The New York Times Sounds Off On Cat Power, Oprah Style
Today’s NY Times has a story on Cat Power’s battle with addiction. Here’s a sample:
About two weeks before [the release of The Greatest] in January, Ms. Marshall said, she lost her mind: ‚”I was looking at death. I wanted to die.” Holed up in her Miami apartment for seven days, she turned off the phone, played Miles Davis on repeat, stopped eating and sleeping. She drank to oblivion and prayed to die.
Susanna Vapnek, a painter, came over to check on her friend. Ms. Marshall was acting bizarrely, obsessively chasing ‚”bad spirits” around her apartment with a lighter and sage. Ms. Vapnek bathed her and stayed by her side. Eight hours later she took Ms. Marshall to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, where she was admitted.
Confined for psychiatric treatment, Ms. Marshall recalled refusing to bathe, hiding from her reflection and wanting to be drunk. ‚”I asked God, I said, I’m tired, I can’t do this,” she said. ‚”I was asking him to just take me.” She was terrified by the other patients who screamed at night and were comatose during the day.
After seven days in the hospital she was allowed to leave. ‚”It was like I was in glue,” she said of the heavy doses of lithium given her.
Most bizarrely, Cat Power says she wants to “join the cast of ‘Saturday Night Live’ next summer.” We love Chan’s music, but can’t imagine that starring in wacky skits about manic depression with Horation Sanz is a good career move.
