The fact is, the word “success” whether in life or post-life often ends up justifying a life itself. An ordinary person’s suicide is a tragic loss but an artist’s suicide is part of some cosmic genealogy that connects them to all the others who were “so misunderstood” in life but none of it really matters because “look what they left us with?” The only successful suicides belong to those that mattered somewhat before in life only to matter too much after. After all, genius can be excused anything. How we, the consumers of their art feel, is quite different. Our maladjustment still requires the salve of success to qualify it from “just being dramatic”. I’m not sure if it can simply be chalked up to a sense of kinship as that requires an equal kinship of genius, of poetry and overwhelming, bubbling art-enough to excuse your you-ness.
the difference painfully well. In my quotient of damage vs. artistic damages, I end up weighing far too heavily in the former column and far too lightly in the latter. I have often thought that these words might be the death of me, that not expressing them would kill me. But then I think, what if I did express them and they couldn’t stand up to the ones I need them to. It’s the worst form of purgatory, to be killed by words that aren’t even your own. It is impossible to determine what makes art great but suicide certainly makes one search for greatness in art. It’s almost as if we need to find some beauty to mitigate the tragedy or justify it or worse... encourage it. What then, is the fate of the rest of us morbid, escapist, lonely, fuck-ups, who lack the genius to justify ourselves? Do we produce art, regardless of consequences... or do we tailor it
There is some sad, solitary sort of honesty in the act of admitting defeat in the face of life. There are times after all, where one thinks, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with us to be able to live with ourselves and what we do to each other. Most of us don’t have that. And without it, we are just borderline nihilists perpetually playing around with the ideals of romance. I have always been haunted by the overwhelming realisation that I can’t write because I am all too aware of what great writing is. The pathological phobia of entering a pool so deep, so ephemerally immersed in immortal words and ideas always keeps one at the periphery looking in. The ability to recognise great art, is perhaps the most crippling barrier to being an artist oneself. Words flow from me sometimes... occasionally they are even good ones. I am not utterly oblivious to that fact, but they are never great and sadly, I know
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for consequences? And yet, this pathos is not synonymous with fantasy in any way. Most writers who delve into the dark tend not to steep themselves too deep in metaphor. They don’t summon dragons and ride unicorns as often as choosing to wage a much more dangerous battle. They wear their heart and their words on their sleeve, both literal and literary. These are artists who do not try to make sense out of nonsense or light out of their darkness, they wrap their darkness like a shroud. They live it and breathe it. French sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his 1897 book ‘Suicide’ termed the condition “anomie”. He described it as a state of “derangement and insatiable will. Of