a wolf angel is not a good angel

25 Comments »

1. michelle:
   March 20th, 2005 @ 10:25 pm

   Comment No. 1: I prefer “gray” because it’s what I read when younger and I find “grey” particularly pretentious when used by southern writers who are probably trying to adapt to english usage. I wouldn’t dream of saying “grey.”

   I think it’s important to note the context in which Terminal Degree’s post was made: a history dating back to elementary school age of depression. I find that quite significant.

   And this comment was such a small touch on that long emotional post of TD’s. It seems unfair to approach it out of context.

   But out of context is has been presented and thus, I’ll say that I agree somewhat with the idea of creativity borne out of depression. Happy people are good contributing citizens; they’re not dissenters and they’re not groundbreaking. They’re worthwhile but you’d have no great literature if everyone in the universe was at peace. Without conflict, there is no story, regardless of whether it’s external conflict or internal conflict.

   I want to write more but I’m sure I’d piss someone off so I will not because I’ve learned by rather harsh means that my opinion is not the consensus and not valued.

2. terminaldegree:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 12:41 am

   Since I can’t spell, I never know if it should be “grey” or “gray.” Both look wrong to me, sort of. (But then most words look sort of wrong to me.)

   Keeping all of this in context, I hope commenters here will please note that *I* am not the person who made the depression-creativity connection. Yes, I have observed that the creative types I know are prone to depression. But then, most of the people I know are in creative fields…

   At any rate I found the comment helpful. Sorry if others didn’t.

   :(

3. wolfangel:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 1:37 am

   Chel, I think there’s a gulf between happy people and people who are depressed — and indeed people who have had periods of depression (who hasn’t?) and between people who have been long-term depressed. And I don’t mean to say that being depressed prevents creativity, either; it would be patently false. I think that when you’re depressed, you’re not at your peak, and that this does limit how much you can do, and — well, we know the stories of Plath or Sexton (who I was thinking of earlier). I’ve also not bothered to get into some intricacies of being functionally depressed vs. being, um, whatever the not-functional one is. In a major depressive episode?
   Though this wasn’t from TD’s post, it was a comment left at the end of the post. And it was meant to be encouraging to TD, who says it was, which means it was a success, even if I took it off in my own direction. Clearly my opinion is not the consensus, either, and I value your opinion, even if I don’t agree with it.

   TD: If you found it helpful, then that works. The fact that I have my own issues about the “creativity needing depression” idea — something which has come over a number of years of hearing that from people — especially myself — who use it as a romanticism of something that’s pretty much shit (well, I haven’t found much good in depression, anyhow) or as an excuse for not changing anything (which is from your post clearly not you, and it sounds like not Melancholic either) and just miring oneself in depression. Or refusing treatment on the theory that it will ruin their art. If depression is not a necessary part of creativity, and not romanticised as such, then there’s one argument gone.

   I know not-particularly creative people who are prone to depression; I don’t know many people (have them as friends, that is) who aren’t prone to depression, and this isn’t exactly a good sampling, either, so I can’t say what it proves.

4. terminaldegree:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 2:04 am

   I’ve never romanticized depression. It simply is, well, what it is. I don’t believe that creativity *needs* depression, and I didn’t take that from Melancholic’s post.

   Yet a lot of good has come from my depression and the treatment I’ve received. While I wouldn’t wish depression on anyone, myself included, I have learned a lot. And I’m grateful for that.

   Terminaldegree (who really hopes I’m not being depressed and an asshole)

5. New Kid on the Hallway:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 7:05 am

   This may be taking the conversation in a slightly different direction, but Robert Boice, who writes about professors writing and writing block, argues very strenuously against the sort of “creativity comes from suffering” idea. Now, he has a particular agenda, so to speak - he’s arguing that writers are MUCH more productive in the long run by writing for shorter periods every day rather than for great marathon-ing spurts every now and then, and part of his argument for this is that the incredible emotional highs of the marathon writing spurt are actually harmful to productivity overall because they’re inevitably followed by the lows, and that a more even emotional keel is much more beneficial (and sustainable) overall. I know that productivity isn’t the same as creativity, but for Boice the latter really comes out of the former (I think he’d argue that you can’t be creative if you’re not actually writing anything). His arguments are intended for a specific subset of writers, but he seems to indicate (sort of anecdotally) that the vast majority of writers (including non-academics) just write, every day, consistently, and his take is that this can’t be a function of the kind of creativity/madness/suffering link that people often romanticize.

