Food for thought
A few weeks ago I watched 'Midnight in Paris' a Woody Allen film about an author who, like many of us, is nostalgic for 'something else'. In his case, it's nostalgia for the past, more specifically for the Jazz year in Paris... and why not!!! What an incredible time and place to live... discussions at Gertrude Stein's, philosophizing about life with Hemingway, listening to Cole Porter LIVE, sipping champagne with the Fitzgerald's...
However, upon closer inspection, yes the jazz years were filled with lavish parties (for the privileged few) and great artistic innovation.. BUT Hemingway, a heavy drinker his entire life, committed suicide; Cole Porter, although he lived in relative comfort, he spent his life having to hide his homosexuality; F. Scott Fitzgerald had constant money, marriage and drinking problems and died at the age of 44.... his wife Zelda was never happy with her life, she was constantly reinventing herself as an author, a song writer, a dancer was diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, she died at the age of 48 in a fire at the mental institution where she was being treated. Van Gogh... Beaudelaire....Flaubert.... Leonard Cohen.. the list of great artists with 'great' lives who were just depressed goes on and on.
It makes you wonder if depression and a general dissatisfaction of everything is the only way great art or creation can come about? Does happiness just not inspire?
In the end nothing is really what it seems, everything is just a gilded reality and maybe we should all be artists.
However, upon closer inspection, yes the jazz years were filled with lavish parties (for the privileged few) and great artistic innovation.. BUT Hemingway, a heavy drinker his entire life, committed suicide; Cole Porter, although he lived in relative comfort, he spent his life having to hide his homosexuality; F. Scott Fitzgerald had constant money, marriage and drinking problems and died at the age of 44.... his wife Zelda was never happy with her life, she was constantly reinventing herself as an author, a song writer, a dancer was diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, she died at the age of 48 in a fire at the mental institution where she was being treated. Van Gogh... Beaudelaire....Flaubert.... Leonard Cohen.. the list of great artists with 'great' lives who were just depressed goes on and on.
It makes you wonder if depression and a general dissatisfaction of everything is the only way great art or creation can come about? Does happiness just not inspire?
In the end nothing is really what it seems, everything is just a gilded reality and maybe we should all be artists.
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