The Curse of Creativity

On June 3rd, 1978, at age thirteen, a young girl named Amelia won her first major national writing contest. Prior to this, Amelia had already begun establishing herself as a young writing prodigy within her local and neighbouring communities. She had won several other, smaller, local writing contests, and her work was already touching on heavy concepts, dark emotions, and wisdom well beyond her years. Naturally, art, in this case, writing, as it tends to often be, was a way for Amelia to deal with her own beginning struggles around this time, to take her early depressed soaked thoughts and lay them out to dry on the page. 

Following the award ceremony of the event, Amelia would find herself being interviewed for the very first time. The interview was for a community access television show about local arts and culture. While being asked a handful of the obvious, cliché questions, the interviewer asked Amelia,

“So, what do you think the secret to your success is—to being such a good writer at such a young age?” Amelia quickly tried to think of the most professional and impressive sounding answer. Then she said, “I think the secret is passion. You really have to love what you’re doing to do it well. And I love writing. I’m always thinking about it and looking for that feeling it gives me.” 

On November 14th, 1981, at age sixteen, Amelia would find herself on her first network television show, appearing in a documentary short series about up-and-coming artists from around the world. Her segment was primarily an interview intercut with B-roll, covering her background, her inspirations, the extremely dark, bleak nature of her work, her struggles with depression, and so forth. At some point, the interviewer asked,

“What would you say to other young, aspiring artists and writers looking to follow in your footsteps? In your mind, what do you think the secret is to make good art?” Amelia quickly thought to herself. Then she said, 

“I mean, I think it’s sort of different for everyone, of course, but generally, I think the secret for me is honesty. Not just honesty with others, but more importantly, yourself. It’s confronting your own weaknesses, your fears, your psychoses, your confusions, the things that make you beautiful just as much as the things that make you vile and horrible.” 

On September 28th, 1983, at eighteen years old, after being noticed by an executive editor for a top-tier literary magazine, Amelia was contacted and featured as part of their emerging writers’ issue. An entire, multipage article was written about her as it chronicled her recent travels, her work, her personal views on writing, and so forth. The general tone of the article was how well Amelia’s work seemed to hit and mirror the alienated, nihilistic sensibilities of the modern person—how each new piece she put out, be it a poem, essay, short story, or book, was seemingly pushing the limits of acceptable themes and ideas, delving into exceptionally difficult areas of the human psyche, and rendering disturbing and sad parts of life into something somehow beautiful and worthwhile. The last full spread of the article was an interview between Amelia and an editor of the magazine. One of the questions in particular read, 

“A lot of artists and writers have different routines or sources of inspiration to get them in the right mindset to work. Do you have any practices or songs or anything that helps you? Are there any tricks or secrets to making the work you do?”

Amelia’s answer read, “No, not really. I just like to be sad when I work. I pretty much need to be. But that’s pretty easy considering I’m almost always sad.” The follow-up question read, “What’s your take on the tortured artist?  

Would you say things like sadness, pain, and suffering are important for a writer or artist?” 

“Yes.” Amelia’s one-word answer read. “Essential?” the next follow up question read. “No, not essential. It’s not like it’s depression or angst itself that makes art good, but I think, in my opinion, the greatest work is always just what strives for truth. And in so far as I can tell, the truth is pretty sad and painful. So I’d say those two eventually meet in some way or another.” 

On June 12th, 1989, after her third official novel released to almost immediate, massive, worldwide acclaim, as part of her press tour, Amelia found herself on her first late-night talk show, appearing as a guest on one of the most popular, major network talk shows of the time. During the interview, after the host did his little comedic banter back and forth, near the end, he asked Amelia in the sort of hacky talk show way,  

“It seems like most people want to be a famous artist or writer at some point in their life, but of course, just about no one ever actually becomes one. If you could go back in time and tell someone like yourself, what have you learned throughout this process? What’s the secret?”  

Amelia laughed a little and then responded, “I don’t know. I sort of hate to play into this type of stuff. But I don’t know, I think it’s at least some degree of dysfunctionality. You have to be  dysfunctional to do this kind of stuff—to just sit in a room alone all the time and stare at a blank page and think, ‘Yeah, I have something important to say here.’ To live that way, in this kind of chaotic, unpredictable lifestyle, it requires a certain kind of discontent or dysfunction. I’m not a particularly happy person if you haven’t noticed in my work.”

The crowd laughed a little.  