   Personally I find his arguments extremely appealing. I completely agree with Michelle that happy people are boring to read about, but I think that happy people can write about conflict and suffering without having to be engaged in it personally. (And I realize I’m kind of eliding depression-suffering-madness-conflict here.) I think melancholic is write that often depression is the consequence of the “intense periods of engagement” that he describes, but I’m really hoping to work out a different kind of model for work that doesn’t require those kinds of soul-draining intense periods of engagement. (American society, which I know doesn’t include you WA unless you want to read it as North American society!, has a very dangerous tendecy to valorize extremes, I think. My impression is that you Canadian folk are less prone to this, although LDH is NOT an especially good example!)

   And I should add that this isn’t meant to be critical of either TD’s or melancholic’s original posts/comments - just a response to WA’s argument. With which I basically agree (I always sort of feel that if people like Van Gogh or Plath had been able to get treatment for their mental illnesses, what OTHER kinds of great works could we have had from them!)

6. Flesh-eating Dragon:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 7:17 am

   The issue of depression versus beauty is a complicated one, but I think it’s worthy of contemplation.

   There’s beauty in the fact that depression isn’t happening right now, of course, and that’s probably the bottom line. But when it’s possible (as it sometimes is) to take refuge from depression in some kind of mental escapism, there can be a certain beauty there too, even if it’s only a mirage (upon which topic I recommend the beautiful song http://bob.bob.bofh.org/~giolla/oysterband/SOD.html, and please ask me if you ever want mp3 files of my favourite songs [offer NOT open to everyone, just WA]). There is also, of course, much beauty in the songs and poetry and so on that have been written out of the experience of depression (even if they’re usually written afterwards) and depression can be a source of other beautiful things too (well, blogs, for a start). This doesn’t make depression beautiful, but it does mean that depression is connected to things that are beautiful. And then there’s the (quite understandable and I think often correct) feeling that a quick solution to depression would leave one a shallower and less interesting person than no solution at all, and that the search for self-understanding is worth the pain of knowing how much gulf there is between the self and the understanding. But the only depression I’ve known is mild: I’ve known depression, but I’ve never known despair.

   It may be strange, but it seems to be quite common for depression to have a certain illusory appeal provided that it’s not happening right now. The following is a quote from an email a very good friend sent me several years ago (I don’t mind quoting this because there’s no way anyone could possibly work out who it is unless it was you) and what she describes seems, in varying degrees, to be not as unusual as one might rationally suppose:

   “Well, I get massive highs a lot of the time. Then, I NEED massive lows. I’m grateful when something bad happens, coz it’s the raw material I need to send myself into suicidal ravines in my soul. I live off strong emotion, I need it. The thing is, I fine it hard to create my own highs. So, when I feel the craving for tidal waves of emotion (and I feel it, well, whenever I’m not enjoying a massive high), I send myself into despair. When I’m happy I can’t understand my own need for tears and anger. But when I feel the start, the build up, the possibility of the screaming tearing pain that I embrace, I exploit it and use it to send myself nearly insane. Sometimes I have to force my tears so much it gives me a headache, but when I feel the need, I can’t refuse it…”

7. michelle:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 8:37 am

   Lots of great comments here and I dont’ have time to respond to all of them although I’d like to but I wanted to tell TD that yes, I understood that it was Melancholic’s comment, not a remark in your post. I read your post thoroughly and sympathize a great deal with what you’ve so honestly brought forth there.

   also, I don’t argue that suffering is necessary for creativity but that complete lack of suffering stunts creativity.

   And of cousre, there are such varying levels of depression and the extreme which incapacitates obviously is not helpful, and I also think that “creativity” is not a word that means the same to all. Perhaps “productivity” is sometimes confused with “creativity.”

8. bitchphd:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 1:35 pm

   I think this is kind of what I call the “Versailles effect.” When I saw Versailles for the first time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the condition of pre-Revolutionary France. And how corrupt and fucked up and unjust the culture was that created this place.

   And yet. It really is beautiful, and I am glad it is there. And–now bear with me, politically I would never translate what I am about to say into action or argument–while the people who suffered at that time are all long gone, the place is still there.

   It’s one of the beautiful tragedies of art, I think. The art lives beyond the individual. From the outside, we can appreciate and admire the accomplishments of very unhappy people whose lives we would never, for a minute, want. From the inside, we can feel that all our accomplishments mean nothing in comparison to the pain of being unhappy.

   In other words, I think both things are true.

9. wolfangel:
   March 21st, 2005 @ 2:23 pm

   I guess I should’ve renamed the post; the title wasn’t meant seriously.

