Doing It Mountain Man Style: Part 4 of the (Massive) Ryan Henry Ward Interview!

 

When we last left Ryan Henry Ward, he had just leapt into the waters around Gas Works Park in an effort to stop the madness that had begun to take control. Ready to drown himself and end everything that he had put so much effort into, Ryan ward was in full crisis mode and realized that he just needed to get away, he needed to run away…

Ryan Henry Ward: So I decided to get into my van, I had a trailer I lived in and a van that I used to get around in, that had all of my mural stuff inside. So I decided to go to my friend Murph’s place because I knew that it would be quiet and I could at least get some sleep. So I made it to about downtown on the Freeway and then I ran out of gas. That’s when I decided to go on foot! I was barefoot and I walked all the way across the 1-90 bridge. In the middle of the night. On the road. Under the tunnels. All the way to Mercer Island to his house and stayed there for a day.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: So where was Wes at this point?

Ryan Henry Ward: Wes had Merlin. I had just said, take my dog, something’s wrong, that I need to take care of. He was good with that and he stayed back and looked after Merlin. It just seemed that I needed sleep, because I hadn’t been sleeping.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: How long had it been since you slept?

Ryan Henry Ward: At least a week! It was this massive crescendo of where my imagination had gotten to me coupled with coming off of pain medications for my back! I hadn’t realized just how bad things had gotten, until it was too late. I had the will-power to get off the prescription drugs, but didn’t realize the full extent of the effects that it was having on my body and my mind.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: So, to a large degree this was the effect of the accident that you had years ago and which had started your artistic career. What happened next?

Ryan Henry Ward: So basically, what ended up happening was that I ended up running around Seattle for three days completely barefoot! I was all over Seattle for three days and during this journey I came to believe that I had done something tremendously wrong to the universe to the point where I ended up believing that I was evil and that I had destroyed everything that was good in the world.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: Awesome!

Ryan Henry Ward: And I started to see ways in which to deal with this, and one of those ways was that I was going to swim across the Puget Sound to an island and survive on natural skills, while the world fell apart, then years later I would teach the world to live with the natural order again.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: You were going to do it Mountain-Man style! What other things did you realize during this period of Kierkegaardian enlightenment?

Ryan Henry Ward: I was thinking of doing that, then I realized that bus system was set up so that they only allowed philosophers on the buses. I was going to get on the bus with the philosophers and ride around figuring out the world’s problems with them for seven years while evil took over the earth. You see I kept going back between thinking I was evil and thinking that I was the last good man on earth, bringing calm to the world.

Xavier Lopez Jr.: This is very heady stuff. Very Iconic and very much about the war that we all wage within ourselves between good and evil and seeking that center we all have of childlike innocence. How were you going to bring peace and calm to the universe? What did you do that had been so evil, what did you believe had been your great crime?

Ryan Henry Ward: It was all about my art. I thought I had stripped away everything from everybody. Basically, at this point full-on schizophrenia was in effect. Paranoia. Delusions of grandeur, split personality–all of it!

At this point I got tied into the mythos of the Raven. And believed that I was the Raven from Native American mythology and that I had stolen the light of the world and that I had it with me. The Raven had always been my favorite my favorite character in Pacific Northwest Native American mythology and he is this character who sets out to do mischief but who ends up creating things. In one story he wanted to steal all of the light from the world but ended up creating night and day by doing it. So he sets out on these missions of selfishness, but ends up doing something really creative and grand for the world. He has always been a favorite and at the height of my shizophrenia–I really thought I was him.

And.

Then.

I decided to go up to highway 99, atop the Alaska Way viaduct and I was going to launch off and transform into the Raven in front of everybody’s eyes. So I walked up there and stood there for a long while and all the cars that were driving by were honking at me and I thought they were encouraging me to do it! And I was getting ready to transform and I stood atop this beam and put my arms out!

And someone grabbed me by my back.

Threw me to the ground.

And put me under arrest.

They brought me to the hospital for attempted suicide and it was in the hospital that they realized that this guy has gone f*cking bananas! So they sent me to the mental hospital, but I didn’t know I was going to the mental hospital. I didn’t know what the f*ck was going on with me! I thought it was the end of the world, I thought this was the apocalypse! I thought that everything had collapsed and we all lived in a “Mad Max” world now! I thought they were sending me off to a Native American reservation! Because they were protecting me from being brutally killed!

Xavier Lopez Jr.: Why?

Ryan Henry Ward: Honestly, this part of my story no longer even makes sense to me–it was so convoluted that I can’t even connect my thinking at this time anymore. It was streams of nonsense that somehow made sense to me at the time! And it just got worse and worse and worse and the nightmare just got darker and darker and darker!

It just got crazy! And this lasted for weeks! Just the worse things that the psyche could come up with. But we finally got a handle on it–through counseling, medication and time!
I spent most of that time walking around like a zombie–not talking to anybody. It was finally my family that helped me to open up and explain what I was going through. My friends and family helped me realize that what I thought was going on, wasn’t actually going on…

I started talking about it and sorting it out.

“Oh my God, that’s not happening, man! That’s not what’s going on!”

“You’re in the mental hospital.”

“They thought you were attempting suicide!”

“No, I wasn’t attempting suicide… this is what was going on inside my head”

And on it went…

More counselors and the process of finding the right medications.

Got me to the point where I was ready to go home.

I was still kind of messed up for a couple of weeks at home. And on into months of healing, where I was kind of spaced out and zombie-like. And here’s where it got pretty scary, I was in this place where I couldn’t create! And that was the first time that that had ever happened to me in my life, where I just wasn’t an artist! There was nothing! No creative thought! I just ate and slept for the whole winter of 2009. Twenty hours a-day. Then one day I went off the medication and processed myself back into reality.

Well I guess that is not the end, but the next one will be, but first a couple more Proust Interviews, at least one review of an art exhibition and more Maggie Toons! So keep your eyes on this space!

_________________________________________________________________________