The Trials Of Being An Artist

The thing about being a creative person is that sometimes it's very easy to get lost and caught up in your own art. This particularly comes to mind in light of the recent death of Heath Ledger. Though it's yet undetermined as to why he passed away, interviews from the last few weeks describe the insomnia and inner turmoil that came from playing the twisted, dark role of the Joker. He discusses how getting in to the mind of such a twisted, homicidal, ruthless killer was highly disturbing to him and ended up plaguing his mind and preventing him from being able to sleep. He spent several weeks living alone in a New York city hotel room in order to get in the role, using such influences as the eventually-demented Sid Vicious to get into the character. It was a difficult and challenging role to play. Whether or not this factored into his early death, it's difficult to say.

And then somehow this reminded me of an interview with Sting, the vocalist behind The Police. In his earlier years, he tried his hand at acting, and landed himself with mostly evil characters. (I was interested to discover, also, that he was the inspiration behind one of my favorite comic book characters, John Constantine.) In his Behind the Music, he discussed the fact that he played so many sinister characters that he eventually started to think of himself as the antichrist. His own acting, the roles that he was hired to play, crept into his head and began to alter the very way he perceived himself. It's hard, now, so many years later, to think of Sting as evil - much less the antichrist. But sometimes, that's what art does to you.

And then that makes me think of painters, and musicians, and writers, and how so many of them are driven to insanity or have a very distorted perception of the world. People like Vincent Van Gogh, who cut off his own ear, or Kurt Cobain, who took his own life. I think putting yourself into your own art and your own creations can cause you to lose yourself in it...for better, or often, for worse. The art that you create is a part of you, and it consumes you...particularly if you've driven yourself to sing, paint, or write about the more dark aspects of living.

It makes me wonder about my own art...my writing, in particular. Depression, clinically, runs deep in my family, and there was a time when I was younger and more vulnerable that I could definitely feel that. I remember, during those years, that my characters became more real to me than the people around me were. They seemed alive, with their own personalities and distinct characteristics, and writing them wasn't really like coming up with anything new...I was just recording what logically they would say, do, or how they would act. The characters that I, myself, had breathed into life had crept inside of my mind. Taken resident and consumed me. Had my story been one of tragedy, I could see how that would have begun to impact my moods and my behavior. Perhaps I would have started to see the world as a dark and tragic place, and likewise been affected.

And even now, whatever I am working on seems to mold my perceptions. I have more recently been focusing on short stories, so the effect is less drastic, but I can feel it none the less. While writing a tragic tale of love and loss ("Storytelling") I can almost feel the heartache and hopelessness of my hero. I am elated by the triumph of my victors ("The Toymaker") and depressed by the pain of my tragic characters ("The Saddest Tree"). It impacts how I see and feel about the world, in small, easy to handle doses. I imagine that upon writing something of great length, as I eventually intend to do, the effect will be more drastic.

It is so easy to lose yourself in art. So easy to let what you create crawl under your skin and take hold. Perhaps that is what makes a great artist...one who gives themselves, as a devotion, completely to their trade. That offers themselves to the paint and canvas, the words upon a page, the lyrics in a song or their portrayal of a character, like a candlelight vigil to a God.

Still, those who wish to be artists must be aware that art should be handled with care.