[-2]. As to who I am with regards to this website and why I've decided to make it, there is really only one central reason: I enjoy putting my thoughts together and where possible, I like creating meaningful content that is accessible to the world as a whole.
If something I write can be helpful in terms of teaching, then I am certainly happy that I am able to teach.
[-1.5]. As I am now, as of 2011, a father of three young boys, I also wish to have this site available to help teach them about the world in both the case where I am here to teach them and in the unfortunate event that I am not here or capable of doing so for some reason. The world is full of possibilities and insurance towards the deeper understanding of the world I am attempting to impart herein is wise in my opinion.
[1.4]. I admit that much of what is contained in this site is not directly for young people as it is rather blunt and harshly worded but so too is the world rather blunt and harsh when one takes the time to look past the veneer we are presented with in daily life.
[-1]. I find a lot of the internet to be either pleasing in terms of depth and content or in terms of aesthetics or beauty but rarely, if ever, pleasing in terms of both. It was always my design with this site to make something that was both enjoyable to look at and to read. I spend a great deal of time in making the graphics for this site in order to spark interest in readers as to the symbolic or abstract meaning behind each creation.
Brief sketch of my life and experiences:
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[0]. The following is a brief summary of my life and experiences, should anyone care to know. I try to mention the high and low points with honesty. Sharing about one's self is always a questionable endeavor at best though I was bored one night and decided to do so, for better or worse, on this particular page.
[1]. I really don't know what name I was born with exactly because my coming into the world was a bit tumultuous to say the least. My mother was only 16 when I was born. My father was a decent bit older, in his twenties I think. In any case, was either born Anthony Peter Iannini or Anthony Peter Abbruzzese and I'm not sure which (but I could probably find out if I tried hard enough).
[2]. My mother was adopted, as were her two brothers, by my grandparents. They had a nice house in a nice neighborhood but my mother became lost in love and drugs before she was mature enough to handle either. From what I have been told, my biological father was fairly lost in a problematic existence when I was born and it is perhaps best he left the picture, early, when he did.
[3]. I was born on April 7th, 1979 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. I lived a short while, as a toddler, in Glendale, California before going back to Auburn, Massachusetts. My mother and father split up and my mother had my sister, Lisa with her new husband, about five years later. Then, we moved to Worcester again and eventually, to Cape Coral, Florida around the time I was seven years old.
[4]. My name became Anthony Peter Brown as my step-father legally adopted me. My mother and and step-father raised me, with my younger sister, for some time in Massachusetts and Florida, but things didn't work out and my sister and I were eventually legally adopted by my grandparents. I consider my grandparents to be my parents in all reality because they did most of the work raising my sister and I.
[4.1]. So, until around 1999, my name was Anthony Peter Brown until I had it legally changed (while I was in College at Tulane University) to Anthony Peter Iannini. I changed it because I felt my grandparents, the Ianninis, were my real parents who had done most of the hard work and the name also stood out a bit more. As far as I know, I'm half Italian and a mix of Spanish, Irish, French, Polish, and Lithuanian. Culturally, I'm American.
[4.2]. Though, I'm not exactly sure what an American actually is because we are a very diverse people who generally don't agree on anything. Many stereotypes of Americans are true and many are not, but overall, the people here are compassionate and they want peace. It is mostly our government and a small handful of powerful elites, as it is in most historical cases, that both coerce us and lead us to lesser paradigms and actions.
[5]. I grew up from the time I was seven until I was eighteen in southwest Florida in a city called Cape Coral. Cape Coral sits on the southern Gulf coast, at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee river, across from Fort Myers. I went to Pelican Elementary school and Gulf Middle school in a quiet, suburban, small city where hardly anything happened and where the largely retired population didn't particularly want anything to happen. It was a mostly white, middle class city with few problems and few things to do.
[5.1]. From the time I was nine until a teenager, I played and programmed on my computer, I rode my bike, I built tree houses, I dove into canals, I painted tiny Dungeons and Dragons figurines, I played endless video games on my Nintendo, and I wrote fiction. I was interested in science. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I wanted to go to MIT and discover new things about the universe.
