Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 08:03:08 -0800
Subject: Re: What's wrong with mainstream sensibilities?
From: Michael Moretti <moretti-AT-mac.com>


William James covered this ground in his Varieties of Religious Experience
(1901-1902):

"Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been
subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been
creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant
inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have
known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently
they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all
sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often,
moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give
them their religious authority and influence."

Instead of looking to suffering (or joy) as the cause of artistic genius,
perhaps it would be more useful to consider that creative genius is a
capacity common to those who might experience a more profound suffering (or
joy) than others, both in day to day life or under extraordinary
circumstances. The experience of suffering (or joy) cannot be a cause as it
follows and transcends the thing that is experienced. I find it more
revealing to see experience as flavoring creativity. That an artist is
emotionally disfigured and might manifest itself in the artist's work seems
natural to me.

Michael Moretti
Napa Valley, CA

1/3/01 7:50 AM, hugh bone at hbone-AT-optonline.net wrote:

> The "God-how-I've suffered pose" isn't limited to artists.
> 
> One never feels another's pain...or joy.  All of us are different,
> and often fail in efforts to communicate thoughts and feelings to
> those we know best and care for most.
> 
> The well-to-do see great benefits of suffering as long as it' happens to
> someone else.  The homeless, addicted, imprisoned, for example, or artists.
> Builds character and strength useful if they survive.
> 
> It is the business of priests, and rabbis and ministers to console the
> dying and the loved ones who watch them die, and who can fault such help
> 
>> In a message dated 1/3/01 1:51:19 AM, kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca
> writes:
>> 
>> << I've heard too many times that "If I didn't write, paint,
>> create... I would go mad, or die." Aside from being rather cliche, almost
>> embarrassingly so, isn't this a problem? >>
>> 
>> Yes, yes a gross cliche, and when someone says this I definitely take
>> intonation into account along with the various motives possible for saying
>> it, i.e. getting laid. BUT! Let's assume for a second that it is not said
> but
>> rather implied, and that it is a sentiment that the subject takes to be
>> certain, then the answer to the question as to whether or not this is a
>> problem would have to be no. In fact it would seem that the someone who
> felt
>> this was rather healthy in recognizing what helps as a palliative for
>> despair. I'm with the radchick on this one. You mentioned Kant (and how
> many
>> intro to philo students have had to suffer because of this man) and Will
>> Smith as a pair of artist not reputed to be great sufferers. For those who
>> did suffer how about Nietzsche, Proust, van Gogh, Plath, Althusser, Vigo,
>> Dostoyevsky, Alice walker, Godard, Pollack, Krasner, Schwartzkogler,
>> Beethoven, Benjamin, Ferrara, Pasolini, Goines, Nizan, Babel, Witkiewicz,
>> Burroughs, Hamsun (Hamsun's Wife), Charlie Parker, Lispector, Frankl, De
>> Quincey, Bruno Schulz, to name only the apex of the tip of a gigantic
> iceberg
>> of artists who suffered and who have provided consolation for many.
>> Cronenberg said in an interview:  When you're feeling despairing or
> suicidal,
>> or feel like your dying, you don't want to see a movie like Mrs.
> Doubtfire. A
>> film like Crash, Dead Ringers, or Naked Lunch will console you because
>> they're dealing with this stuff. Mrs. Doubtfire will kill you.
>> I do agree that suffering should not be an imparative to create, and I
> know
>> that there is a list of many artists that did not recount an unduly amount
> of
>> suffering in their life, but in this age when we still catch a glimpse of
>> despair we should cherish it, as it is an idication that the full
>> transformation of the human being into a vacuous echo machine has not
>> entirely occured. And then I suppose really what we need to do is figure
> out
>> what the hell suffering means before we go too much further.
>> Top 3 of 2000:
>> Battle of Chile re-release at Walter Reade
>> Origins of the 21st Century
>> New Print of Phantom of Liberty
>> I honestly did not see one American release that was worth a fraction of
> the
>> money it took to make it.
>> Paul
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
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