Linda Lee Greene in the heart of Ohio, USA, March 21, 2015
“The poet Rilke
was afraid that if he got rid of his demons, he would lose his angels as well.
Of course the danger of clinging to our demons to save our angels is that our
demons may well take over.”[1]
Boy,
do I relate to that statement. I bet a gang of you do too. My demons
began to take over when I was the tender age of sixteen and developed a
hyperactive thyroid, wrongly diagnosed at the time, and under-treated for many
years thereafter. During those most important years of marriage and
childbearing, when, if one can possibly arrange it, it’s a good idea to be at
ones best and on top of ones game, too much of the time, I seesawed between depression
and anxiety, in my case, depression manifesting as feelings of dissatisfaction,
and anxiety as restlessness and a sense of uninterrupted urgency. Believe me, I
get the angst of victims of mental disorders.
My
children grown and on their own, I ventured into New Age Practices, gave
Buddhism a look, tried Yoga, joined a church, read enough spiritual tomes to
fill the library of Congress, hunted for a better me in the eyes of lovers who
hadn’t a clue (I was divorced by then), all in an effort to just feel better. I
finally got diagnosed, the lights came on in my brain, and the mood swings
began to level out (but not completely). As a result, I have a life-long
dependency on Synthroid, a thyroid replacement hormone, which most of the
time, keeps me just level enough that I don’t tip over into total insanity
again. Now and then, though, the mood swings get out of control, which requires
an adjustment in the dosage of the Synthroid.
During
my famine years, and before I knew there was a bona fide organic disorder
responsible for my troubles (in large part, at least), I gave various antidepressants
a whirl—or more precisely, I contemplated giving them a whirl. The truth is, I
got prescriptions for them filled, took them for a few days, and then never
touched them again. I was afraid of them! Like Rilke, I was afraid they would
kill my creativity, my spark. I was afraid I’d descend, if not into the
blackness of full-blown depression/anxiety, but into the gray gloom of a medicated
zombie state. I bet a slew of you have also experienced that same fear.
“Blake,
Byron, Tennyson, Woolf, Poe, Plath, Kierkegaard, Pound, Hemingway, Van Gogh,
Tennessee Williams[2],
Stephen King, Robin Williams, to name a few in an endless accounting of artist-sufferers
of depression/anxiety, some of whom are among the eighteen percent of creative
people who have committed, or are more prone to commit, suicide than depressed
people in the general population. Other mental disorders among artistic people present
similar terrifying statics.
In
tandem with my faulty thyroid messing with my moods, the fact that I’m
primarily a right-brained individual—an author of fiction, an artist, and an
interior designer, also presents tremendous “real-world” challenges for me.
When a fire is burning in my right brain, and its light-filled, stress-free, happy,
and filled with understanding people hovering steadfastly in the periphery of
my existence, encouraging me, supporting my efforts, giving me space and time
and freedom to do my thing, life is good for me. But once the project is
finished—the book is published, the artwork is hanging on the gallery walls, the
rooms are arranged and decorated down to the last knickknack, my Muse retires
to her cave; she pulls its blackout curtain across its door, and wants only solitude
and nothing to do with the other side of all her efforts, namely the business
associated with them.
That’s
where I am now! The cool, silent, seclusion of that cave is calling to me—beckoning
me. And do you know why? It’s because the reissue of my novel GUARDIANS AND
OTHER ANGELS (http://goo.gl/imUwKO) in ebook
is available for purchase again. The email from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
came through to me yesterday informing me that it is up and running. I had to
do a reissue because the original publisher went out of business, rendering the
novel no longer available. I will publish a paperback version at a later date. One
consequence is that I lost all of the reviews (all of them 5 star reviews) the
first edition accumulated. In essence, I have to begin a whole new marketing
campaign for it…and since that’s a left-brained activity in which I dislike
hanging out, depression and anxiety are back in full force again.
How
about you? Where do you stand on this subject of depression and/or anxiety vs
creativity? If you are a seamstress, scrapbooker, photographer, furniture refinisher, cook, gardener, artist, musician, writer, composer, singer...whatever your creative outlet, do your creative efforts get waylaid by depression or anxiety? This is your forum to talk about it. Talking helps!
Linda’s novel Jesus Gandhi Oma
Mae Adams, co-authored with Debra Shiveley Welch, is at http://amzn.to/VazHFG
Linda’s artwork
is on view online at www.gallery-llgreene.com
Linda’s Twitter
handle is @LLGreeneAuthor.
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