Recently Nancy Baker posted to Anonymous Female Artist -- not so anonymous, definitely female -- about women, depression, and art. Someone (ml, whoever that is in this wonderful cacophony of aliases what be the Internet) wrote, "My attitude about depression changed when I read Rilke: Banish the demons, the angels flee as well."
For some reason this sticks with me. Because my immediate reaction -- which hasn't dimmed in the days since I read this and went looking for the original quote (I'll even take it in Deutsch) -- my immediate reaction was this: FUCK THE ANGELS. If depression is the price to pay for being creative, then I don't want it. I'd trade a normal life for this crap in a fucking HEARTBEAT.
I mean it. If the demons would leave, I'd tie the angels up in a little package for them to carry with them.
I don't happen to think mental instability of any kind -- depression, substance abuse, mania, any of it -- I don't think any mental disorders at all help art. Ask any real artist and I think they'll say having a brain which doesn't work right won't help you make anything worthwhile. Bill Maher recently asked Stephen King if his addictions didn't help make his writing better in some way: King's answer was negative. That crap gets in the way.
Beethoven wasn't crazy. He went deaf and lost contact with the world, his bowels made him suffer terribly, he became cranky as all hell -- but he wasn't crazy. He worked until the very end.
You know who was crazy? Henry Darger. He was stone cold nuts. His art ain't worth shit. Unless you, too, are schizophrenic squirrel bait, in which case his work probably speaks to you.
This isn't fun and games. This is like cholera. The end is never easy. Think of Jackson Pollock wrapping himself around a tree. Arshile Gorky hanging himself. Mark Rothko slashing himself to death. Van Gogh going out into the fields and shooting himself, then crawling home to spend three days dying. Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven. Ernest Hemingway with his gun in his mouth.
This isn't romantic. This isn't art. This is LIFE and this is DEATH.
But then I think, what are we saving ourselves for? It's not as if we get to snap the tape across our chest as we cross some finish line. We don't get a medal or a trophy. Are we saving ourselves so we can end up like Willem de Kooning, so demented we can't even remember what happened five minutes ago? Maybe we can go like Charles Mingus, with the cruel, crawling paralysis of ALS. Or in pieces like Ella Fitzgerald. We can wait until our prostate rises up to engulf us like Frank Zappa. We can be slowly crumpled and crushed like Renoir.
Because there's something waiting for its chance to devour you. And it will get that chance some day.
Demons. Angels. Bullshit.
I sometimes wonder if I'm a REAL artist since I have a good life with only the normal, to be expected, heartaches. The few years I did deal with depression was due to the chemicals I was using in printmaking. Changed mediums and changed my outlook. I've made a decent return on my artistic investment, but my lifestyle is not what is expected of artists, it seems. The only suffering I do is in front of a difficult canvas. Your post makes good points. KJ
Chris, Have you ever read any Oliver Sacks?
Suffering does not equal art. So you don't need it. You don't need the current stereotype of the artist's life. Good for you, and I mean that.
Steve, I have read Oliver Sacks. It's been a while, though. I think I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I probably have a copy around here somewhere.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, aside from the reasonably obvious conclusion anyone might get after reading Sacks, which is that one's nervous system determines how one perceives the universe.
I'm getting at nothing.
I've never helped any of my friends who have eventually lost all their legal rights and entered the cuckoo's nest. In fact, I promised myself that I would never again talk of demons, angels, or bullshit.
I know nothing.
I was just trying to imagine a person that Sacks might have invented? A person who is always happy? Chronically happy? Happiness is a disorder too.
I know that you know more than I do.
I don't know what you might be allergic to. I don't know your family history. I don't know anything.
I know that Oliver Sack's books are a diversion. They are something to marvel at.
I know nothing except that misdirection can work magic.
Well, I did find my copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and I'm re-reading it. So, hey, something was accomplished today.
