By Joanne Zuhl, Staff Writer
When Storm Large was 9 years old, a doctor told her that she would go crazy in her 20s.
And in a way, she did — crazy as a young teenager, tearing off from home and hitting the streets, experiencing everything New England parents don’t want their teen-age daughters experiencing. She crafted her own curriculum of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll and graduated with a degree in human nature that has served her well in the world of popular entertainment.
She has not, however, succumbed to the mental illness that plagued her mother throughout Large’s life. She became its student, looking for reassurance she would not develop the schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or any of the afflictions applied to her mom. She got on with her life, went to school, crafted a popular career on stage and screen. Her mother is dead now, and Large is just shy of her 41st birthday, so perhaps it’s time for all those memories of mental institutions, suicide attempts and the occasional poisoning to be boxed up and shelved for good.
Or — they could be turned into a wildly successful theatrical production for the world to see, which is what Large did in “Crazy Enough.” Her unrestrained, autobiographical performance played to sold-out crowds in Portland, including many in the audience with their own stories of living with mental illness. A version of the play will be performed at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, later this year, and it’s also being refined for a possible staging in New York for the fall of 2011.
She’s now writing a book about growing up with a mentally ill parent and its effect on her and her family. And like her performances and her life, you can expect that Large will pull no punches. Her youth was a mix of abusive living and opportunity, and — with hard work and talent — opportunity won out. It took her all the way to the 2006 reality TV show “Rock Star Supernova,” and Storm, the Portland Icon, became Storm, the superstar getting chased in airports for autographs with fans literally crying for her attention.
Back in Portland, her performances continue to pack houses, often as benefits for local causes. And she’s fiercely front and center when it comes to gay rights and the promotion of the arts — not always to everyone’s applause. In between, she keeps working on her book, which is what she was focused on in a Southeast Portland Café recently when we sat down to talk.
Joanne Zuhl: What are people going to take away after reading your book?
Storm Large: I want the readers to take away from it that everybody has their shit. We all have our shit. And it really is how you react and respond to your own emotional and psychology thing. Nobody is the same as everyone else. We grow up in a pack mentality, and we want to be strong, we want to be beautiful and we want to be loved, first and foremost. And that’s why people want to be popular — it makes them feel powerful, it makes them loved. And of course not everyone is beautiful and not everyone is popular. And that’s when we run into issues like loneliness, alienation, ostracizing the losers and dorks.
J.Z.: When we try to play by other people’s rules.
S.L.: Right, and we hold ourselves up to these standards — especially women: good mother, good looking, good in bed, good person. And they’re impossible standards. So, really, it’s about holding yourself accountable to only yourself and just trying to be better all the time. Be good and do good, and you know the difference.
J.Z.: So make your own rules.
S.L.: Fuck yeah!
J.Z.: Tell me what you think of this: “Storm Large is a singer best known as a contestant on the CBS reality television show Rock Star: Supernova.” That’s it. That’s your definition on Wikipedia. It may just be Wikipedia, but that’s what people are going to see.
S.L.: I don’t know who writes Wikipedia. I saw I have a page and I see “click here to edit.” Click here to edit? Anyone could! It could be like, “Storm has an arm growing out of her back and a toenail on the head of her penis.” And I’m afraid of piñatas! No, I’m actually not afraid of piñatas.
J.Z.: It just struck me as a shallow representation of a life — your life.
S.L.: As a public person you’re really only known for what people see. And if you have some level of celebrity in a city like Portland, the majority of folks around have met you or encountered you in some way. When I was on television was when I started to get chased through airports — people crying, holding up phones, “Please talk to my sister — she’s going through chemo.” “Oh my god, my daughter would die if she knew I was shaking her hand right now.” And I still get that.
I was actually talking to a very famous movie star, who is now on television, about the differences in fame response. Fame is fascinating to me. When you’re a musician, people will come to see you, and you are up on a stage, and you are lit, and you look more than real. You’re beautiful. You’re powerful. You’re amplified. You’re electric. And when you’re a movie star, the audience sits in the dark and you have this huge screen and you’re impossibly gorgeous or impossibly talented or paid exorbitant amounts of money, and people know things about you and you have mysteries. But when you’re on television, you’re freely flowing into someone’s home constantly, so people assume a relationship with you or your character.
You are in that house while they’re having dinner, while they’re putting their kids to bed, while they’re sick, while they’re fighting. With television fans, especially people who work 9 to 5, or they’re moms and they’re busy. It’s their time to just sit in front of the television. They don’t have the luxury to develop relationships with their friends or go out and engage in outside activities. They sit in front of the television to just let their brain go a little bit, so the relationship they develop is with those characters.
J.Z.: With “Crazy Enough,” was there a connection made with the community that is not necessarily theater going or of means, but people who really could see you as a personal inspiration? Was there a connection made with that audience?