[5.2]. I drew things and I dabbled in painting. I loved to learn but I wasn't thrilled about school because most of school had little to do with learning and more to do with fitting in, sitting down, and lining up.
There were classes and teachers that stood out, but it wasn't all the time and in all the grades. There was little room for challenging students' minds in the overall bland primary public schools in Florida. They weren't the worst or most backwards in America, but they certainly weren't the most advanced or enlightening.
[5.3] I went to Catholic church each Sunday and I went to Catechism once a week, after public school. I did it because I was supposed to but it started to rub me the wrong way and I finally declared, at about 14, that I was an atheist.
I could find no proof for God and I thought the Bible was a collection of ancient fairy-tales. I didn't want to upset my pious grandmother but I couldn't stand what I saw as religious nonsense from even an early age. All of it made me feel bad, weird, and like I was in some strange cult.
[5.4]. I was, on the outside, perfectly normal other than my rejection of the family religion. But, inside, I was lost and emotionally hollow. I was damaged by the chaos of my upbringing and I couldn't find a reason to care about my life or life in general. But, all the while, I did what I was told and got good grades and managed to stay out of trouble until I got caught, at 15, doing mischief for no other reasons than the adrenaline such actions produced and the boredom they alleviated. I listened to Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails and all the desperation and hopelessness of such artists' music seemed parallel to my mindset.
[5.5]. I couldn't help but think that I wouldn't live to see my early twenties because I was subconsciously aware of my depression about all that had happened. I never fully examined this thought, but it was there, always, in the background.
[5.6]. When I was sixteen, I went, reluctantly, to Bishop Verot Catholic high school in Fort Myers, Florida. At first, I didn't like it at all because I was completely out of my element and I was away from all of my friends. I wasn't rich but I wasn't poor. I didn't know or think much about class until then at all really. I had always lived in apartments or condos and I usually shared a room. I never wanted for anything I didn't get and this I owe to the generosity of my grandparents who had worked hard and saved all of their lives.
I won an overall award for a horror short story, called A Lonely Road, that was published in newspaper.
[5.8]. I studied hard, made decent to good grades, and began making friends at Bishop Verot as my sophomore and junior years went on. I started drinking heavily on the weekends, which most of the Catholic kids did, and it never amounted to any serious problems.
I was able to balance scholastics with a social life for the most part. Rather than play sports after school, I usually worked washing dishes or building websites for a computer company- though I lifted weights for a time and I pole vaulted on the track team briefly. I always found time for girls.
[5.9]. While at Verot, I went to Costa Rica as part of a Spanish class excursion that made me fall in love with other places. I went to Washington, D.C. for a short leaders conference and fell deeply in love, for the first time, with a young girl I met there. I was amazed at, but put-off by, the power of representative government. My general attitude towards government was that of a disinterested cynic. I hated bullshit even then and that's what I saw in government and religion.
[5.91]. I was president of the National Honor Society and played the part of upstanding young citizen well as I was looking forward to college. I thought University would be the first free place where I could learn the really interesting things.
I felt my education at Verot and in public school was very censored and filtered. I knew there was a seedier and darker side to history, to religion, and to society that was being hidden from me. I knew there were deeper thoughts other thinkers had- thoughts that were being kept out of the books and lectures I was receiving.
[6]. I visited New Orleans and Tulane University one weekend, by myself, and quickly fell in love with the idea of studying therein. My time at Tulane was a wonderful experience and I found my intellectual interests completely satisfied by the range of studies and fields.
I could take any class I wanted. I could study anything. When I found philosophy, I fell deeply in love with it. I took twice as many classes as were required for a degree because I was genuinely intrigued by the field.
[6.1]. A particular professor or two became my mentors and I never enjoyed studying and writing as much as I did during my years therein. But I somewhat overdosed on thinking and analysis. I got so entrenched in philosophy and attempting to figure everything out that I forgot almost everything else, including my mental health. I was pushing myself to understand and see things that may not even be possible to comprehend and I found myself lost in substances and depression in my junior year. I wasn't able to understand everything completely and this depressed me to no end.
[6.2]. I wasn't aware then that I was showing signs of bipolar disorder and it confused and upset me to think of my mind and emotional state as so erratic. At times, I could absorb and regurgitate almost anything in terms of complexity. But, my concentration would wane and, although my grades were very good, they were not perfect and this made me think myself unable to compete with those who had flawless records.
