomax recording Singing In The Streets, which I LOVE.
I hadn't heard of that, and will look for it. It makes me curious if you have the Langley Schools Music Project recording? (and also the collection of Scottish Drinking and Pipe songs, which is definitely of mixed quality, but includes some superb recordings).
What's conventional wisdom around here about whether hypnotism is, you know, a thing? I have these two basic self hypnosis things downloaded on my laptop in case they might do something in the impossible case of Smearcase v. Airplanes, but they've been there for much of a year because I sort of figure they won't do a damn thing and that's always disappointing.
I've already listened to bits of the Dave Douglas/Uri Caine Shape Note/Jazz album
Wacky!
DQ, if your gift-givee doesn't already have it/them and is willing to take his Mahler with a significant bit of sacrilege tossed in, I really like Uri Caine's Urlicht. Timo Andres' Home Stretch with his Mozart "recomposition" is similarly neat (IMO anyway).
My only data point is that my parents got hypnotized to quit smoking, and it worked like a charm for my father -- he'd never really quit in the thirty years of smoking before the hypnosis, and never had another cigarette after. It was not a silver bullet for my mother.
I'm about to go home, but I've been listening to Das Lied von der Erde for the last hour: Bruno Walter, to whom Mahler confessed he was afraid to conduct it, with the Vienna Philharmonic and the dying Kathleen Ferrier. Heartbreaking, as Smearcase says, not just Der Abschied but also Von der Schonheit.
61: I don't recall you mentioning that before. My mom never smoked buy my dad also quit with hypnosis and worked like a charm. He went from two packs a day to cold turkey ever since the hypnosis. He smoked for forty years.
This may not be for DQ but the Impressions of Monk album by Georg Graewe, Marcio Mattos, and Michael Vatcher is really great (also not very recent). One can also recommend the following:
Owen Pallett - In Conflict
Mujician - Poem about the Hero
Biota - Funnel to a Thread
Locrian - Return to Annihilation
Present - Le poison qui rend fou (remastered ed)
Magda Mayas/Tony Buck/Damon Smith - Spill Plus
Battle Trance - Palace of Wind
The grandfather who changed his identity wholesale was a research psychologist who specialized in hypnotism. It sounds funny when I put it like that, though.
"Contemporary Classical Music for 7 Bassoons", huh.
62: Really? I heard Seattle Symphony do it here and was impressed. Not that I'd want to listen to it again more than once, but it was a pretty skillful use of orchestral sonorities in the service of making something very thoroughly composed seem formless.
64: Come to think, forty years is closer to right for my father as well -- mid-teens to mid-fifties.
ALSO,
Andrew Raffo Dewar - Interactions Quartet
Bristle - Future(s) Now(s)
Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack - Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire
68: I found it boring. I listen to a lot of formless music, though.
I found it boring. I listen to a lot of formless music, though.
New hovertext?
Heebie! You completely need to obtain the Langley School album, put it in the car/van sound system, load up the kiddies and then report back the results. Go!
Let me reiterate that things in 65 and 70 are really just albums I've encountered with much enjoyment recently. Locrian, for instance, would probably not be a good gift. Depending on attitudes toward jazz (fairly abstract jazz in Dewar's case), though, the Monk album, and the things in 70, might not be TOO off the mark. I dunno!
55: I dunno, I feel like pat sajak's ass is just meh.
59: have you recruited special forces agents xanax and bourbon into the fight? IMAPWO (in my admittedly pretty wasted opinion) that worked fine. the power of prayer...eh, they oversell it, I think. that's my sponsor's suggestion.
Speaking of flights, mine just got delayed again. This day is turning into much more waiting around in the airport than I had intended.
A good Christmas present is
The first country album with an openly gay band identity and lyrics. It's genuinely good! The label that re-released it is run by my friend and has other great things.
I found it boring. I listen to a lot of formless music, though. But really, my cows.
Should have linked the original comment and included the full text since it was very on-topic.
great, now thanks, i was waiting forever when the music will begin and there are noises
but, really, my cows
59 -- I've probably mentioned before the relative of mine who does (did? I haven't seen him in 20 years) hypnosis for various things, including breast enlargement.
I never understood how that was supposed to work.
85: Thanks. We're having to reschedule/consolidate the meetings we were going to have this afternoon but otherwise there shouldn't be too much disruption to our plans.
The Pacifica Quartet's Elliott Carter recordings are great, on the off chance they haven't passed through your household already.