S.L.: During the run of “Crazy Enough,” because it ran so long and was successful, we offered gratis tickets to Girls Incorporated and Planned Parenthood and a lot of other nonprofits who came, and all these psychologists and psychiatrists came, and I always did kind of a meet-and-greet at some of the matinees. I would go and sit with the audience, and there would always be one or two folks who had a tough go and were dealing with mental health issues. People still come up to me and thank me for it. I appreciate that my story means that much to folks, but it also makes me feel so spoiled because I really dodged a bullet. And no dis to the psychiatric community or the APA, they do a lot of great work, but I really feel that when I was going through what I was going through with drugs and sex and running away and being angry and self destructive, if I had gotten locked up or taken into the system, I’d probably be dead or homeless, on the streets, on a bridge, really crazy. Because especially when you don’t have insurance and you’re poor and you get into that system, they don’t take care of you. There’s no way to take care of you.
J.Z.: Why do you say that?
S.L.: When I was growing up, when I would visit my mom at the hospital, I saw women like this, and men, who were alone in the world. Just thrown away. And it was only in the late 60s early 70s when big insurance companies started to recognize manic depression as an actual illness and started to allow people with insurance to be covered under that. But still, it was like draconian treatment.
My mom had rich parents and sometimes she got to stay at these cush, awesome hospitals. But when it was up to my dad, his insurance was long run out by the time I was 6 years old, so he had to sell shit to get her into a hospital or she would go to the state hospital. And man, when she was in the state hospital, she would have been better off in a prison.
J.Z.: That much of a difference?
S.L.: Oh my god! The level of danger, of physical threat, was always looming in the air. And we’re little, my brother and I, and we’re walking in there, and there are women masturbating with hair brushes, banging their heads on the wall, and just nightmarish, and I don’t think it’s really gotten much better.
At the end of my mom’s life she was staying in assisted living facility, and it was a wonderful place. My father was long out of the picture. (He was a teacher.) In the 80s, I stopped going to the hospital to visit my mom. My mom kept insisting that she needed to be hospitalized, and I saw it as a cry for help. And to see her knowing that she didn’t need the care that these other people needed and that she just wanted attention and subjecting us to this ...
J.Z.: Kind of Munchausen’s Syndrome?
S.L.: Absolutely. And it was disgusting to me, and so I stopped going to visit her. And to this day, I can’t go to hospitals. A mental hospital, absolutely not. I freeze. I think that’s the biggest trauma I suffer. I get asked all the time to do things (in support of mental health) — and I’m fine doing it, but don’t ask me to go there. It’s too much.
J.Z.: So when you read about James Chasse, and Aaron Campbell, and others who are clearly dealing with mental health issues, who are dying on the streets, what’s your response to that?
S.L.: I think mental illness is the most prevalent that we see of folks on the street, but it’s really all of the medical and insurance industries in general that are creating this problem. People have lost their homes because a loved one got cancer and they’re trying to keep their loved one alive, and they lose everything. It’s disgusting... We all want to be healthy and you have to pay a price to afford, if God forbid if something happened to you.
J.Z.: When these tragedies happen on the streets, a lot of people focus attention on the police, the training, the situation. You look back at an industry and a system that created this?
S.L.: It’s like the perfect storm of bad is happening. We do need to train our police better, we do need more funding for our schools, and our police — and we certainly need to overhaul the health system and absolutely the insurance companies.
J.Z.: They’re the only ones who don’t need more money...
S.L.: For fuck’s sake — seriously! It’s such a big multi-tentacled problem, and that’s when I rage at myself for being a stupid musician and all I can do is sing to try to raise money to help a family, or sing to help the kids in Haiti. I wish I could swing a hammer. I wish I were more versed in legislation. I wish I knew law. I wish I could fight. I have a lot of friends who do, and I support them the best I can. It’s just really easy and it’s human nature for us to go, “That cop! Fuck that cop!” I have a friend who lives next door to that cop and can you imagine being him and living with that? I’m sure a lot of people would go, “Fuck him. I hope he suffers forever.” I pray for that man. He has a family. He did what he was trained to do, and now he has to live with the consequences. And maybe he’ll get a slap on the wrist.
I have to say (City Commissioner) Dan Saltzman is doing a really good job of addressing this. He is not educated in law enforcement. He inherited this issue. And he took it on.
Portland has always had a terrible reputation for “shoot first, ask questions later.” Dan is at the reins right now and he’s in the news a lot because he’s actually trying to address it and do something. He’s bringing in the FBI for investigations, and he’s confronting the problem, even though it’s not his skill set.
J.Z.: Every summer we get the influx of kids, the whole West Coast rail riders. Every summer it’s the same discussion but this year it seems like people are really worried.
S.L.: When I was young, I was running away and I was squatting and trying to be a little dirtball, and begging for change and being spit on and sometimes getting money and getting fed and getting places to stay.
I think I started 15, or 16, typical age. We lived in Southborough Mass. I would hitchhike or take the bus out to Boston, and I would squat in Cambridge, and if I could get laid I could stay, sleeping with someone, or someone who had drugs, I would stay there. But I had heard that in the shelter system, girls would get raped, so I would never stay there. I’m not saying that that’s the case here. But that’s the news I got.