   TD: I am not saying you ever romanticised depression. That said, a lot of people do; I know I did, and I still fight against it, because it is a really really bad thing for everyone I’ve ever seen who does it. (There might be exceptions in that, but I’ve not seen it on various groups etc — and there are lots of people who don’t do it.)
   And yes, you can learn a lot from depression, but for me, the bad strongly outweighed the good. Yes, there is stuff I learned this way which I might not have learned otherwise. Or maybe I would have; I can’t know. I did things I wouldn’t've otherwise, but I didn’t do other things i might have done. I can’t predict it. But if I could go back and make it so that I wasn’t depressed, I would do that. And I don’t think I’d be less creative; I think I’d be differently creative.

   I thought your post was thoughtful, honest and worthwhile; I hope you haven’t taken this as an attack on you or that post.

   NK: yeah, I tend to agree with you; you’ve said a lot of what I think, but much more gracefully. Life itself is always going to give us periods of unhappiness, even of depression, but that’s (I have found) qualitatively different from being *depressed*.

   FED: I agree that beauty can come out of depression, but beauty can come out of all sorts of things, and there’s a great deal too much under the umbrella of depression: I suspect we’re all talking about different sorts of things with depression. There are better, less painful, more healing ways to take a step back from the world, too, rather than be engaged in fighting yourself or hating yourself or not caring about anything at all.

   But yes: there is a certain draw that depression has. And this is neither good nor healthy (maybe it is for some people, but not anyone I’ve come across), and, as I’ve said, it’s something I fight very hard against (often failing). This is somewhat distinct from wanting the painful depression instead of the numb depression.

   Chel: I agree, complete lack of anything bad happening would make someone a very boring person. But does that really happen? And there is a distinction between periods of being sad and depression the illness; I’m not sure we disagree about the meaning of creativity as much as the meaning of depression.

   Dr B: yes, I realise that art transcends the individual(s) who suffered to create it, but I think that we miss the art they’d've created if they hadn’t been despairing. Of course then we’d've missed what they created in their pain.

10. Rana:
    March 21st, 2005 @ 5:55 pm

    I wish I had something interesting to add about the relationship between creativity and depression, but I don’t.

    So I’m going to comment on grey/gray. My own idiosyncratic sense is that “grey” applies to the lighter softer colors, like mist or dove or ash. “Gray” for me is on the darker spectrum, of storm clouds, charcoal, slate.

    I don’t know which applies to depression better. Sometimes it feels like an enswathing fog (grey), sometimes like a dark wet bleakness (gray).

11. eb:
    March 21st, 2005 @ 6:40 pm

    Another possibility is that whatever it is that makes one creative can/may also be what leads one to depression. Which is to say that depression does not lead to creativity by itself, but that it can/may often coincide with it. Of course this may not be a helpful way of looking at it, as it still doesn’t explain what the “whatever it is” that’s producing the creativity and depression actually is.

    On a related note, I recently came across this article on child prodigies (via this post) which implies a link between genius and depression. But for many of these kids it seems like their depression, if it set in, came only as they grew up. The genius, such as it was, seems to have been there earlier.

12. Cougar:
    March 21st, 2005 @ 8:20 pm

    There are a lot of young aspiring writers in America who think they have to drink heavily to be writers. Maybe they would be better off if they thought they had to be depressed.

    Young people are imitative, and it’s easy enough to wear the Dizzy Gillespie glasses and goatee, take drugs like Yardbird, drink like (too long a list of American writers, unfortunately) — but how easy is it to make yourself depressed? They would mope around a lot and annoy their friends but I think they would only be faking it and wouldn’t be able to do themselves much real harm that way.

    Maybe we should try to popularize the idea.

13. wolfangel:
    March 21st, 2005 @ 10:33 pm

    Rana: your differentiating between the two spellings of gr[ea]y is incredibly cool. I am in awe.

    eb: yeah. I can especially see the intelligence/depression linking: if you’re smarter and isolated because you’re smarter — which isn’t necessarily what happens, but often — then it could lead to depression. This could also work for creative.

    Cougar: actually, faking it can lead to depression, and it’s probably not all that hard.

14. michelle:
    March 21st, 2005 @ 10:36 pm

    Cougar, am I wrong but isn’t that what the goth of the west coast 90s teens was about? All that rain and the highest suicide rate in the nation. (I don’t have that on a high authority; one of my students suggested it and I didn’t bother to challenge the factoid by checking its veracity.) I assume the notion of drinking to write was popularized by the heavy drinkers of the early Modernists who drank in response to the betrayal of the world and the heavy casualties of WWII, the topic of which made its way into many successful novels from the era. But it’s difficult for me to agree with the notion that young people romanticize the idea of self-abuse to the extent that they embrace it hand in hand with the potential for creativity.

