Why so miserable, Brilliant?

I know I’m not the first to ask this question. Unlike a smattering of brilliant minds that have bestowed this earth with the creations formed of their enviable imaginations, I will not present to you an original idea here.

The question stirred in me today, not for the first time, when I observed my sudden abundance of writing inspiration; the same inspiration that has been conspicuously absent up in Thoughts HQ of late (I won’t deny there has been talk around the water cooler).

But in the last forty-eight hours, I have been compelled to write, in way I have not for quite some time. As my two most recent blogs might attest, I haven’t been in the best of moods – and I wonder if that is why?

On reflection, my most lavish, and quality, production of words came at a time in my life when I was the most depressed; I could not write enough; poetry and lyrics were like therapy; like journaling. And, respectively, the periods I have concerned myself with being ‘unable’ to write anything; or wanting for inspiration, were times I have been happiest.

Commonly admired and immortalised creatives including Miles Davies, Jim Morrison, Vincent Van Gough, Virginia Woolf, and Kurt Cobain (to name but a few) are known for their erraticism and self-harm, as much as they are known for their art.

Mark Moldre observes Phil Spector’s public plight in ‘Troubled Genius’, and the movies about Johnny Cash, John Nash, and the rest are common fare. It is a long list.

I have worked with people whom are great as artists, but, frankly, arseholes as people. Some people wear their creativity like a heavy coat – pulling out the clichéd tortured artist card at every opportunity – and if they are actually good enough at what they do, most people forgive them. I’m far too much of a cynic for that. In my mind, they’re just arseholes; and no amount of art is an excuse to be an arsehole. Sorry.

Others, such as the aforementioned Ms Woolf, used art as way of expressing and processing the inner turmoil they were predisposed with. A certain amount of genetic imbalance might be credited for some of the most celebrated works we are lucky enough to share today; Swedish researcher, Fredrik Ullén, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm was quoted suggesting “Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box”. Well there’s a back-handed compliment for all you crazy genius’ out there!

So, why are the people who bring the most pleasure to the world, often the most miserable?

Whilst research on the relationship between creativity and mental illness shows a positive strong correlation, not every creative person need fear the label (just don’t be an arsehole), and I admit it is hard to control the ego in a world where celebrity is such a valuable currency; so people on the side-lines will allow people who do not have a genuine grievance with genetics or chemicals, to act the fool because “that’s what creatives do”. Fuck that. Pull your head in and be grateful you have a gift sans the burden of a mood disorder.

I am not aligning myself with these exceptional minds in any way – I have simply observed that my bad moods, generally mean good writing time. How does a creative person negotiate this? I think I made it pretty clear earlier that my patience for arseholes is minimal, so why would I strive to be one myself; and therefore, I would be amiss to pursue a path where I must ‘suffer for my art’. I don’t want to be a good, committed, prolific writer if the tradeoff is mental instability. Others might feel differently.

Tell me.