Doesn't the mantra start "I must, I must..."?
82: we must! we must! we must increase our bust!
I tried Ativan and red wine once. I was nervous though disoriented throughout the flight, but I can report that I was quite "well, that happened" about barfing on the floor of LaGuardia upon arrival, and I'm usually not at all a good sport about barfing. Recently I went to my doctor at Kaiser and asked about beta blockers and he wasn't into the idea and instead said he was going to give me whatever, the benzo with amnesia that they use for maybe colonoscopies, and I was really into that because I guess I don't mind being terrified if I have no memory of it, but the actual psychiatrist must have thought it was a bad plan because when I got to the pharmacy, there were some plain old Klonopin waiting for me. Love them as I do, I had 30 or so at home so that didn't do much for me.
I'd feel the same way about barfing on the floor of LaGuardia with or without drugs and alcohol.
JFK gets a pass mostly because of the Calder mobile. ♥
I wish there was a way to signal to doctors that I mega support prescribing me placebos whenever prudent*, without it somehow seeming to undermine the whole thing.
E.g., not when am in agony from appx 10 year old root canal going majorly sideways on me, thank you very much, and yes I had my suspicions when the antibiotics took 72 fully excruciating hours to start working.
about barfing on the floor of LaGuardia upon arrival
Oh, that was you.
I just went over to a person who in retrospect I think was a security guard with no real responsibility for barfing incidents and muttered "I was sick on the floor over there." Then I took a shuttle into Manhattan to meet friends for dinner. The next day I remembered absolutely none of the shuttle ride or dinner. I'm surprised I found my way across town.
And to think - it could have all been a placebo! Wouldn't that be cool?
klonopin is BOTH the benzo they give people (in large amounts) to reduce anxiety (and perhaps, though I'm not sure this is the agent particularly, induce retro-grade amnesia) in people about to undergo surgery/have an outpatient medical procedure, AND the klonopin known and loved by all as a way to turn normal wine into happy funtimes winey wine times.
I think Smearcase should just recast his phobia as "Flying commercial is horrible and I have impeccable taste, so fuck flying." You can take a Ativan and swallow some red wine if you ever have a chance to fly private or maybe international First Class.
A request for suggestions from the Mineshaft!
My parents are Going to take a trip down the Danube next year, so we children are going to inflict all kinds of history and literature on them featuring the places they are going to visit. Any suggestions for history, literature, or well-done genre that features: Prague, Vienna, the Danube, Belgrade, or Sofia? (yes, we are aware that some of these are not actually on the Danube.)
the benzo with amnesia that they use for maybe colonoscopies
I have no idea what they doped me up with when I had mine last week, but goddamn that was a great nap.
Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy takes place there, but in the WWII period. Lots of Iron Guard, etc. You'd want something contemporary featuring Skinheads instead.
Thanks, idp! I will look into the Manning. Not so much with te skinheads, I suspect.
there were some plain old Klonopin waiting for me
"I feel obligated to tell you this. This is actually kind of funny. Stevie Nicks described Klonopin withdrawal like being pushed into hell."
Are we all watching High Maintenance yet? Because we need to be watching High Maintenance.
Where does hal/ion fall on the totally out of it / don't remember scale? That's what they're giving me for dreaded dental surgery this week.
Patrick Leigh Fermor is great for that part of Europe.
Or just jump right in on this one. I like this but Dave should really go to NM and play with some mariachis to get the ring right.
105.--Thanks very much, that looks fascinating!
For Vienna: Schnitzler, and then some more of him, Tragically outdated.
Arthur Koestler's autobiography.
Claudio Magris, Danube
For light relief, the two completely brilliant Laurence Durrell books about his time as a British diplomat in Belgrade int he Fifties -- Sauve qui peut and, er, the other one. He hated everything and so wrote very funnily about it.
Grahame Greene, the Third Man.
Neal Ascherson, Black Sea (I know: it's the end of the journey, but it's still great)
Seconding PLF, of course.
Discussed at dinner tonight, have some (prob too wacky) ideas, but will have to post tomorrow as have been dragged into Christmas card project.
Claudio Magris' Danube seems like the obvious choice. In college I had a somewhat inexplicable weakness for Péter Esterházy's The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (Down the Danube), which includes a lengthy and cute pastiche/outright plagiarism of Invisible Cities, but that one is not to everyone's taste and possibly not to my mature hatred of everything taste either.
