The other night I had a wet dream.
This isn't all that odd but it's been happening to me more since I've become undepressed. This most recent emission started me thinking, though: If my nervous system can cause me to have an orgasm without any of the appropriate external stimulation at all, it follows that my nervous system contains within itself everything needed for me to orgasm. Therefore all the seemingly appropriate external stimulation is unnecessary.
Generalizing from this I conclude that my nervous system contains within itself everything I need to be happy. (This is a particularly bitter pill given that for the past few years my nervous system has decided to withhold that from me and instead let me be depressed all the time.)
Stendhal wrote, in a quote I have taped to my easel, "Beauty is the promise of happiness." Or, in terms of Darwinian survival, beauty is an outward sign of reproductive fitness. Or anyway my apprehension of someone's physical beauty is my nervous system's measure of that someone's reproductive fitness. I think they'd make me happy. I think they'd make a good mate. I would like them to make me orgasm.
But that orgasm isn't in them, it's in me. My happiness isn't intrinsic to that person, it's inside my nervous system. So what does that make them? Some kind of complex key to unlock the happiness inside me?
Beauty may be the promise of happiness, but it's an empty promise. Reproductive fitness does nothing for the individual's happiness. Having children who can go on to reproduce themselves doesn't help me have a happier life in general, or anyway it doesn't need to; once I've had those kids and raised them to a certain point, I can be unhappy. I can even die. And it won't matter a bit to their survival or the survival of my genetic material or the species in general. Darwinian survival isn't an individual matter.
So what's the point of beauty?
I wrote once, not too long ago, that maybe it's time art became about the creation of beautiful objects. Now I'm thinking about changing my mind. I think I'd rather not have my art promise happiness; I'd rather my art unlock the potential for happiness inside you.
I don't know if art can do that. I don't know if I can make art that does that. But it's something to aim for.
I guess I'd like to know how you pulled out of your depression.
What caused the change? Do you know?
I think your aspiration for your art is a noble one.
I remember, at one point, wanting to do a show that would move people to tears - not in a bad way, but simply because it deeply moved them.
I don't think I ever accomplished that.
These days, my own focus is to create art that changes society and the world. In the past, artists have often played that role. Money, power and war doesn't seem to be getting the job done. Why not art leadership?
I think that's the new cutting edge - the level field.
As it has been, what with the hierarchy of galleries, there is no level field. It's all about doing art or being the type of person that fits into an existing package, and that package excludes most everyone right up front.
If the focus became addressing or fixing bad situations in society or a particular neighborhood, or even just inspiring the people who live there - something in which the positive affect of the project could be measured or substantiated - well, then, most everyone could play the game.
Tim Folzenlogen
I have no idea how I became undepressed, just as I have no idea how I became depressed in the first place. My current theory on depression, based on what I've read, is that it's neurochemical, although of course that doesn't explain it. There's evidence that depression is like bruising, that depressed people are like people who bruise easily. Stress causes damage, like a brain bruise, and most people heal that damage pretty quickly. But depressives don't heal as quickly. So small stresses build up, and large stresses cause more damage, and eventually the damage becomes so heavy, the person gets depressed and doesn't start to feel better. As long as stresses keep coming, the person doesn't feel better. The key, to me, is that the stresses are not why you're depressed -- it's not that your dog died and your wife left and your pick-up truck got stuck on the train tracks or anything. Those things are bad, but they're not why. You're depressed because your brain chemistry is screwed up.
We just don't know enough of how the brain works.
I can pinpoint exactly when I began to be undepressed, but I don't know what happened that did it. My life is a poorly controlled experiment. A number of things changed around that time and any one of them, or all of them together, could've been the catalyst. Lately I've been thinking it might be testosterone: A few years back one of my doctors found, accidentally, that I have low testosterone. He started me on replacement therapy (a gel I put on daily) but last October or November my general practitioner tested again and found it was low again, so he raised my dosage. Low testosterone is the most likely culprit for depression; the raised dosage corresponded pretty closely with my sudden undepression. But not exactly.
Bottom line: I don't know and no one does. That means there's no telling if or when I'll relapse. I'm thrilled to be undepressed, but it does suck to wonder how long it'll last.