I don’t know if most people’s conversations with friends talk about philosophy and psychology and culture and generally ignore sports, but mine do. A couple of weeks ago I was hanging out with my best friends playing Rock Band 2, and during a short interlude I put forth a theory I have about happiness (and a quick note that she is pursuing a graduate degree in counseling or something and he is a doctoral candidate in philosophy and they’re married) to my friends which spawned a bit of a conversation and resulted in the quote I had posted:
Creativity is about understanding implications. Depression is also about understanding implications, but maybe too many of them.
So, the theory which spawned the conversation (and please ignore the implicit valuation) I (now) call the shape-complexity theory:
- You can reduce people to shapes. we already use the language, “people are faceted.” Some people are simpler people, and may be the triangles or rectangles of the world, and on the other end you have irregular dodecahedrons all the way to, I dunno, Mandelbrot Set people.
- Happiness is the ability to connect the edges of your shape to the world through some means, art, friendship, romantic involvement, etc.*
- Simpler people have a much easier time connecting.
- Complex people, however, can appreciate the connections made much more. They are not necessarily happier, but much more aware of the challenge and triumph in making those connections.
- The corollary to the above is that complex people are more likely to experience the extremes of both happiness and unhappiness because of the complexity of engaging seemingly or actually contradictory facets.
From there, it was determined that while creativity was not a province of the complex, it is connected. Both are about viewing the world around them and making unlikely connections between things. Both inherently approach a state of discordance and it is in that place of tension that art is found. Consider most things that are made just for being the thing: tools, crafts, sandwiches- these are not art. Art is a statement, art is an action. For something to be an action there has to be a better/worse dichotomy. Tension. Unlikely connections. While these have the capacity to be wonderful connections (Neruda’s incredibly lush Cien Sonetos de Amor as one example) they also have the capacity to be troubling in much the same way that depression is awareness of the troubling connections possible.
Then, today, I see a link at The Poetry Hut News Blog to a CNN story: Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders.
The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.
“If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what’s happening to you and to the world — people who do that are at risk for depression,” he said.
…
Sensitivity to one’s surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.
Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings — colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don’t worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.
I’ve never suggested that I’m original, but if I’m thinking about these things and scientists are off studying them and I’m not aware of it, that means, to some extent, these are obvious things. But sometimes we neglect the obvious as intent as we become on some far-off or abstract goal. Then Dana tells us:
That is precisely the trick: to create poetry in the midst of the mess. To create poetry, you must enter the mess. Poets enter the mess of the world in ways most can’t or won’t.
As for sound mental health advice, that may be contrary to reality. If rumination and awareness are part of the problem, it may be better to avoid those things!
But is it worth it? Is it worth it to shut off that part of yourself, to voluntarily amputate some portion of your mind, reduce the facets of you? For some people, I’m sure, the answer is yes. But as artists,isn’t it pretty fundamental to who we are that we live in that world of mess and we make what sense of it we can. Some of us may only treading water, some of us may be leaping like dolphins and flying fish willfully going deep into the water to soar into the sky? And as for the sharks, well, they need to eat too, I suppose.
I’ll end this with two thoughts- Be aware that there is a line between creativity and madness and cross it if you want, but be aware of it.
Make it worth it! If you are going to be in the mess, if you are going to be making the connections to the world that no one else can make, make it worth it.
*Though I removed it, I also included genocide in this list originally, but I felt it changed the tone too much. Some people have sources of happiness that are harmful to others and civilization and pretending otherwise is false. To some extent everyone has those views, I think. But for most people they are incredibly minute and satisfied by reality television and celebrity tabloids.
**I had someone read this before I posted it to see if it made sense in the world outside my head, and the response I got was that it did make sense, but it was swimmy-feeling at the beginning. this is apropos of nothing.