[6.3]. While at Tulane, I taught at and eventually headed a wonderful one day a week, weekend program for local children that kept me in good spirits on a regular basis. I had a loving girlfriend and many good friends, but the charm and beauty of the city also came with a dark, bleak downside. The poverty and depravity of some of the New Orleans culture was right in front of me, juxtaposed by the wealth of the students and the upper classes of the garden district. Many students got sucked into the city and dropped out.
[6.4]. I managed to graduate Magna Cum Laude and with an award for a thesis in Philosophy, but I was exhausted from academic life and I wanted, again, to be free to do as I pleased. I graduated with two bachelor's degrees, one in Philosophy and one in Cognitive Studies. I got minors in psychology and computer science.
[7]. A friend of mine and I toured Europe the summer after college graduation. We went skydiving in the Swiss Alps, we drank absinthe in Prague, we saw many of the museums and cathedrals of western Europe, and we spent a lot of time in the coffee shops of Amsterdam.
I fell in love with travel. We decided to start a t-shirt company on the west coast. So, we started Reflect Clothing in Encino, Los Angeles in the fall in 2001. September 11th happened and we decided to wait a while because everything was different then.
[8]. We drove up the coast, spent a few days in Seattle, and went to Vancouver, B.C. When we returned to L.A., we waited tables and bartended to pay the bills as the company took shape. I was, unknown to myself, very hypomanic.
I hardly slept. I worked, I had a girlfriend that I loved, I played, I traveled more. I spent wildly and lived well. I thought this was normal and how one should be. Then, in the summer of 2002, I crashed- very hard and very abruptly.
[9]. It all started with a blackout and seizure one morning. It was like a switch had been flipped and I went, in an instant, from positive to negative. I was, again, slipping into a very low, suicidal depression. But it was getting deeper and worse this time. Doctors told me I might have had a brain tumor, a virus, or lesions.
They did MRI scans, blood tests, and batteries of examinations over and over again. Everything came up negative. They said I was healthy and that there was nothing wrong with me. They said my brain was completely without defect. I felt like I was dying. I felt like I was losing my mind, completely.
[9.1]. After all the tests and the money had gone towards doctors, after not working and shedding all my close and casual relationships, I found a diagnosis that fit- Bipolar Disorder. It's a disorder which was once called Manic Depression (I don't know why they had to change the name, it seemed an appropriate enough label). I simply couldn't conceive that a mental disorder could be so physical, overwhelming, and powerful. I couldn't accept, with my ego and will, that I was mentally ill.
[9.2]. Psychiatrists agreed with my diagnosis and I began treatments that did not work. I later found out that my biological father was severely bipolar and that it is largely genetically inherited. I thought about the mental problems my mother seemed to have. I read how the disorder gets slightly worse through late adolescence and how it becomes a serious problem usually in the early twenties.
[9.3]. This time, the depression wasn't going away. I thought my life was over and that I was damaged irreparably. I changed completely. I was angry, dark, weird, and not the person my girlfriend and other friends had known. I painted a few oil paintings that gave me a brief moment of relief for a day or two. Only one, called Bipolar, and given to my then ex-girlfriend, survived.
I didn't think much of it and being an artist wasn't anywhere in my mind. I fled Los Angeles in the fall, abruptly, and went back to live with my grandparents. I was in a dark place where I thought I was forever fucked by this disorder that I wasn't prepared to deal with. I didn't want to live with it.
[10]. So, I went back to New Orleans, not wanting to be a burden to my grandparents and not wanting to live like some kind of helpless child. I was 23 and I felt like I couldn't cope on my own. Going back to New Orleans was tough on my friends who I lived with for a while.
I wasn't the same person they had known. I started waiting tables and going out all the time. The medication I was on was making me more manic and I thought I was invincible. I thought I went back to New Orleans to get sucked in for one last hurrah and die with a bang.
[10.1]. I met an older artist who was wild and impressive to me. He told me I should paint. I decided to paint. So, I used my few thousand dollars in cash tips from running a liquor stand on St. Charles during the 2003 Mardi Gras for art supplies. I quit working for a month and, for the first time, painted furiously and constantly. I painted weird things.
