Do You Have To Be Depressed In Order To Be Creative?
The old cliche is that you have to have some sort of a tortured soul before you can product a great work of art. This is the excuse some people give in order to go on a drinking bender or do a lot of drugs, because they will get the “inspiration” they need in order to create AHT (as opposed to mere art). Depressives don’t need the drink or drugs in order to be miserable — yet we’re usually crippled by the fear of making a mistake in order to get around to being creative.
The Good News
You don’t have to be depressed in order to be creative. Being creative just doesn’t mean making music, painting or writing a novel. Cooking is definately shows artistic talent, as well as interior decorating, tending a garden, sewing, rearranging the furniture or figuring out how to fix the leaky sink with nothing except duct tape and a prayer. You can be in any kind of mood or state of mental health to accomplish any and all of this.
The Bad News
Secondly, it’s going to be inevitable that you will make mistakes when creating anything. Sometimes the mistakes can be therapuetic. But you are under no obligation to make a universally acclaimed masterpiece every time you want to make something. Even scribbling on your paper (or ranting on a blog) can be a great source of cheap, effective emotional release. It helps to take youir mind off of the usual tornado of thoughts that depression can give you.
For Pete’s Sake
Successful singer/songwriter/musician Peter Gabriel (once of Genesis, then solo and not a depressive, despite some of his songs) often scoffs at interviewers who insit that he posesses any special talents. He claims that any success he had is due to hard work and slogging it out rather than any innate talent. If he wasn’t successful, he wouldn’t survive. Simple as that.
In a 1986 interview with Musician magazine he said, “If you put a gun to someone’s head and tell them that they will be dead in a year’s time unless they make a great work of art, they will suddenly be inspired to do so.”
Hope this helps.
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 am
[...] at Depressive Talk muses about that long held belief that you have to be mentally ill in some way (most often [...]