I had a disastrous reaction to Klonopin the one time I took it, for the wedding weekend of a close friend. I remember falling asleep at inopportune times, like the middle of a fancy restaurant dinner, and ... that's most of what I remember: with mortification in front of puzzled host-friends, kayak trying to lure me onto the dance floor from wherever I was curled up in the fetal position because they were playing a Tindersticks song, stopping at Labyrinth Books to buy Haun Saussy's Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic, which is excellent, although not about the Danube at all. This suddenly seems like a lot of highly identifying information, actually, but only to about ten people.
My blanket policy of buying every Arditti Quartet recording I can find has worked out pretty well. Someday I will track down a DVD of Henze's Prinz von Homburg. It would have to be so terrible to disappoint me.
-with, -redundant Magris recommendation (I totally haven't read more than ten pages but it just seems like inoffensive, accessible middle-highbrow Sebaldy stuff).
100: klonopin! there is like 1000mg total in my house now and what even, people? OK, 100 5 mg tabs, 500mg, fine.
103: benzodiazepine withdrawal is well known as THE WORST. the fucking WORST. it goes on and on and on and you will never sleep again, and you will be pitched into a maw of depression that will take a year to lift, and other stuff.
A little farther south and on a different river, The Bridge on the Drina is pretty good.
Under a Cruel Star is good if you think a memoir of someone who went into exile from Czechoslovakia is appropriate for the trip.
If you want to go way back, The Barbarian Conversion is about the conversion of all of Europe to Chistianity, but has some really interesting chapter on the south and east.
There were a lot of "what is this so-called Eastern Europe?" books right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed shortly by a group of "call us Central Europe now, we're not that Eastern (Russian), ok?" books. Those might be dated, but I remember reading some of them before I went on a trip to Europe in 1999.
Neal Ascherson's Black Sea book is great.
There were a lot of "what is this so-called Eastern Europe?" books right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed shortly by a group of "call us Central Europe now, we're not that Eastern (Russian), ok?" books.
I remember those books. They were mostly by someone named "Misha Glenny".
The Schorske book on Vienna is supposed to be great but I've never read it.
It's great! But I must have sold my copy.
I'm sure books on Merrie Olde Hungarie (Budapest 1900 etc.) would be super depressing at this point.
This is going to end by someone offering to give Jackmormon's parents a large collection of Laibach albums.
A grad school classmate of mine appears to be the foremost authority writing in the English language on the subject of Slovakia's WWII dictator.
113: fa! I am so happy to find someone else has read the Barbarian Conversions. It is in store at the moment, but one of the books I most want out of there when I finally settle in a place to live where the walls are vertical all the way to the roof and I can put my fucking bookshelves in place.
I am rather fond of Christopher Biggins, "A Sailor of Austria" and its sequels. And "The Good Soldier Sveik" is roughly that area and period.
And, yes, Patrick Leigh Fermor.
|| Fuck.
So, these past few days I've been going through breakup talks with my girlfriend (we live together). I was spending the weekend at my mom's in a different city, watching her dog while she was abroad, when she (the becoming-ex) called and told me she'd swallowed 26 clonazepams. I called the cops while continuing to talk to her, and over her protests. For some reason cops showed up at my mom's place too, where I didn't even think to hide the small amount of weed right on the table as you enter.
The cops started detaining me while they were radioed that others were at my apartment and everything was ok. Meanwhile, girlfriend told me on the phone that she'd opened the door, lied to the police that she was ok, and they left. I was hauled down to the station with the guys arresting me not giving a fuck and claiming they'd done their job. I managed to catch her ex on the phone and told him what was going on before my phone was taken from me.
She resisted the police and medics and was taken by force to the hospital, and now she's forcibly committed to a closed mental ward which is, apart from lobotomies and such, pretty much a horrifying Cuckoo's Nest thing. Her parents are nonexistent, what remains of her family is dysfunctional, and she has no other close friends apart from said ex who has his own issues. She still sounds suicidal, appeal for exiting the horrifying closed ward is on Thursday and I don't know what's going to happen. So far her workplace got a generic message but won't be able to be put off much longer, and I have no idea what support she can get even if she does get released. Fuck.
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120. Well, shit. Are you at liberty now, at least? Can you talk to the ex?
