Featuring: Damon Smith, Adam Coad
Music: Damon Smith, Adam Coad, Barney McCall
Creator: Damon Smith
Producer: Matthew Briggs
Mental as Everything is a documentary that uses a quirky combination of animation, original music and lyrics and direct to camera discussion to tell the story of two musicians who provide mutual support and understanding for each other’s mental health conditions.
Even from the very first scene, it is obvious that it hasn’t been easy for Damon Smith and Adam Coad to share so much of themselves with the camera. This becomes clear when Damon introduces himself: ‘On the screen there is Damon Smith and that is me and this is my voice talking about myself while you watch me on the screen’. Immediately followed by, ‘This is awkward.’ And to double down on his point the word ‘Awkward’ appears in bright yellow letters against a black screen.
At first, Damon’s introduction does appear self-conscious and awkward, but it points up an interesting motif woven through the documentary. Damon is identifying himself as both an onscreen character and someone existing somewhere off screen giving voice and motivation to his onscreen likeness. This sense of duality is one of the things I found so fascinating about Damon and Adam’s story.
In some of the animations and in the lyrics of their songs Damon and Adam personify their conditions, with Adam describing panic attacks as lying in wait behind bushes while Damon poignantly refers to his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as an, ‘Outlandish Centralised Dictatorship’. This duality is a way, I think, to separate themselves from their conditions and give some critical distance to their inner torment.
On another level, Adam describes his mind as a seedy bar filled with sketchy characters, each more heinous than the next. While, at the same time, he acknowledges that, ‘Nothing is broken on the outside.’ On the outside, Damon and Adam are two very likeable and easy going mates and it is hard to fathom that they each have such a Sisyphean struggle going on inside themselves.
In giving this window onto their inner worlds, it is Damon and Adam’s intention to de-stigmatise their conditions, but their documentary is also filled with interesting snippets along the way, such as bananas being natural beta blockers that inhibit some of the physical effects of anxiety and as well as attempting to gently debunk some of the misconceptions that still cling.
When someone who likes to be clean and organised humble brags, ‘OMG! I’m so OCD,’ its not OCD that they are boasting about. For Damon having OCD is torture. One of his compulsions requires him to fulfill a ritual where he puts on and removes his socks seven times, and he must repeat the ritual until it has been executed to the implacable standards of the dictator within, otherwise there will be a ‘hellish outcome’. The humble bragger is actually referring to a much less cruel condition, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.
Mental as Everything is a sensitive documentary that deals with its subject matter in a creative and insightful way, and Damon and Adam’s music adds to the appeal. A band with a double bass in their line-up is likely to produce an interesting sound and this one with its double bass, piano and drums, original music and lyrics certainly does that.