Chris, you are so right about Demons, Angels, Bullshit. There is nothing romantic about feeling like shit. Have you ever read William Styron's, Darkness Visible? It's one of the most harrowing and disturbing memoirs of the descent into what he called,"despair beyond despair".
The crappy part of this is that a lot of us are hard wired to be depressed. There was a recent article in the New York Times Mag about genetic research into this, and they found certain alleles in the chromosomes have a serious impact on depression. In my most unscientific recollection there is something called 5HTT,the depression gene.It seems that there are short alleles and long alleles (which are the serotonin tranporter genes), and that if you have two short ones you have a harder time bouncing back from difficult events. Two long alleles and you are Oprah. one short, one long... well, it's a crap shoot.
But let's not give up hope! There are lots of ways to feel better, and art has always been a great sublimator of shitty feelings. It has worked for me pretty well, but if I get really fucked up in the head, all I do is paint a million fucking pearls, or use a brush that has one hair. OCD strikes!!
There seems to be a great congruence of creativity and craziness.
Real depression is not a creative motivator. For most people, we just want to stay in bed and watch stupid rerunds of CSI, eat too much, and forget to brush our teeth.
Rebel Belle sez:
Have you ever read William Styron's, Darkness Visible?
I have not. But I can say I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, adopted the orphan.
I was reading recently about the whole serotonin/tryptophan connection and so on, thinking that maybe I could take some supplement that would increase serotonin production. Turns out there's even a prescription drug which could do that, but it apparently doesn't help depression.
We just don't know enough, dammit.
Real depression is not a creative motivator. For most people, we just want to stay in bed and watch stupid rerunds of CSI, eat too much, and forget to brush our teeth.
Hey, I've got that t-shirt, too!
I slept Monday until noon. Last night I went to bed at nine. I had to get up this morning because my son is home sick and I need to play video games with him.
I want to crawl into an isolation tank and stay there for at least a week.
If you can bring some rum raisin ice cream into the isolation tank, I'll join you.
I'm sure we can work it out.
Chris, we also need to put Diane Arbus and Spaulding Gray on your list, and Nan Goldin who is still with us but has lived a life of immeasurable torment.
I was going to mention Spaulding Gray, actually, but he didn't make the final piece. (I compose these things in my head for hours before I type them out, but as I type them they change themselves -- it's kind of like painting that way -- and things get left out.) I'd forgotten I was going to put him in there.
Spaulding Gray was one of my heroes. For a long time I thought he best fit what I wanted to do with my life, his sort of stand-up philosophy routine, with occasional books and movies. Swimming to Cambodia was an amazing experience, both on DVD and in print.
He did an online thing once, where he was taking questions from people. I sent him e-mail: I asked how someone could do what he does. What's the career path for that? He never wrote back.
When I heard he'd killed himself I was saddened.
I used to show Swimming to Cambodia to first year art students. It would serve as a touch stone through-out the year. Some people never seemed to appreciate it. They usually failed the class.
chris
I feel for you. depression is really hard. you're not alone with it. even though i'm posting anonymously, think of me and i'll think of you. people can help each other.
Okay. Tonight I will meditate on Anonymous.
I had a very bad night last night. I forgot to think about you.
I thought about you, Anonymous, and had trouble falling asleep.
Actually, I fell asleep thinking of how I wanted to stop existing, and was rewarded with a dream of the future in which everyone merely exists, nothing more, all trapped inside milky, opalescent eggs.
I was still awake at 5 am, having a bit of a panic attack, so took some drugs. I know that feeling of not wanting to exist. I'm always disappointed when I wake up, disapppointed to be in the concious world again. Sleep is better, even with the ocasional bad dream.
Sleep and Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) are the only things not disappointing in my life right now. Sleep is never disappointing, even when you're having a nightmare, because you don't even know you're having a nightmare until you wake up.
Hi, I followed this link from Loren Monk's FB page. I like your writing very much.
Thanks, Molly!