Yeah, they let me go after a couple of hours. I'm in contact with the ex and with her aunt, but the ex has a new girlfriend who even before all this demanded he cut all contact with her, and the aunt is mostly worried about any repercussions for her family. At this point, until the appeal, there's really nothing any of us can do, and I'm hoping the aunt will step up a bit more.
122: God, so sorry. Weird that they showed up at your place too. Sucks about the weed.
There's not much good in terms of options. As horrible as that ward is, it might just be the best place right now. I don't now whether you are in the US, and if you are, where, but there are not too many options.
She got the klonopin from somewhere. Was it prescribed? Does she have an outpatient psychiatrist or therapist that you could contact?
124.last is a good point. That stuff is prescription-only, so presumably someone prescribed it to her. (Or to you?)
Awlwo, my sympathies to you and her. Also, I think 124 is right about the options. Unless there's a horrible closed ward and a less horrible closed ward across town.
Oh awlwo, that sounds awful, all of it. I'm trying to mentally problem-solve some but not coming up with much. Has she been assigned a lawyer or guardian ad litem who might have some insight? Are there half-day programs she could maybe step down to? I'm not saying any of this to pressure you into being the one to make the decisions and take on a caretaker role when you also need to be extricating yourself from the relationship, but if you could come up with a potential plan of action maybe you could delegate some of it to the aunt and team up with Fellow Ex to make sure the right things happen? Ugh!
Follow up to 124. If there are any professionals involved, you need to be really clear to them about what you can and can't do. Otherwise they will see you as a "natural" support and try to unload her on to you.
In my experience with my parents, trying to plan things out with the social worker was not super helpful. My parents are especially difficult, but I did notice that when I said that I wanted help with some practical stuff--like having someone work with them to make sure that they balanced their checkbooks and I gave her information about programs that would help or asked about having the OTs help, her response was to talk to me about having a family meeting to support me. In other words, they saw me as a a "natural" support and wanted my free labor.
If you are really clear that you can't do much, the social workers at the hospital won't like it, but they will have to come up with a discharge plan which doesn't assume that she can just go back to you.
Pass the buck.
Yeah, she does have a psychiatrist, but he's mostly a rubber stamp - she's a nurse by training, so she basically self-medicated by asking him for prescriptions. I'm trying to work things out with the ex and the aunt, and will probably talk to social workers at the hospital today and try to figure something out, and I am making sure everyone involved understands that unloading her on me would be a terrible idea for both of us.
I'm not in the US, this was my lame attempt at distancing myself a bit from my usual pseud while remaining recognizable.
The one ray of light in this clusterfuck was seeing how great my own support network is - while the options for actually doing something are pretty limited, my friends and family have been amazing with everything else.
130 last is excellent news and the pseudier pseud also works. Thanks for telling us about it, too. There are a lot of people here who care about you!
130: Yeah, I really did know that you weren't in the US. The use of the word "Medic" made me think you were in a Commonwealth Country (not Canada).
she's a nurse by training, so she basically self-medicated by asking him for prescriptions.
OK, well, he needs to step up and start doing his damn job for a change in that case. At the least he should be informed that one of his patients has just attempted suicide. (I assume she actually did take the pills? She didn't just say she had?)
I still haven't the slightest idea who you are, but I don't think that matters. Best wishes.
Very glad to hear that you're getting the support you need from your own family - that will be a tremendous help even if they can't do much for the gf directly.
AWLWO, that's miserable. Sounds like you're doing everything right in a bad situation. Hope you don't feel guilty about either the attempt (/plea for attention because I'm a cynic) or for what you are or aren't willing or able to do. Glad your people are rising to the occasion.
Yeah, I'm hoping the psychiatrist will help, too - since the hospital is underfunded, understaffed, etc., they haven't contacted him yet, and as of yesterday, she only got 15 minutes with three of the doctors there, and the rest of the time she's just there. The rest of the patients look like what you'd expect in an underfunded closed ward, and keep intruding on her personal space and making her feel even worse.
And thanks for the support here, too. It's funny how these things make such a difference. I wish she had that.
ydnew is also awesome and on point. Suicidal threats and gestures are relatively common in situations like breakups where I think they can constitute emotional abuse, though this sounds like a situation where there may be more going on than just that. I'm really glad you don't seem to be taking that part personally or feeling guilted by it, because you shouldn't.
Sheesh AWLWO, that sucks balls. I hope everything shakes out OK. I can't add to the good advice you've already been given, but I wanted to send my support.