I began to learn about painting on my own, in a back room, off Napolean Street while everyone around me thought I had completely lost it. I would come out only in the middle of the night and hang my masterpieces in the hallway of my friends' rented second-floor home. They couldn't stand me because I was off the wall. I had to leave.
[10.2]. I moved into a small, secluded one-bedroom apartment where I let the madness soak in. I painted all the time. Whatever was strongest was best. Whatever kept me from being aware of being broken and hopeless was best. I loved painting but I couldn't keep it together. I would spend every last dollar, beyond my mountain of bills, for canvas and paint.
Work in the French Quarter at the Bourbon House restaurant went well for a while, but I was too chaotic for anything regular. All the money I made went to the neverending nights.
[10.3]. My small apartment was filled with my fledgling art but by early 2004, I had lost my car and I couldn't come up with rent money anymore. I was lost again. I had been wandering around the city all day and night, walking endlessly, in a daze.
I had dug myself into a deep hole, financially and mentally, and I decided, in almost an instant of clarity, to go back to Florida to be with my grandparents once again. I left everything I owned in that apartment on Taft street, just off Orleans Ave. It didn't matter to me at all because I didn't think I was even really still alive.
[11]. I spent some time recovering in Cape Coral, but I soon found myself wanting freedom again. I lived, for a while, in a maintenance building at an airport, where I worked doing light construction. I had some space to paint for a short while. Then, I moved to Tampa and lived with some friends. I painted some more.
Things went badly with my friends for many reasons, including my bipolar disorder, and I moved elsewhere in Tampa. I tried to paint and make money and live on my own again, but it seemed hopeless. I wanted something new and, perhaps, some adventure, so I decided to join the army. I thought I was cured in a manic phase and I convinced myself and the recruiter that I was superman.
[12]. I enlisted in the summer of 2005, just before hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I went to Ft. Benning in Georgia to train with special forces infantry candidates. I thought I could help, get in shape, get sober, and make a difference in wars that I knew were based on lies.
I thought we Americans made the mess so I should go help straighten it out. I excelled in training but, by that winter, my depression came like a ton of bricks and I knew I had made a huge mistake. One night, my mood shifted so abruptly in the barracks, that I had a seizure and fell. I hit my head on the M16 gun racks.
[12.1]. When we were allowed a week of leave for Christmas, I didn't go back. I was AWOL. The paranoia was unbearable and I thought I would leave the country. I bought tickets to the Netherlands. I had a place reserved. But, a friend convinced me to go back and face the army.
I knew if I ran it would be worse, so I went back to Benning and the army summarily discharged me within a month or two. The army was considerate of my attempt to help and there were no problems leaving as I had been a good candidate during my training. I got an uncharacterized medical discharge.
[13]. I was back in Cape Coral, where I always seemed to end up at the end of every depression that left me helpless. I met a girl who liked my art. She lived in Orlando and I began visiting her. WIthin a few months, by the summer of 2006, I was living with her in Orlando. I painted in an empty spare bedroom in her apartment. I flourished for a while and did some of my best work.
I showed in Tampa at several places, several times. She and I went to London and Amsterdam in early 2007 and then we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico for no other reason than to make a change and see the desert. It was a cheap city, one of the last in America, and it was somewhere else to be and to experience.
[14]. We got married and had natural triplet boys in January of 2008. I painted a lot and showed a bit. Before the kids were born, there was some chaos because I was not well. Since their birth, I have been mostly good.
I have been painting and writing where and when I can. I made this website, hiartx.com, during a manic phase in late 2009 and I continue to use it as an outlet for my ideas and analytic writing. I use this site to organize my thoughts, express my philosophical views, and to leave something behind for my children in case I am not here to teach them about the world and the way I see it.
[15]. I still get down and I still become manic, but I try very hard to maintain for my wife and children who mean the world to me. I am happier and more stable than in all the rest of my life and I hope to only get better and produce more art and writing as time goes on.
[16]. Although my depressions continue in cycles, I try and try to be a better person as time progresses so that I can be a good father and husband. This is all that matters to me now, though I will never stop creating in any way that I can, in the meantime.