“But it’s not that I’ve become unhappy because of my work. My work is a symptom, not the source. Or maybe even better, a treatment. And so, in truth, I credit a lot of my work to my depression and insomnia. I often find myself staying up all night just thinking about how miserable things are. And then, hopefully, by morning, there’s something on the page. And that seems to work enough for me to make a living out of the whole thing. So yeah, personally, I do think the secret is probably some heightened degree of torment or dysfunction, or whatever else you want to call it.”  

“Have you ever just tried therapy?” the host responded with a sort of joking, underhanded tone.  

The audience laughed again. “Yes, actually, I have,” Amelia responded. “And how did it go?” the host replied.

“Well, pretty much right up front, I asked the therapist if the process might affect my creativity. And she said, ‘I have to be honest, it could.’ So, I shook her hand, said thank you, and never went back.”

“So, you like being dysfunctional?” the host went on with.

“I don’t know if I like it,” Amelia responded, “but I don’t know if I want to fix myself if I’m working well.” 

Over the following years, Amelia’s career would continue to elevate. She would become known by just about anyone who knew anyone in the world of art and mainstream culture; a feat very few writers ever have or will achieve. Throughout this time, though, Amelia would find herself frequently dipping more and more into the depths of her depression. But as her depression seemed to increase, her work seemed to only get better and better. Not wanting to re-try therapy or go on any mind-altering medications that might affect her creativity and work, but eventually coming to terms with the fact that she needed to do something to become at least somewhat more bearable, she hired a leading health coach to help her eat and live a slightly healthier life. 

During her first appointment, the health coach asked Amelia some general questions about her diet. Amelia told her what she generally ate on an average day. She said she normally had things like cereal with milk, smoothies, or eggs with cheese for breakfast; things like ham and cheese sandwiches, French onion soup, or salads with blue cheese dressing for lunch; stuff like Lasagna, mac and cheese, burrito bowls, quesadillas, turkey wraps, veggie wraps, or pizza, for dinner; and sometimes ended the night with some fruit or nachos or ice cream as a late-night snack.  

“So, dairy and cheese almost all day and all night?” the health coach asked. “Yeah… I guess so.” Amelia responded with a hesitant uncertainty, having never really thought about it before.  

“And how long would you say you’ve been eating like this?” the health coach asked.  

“Umm, I suppose as long as I can remember...” Amelia answered. 

A week or so later, it would be discovered that Amelia had an extremely high sensitivity to Casein, a slow digesting protein found in dairy products, especially cheese. This same protein also happened to be known to cause and worsen psychiatric conditions, like schizophrenia and depression. Amelia was most likely born with a low tolerance to Casein which also likely increased this effect. And she ate tons of it her whole life. Amelia was instructed to simply reduce her cheese consumption to near zero, which she agreed to do. It was just cheese, after all. 

On March 15th, 2004, Amelia was in her first interview after having not been interviewed for nearly eight years. It was a Public Broadcasting Service interview about her career,  why her work suddenly changed, where she went, and her anticipated comeback that was being rumored.  Eventually, after some skilful, but respectful coaxing by the interviewer,  Amelia explained what had happened. She told him about her dietary condition, and how once she changed her diet, she quickly began to feel the best she had ever felt in her life. She suddenly felt like her brain had been cleaned out of all the sludge and rust inside the folds. She still thought about the same things from the same relative vantage point, but her thoughts seemed to affect her differently (less) like the weight had been partly emptied out of them. And once they stopped bearing down on her so much, they didn’t compel her to fight back or flail so much.

“And so, I didn’t really feel inspired to write about you know dark or serious things anymore. I just felt like writing about nicer, more light-hearted stuff. But, honestly, that got pretty boring pretty quick, and then I just didn’t really feel like writing much at all.” Amelia explained.

“And after having received so many bad reviews and degrading media coverage regarding my newer work, and after my fans disliked how sharply my stuff changed, I just stopped trying to force myself to release anything new.”

“And so, that’s when you quit?” the interviewer clarified.

“Yeah, sort of. I mean I still wrote, but nothing serious. Nothing to put out.” Amelia responded.

“So, what you’re saying is, sometimes the secret to good art is cheese?” the interviewer said in a joking but still somewhat respectful tone. Amelia laughed, but not because she thought it was that funny.

“So, I guess my next question would have to be,” the interviewer went on with, “are you eating cheese again? What’s worth more to you? The success of your work or the more pleasant state of mind?”

And now, my obvious question to you... :)

What's worth more to you?