"Well, here's the flaw in your argument: If I enjoy hating life, then I don't hate it, I enjoy it."
There's this one idea that seems to be cropping upover and over in my life right now. I can't seem to avoid it, and I can't seem to conclusively decide what I think about it either, which is really annoying. It's like that weird phenomenon that happens when you learn a new word and the day after you learn it you come across it like seventeen times in random places; it's a function of the whole creepy we-see-what-we're-looking-for-and-nothing-else phenomenon. So my concept-ghost of the moment is the idea that in order to create great art you have to suffer intensely over a long period of time. I hate that idea, and it seems fundamentally wrong to me, but there is an awful lot of evidence to support it.
"You said how Michaelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifidia that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness." -Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
But the thing is, it's one thing to say that you can use your pain or whatever to create art, but it's another thing entirely to say that pain is always, inescapably, without exception essential to the creation of art. It makes sense to me that pain and suffering and tragedy expand the range of human emotions to which you can relate/with which you can interact and therefore give you more to work with in creating art, but I find it offensive to think that people who haven't suffered intensely MUST be too emotionally immature or limited to have anything to say that the rest of the fucked-up world would care to hear.
My brother had this friend once who was this incredibly gifted drummer, and who also struggled a great deal with schizophrenia. there were medications he could take that made his schizophrenia manageable, but he couldn't play when he was on them. He opted not to take his meds in favor of being able to play like a fiend. So if Part I of this question is Can People Create Significant or Relevant Art Without Intense Suffering, then the schizophrenic drummer brings up Part II of the question, which is: If you really did have to pick between being happy and functional OR being a great artist, and the two were absolutely mutually exclusive, which would you pick? And my sister's response to that was that she thinks you would only pick your art if it was all you had. Like, if you had happy relationships and a decent life and a lot of things from which to derive happiness, then you would choose that over your art, but if you didn't have those things and you felt like you HAD to paint or write or dance or play the bagpipes or whatever because that's all you had going for you, then you would choose art over happiness. But that answer bothered me too, because it denotes that people would only choose to create art if they couldn't have anything else, and it's offensive to me to think of creating art as a last resort rather than a worthy endeavor in its own right, you know? Or once I was talking to someone very close to me- someone who has always flirted with the idea of trying to be happy but has never quite decided to do it- and he was talking about his writing, and he said, "What am I ever going to have to write about if I lead a normal, happy life?"
And that really pissed me off, because I feel like this guy has spent his entire life oscillating between happiness and misery, never fully committing to even WANTING to be happy, because of some ephemeral idea he has that choosing misery might somehow ultimately be more productive than choosing happiness, and that struck me as being bullshit. That's partially because when I went sort of insane I didn't feel like it was productive in the least, and I hate how sad people almost always think they're better than happy people, that their misery makes them somehow superior. That happy people are only happy because they're missing something. And I know too many smart, happy people to buy that (Straubhaars straubhaars straubhaars). I think that's ultimately what this is about: If great artists have to be sad, then it makes self-destructive, self-pitying people who actively choose sadness over happiness... well, it makes them justified in choosing that, you know? It means that maybe being sad really does make you better than happy people in some ways, or at least capable of better things. And that seems perverse to me. Because for every person who has suffered and turned his/her pain into something important and beautiful, there's someone who consciously chose to suffer, thinking that it would somehow make them better than other people, when in fact all it did was make them self-pitying, pathetic, and sad. Being miserable doesn't make you better than anyone else, House, it just makes you miserable! I just feel like really self-destructive people pretty much without exception have something to prove, and if it's true that they can self-sabotage their way into productivity, then it makes self-destruction a valid way to prove a point to themselves, and I don't think that self-destruction should be considered a valid, productive way to do anything. But then, who am I to say that, because I had to prove something to myself, and I couldn't stop until I had done it, and I most definitely used pain to do it. And now I did, and I'm fine, but I definitely wouldn't say that I'm better than someone else for having had to do that. In fact I would probably just say that I'm crazier, more stubborn, and possibly less intelligent than the average person for having had to do it that way.
So the only conclusion I can really come to here is that maybe sadness and suffering can make people better artists, but that isn't justification for seeking them out. Simba, being brave doesn't mean you go looking for trouble. Choosing to make yourself miserable is never going to be productive- but fortunately for anyone who wants to be an artist, usually life brings enough suffering along with it that you don't really have to worry about self-sabotaging your way into productivity.
