Artists are sad. Artists are crazy. Artists are alcoholics and addicts. Most importantly: misery generates art.
This is what we, as creatives, believe about ourselves. After all, we know that art should "Comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." Creatives generally identify with feeling strange and out of place. Perhaps it's because the drive to create robs its owner of his or her ability to take the world at face value. In order to render something accurately (be it in words, on film, or on canvas), the artist must uncover the good and the bad, distinguish the genuine from the facade, and proceed to communicate these things unabashedly to his or her audience. The artist rebels by addressing what no one else wishes to address.
And yet, I cannot help but wonder if the darkness associated with art has become so commonplace, if artists have done such a thorough job of revealing it, that perhaps such work is no longer a rebellion at all. If misery generates art, and miserable art sells, then maybe we, as creatives, have fallen into a trap. Maybe we are mass-producing misery for an audience that is numb to it; we are driven to ever further lengths in order to prove that we are the most creative, the most tormented of them all. We are no longer disturbing the comfortable (who are far too comfortable with our dark revelations) or even comforting the disturbed (we are the disturbed, and must remain so in order to maintain our artistic status).
Perhaps, at this point, the revelation the world needs from artists and that we need from ourselves no longer lies in misery. Misery is everywhere. One need only turn on the television to be bombarded by scandal, corruption, epidemic, and addiction. So what is our purpose now? What do we have left to uncover in a society that glories in and romanticizes the most unpleasant parts of itself?
Maybe we should dare to examine the things we're not allowed to talk about: happiness, beauty, kindness, redemption. Choose optimism in the face of overwhelming opposition. We've been told that happiness is juvenile, that in order to mature as individuals and as artists we must become bitter and scarred. Perhaps, instead, we should rebel by offering redemption, by creating a world that acknowledges the beauty we've obscured with grit. Perhaps we should write stories that offer the opportunity for healthy relationships, for happy families, for hope.
Of course, for some people, art functions in a purely therapeutic sense, and one does not wish to imply that such work does not have intrinsic value. The idea, however, that creatives must suffer for their art, that those who struggle with mental health must refuse help in order to preserve their skill as artists, is a truly damaging concept. In the end, it's important to remember that the psychological state that generates art does not determine the quality of the work.
