abbey

the paladin and the sorcerer

for @andiwriteordie’s birthday!!

Keith Haring - Unfinished Painting (1989)

Growing together 30 years and counting…

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

you put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray - Cold As You

you and I are painting pictures in the sky - I'm Only Me When I'm With You

you set up a paint set in the kitchen - The Best Day

you paint me a blue sky - Dear John

and all my walls stood tall, painted blue - Everything Has Changed

and did the twin flame bruise paint you blue - All Too Well (10 MV)

crimson red paint on my lips - I Did Something Bad

deep blue, but you painted me golden - Dancing With Our Hands Tied

they'd paint me out to be bad - The Man

so sad we paint the town blue - Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince

which takes me back to the color we painted your brother's wall - Paper Rings

I'll paint the kitchen neon - Soon You'll Get Better

we never painted by the numbers - the 1

you paint dreamscapes on the wall - peace

did I paint your bluest skies the darkest grey - coney island

before you painted all my nights a color I have searched for since - Question...?

and if I was some paint did it splatter on a promising grown man - Would've, Could've, Should've