I don't know, though. I mean, I know all about using pain to fill a specific purpose, and in a lot of ways it is a gift, and can sometimes be used as a tool. But to me, there's nothing that truly justifies choosing to be sad over choosing to be happy.
I think.
"You said how Michaelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifidia that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness." -Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
But the thing is, it's one thing to say that you can use your pain or whatever to create art, but it's another thing entirely to say that pain is always, inescapably, without exception essential to the creation of art. It makes sense to me that pain and suffering and tragedy expand the range of human emotions to which you can relate/with which you can interact and therefore give you more to work with in creating art, but I find it offensive to think that people who haven't suffered intensely MUST be too emotionally immature or limited to have anything to say that the rest of the fucked-up world would care to hear.
My brother had this friend once who was this incredibly gifted drummer, and who also struggled a great deal with schizophrenia. there were medications he could take that made his schizophrenia manageable, but he couldn't play when he was on them. He opted not to take his meds in favor of being able to play like a fiend. So if Part I of this question is Can People Create Significant or Relevant Art Without Intense Suffering, then the schizophrenic drummer brings up Part II of the question, which is: If you really did have to pick between being happy and functional OR being a great artist, and the two were absolutely mutually exclusive, which would you pick? And my sister's response to that was that she thinks you would only pick your art if it was all you had. Like, if you had happy relationships and a decent life and a lot of things from which to derive happiness, then you would choose that over your art, but if you didn't have those things and you felt like you HAD to paint or write or dance or play the bagpipes or whatever because that's all you had going for you, then you would choose art over happiness. But that answer bothered me too, because it denotes that people would only choose to create art if they couldn't have anything else, and it's offensive to me to think of creating art as a last resort rather than a worthy endeavor in its own right, you know? Or once I was talking to someone very close to me- someone who has always flirted with the idea of trying to be happy but has never quite decided to do it- and he was talking about his writing, and he said, "What am I ever going to have to write about if I lead a normal, happy life?"
And that really pissed me off, because I feel like this guy has spent his entire life oscillating between happiness and misery, never fully committing to even WANTING to be happy, because of some ephemeral idea he has that choosing misery might somehow ultimately be more productive than choosing happiness, and that struck me as being bullshit. That's partially because when I went sort of insane I didn't feel like it was productive in the least, and I hate how sad people almost always think they're better than happy people, that their misery makes them somehow superior. That happy people are only happy because they're missing something. And I know too many smart, happy people to buy that (Straubhaars straubhaars straubhaars). I think that's ultimately what this is about: If great artists have to be sad, then it makes self-destructive, self-pitying people who actively choose sadness over happiness... well, it makes them justified in choosing that, you know? It means that maybe being sad really does make you better than happy people in some ways, or at least capable of better things. And that seems perverse to me. Because for every person who has suffered and turned his/her pain into something important and beautiful, there's someone who consciously chose to suffer, thinking that it would somehow make them better than other people, when in fact all it did was make them self-pitying, pathetic, and sad. Being miserable doesn't make you better than anyone else, House, it just makes you miserable! I just feel like really self-destructive people pretty much without exception have something to prove, and if it's true that they can self-sabotage their way into productivity, then it makes self-destruction a valid way to prove a point to themselves, and I don't think that self-destruction should be considered a valid, productive way to do anything. But then, who am I to say that, because I had to prove something to myself, and I couldn't stop until I had done it, and I most definitely used pain to do it. And now I did, and I'm fine, but I definitely wouldn't say that I'm better than someone else for having had to do that. In fact I would probably just say that I'm crazier, more stubborn, and possibly less intelligent than the average person for having had to do it that way.
So the only conclusion I can really come to here is that maybe sadness and suffering can make people better artists, but that isn't justification for seeking them out. Simba, being brave doesn't mean you go looking for trouble. Choosing to make yourself miserable is never going to be productive- but fortunately for anyone who wants to be an artist, usually life brings enough suffering along with it that you don't really have to worry about self-sabotaging your way into productivity.
I don't know, though. I mean, I know all about using pain to fill a specific purpose, and in a lot of ways it is a gift, and can sometimes be used as a tool. But to me, there's nothing that truly justifies choosing to be sad over choosing to be happy.
I think.