Like many people, I don’t subscribe to many magazines. I hate having to recycle them when I’m done as I always feel guilty throwing away good writing. But one enjoys a special place in my mailbox: The Sun. It’s a bit like A Prairie Home Companion in print, but darker. As they say on their About page, “words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human.”
This month’s issue included an interview with Tim Farrington, who discusses the connection between creativity and depression. I found this topic fascinating because for many years I was convinced my best work came when I was down and out, or at least exceedingly tired (often both). The interviewer begins by listing some sobering statistics from a 1995 Scientific American article: artists experience up to eighteen times the rate of suicide seen in the general population, eight to ten times the rate of depression…
But this doesn’t ring true for me. I know many writers and artists, and while they are soulful (an endearing term for incredibly empathetic), they’re not necessarily more depressed than the scientists and engineers in my life. They’re just better at expressing their feelings. As Farrington says in the article:
An artist’s lack of psychic balance is immediately visible in his or her work. If you lose your balance on a high wire, people notice. If you lose your balance at ground level, you may stumble or reel, but you can conceal it.
I realized I didn’t need to be depressed in order to write when my circumstances in life (or my appreciation of my circumstances) turned around, and the words kept coming. A bit like leaping off a cliff and discovering a hidden ledge.
But it may be fair to say that in order to be a good writer, one must have been depressed at some point. That’s where the empathy springs from. Or as one of the quotes in the Sunbeams section of the magazine says:
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. Theodore Dreiser
I’m grateful for the misery that produces the honey of writing, and for the magazine that reminds me of it. As The Beatles remind us, “It’s all right…”
Photo courtesy of Luis Argerich on Flikr
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I like how you said, “But it may be fair to say that in order to be a good writer, one must have been depressed at some point. ” That probably helps with certain kinds of writing. I am not sure I would agree totally with the notion that depression, (or having been depressed) would make one a better writer, but certainly a different kind of writer.
As to the idea of depression, I think those who think that writers and other artists produce their best work because they are depressed are missing the mark. I think that artists are more in tune with the totality of the human experience. They are sensitive and evocative of the full range of being alive. That is why they are artists. A side effect of that, however can in fact be a greater immersion in the tragic sides of life as well.
Completely agree, Ty, and I like how you said it. Artists are more in tune with the totality of the human experience. Yes.
I’ve often pondered the relationship between artistic genius and tragedy. Anecdotally, I notice that those in my life who have expressed the most compelling art, song, poem, sculpture etc – seem to be the most unhinged. This is obviously a convenient generalisation, but it makes for interesting conversation.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever experienced depression. Melancholy, yes – but not depression. Will this limit my artistic expression? I don’t know.
I’d like to give this topic more thought.
Best to you Jennifer, Robin
Robin-
It’s a good point. When I said one should have been depressed at some point, I didn’t mean clinically so. That was a bit sloppy of me. But I do think that people who simply never let anything bother them overly much will have a hard time creating full characters (in either fiction or nonficition). Of course, the reverse is also true: those who have never experienced joy or elation will have the same issue, probably one of the best reasons why this connection between depression and writing doesn’t work for me.
A.E. Housman wrote (in “The Name and Nature of Poetry”) that he tended to write poetry when he was depressed. He said that for him poetry was a secretion, not a natural secretion like pitch from a pine, but rather a morbid secretion like the pearl in the oyster.
What a wonderful quote. Now that’s creativity that might be worth being depressed about! (No, not really. I think.)
This explanation from Isabel Allende is one of my favorites: “Maybe I’m a writer because I’m desperately trying to clean up my mess. Other people do other things, going to therapy or becoming psychiatrists just to clean up the mess. Well, I couldn’t afford therapy at the time I needed it the most so I started writing.” (http://www.observationdeck.com/writers/allende.htm)
Maybe “depression” is too severe a word. Maybe the word is simply, “sad” or “anxious.” I don’t think you need to feel depressed to feel empathetic. And I don’t think you need to feel depressed or empathetic to write. Maybe it’s more a desire to “clean up the mess” that the writer perceives and is unwilling to ignore.
Vincent
I don’t mean to imply that you need to be currently depressed in order to write. That was in fact my big revelation (and relief)! The idea of having a mess to clean up suggests your life has been complicated enough you’ll have something to write about, regardless of your current emotional state and I don’t think is far off from my idea of having been depressed or sad at some point. The reason I shy away from that explanation is that it subscibes to the idea of writing as therapy, which has never particularly helpful in my opinion–it leads people to think they need only write their own truth instead of a good truth. In any event, I probably still need to struggle a bit with exactly what it is that lends itself to good depth of writing. I think we can both agree to that! LOL