"You seem depressed."
"It's the kind of depression I enjoy!"
- Arthur Miller, 'The Price'
Two interesting takes on depressive tendencies and the creative process: the first from Peter D. Kramer, author of 'Listening to Prozac', whose essay 'There's Nothing Deep About Depression' in today's New York Times makes the case that people who think art and depression go hand in hand are dead wrong.
Dead as in metaphorically, not dead as in Vincent van Gogh rotting in his suicidal grave.
In truth, anyone who thinks a tormented soul is the Romantic essential to creative genius has probably never been depressed nor created anything much. Because anyone who has ever been depressed knows how debilitating hopelessness is; and anyone who has ever created anything worth sharing knows that to create is to hope.
Then again, in a world rife with murderous governments, popstar pedophilia and The Weather, it's a wonder we aren't all deep into that mood indigo. "Awareness of the ubiquity of horror is the modern condition," Kramer writes, by way of making the obvious but perfectly relevant point that terrible events and an individual's mood disorder are wholly separable tragedies.
Or in other words: life, lemons... chemical lemonade. But if the meaning of life is feeling, as someone once said, then the question of whether antidepressants are leveling a generation's field of hypothetical van Goghs is not one on which the 'Prozac' author is likely to have the last word.
For one thing, drugs are not the only drug. Art itself (for those who create) can be a fine therapy for milder forms of depression, not to mention (for those who view) a more than suitable salve for the ubiquitous horror, even if only by making us laugh at the sheer nonsense of it all.
The current issue of eye magazine, the graphic design quarterly, has a profile of Paul Davis, an illustrator whose stylistically naive scribblings on graph paper and the backs of envelopes capture the dark humor and general malaise of this modern life. Here's a typical bit of Davis wordage:
"Mans life is essentially without meaning or purpose and human beings cannot really communicate. Existence is futile. Illogical and meaningless art is the only worthwhile art. It will lead us to silence. Now, what the f**k shall I wear?"
Pertinently, another Davis drawing shows a host of badly-drawn pills and capsules, each attached to a speech bubble: 'happier', 'healthier', 'loving', 'cozy', 'great big hard cock', 'sleepy', 'lovely', 'mmmm'...
(For more of Paul Davis' genius, have a look at copyrightdavis.com, and -- get it? -- be sure to click the copyright bar at the bottom of the page.)
