The Artist

The Tortured Soul

TW: Suicide

I want a break from writing thousands of words on love, so we go back to the good old blog post.

When I am in a bad mood, in addition to poor financial choices and copious amounts of camomile tea, I write.

It got me thinking about the idea of ‘The Artist.’ The tortured creative soul, with God given talent and mental illness.

There has been an obscene romanticisation of mental illness within the world of art.

Take Van Gogh. Don’t worry, I am not comparing myself to Van Gogh. I am neither as depressed, or as talented, or as dead.

But in the song ‘Vincent’ by Don Mclean, it talks of his suicide as something ‘lovers often do.’ It irritated me. I still always sing the line as ‘took his life as people with severe mental health issues do’ instead.

From French philosophers to terrible romantic poets (we don’t care about your clouds Wordsworth), depression has been seen as the price you pay for being creative and passionate. I am anxious, therefore my poetry must be top-notch.

But I am going to present another viewpoint, albeit revolutionary in nature. You don’t have to be mentally ill to be an artist. You can paint, write, sing, or papier-mâché, when you are healthy. We just don’t have such a morbid obsession with it.

We are drawn to explorations of pain and suffering. I write about neurodiversity or the gender health gap, and that garners little interest. Even my current essay collection on love is not particularly popular.

But I write an article titled ‘Heartbreak, what the fuck is it?’ and suddenly hundreds of people want to read it. Don’t get me wrong, I did want to share the inside of my tumultuous mind with the masses. I make my pain into dark jokes, metaphors, and faux philosophical musings. But I can write in a good mood too, and it may not be as intense or urgent a motivator, but I am no less of a writer on a good day.

‘The Artist’ has become some kind of absurdly pretentious ideal. You must write with a cup of coffee in hand, surrounded by books, on a rainy autumn morning. The embodiment of the perfect Pinterest post.

But writing belongs to everyone. I know of a cybercrime policy expert who writes comics. There are scientists who write dystopian fiction, and there is absolutely a politician who has a secret papier - mâché habit as well as the non-secret affair.

There is not some secret ‘creatives club.’ You do not need a ‘creative’ brain. Say what you want about neurology, psychopathology, or God. But at the end of the day, art is about individuals with different talents, like any other discipline in the world.

You don't have to be good at something to do it for fun either. I was so stressed yesterday I wrote two separate articles with meatball-related titles. I hadn’t even had meatballs. They weren’t even about meatballs. Will I publish them? No. But it helped to write them.

You can be an artist whether you are healthy or sick, happy or depressed, talented or shit.

Anyone can create.

Now go write a fucking poem. You don’t have to be depressed to do it.

Artistic regards,

Down the Rabbit-Hole