Does Art Depend on our Suffering?

By David


One night, when I was drunk, I met this artist.

“About a few thousand years ago,” this artist told me, “I met this like, really influential businessman. This businessman, this businessman pointed at the world around us and said, ‘Know what? I can get rid of all the suffering in the world for you. But in doing so, nobody in this world will be allowed to create anything even remotely artistic. You won’t be allowed to have books, you won’t be able to make your pretty little drawings, you won’t be able to sing. But, don’t ask me how, you’re going to be content with the world. Forever.’ The influential businessman, this big intimidating motherfucker of a guy with this funny Hollywood gangster accent, he grabbed my wrist with one hand and pointed at me with the other and said, ‘so you got two choices: art, or eternal happiness. What're you gonna pick?’” The artist, looking at me sarcastically, concluded his story with: “I had a minute to decide, so I chose art. So now, you’re drunk and I’m in debt.”

Gogh. Plath. Hemingway. Elliot Smith! There are (were) a lot of sad, creative people out there.  Would the lives and works of artists such as Van Gogh have been a lot more different if they’d lived a little easier? We create enormous buildings for the sole purpose of hosting paintings and statues. People go inside them, staring at the paintings, staring at the statues, and they think. They think and they think and they think. They may be thinking about the work they’re looking at, they may not; but that doesn’t matter: the important and the confusing part about this all is that such buildings even exist. We need for them to exist; they need to be there for us to function. Why must we paint stars in the night? Why must we plaster “Change” on every wall? Why must we dance to more than one song?

A close friend of mine couldn’t move on from her ex-boyfriend. She was so crushed she decided to start writing poetry. Intense, nipple numbing poetry. She wrote so much poetry she decided to dedicate an entire website to her poetry. After some time, she met a new man. He smiled at her, and her poems stopped for good.

Waltz #2, by Elliot Smith: 

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