Essay: "The Stupidest Myth in the World"

The death of Amy Winehouse  made headlines, but it didn't exactly sweep the social media landscape the way other, seemingly more trivial events, have done recently.  Whether you liked her style of music or not, Winehouse was exceptionally talented.  Her voice was unmistakable, of course, but her songs were very well put together too, and had an intense raw honesty that you don't see very much in popular music.

I think part of the reason Winehouse's death didn't cause more of a stir is that her last album came out in 2006, five years ago now.  That's a long time in the world of entertainment.  And we all know what caused that big delay: her struggle with mental illness and substance abuse.

Seems simple enough, right?  Well, it's not.  Because the example laid down by Winehouse, and countless artists before her, can do nothing to dent what I think of as the Stupidest Myth in the World.  Namely, that there is some sort of causal link between drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, and artistic genius.

The first time I heard someone demolish this myth was in a small class in first year university.  The course was "Forms of Fantasy" and we somehow got on the topic of artistic genius, and someone mentioned that artists "needed" their drugs to be creative.  And then a young man shot up his hand and said that was stupid.  He pointed out that Jimi Hendrix (also killed by drugs at the age of 27) never did any good creative work when he was high.  When he was relatively sober, in his relatively younger days, he wrote all the music for which he is so justly famous.  When he strung out with drugs, he played long solos that didn't go anywhere and mostly sat around and did nothing.

If you don't believe me, try it out yourself.  Drink a bottle of Jim Beam before you show up for your job in the morning.  Is your performance better or worse than usual? Then ask yourself: why should an artist be any different than I am?

Another way to test this theory: get totally high, and then write down a bunch of ideas that seem really profound to you.  The next day, look at what you wrote, and tell me whether you still think you unlocked all the secrets to the universe.

People make similar claims about mental illness.  I remember when I was in another course at university, and an elderly and irritating member of our class said that she thought William Blake, the artist and poet, was like the protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, a genius, but totally insane.  My proferssor, who was a mild-mannered guy, got pretty irritated.  He poitned out that people who are actually insane have ideas that are quite boring, repetitive, and hard to understand.  They're like the people who scribbled densely worded manifestos on sandwich boards (or statements of claim they draft themselves).  Their ideas just don't make any sense.  It doesn't  blow your mind, it makes your head hurt.

There is in fact no link between substance abuse, mental illness, and artistic genius.  How could there be?  Sure, artists run a higher chance of having these problems than the general popularion.  But so do lawyers and no one says they need to be drunk in order to do a good job.

The troubling thing about this myth is that it prevents people from seeking treatment.  Stephen King, for instance, was convinced that if he stopped drinking he wouldn't be able to write.  He decided to do it anyway, so he could see his kids grow up.  And what do you know?  It had no affect on him creatively at all.

And, to use a different example, the Penny Arcade guys are both on anti-anxiety drugs.  They worried that it would affect their ability to be funny, that their anxiety was a part of who they were as people.  Eventually they did it for their children, just as King did, and found, just as King did, that they didn't need to be miserable all the time to be an artist.

None of this answers the question of where artists do get their ideas.  Of course, it doesn't have to.  Once we've established it's not drugs, we don't have to set up an alternate theory in its place. And I don't think there's any more mystery over where artists get their creative ideas than, say, creative business people

My own personal theory is that getting an idea is like making a serving of cotton candy.  You start with an source of inspiration - maybe from a conversation, a news story, or another artist's work.  That's the stick.  Then you roll the inspiration around in yoru brain (which is like swishing the stick around in the cotton candy machine) and you pick up flecks of stuff, from  your memories, from things you've read, the philosophies and ideas that shape you.  Eventually, by just turning this idea around in your brain, you end up with a finished product.

But that's just one theory.  I can however, say that I know where ideas don't come from - and that's the bottom of a bottle.