Word Salads come in many forms: In psychiatry it refers to a thought disorder found in various forms of psychosis; in the creative field a break from purely logical thinking to arrive at new meanings; in poetry it suggests playing with language such as the famous Jabberwocky poem of Lewis Carroll. Some word salads are complete non-sense and in others you have to dig for the meaning. In this video, it is a mix of all these senses.

 This semi-divine comedy takes an out-of-the-box “mockumentary” approach to the creator-producer's state of mind and tells his tale through his alter-ego, Rembrandt and some of his friends.  It presents a new look at creativity and a new look at madness. It begins like an educational piece on creativity but soon evolves into a mad morality/mortality play.  In it he mocks contemporary art, immigration policy, museum installations, architects, rap, himself--even God.

 This video, Word Salad, begins with a series of sketches, using widely differing multi-media approaches from word-play games, graphic manipulations, documentary, fantasy installations, music/poetry videos, to posters and rap. It makes suggestions about the creative process and creative expression that carry through the video and looks at their relationship to madness. 

 Like the elements of a salad, the sketches are individually prepared before they get mixed together.  Issues of bowing to the past vs. starting fresh, boundaries and intimacy, choosing and being chosen, standing out and fitting in, shallowness and depth, and duck, duck, goose get all mixed up. Psychiatrically poems move from ignoring issues [Sublime Suite and Strangers to Themselves] to the struggle to face one’s demons [Plaza de Toros], to manic excesses [Hamilton and Chicken Salad.]

 The video poem gradually moves into madness.  It progresses from the psychological madness of schizoid distance and manic excesses to the physiological madness of multiple sclerosis, its multiple ramifications, and anger about its indignities to existential madness of being tossed into existence with the prescriptions for living “left in a bottle too wet to read,” only to then in the end having to face loss.

 In the concluding neo-dada play Dr. Young tossed the entire work into an incredible chicken salad.  It extends the focus from sense and non-sense to meaning and meaninglessness in the style of the “Theatre of the Absurd.” The dialogue is full of chicken clichés, wordplay, looseness of association and other nonsense.  Humor replaces the sad edginess and over-the-top emotionality of some contemporary art films focusing on madness, but it is not just funny, the video has a serious side too. It suggests we all have to hang together and face our demons, individually and collectively. He closes the psychodrama with a nod to Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem—it sounds nice but makes no sense.

 Some of the video sketches were taken using a $600 Sony camera that did both still and video and had a 12x zoom. Many sketches were revised over 100 times so there is some pixilation. For the video poet “A poem is never completed, only abandoned.” The distortion becomes a video metaphor for the distressed state of multiple sclerosis and the aging process dealt with in later sections.

 John G. Young, M.D., a retired psychiatrist and multi-media artist, created this unique experimental video. He blends Jungian, Freudian, and existential approaches into this complex psychodrama.  Dr. Young did the paintings, graphics, poems/script, photographs, music/sound-scapes, performance, animations, videos, and voice-overs along with his wife, Diane. The music was freely improvised, sometimes on two keyboards simultaneously. The only composed piece was Fuwa’s Barriers, the second movement of Concerto with …which is in three parts, in 5/4 and 7/4 times like the line beats of the four haiku of that section. The music varies from a simple piano improvisation to more complex orchestral and sound-scape pieces. The poems fluctuate from serious poetry and light verse to doggerel and rap. The art, in style and subject matter, vary from simple drawings, subtle graphics, large format contemporary florals to various kinds of abstraction. Videos range from animations, documentaries, and mockumentaries to abstract pieces. There are no actors. Videos within videos, plays within plays, also shape this multi-layered multi-media piece. The piece was subtitled so my hearing impaired daughter and you would not misunderstand the computer voices; it re-emphasizes that this is truly a “word salad.”

 A much earlier version of Word Salad was juried into the Core Art Gallery Word Play show as a video installation. Other videos by John G. Young, M.D. such as The Creative Adventure and Poems at an Exhibition have received the International CINDY Competition award, The Telly Award and the Communicator Award.

The Creative Adventure

In The Creative Adventure, a two-part, two hour video, Dr. John G. Young, develops the original conception that love is essential to emotionally healthy creative functioning. He shows you how to develop maximum effectiveness using creative and innovative approaches. The Creative Adventure won the International CINDY award, the Telly Award and the Communicator Award.

Part One: Love and Conception answers the questions, "What is creativity?" "Why is creativity important?" and "How can you become more creative?" It takes the attitude that everyone has creative abilities, but we can all improve our creative approaches.

 Part Two: Birth and Re-Birth extends the investigation into creative approaches, but shifts the focus to the being side of creativity. We move from the creative process to the creative person. We look more at the "Krainen" aspect of fulfillment, and explore attitudes necessary to creative living, learning and loving. At this level living with purpose is as important as accomplishing a goal; the process becomes as important as the product.