The Importance of Craziness, part 2

Artistry, it seems, is bound up in experience. It is experience, of a sort. My experience, the artist's experience, my experience of the srtist's work, and the experience of place and time - bound together in our mutual experiences of each other (both myself and the artist, and myself with their work).

But the question I raised a couple weeks ago, to what extent have we medicated away some of our finest artists? To what extent do we fear experiences of angst, depression, or mania, such that we pour pharmaceuticals down our throats and thus make everything "okay."

I considered this again with respect to Virginia Woolf. While gifted in remarkable ways, she was also (by most accounts) manic-depressive. She wrote powerfully moving things, and then one day put rocks in her pockets and walked into the river.

Probably if we'd had her on Xanax, Zoloft, Prozac, or something equally stunning, she'd be "just fine." But I doubt she'd be interesting. Or worth reading.

I find that I wonder about these things when I consider all our great artists who have been tortured and gifted... folks like Vincent VanGogh, Auguste Rodin... the list goes on. I wonder sometimes, if they lived in the modern age, whether they would contribute the same gifts to our common benefit, or would they just settle down and become Business Consultants at Deloitte?

I also wonder about this when I'm going through one of my depressive phases. You know - when the biochemistry dips a little, from lack of sunshine, or a crappy week of work, or the besetting of various traumas... and I wake up thinking, "just a few more days of sleep, and I"ll be fine. When a trip to the grocery store is a mammoth undertaking, and I have to plan all day in order to go to the driving range...

If I was on medication, I'd be "just fine." But owuld I cease to be Andy? Is our identity tied up in our experience of who we are, along with others' experiences of us... and along the way - does this make us a piece of art all to ourselves?

Scripturally, we are described as God's artistry - we are the experience of his creation, and we experience God's handiwork as we experience ourselves and know ourselves better. Along the way, then, it seems reasonable to suggest that if we are altering who we are in the application of self-altering medication, we cease to become who we are meant to be.

Of course, the big caveat her is the question of betterment: do we become more, or less of who we are because of the medication? Probably this is an answer that can only be answered by the individual in consultation with their physician, but the book Listening to Prozac offers an intriguing look into the psychology of psychiatric medication.

For myself, I refuse the application of medication because I don't find my moments of depresison all that stifling. (Plus - the ability to know I'm depressed excites my competitive nature, and I defiantly shout down the depression, and refuse to be subdued by it. Plus - I have rules against calling in sick simply because I'm tired.) But I deeply respect the needs of others who have to have the medicine in order to function.

I just hope we haven't lost any artists along the way, or that the voices of prophets aren't being drowned in pharmaceuticals.

The Importance of Craziness, part 1

Back in seminary, we started practicing some goofy music. At the time, I thought, “why on earth are we singing this craziness?” Now I understand: it was so I would have interesting things to talk about later.

“Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his spear to the Lord.” – from Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart (1722-1771).

It was – quite literally – craziness. Christopher Smart was in an insane asylum at the time. Benjamin Britten took the poetry and set it to music that fit the mood: idiosyncratic, one might say.

I remembered all this while I read a review for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concerto "Nobody knows de trouble I see."

Apparently, the music was written in the 50’s in postwar Germany and, as the reviewer put it, “it represents the attempt of a German composer to find a place for an African American spiritual in the world of the then-new German music, which was trying to replace old-fashioned emotion with the scientific method.”

I wondered if perhaps this composer felt the postwar impulse to banish pathos in favor of logos was motivated by well-intentioned fear. Perhaps, trying to find a more wholistic voice that combined all parts of the self, he sought a voice of sorrow that could moan its hopeful pain through a highly structured musical medium.

As the reviewer points out, Zimmerman later killed himself, “caught in a nightmare from which he couldn't escape.”

Tragedies of this sort raise complicated questions for me. In the modern world, how many of our crazy artists would simply be medicated into happiness… have the pathos driven straight out of them? Is what we seek in psychoanalysis the discovery of a fully logical self? What of the passionate self? (This is, of course, completely ignoring ethos, the third leg of the classic rhetorical tripod).

Hmmm…. More on this later…

Are you doing any Journalling?

Once upon a time, during a particularly horrible time in my life, I was asked, "Are you doing any journalling?"

I think the idea was that, if I was journalling, it would give me an outlet. But I knew better. If I journalled, I would have a record of what was going on: how I was feeling, what was happening to me, etc.

So, "No - I'm not," I responded, "I don't want to remember what this feels like."

Every once in awhile I'm reminded of what that time was like, and still I'm glad I didn't journal my way through it. Sometimes the forgetting is important. But the limited remembering is nice, because it gives me perspective. "You see?" the Remembering says to me, "you've grown!"

Last night I finally saw "The Constant Gardener" for the first time, and I really liked it (I can always tell how much I like a movie by whether or not I watch the "extra features" on the DVD. If I REALLY like it, I'll rewatch the whole thing with the Director's commentary).

There's a scene where Ralph Fienne's character is back in London - at the house owned by his recently murdered wife, and all the memories of their former joyous life come flying back at him. His grief overcomes him (or more probably, kicks its way through his masculine facade) and plasters his face and fist up against the window, wracked in his sobbing.

And I thought, "you know - if he collapsed on the ground right now that would totally be me like 4 years ago..."

I'm glad I didn't write it down, but I'm glad I can remember sometimes.