    Then again, maybe I’m just making all this up.

15. Flesh-eating Dragon:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 12:47 am

    I daresay that if we were to blow up the earth, the spectacle would be quite pretty from the right viewpoint. But it’s a bit of a stretch to say that doing so is therefore desirable. Could there be an apt analogy here?

16. Waterfall:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 6:48 am

    I get very frustrated with folks who romanticize depression. It SUCKS. I am both “creative” (writer, pianist, learning to be a composer) and bipolar (manic depressive), and it is a double-edged sword. It is exhausting. Sure, it’s nice to have marathon manic episodes where I can get a lot done, but then there is the crash, and the perfectionistic goal post that keeps seeming to move, and the lack of boundaries that make me hate myself for not having written a Great Novel already.

    I read a book recently, “Touched with Fire,” by Kay Redfield Jamison, about the relationship between creativity and depression (primarily manic depression, but unipolar as well). It’s careful about arguing for a direct relationship between the two, but it does write about how the depressive temperament and creative “genius” seem to coincide (Byron, Woolf, Plath, Rossini, etc.). At the same time, it definitely says that depression doesn’t always coincide with creativity–but that people who are unusually creative tend to have depression-related problems.

    I hate medications because they dull me and, yes, they dull my desire to play piano and write. They make me happy and adjusted. It’s nice, but at the same time, the music and the writing are part of my sense of purpose in this world. They are what I’m good at, and what make me connect most to others. So I’m still in search of a med that will help curb the extreme mood swings while not numbing me to the point of creative inactivity. (Alcohol isn’t it–for me, it opens that creativity window for about a half hour before things start to get fuzzy. Bad medicine, for me at least.)

    It baffles me that people would WANT to be depressed. I feel like depression has stolen huge chunks of my life from me.

17. Rudbeckia Hirtea:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 6:49 am

    How much of a geek am I that my thought was, “You can test this hypothesis with the chi-squared test”?

18. Flesh-eating Dragon:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 11:01 am

    I have a number of things I wanted to say to Waterfall in private, but I’ve looked at her blog and I can’t find an email address or contact link anywhere. Mine is dragon at netyp dot com dot au (incidentally, WA has my spam-free address, which has something other than “dragon” before the at).

    To summarise the things I wanted to say, first of all, as a flesh-eating dragon I agree with Anitra Freeman’s notion of dragons, as described at http://anitra.net/commonwealth/dragonhoard/ . I had some email contact with Anitra several years ago; she’s bipolar too and has an extensive web presence. Speaking of bipolar disorder, I am absolutely fascinated by Jack Pettigrew’s research at http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/jack.html . Great stuff, if you have a scientific turn of mind and enjoy psychology.

    But mostly, I wanted to mention how I am passionate about music, that I play piano and other keyboard instruments, that I’ve composed a bit in my time but really what I LOVE is improvising, and that sort of thing. One of my compositions can be found here: http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/create/WorldWithinYourMind.mp3 (but it’s several years old and the quality is pretty poor because it’s a digitised cassette recording). As for the music I listen to rather than play, excerpts of various tracks can be found here http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/listen/music.htm. No excerpt is longer than ten seconds.

    Sorry, WA, for cluttering your comments space, but as I’ve said this was supposed to be an email :-)

19. Waterfall:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 11:31 am

    Hi dragon, I just e-mailed you. Hope to hear back from you soon.

20. Waterfall:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 11:53 am

    Ack, I just re-read my first comment. That’s the danger in commenting/blogging early in the morning, before coffee. Self-indulgent whining on unsuspecting blogs. Sorry about that, everyone!

21. wolfangel:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 11:57 am

    Waterfall, if you knew how much self-indulgent whining I do in comments, you would not be at all worried. Plus, I like comments of any sort.

    (Will finish replying later, when work is under control. Ish.)

22. Anonymous:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 4:15 pm

    Well, everyone’s pretty much covered it already, but I have to agree; depression [the disease] isn’t the least bit romantic. I can’t think of anything less romantic.

    Also, I like “grey” much better.

23. melancholic:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 5:36 pm

    An interesting thread; I’ve responded to some of these issues at Melancholia.

24. Cougar:
    March 22nd, 2005 @ 11:08 pm

    You’re right, trying to be depressed isn’t good for people. I’ve thought of a better idea to popularize. I’m going to tell young people who aspire to be creative they should send me money.

25. michelle:
    March 24th, 2005 @ 12:41 am

    Cougar, ha! :) Would you send them my address too?

    PS I realized I wrote WWII when I meant I. Not sure anyone noticed but for the record, that was an error.

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