the winter mind

For some artists, depression appears to be the most intimate muse, it seems. Once treated for the symptoms, the drive to create (let's say write) leaves with the muse for those darker shores elsewhere. This is not the case for all creative people struck by depression, of course. There are those who are freed of the demons and go on to find a new muse, perhaps not one that delivers the same seductive words or images, but just as willing to spur creativity in other -- and perhaps less obvious -- ways. 

I was thinking about these matters lately and went hunting through my library for books I used to collect on the topic of depression and the experiences of creative people. So this is how I came to this passage on writer's block and brain state from Alice Flaherty's The Midnight Disease:

Other writers argue that depression is not necessary for creativity directly, but is an inevitable side effect of the mechanism that produces elated, creative states. As Rilke said, when it was suggested that he be psychoanalyzed, "If I lose my demons, I will lose my angels as well." Several more recent writers have described how their desire to write disappeared as their depression lifted, but blame the antidepressant -- not the loss of their depression -- for their decreased creativity. Lauren Slater depicts such a state a year after starting Prozac:

It's been almost a year now since I've completed a short story or a poem, I who always thought of myself as a writer, all tortured and intense. I can just manage this journal. So maybe I am not a writer anymore. Maybe Prozac has made me into a nun, or a nurse, or worse, a Calgon Lady. Why can't I manage a simple story? Why is my voice -- all my voices -- so lost to me?

Every morning before work, I come to the blank page and look at it. It looks like winter. It is February in my mind. I think of the things people have said about the blank page, all the images. Sheet of snow. Anesthetized skin. To those images I add my own: the white of Prozac powder, spread thin.

The biochemistry of this side effect, if it is real, is unknown. One possibility is that it occurs through mood flattening. Some antidepressants, at least in some people, seem to not only decrease their low moods but diminish their excited or high moods. Without their highs, patients may find they have less desire to write. This occurrence can be misinterpreted as more depression breaking through the antidepressant -- sometimes causing the physician to increase the dose, which only worsens the symptoms. [Emphasis mine]

I have this sneaking suspicion that antidepressants may not be the only muse-repellents for some artists. A dedicated spiritual practice, such as meditation, may well bring on the same mood flattening effect for them.

And yes, like Lauren Slater, I have been staring at sheets of snow -- though not of Prozac. I am no longer writing poetry -- it has been nearly two years since I wrote a poem. However, I do not mourn the loss. My poetry muse and I had an amicable split, something we have done on and off throughout my life, as I moved from place to place and "space" (or phase) to "space" in my life so many times before. 

I've never been monogamous when it came to my form of communication -- how could I be, being a polymath in the first place? In fact, I have even tried music and painting and photography, not to mention fiber arts.... Still, at first I was at a loss without poetry, only to realize later that though my intensity of focus has shifted down, the area it now covered has widened.

This confessional may well show that when it comes to art, in whatever form, I am an eternal amateur and dilettante. Be that as it may, when it comes to packing and carrying the baggage along the journey through it all, I am as hardy and seasoned as any veteran profesisonal!