But I could always go home. Not that home was awesome. I wasn’t being beaten and I wasn’t being starved. I was ignored. When my mom was home I would get poisoned a little bit, when I was really little. But for the most part I was safe. I could go home and I knew that in the back of my mind. Sometimes when I’m walking around in the summer time and I see these kids, I can tell who’s a lifer and who can go home. You can tell who is a phone call away from mommy coming and getting them and giving them a shower. They’re just seeking an identity.
Again, there’s so many elements involved in this, the education system and also the fact that both parents have to work so goddamn much. When they come home they don’t have any energy for their children and they can’t pay any attention to them. The school programs are eliminating their creative arts and outdoor activities and so they’re just teaching kids to pass these tests so the school gets funding and it’s just bullshit. The individual kid is not being explored for their potential. Nobody feels like they’re worth anything. And so, what the fuck, why not? I’m going to fucking go away. I’m going to be in a band. I want to be famous. I want to be somebody. And how can you be somebody when you’re in a hive? I’m going to go out and be alone and stand alone. I’m going to be a drug dealer. I’m going to be the dirtiest. I’m going to be the scariest. I’m going to sleep under bridges and people are going to look at me, and think I’m a piece of shit, and I am. I am what I tell you I am.
And some kids are lifers, and you can see in their eyes that there’s something going on that’s not all right. That they’ve either been traumatized, seriously hurt on the inside, or they have a mental glitch. Or you can see the kids who are just kind of tagging along because they think it’s cool. But they have an out.
J.Z.: Do you think it’s getting worse?
S.L.: It doesn’t look different to me. Honestly. All the kids look the same. The same pitch: “Spare change for dog food. Spare change for beer.”
J.Z.: What you were doing?
S.L.: Fuck yeah! Of course I was asking for money. I was squatting outside of Harvard University. There were people with money there. “Buy me a cup of coffee, you fucking dick.” And they would! But again, I was one of those kids that if the shit really hit the fan, I could go home. I was kind of a poser in that world. But even in that world, if I had nowhere to stay — I slept on a bench on the Charles River one night with a man, and he was completely brain damaged. I think it was from drugs. He had some kind of nervous condition where he couldn’t hold still. And he was a lifer. But he let me sleep on a bench, and he sat with me all night long and watched over me.
J.Z.: We’ve had a couple of reports in the paper about Portland’s heroin situation returning to levels of the late 1990s when we were the heroin capital of the nation. You’ve been quite open about your past use. What’s your impression when you see this happening, and the city’s response to this?
S.L.: I was really lucky. It was my drug partner who kicked me out. He kept all the drugs. When I got clean — the scenario was we bought some drugs, used, and then he picked a horrible fight with me and then sent me out to the streets crying. And I ran into someone, told him I needed a place to stay and that I was going to be sick in a few hours. So I go to this person’s house, and I got raped. I walked home first thing in the morning, got into my house and I crawled into bed and I shook and sweated, and I was sick.
During our addiction I tried to take my partner to the methadone clinic. I don’t know how anybody gets clean using methadone. First we had to get there before 8 or 9 in the morning. What junkie do you know opens their eyes when the sun is up? They were so cruel, and so belittling. And the methadone — he was sick. It was horrible. I don’t know what the drug treatment centers are like here, but heroin is the sneakiest drug out there. It makes you feel like you’re loved. It makes you feel like everything’s OK. You feel loved and safe. And it’s fucking poison.
J.Z.: So it’s providing all the kids out there with exactly the thing that they need?
S.L.: That they lack, and it’s cheap and it’s everywhere. I want to tell people out there who think these kids are just trash and they’re asking for it. Well, God help you if you find some body, some 14-year-old dead girl on your lawn, because every summer we have a bad batch that gets on the streets. And the streets are littered with bodies. And if you can live with that, then good on ya. It mimics love, it mimics community, and it’s the devil.
All I can do is be an air raid siren and call attention to something that I see is wrong. I can yell “fire,” but I don’t have any water to put it out.
J.Z.: Would it bother you if people knew you more for your politics than your performances?
S.L.: No, not at all. I get a lot of shit in town because I’m a musician and I’m politically active. But I always say as a caveat, I’m not educated in poly sci. But when I see something I think is wrong and I want to try to correct it, or when I see something that I think is good and I want to emphasize it, I use what I have to do that. And I get a lot of shit because a lot of people think musicians should just fucking sing: “Just show us your tits.” And that’s small thinking. What about the banker who wants to march to legalize marijuana? Should he shut up and count money? We’re all in this community. We’re all in this together. We all have to live together whether we agree or not. We all share this city and this state and this country and this world. And what I think might not affect you but I’m allowed to think and do just as you are. I don’t care what people think.
J.Z.: Where do you buy Street Roots?
S.L.: Down by PCS, down at Whole Foods. There’s different guys.
J.Z.: Just want to put in the plug.
S.L.: Plug it! You guys are doing good work!