Now You Know Me is the title of local musician Clayton Earl’s documentary about the inspiration for his debut album of the same name. The documentary will premiere at the Algonquin Theatre this Saturday night, August 27 with a portion of the proceeds going to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Earl is a self-taught musician and he spent several years crafting the songs that appear on this album. The accompanying documentary was produced by Mark Boucher and includes intimate details about Earl’s musical journey.
“The point of it is not to be ashamed and just step up and be brave and say that these are the sort of thoughts I have,” Earl says in the trailer for the documentary. “At the same time your brain still tells you that maybe you should be ashamed of this. I want to break that wide open.”
Learn more about Earl in an earlier Doppler profile by Laura MacLean here: Strumming straight from the heart.
Check out the trailer for the documentary below. Tickets are $20 each at algonquintheatre.ca or the Algonquin Theatre box office. Bundled packages of the documentary and album will be for sale at the premiere with a portion of the proceeds going to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
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Kudos to you, Clayton! I also have a mental health disability (bipolar mood disorder), and I quite realize that I probably bore people to death talking about it. But education, from a larger platform, e.g. your music and documentary; or just one-to-one, is slowly removing the stigma against us. The overwhelming majority of persons with mental health disabilities are no danger to anybody (except possibly to themselves). We do not want, nor do we deserve your pity; just the appreciation that this is an illness (akin to heart disease, for example). We would very much appreciate being treated as persons with heart disease (and being questioned about our illness). Clinical depression, in fact, will surpass heart disease as the number one disease in the world by 2020; it’s not going away.