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Memory Keepers: District Six - Conversations with National Living Treasures
113 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2012
About the author
Keith Adams
61 books5 followersMy book, which was recently published by Chipmunka, has been called "… probably the most entertaining tale of mania you're likely to read". "Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos" is available at all online booksellers in paperback, and on Kindle too (at Amazon.com)
I always wonder how an abnormally tall, working-class boy from the North Sea coast of England ended up living in a house in Hollywood with two dogs, and a partner, Benhur (really), who's a smarty-pants scientist at UCLA.
I do actually write for a living. Admittedly it's computer code, but I've always hoped to have my “real writing” - from experience - published. Yet I never thought my life to be eventful or interesting enough to merit a full memoir. That is, until I had a serious brush with insanity in 2006.
Heading towards a final diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I had a manic episode of truly heroic proportions. At one point, I thought I'd be a gay superstar / epochal intellectual / latter day Messiah all rolled into one. Quite obviously, I became none of those things, but I did survive the inevitable crash to tell the tale in my memoir, which recounts the creativity, the great ideas, the not so great ideas, the fist-fights, and one impersonation of the Anti-Christ while in jail overnight courtesy of the LAPD.
If you like watching train crashes in slow motion, my memoir is the book for you. But it's also an unlikely story of growth through disaster. While I would never wish this disorder on anybody, I became a better, stronger person through it all, and my relationship with my partner became embedded in rock. So I like to think the book offers hope to anybody in the midst of similar trials and tribulations.
And that’s also the underlying reason I’ve kept a blog these last few years, writing not just about my own little passions (writing – obviously, literature, cosmology, photography, consciousness … it’s a long list) in life, but also about my experience of depression, and mania. Nothing touches me more than when somebody writes me and tells me that my attempt at bearing the soul of mental illness has made them feel understood, and less alone.
All the best, Keith Adams
I always wonder how an abnormally tall, working-class boy from the North Sea coast of England ended up living in a house in Hollywood with two dogs, and a partner, Benhur (really), who's a smarty-pants scientist at UCLA.
I do actually write for a living. Admittedly it's computer code, but I've always hoped to have my “real writing” - from experience - published. Yet I never thought my life to be eventful or interesting enough to merit a full memoir. That is, until I had a serious brush with insanity in 2006.
Heading towards a final diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I had a manic episode of truly heroic proportions. At one point, I thought I'd be a gay superstar / epochal intellectual / latter day Messiah all rolled into one. Quite obviously, I became none of those things, but I did survive the inevitable crash to tell the tale in my memoir, which recounts the creativity, the great ideas, the not so great ideas, the fist-fights, and one impersonation of the Anti-Christ while in jail overnight courtesy of the LAPD.
If you like watching train crashes in slow motion, my memoir is the book for you. But it's also an unlikely story of growth through disaster. While I would never wish this disorder on anybody, I became a better, stronger person through it all, and my relationship with my partner became embedded in rock. So I like to think the book offers hope to anybody in the midst of similar trials and tribulations.
And that’s also the underlying reason I’ve kept a blog these last few years, writing not just about my own little passions (writing – obviously, literature, cosmology, photography, consciousness … it’s a long list) in life, but also about my experience of depression, and mania. Nothing touches me more than when somebody writes me and tells me that my attempt at bearing the soul of mental illness has made them feel understood, and less alone.
All the best, Keith Adams
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October 20, 2016
It took me days to finish a book which I could have finished in a few hours but, I found many errors throughout the book, I didn't like the illustrations at all and I found the interviewer to be too wordy at times. I think someone researching any of these District Six creatives may find the interviews insightful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review