Suzzan Blac is a surrealist who uses her "pain, anger, and frustrations" to fuel her art. I found her through beinArt.
It used to be accepted wisdom that artists routinely suffered to create. Now, in the era of happiness science and multiple therapeutic and pharmacologic approaches to that elusive state, Eric G. Wilson worries in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education (hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily) that we're losing our appreciation of grief and melancholy and the richness of life and art produced from experiencing the full spectrum of emotion deeply.
I find his arguments a little overweighted towards selling misery, and I do bristle at his pejorative use of the phrase "American happiness" as a kind implied to be both manic and plastic. Aside from that, I do think he has an interesting point about a popular culture which seems to view it as unnatural or unhealthy to experience spells of sadness, a condition which used to be considered just another part of the existential package. I believe, as he seems to, that some people are more temperamentally inclined to melancholy, and that personality type doesn't necessarily represent something that has to be cured.
For myself, I can't write if I'm genuinely in the Slough of Despond. I can't focus well enough. However, I feel too much like celebrating, not working, when I'm soaring on clouds of glee. My best writing mood is a taciturn kind of broodiness, where most of my energy turns inward, trying to figure things out. I may even be unconsciously scowling into the distance as I wrestle with a plot point, but I'm not unhappy, and it does work for me.
Do you think of your writing as art or craft or both? What's your best mood for writing? What mood is sabotage to your work?
Friday, January 18, 2008
Are You Suffering for Your Art?
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11 comments:
Hi Clare,
I bristle at the idea that because I am mostly happy, I am "inauthentic," but hey, what does Eric Wilson actually know?? His work is based on his own theory and, possibly, and ode by Keats.
I think that art is the product, craft is the means.
I work best when my mood is in neutral, which is almost never, since I am always excited about something. So, I have to say to myself, okay, Ter, have a seat and read or write, or whatever today's task is. Life is good.
Terrie
I agree with Terrie that I do my best work when I'm neutral. When I'm happy, it's hard for me to write not happy. When I'm depressed, I'm so focused on myself that I can't write at all, or at least something that isn't totally negative or depressing. When I'm in what Terrie calls a neutral mood, I can be analytical as well as up or down. I can put myself into my character and feel what I need to feel to write what I need to write.
Terrie- I like your statement on product and means. I tend toward the pensive, but stubbornly optimistic, too. No matter how saccharine and shallow it may seem, I have to agree with you that Life is Good.
Elaine- Interesting. So maybe quiet broodiness IS my neutral state! No one sitting next to me at a meeting would say so, but by then, I've always got a lot of socializing to uncork.
This argument pisses me off.
First, you don't have to be melancholy to be thoughtful. As Terrie and Elaine say, moodiness is not necessarily conducive to good work.
Second, although he acknowledges the distinction between depression and melancholia, he's very dismissive of depression, making it sound as if the problem is the reaction of the person who's experiencing it. (It makes them apathetic rather than thoughtful.) Depression is just as apt to make someone angry as apathetic, but chemical depression interferes with the ability to think logically and clearly, so of course you can't create art when you're depressed.
Third, he's mistaken the symptoms for the disease.
We are a nation of drug addicts; I'm with him on that one. We'd rather medicate our children than teach them self-control, self-monitoring, self-confidence or basic ethics and morals. We'd rather take a pill than think about why we're miserable. We'd rather take a pill that makes us--literally--crap our pants than learn to eat right.
But the addiction to Prozac and its clones isn't the disease that may infect art. No, the drug-taking is a symptom of the disease of "give it to me, and give it to me right flipping now because I deserve it all!"
Another example: I watched an interview last night with David Levy, who wrote Love and Sex With Robots. Levy believes that we'll have "sexbots" (my word) within 5 years, and that eventually people will fall in love with robots the same way they do with people. He thinks this is great. I think it's unbearably sad.
Relationships, even casual ones, are hard. Because people are complicated. The "quick fix" culture doesn't like complicated. It doesn't like difficult. It doesn't like long-term solutions to long-term problems. It likes robots and pills.
That is the disease that may be fatal to art.
For the lowbrow, NY version, see this ad on CraigsList: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/com/537793407.html
Welcome, Laura (K) Curtis! I think it's sad, too, if people stop being willing to mess with people. Humans are thorny, complicated beings, but they're the only game in town, not to mention capable of unimagined glories at their finest.
Thanks, Clare. I'll get around to a "what's in a name" post in a while.
Once I get my butt in a seat and my laptop, well, on my lap, I'm half way there. Once my fingers get writing, I'm no longer me. I'm free to lie and cheat and write about the most private thoughts as if they were someone else's.
Writing, when I get my rear in gear, is a great escape. I wrote for years upon years while teaching and couldn't write with freedom of expression. I was a teacher, and teachers weren't allowed to be less than model citizens.
My stories from back then either need to be liberated - rewritten with a free hand.
As mystery writers, we work under a dark cloud. We strive for truth, justice, and happily ever after endings. We celebrate our gritty moments. I think Eric Wilson needs to read a few more mysteries.
Laura- Do you watch Boston Legal? One of the lawyers dated a woman who broke up with him for something like an answering machine. It was her second or third relationship with an object. She felt emotionally safer with them. Funny and scary in light of "sexbots."
writing is art unless you make it into a craft
I am not a writer, check out the titles of my photorials if you don't believe me, but I am an artist of the visual realm. I find my creativity comes out while I am engaged in deep concentration of potential subject manner, usually right after I have become fully alert; say 10 a.m.. I fear too much is being made of the negative aspects of existence, see the History channel with their specials lately, "Earth without Man" or "When Comets Strike", etc. it's all dome and gloom and wouldn't it be much nicer if man was no longer around to despoil the Earth. Angst is all well and good and everyone experiences it at some point. Some of the best artists were clinically depressed but some were also normal. From Heath Ledger to Norman Rockwell to Jonathan Winters many artists have a dark side. I guess what I am getting at, whatever you got, use it. Not everyone can summon up the insanity to lop off an ear so go with your gut.
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