Kitten Power has written a beautiful tribute to Mahinarangi Tocker, and what she meant to her as a lesbian on her own blog. My perspective is slightly different, because, like Mahina did, I also live with depression.
She did many of us who also live with depression a great service when she appeared on the “Like Minds, Like Mine” series of advertisements that dealt with mental illness, and the need to end stigma and discrimination against mental health consumers/tangata whaiora back in 2001. I spotted her and remembered, hey, isn’t that Mahina Tocker from the Web Womens Music Collective (I got their album back in the eighties..)? It made more of an impression on me than John Kirwan, I have to admit.
In 2004, she talked to Dominion Post writer Robyn MacLean about how depression had affected her life. She got mixed messages about her prodigious musical talent, being asked to stand up and sing for her aunties, and then getting told off for being a show-off. She started composing music and writing songs while still at school, and her response to the prospect of performance was paradoxical. She was terribly afraid of performing before small intimate audiences of people she knew, but not larger audiences of thousands, given their anonymity. She recalls her negative self-impressions warring with being praised for her extent of talent, and she even stopped performing and writing when the “Black Dog” of clinical depression bit hard.
Fortunately, though, she was diagnosed with depression in 1998. She then got considerable help from medication and therapeutic counselling, which helped her to be proud of her Maori (Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Tuawharetoa, Tainui and Ngati Maniapoto), Celtic and Jewish heritages, learnt a lot about her personal identities, and the extent of positive response from others after she ‘came out’ as someone living with depression often amazed her.
I hope her lover and whanau realise how sorely she is missed, and how much the rest of us loved and cherished her for her courage, craft as a musician, and inner and outer strength.
Strongly Recommended:
Robyn MacLean: “The Demon Within” Dominion Post: 02.03.2004
Mahinarangi Tocker Discography:
http://www.muzic.net.nz/artists/757.htnl
Haere ra Mahinarangi, you’ll be missed:
1 response so far ↓
1 stellarluckystar // Apr 22, 2008 at 3:56 pm
“I hope her lover and whanau realise how sorely she is missed, and how much the rest of us loved and cherished her for her courage, craft as a musician, and inner and outer strength.”…. ya think????
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