Art is weird. It’s hard to define. It’s nebulous. Its meaning is something intuitively felt, but suddenly hard to capture. Art is like love in that it’s something that is universally felt by humans to exist, but rarely understood or defined. Questions about art invariably bleed into all the other unknowable questions of humanity: who are we? Why are we? Does any of it matter? The impulse to create seems to be the characteristic that defines us, that defines that essential common human identity.
Art is weird. It’s sometimes hard to understand why anyone makes it. So its sometimes hard to understand the people who make it. The image of the tortured artist is hotly debated in our culture--the link between melancholia and artistic ability called both “the source of genius” and “cultural myth.” Whether genius stems from mental illness or not, what is certain is the fact that no artist has ever been content. Art is affirmation. Art is a statement of being. Creation makes a person permanent. The creation of art is the creation of purpose, of agency. People who experience great existential crisis, a great need to pursue purpose and beauty have the impetus to become artists. The man acutely aware of his own making of himself will constantly make himself and constantly agonize about the making.
Art stems from a human need to express oneself. Those who create art are those who feel that they have a unique perspective that they are compelled to share. Such people, by definition, would perceive the world around them in a different way from the majority of other people. Perhaps not every great artist has been depressed, but every great artist has been alienated. If Van Gogh had not seen the world in a radically different way from everyone else, he would never have had to paint. Even artists in history thought of as better-adjusted than others stood apart: Bach made his music to share his personal faith in God, to express his deep spirituality in a way that others couldn’t and Dickens clearly felt removed from the society he so ruthlessly eviscerated in his novels. Making art is weird. It takes a unique vision, something that by definition distances an individual from mainstream society. It takes a deep need to create, to affirm purpose. Therefore it’s really no surprise that the people who feel compelled make art (most of whom have described it as a need rather than compulsion) can feel alone, alienated, or angsty. In fact, it might just be necessary.
The connection between mental illness and artistic talent is hotly contested. The association can be traced back to Plato, who wrote in the Dialogue with Phaedrus “ Madness….is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings… Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.” The connection of mental illness to genius has been highly noticed and somewhat celebrated by society: Beethoven, Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Kurt Cobain--untold numbers of the artists considered to be true geniuses suffered from mood disorders. Many argue, however, that the connection between mental illness and artistry has been romanticized and is unhealthy. An article that appeared in Trespass Magazine in 2010 titled “Torturing the Artist.” It begins as follows: “I have a confession to make. I’m not scribbling away manically on yellowing pages, cramped in a dim-lighted room, starved of food and human interaction or weaving tragic verses about the harrowing ruins of life and humanity. Also, I have showered. It would seem then that there is very little room for me beneath the frothy definition of an ‘artist’(Trespass). This passage is a perfect expression of the stereotype of a tortured artist in our cultural mind’s-eye. A tortured artist is a drunken, black-wearing, unshaven, suicidal mess. A tortured artist is self-absorbed, pretentious. The very concept of the tortured artist is a “cultural myth,” a variety of sources will say. Of course it is, they’ll say. Don’t you know some perfectly happy people who draw? Don’t you know a friendly actor or musician? The article in trespass rhetorically asks “Is pain an absolute necessity for good art, and do artists really suffer any more than the rest of humanity? Can one work on deadlines and self-discipline in the comfort of their living rooms, or must they work only on whims and inspiration, soaked in a pool of alcohol and urine?”(Trespass). “Of course they can,” I’d say. “Of course you can be perfectly happy and create great art,” I’d say. I’d say a lot of things if I hadn’t experienced torture. I’d say a lot of things if that torture hadn’t turned me into an artist.
I moved when I was fourteen. And that really shouldn’t be a big deal—people move all the time and don’t become artists and aren’t tortured by it. But this move destroyed me. It destroyed me because I became deeply depressed. I was sad. I was sad about missing my friends and my home, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that my Self left. My Self killed itself. My Self killed itself and left Something Else and this Something Else consumed me. I was sad. That is certain. But sadness cannot capture what I felt. On a fundamental level, my entire Self had been destroyed. My Self destroyed itself for days and nights and weeks and months. That is what depression is. Depression is crying. But it is not normal crying. It is crying and hating yourself for crying. It is crying and hating yourself for crying and crying because you hate yourself for crying for hating yourself for crying for crying. Depression is deep, inexplicable guilt. Depression is an overwhelming sense that your very existence is wrong. It is deeper than sadness.
I spent months curled in a ball, crying. I spent months unable to understand myself or anyone else. I was entirely incapacitated for a great time by the torture of myself by my Self. But as the sun returned, I emerged slightly. And my parents sent me to Arts Camp. And I became an artist. Now what follows is something that I don’t fully understand. I had always made art. I started playing music when I was five years old. I wrote my first story when I was three, my first play when I was six. I had always made art. But I was not an artist. But after my first depressive episode I became one. I was seized with a feverish sense of Self and need to create. I suddenly found a deep connection to my own emotional life and to that of others. I understood people. Because I had suffered, truly suffered, I understood the human condition to a greater extent. I became an actor. I had acted before. But now I was an actor. It was what I did and what I would do. I knew this deeply and it allowed me to regain myself. Every time I acted, every time I created a work of art, I felt a catharsis. Every time I expressed my Truth, I became important. Necessary. Every time I created, my Self killed a piece of the other Thing that had fed on itself in my mind.
That was a very twisted way of saying that I became an artist when I became a depressed human being. My depression almost destroyed me, and it has come close again nearly every winter since. But the battle that I have fought with it has given me a deep need to create. It has given me a profound understanding of myself. Since the beginning of high school, I have taught myself to play three instruments. I have been in umpteen plays. I have written. I have engaged in a constant, furious battle for the survival for the possession of myself. And that battle has manifested itself as art.
I am not really glad that I have depression. I would never recommend it. William Styron wrote that “Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode (Darkness Visible).” Depression is so unimaginably horrible that I have trouble remembering what I felt like before an episode when in the midst of it.
Styron also wrote “A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience”(Darkness Visible). This is a phenomenon that I have experienced. Depression to me is a chemically-elicited existential crisis. I become acutely aware that everything I do is an action that is making me when depressed, and am often full of inexplicable guilt. I observe myself incredibly closely, studying my own behavior obsessively. I do the same for others. I’m rambling again, but the magnitude of what I am trying to say defies organization. I am trying to say that there are no blessings in life. I don’t think there are curses either. I think that there is only something in between. Mental illness has nearly destroyed me, but it has also helped me to become a better artist. I cannot say that depression is the sole cause of my artistic drive, but I can confirm that it has strengthened my artistic tendencies, given me greater material to draw on, and given me a great need for emotional expression and catharsis.
Scientific evidence supports the correlation between creative genius and mental illness. Dr. Arnold Ludwig, a psychiatrist, did a study that took a “clinical measure of creativity” as well as determining mental health and comparing the two results. This experiment conclusively showed artists including musicians, actors, writers, and other as having significantly higher rates of mental illness. Dr. Alice Flaherty of Harvard Medical School, after doing chemical studies, concluded that the irregular or atypical dopamine levels that characterize mental illness often also correspond to creative drive. Essentially, the exact chemical signals that create mental illnesses increase creativity. This discovery complicates the implications of the treatment of mental illness. Mood disorders can be debilitating disabilities. But it is also clear that they can create ability.
Ultimately I think art is an intrinsic part of humanity. The drive to create is inextricably tied to the drive to live. Genius is often simply courage to think uniquely, to be different, to see the world in an entirely fresh way. The question remains: is there really any distinction between genius and madness?
