![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Part of this comes after viewing Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on nurturing creativity -- if you haven't already watched it, you really should. I don't entirely agree with her take on creativity, but I believe nearly a creative artist of any ilk can understand where she's coming from and will find her talk intriguing and uplifting.
Not long after I saw Ms. Gilbert's talk, I re-watched the 2004, Academy Award-winning animated short called Ryan by Chris Landreth. Ryan is a quirky and strange documentary about Ryan Larkin, who back in the late 60s/early 70s put out some truly gifted animated shorts for the National Film Board of Canada, and who spiraled down in later life into drug abuse and addiction, ending up homeless and panhandling in the streets. I was also reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and came across this quote:
Here are a few other quotes: "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you." (Maya Angelou) "I am a great artist and I know it. The reason I am great is because of all the suffering I have done." (Paul Gauguin) "Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax." (Claude Monet)
There you have it, again and again. Those who are true artists are mad and tormented. Yet...
Maybe this is why I'll probably never be considered to be a "true artist"--I enjoy writing. It's what I makes me feel good, more than nearly anything else. I look forward to those moments when I can sit down at the computer and just be alone with the story-in-progress. Writing isn't a torment for me; in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's a salve; it's a moment of joy; it's what keeps me sane.
Oh, sure, I have those "dark moments of the soul" at the middle of every damn book where the words don't seem to want to come and I wonder if I'll ever find my way through to the end of the book. I agree with Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said: "Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression." That's true -- the story that ends up in print in the book never quite matches the one I had in my head. And Denise can tell you how depressed I was feeling at the beginning of this year: when I had no contracts for new books; when my agent of the last twenty years or so decided to part company; when I was seriously wondering if my writing career was over.
But that wasn't about the writing; that was just life. We all have moments in our existence when reality throws us a wrecking ball that threatens to rip apart everything we know. But, for me, it's often writing that helps me to get through those times (that and the support of Denise and other friends...).
I'm not a tortured artist. I wonder how much of that is myth and perception. Yes, there have been artists whose lives seem to have been one long tragedy -- but there are just as many others who seemed to have lived lives no more tragic than anyone else's. Shakespeare is the one name in literature everyone knows, but from all indications, his life was not an eternal torment. Leonardo da Vinci doesn't seem to have been especially tortured, nor does Charles Dickens, Ansel Adams, or a dozen others I could name as being what we consider artistic geniuses. Yes, they had rough patches -- like everyone else in the world -- but by and large their adult lives were relatively placid.
And there are millions of people who have had torment and and tragedy in huge, heaping, stinking shovelfuls, yet those horrors didn't make artists of them.
So I wonder... why is the Artist-As-Tormented-Soul such an enduring portrait? Why is that we tend to associate artistic greatness with a tragic life? Why do we seem to celebrate such anguish?
What do you think?
Not long after I saw Ms. Gilbert's talk, I re-watched the 2004, Academy Award-winning animated short called Ryan by Chris Landreth. Ryan is a quirky and strange documentary about Ryan Larkin, who back in the late 60s/early 70s put out some truly gifted animated shorts for the National Film Board of Canada, and who spiraled down in later life into drug abuse and addiction, ending up homeless and panhandling in the streets. I was also reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and came across this quote:
"Nor will Sylvester ever be a writer, though his name blaze in 50,000-candle-power red lights. The only writers about me for whom I have any respect, at present, are Carl and Boris. They are possessed. They glow inwardly with a white flame. They are mad and tone deaf. They are sufferers."
Here are a few other quotes: "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you." (Maya Angelou) "I am a great artist and I know it. The reason I am great is because of all the suffering I have done." (Paul Gauguin) "Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax." (Claude Monet)
There you have it, again and again. Those who are true artists are mad and tormented. Yet...
Maybe this is why I'll probably never be considered to be a "true artist"--I enjoy writing. It's what I makes me feel good, more than nearly anything else. I look forward to those moments when I can sit down at the computer and just be alone with the story-in-progress. Writing isn't a torment for me; in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's a salve; it's a moment of joy; it's what keeps me sane.
Oh, sure, I have those "dark moments of the soul" at the middle of every damn book where the words don't seem to want to come and I wonder if I'll ever find my way through to the end of the book. I agree with Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said: "Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression." That's true -- the story that ends up in print in the book never quite matches the one I had in my head. And Denise can tell you how depressed I was feeling at the beginning of this year: when I had no contracts for new books; when my agent of the last twenty years or so decided to part company; when I was seriously wondering if my writing career was over.
But that wasn't about the writing; that was just life. We all have moments in our existence when reality throws us a wrecking ball that threatens to rip apart everything we know. But, for me, it's often writing that helps me to get through those times (that and the support of Denise and other friends...).
I'm not a tortured artist. I wonder how much of that is myth and perception. Yes, there have been artists whose lives seem to have been one long tragedy -- but there are just as many others who seemed to have lived lives no more tragic than anyone else's. Shakespeare is the one name in literature everyone knows, but from all indications, his life was not an eternal torment. Leonardo da Vinci doesn't seem to have been especially tortured, nor does Charles Dickens, Ansel Adams, or a dozen others I could name as being what we consider artistic geniuses. Yes, they had rough patches -- like everyone else in the world -- but by and large their adult lives were relatively placid.
And there are millions of people who have had torment and and tragedy in huge, heaping, stinking shovelfuls, yet those horrors didn't make artists of them.
So I wonder... why is the Artist-As-Tormented-Soul such an enduring portrait? Why is that we tend to associate artistic greatness with a tragic life? Why do we seem to celebrate such anguish?
What do you think?