I’ve been thinking lately (and just three words and one colloquial contraction, in I’ve already made the fallaciously presumptuous assumption that you give a damn what goes on in my head) about the utility of unhappiness, the creative power of pain. Look at all great artists throughout history, any individual responsible for any really moving or momentous piece of art be it in literature, music or another medium, and invariably these people possess a tremendous amount of inner anguish or drug or alcohol problems that seems bound up with their artistry. It must be bound up with it; it seems far too ubiquitous a feature of creative geniuses throughout history to chalk it up to mere coincidence that so many of them have such internal strife, that so many of them have such a pronounced dark side of their psyches. Inner pain or drug or alcohol addiction seems a necessary feature of impressive artistic ability; creative genius appears to be a sort of double-edged sword.

Look at the lives of some of the great American authors. Virginia Woolf killed herself. William Faulkner drank his ass off. Ernest Hemingway drank his ass off and then killed himself. Jack Kerouac killed himself by drinking his ass off.

Look at great comedians throughout history. Reading George Carlin’s recent autobiography reveals that he had his fare share of struggles with the bottle, and Richard Pryor got high enough freebasing cocaine and drunk enough on 151-proof rum that he literally lit himself on fire.
John Belushi, the cherubic, fun-loving clown best known for his work on Saturday Night Live in the ‘70s and for playing the role of “Bluto” in Animal House, syringed a speedball into his arm and died in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood after a fast-paced, short-lived life of astounding drug abuse.

Conversely, look at Dan Brown. The man makes an ungodly amount of money off of his book sales and the accompanying film adaptations, but nobody makes the argument that Brown puts out good literature. His works might be entertainment, but they certainly don’t count as art, and I’m saying this, I feel, with as little English-major snobbery as possible. Nobody talks about the beauty of Brown’s prose. And I’m sure Brown is as happy as a clam.

Just look at the image of him on his Wikipedia page. Look at that confident combover, that black turtleneck, the tan power blazer and that prominent cleft chin. I haven’t seen a more content-looking man in years. Look at the look on his face. That’s the look of a man who attended Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, then played squash and was a frat brother at Amherst, then went on to churn out a series of mediocre-at-best books that became international bestsellers. You’re right, astute reader, I don’t fully know Brown’s internal state. Maybe he too is deeply troubled like these other authors I’ve mentioned. But then his Wikipedia page informs us that after leaving Amherst, Brown briefly pursued a musical career, releasing a self-produced cassette of children’s music on which he played synthesizer called SynthAnimals, featuring song titles like “Happy Frogs” and “Suzuki Elephants.” Yes, nothing quite says “gifted but troubled” like a song called “Happy Frogs.”

So what’s my point? I guess my point is that pain seems to have a purpose. Happiness never leads to fantastic art, pain does. Nobody feels fuelled by contentment to produce great, groundbreaking art. Great artists and performers have an innate ability to synthesize (sorry to recall Brown’s no doubt atrocious children’s album) their pain into something that resonates with the people who consume or view their work, something that resonates with the pain of their audience and provides a means of expressing and articulating what the people themselves feel. Unfortunately, with this innate ability to channel one’s pain into creative outlets seems to come large quantities of pain for the artist.

So what does that say for young aspiring writers and artists out there? Well, it says that if they are at all serious about their chosen craft they had better start developing some serious emotional, psychological or substance abuse problems if they don’t already have them. Should they be worried if they don’t feel quite troubled enough? If they have some days of unmitigated happiness, should they be concerned that their artistic goals might be in jeopardy? Should hopeful young painters maybe start thinking about cutting off part of their left earlobes in a brothel if they have a few too many days of consecutive happiness?

To all the above, I answer with a resounding “yes.” If you’re not in pain, you had better get cracking on that. Affecting a troubled disposition heightens other people’s perceptions of your artistic and creative abilities tenfold.

Let’s do a quick thought experiment to illustrate my point. Picture me sitting here writing this article drinking chocolate milk and typing fastidiously away on a MacBook Pro in the library, pushing the Scotch tape-guarded bridge of my glasses back up on my oily nose whenever my spectacles begin to slide down. Now picture me sitting here with a tumbler brimming with Jim Beam beside me, hammering away on a Royal typewriter with a lit cigar clenched savagely between my teeth, a rail of cocaine lined up on the space bar and a loaded gun lying out on the table.

It’s subtle what I’ve done here, but I’m sure you can see the difference between the two scenes, and can also see how much credence the latter imagery lends to my artistic abilities as opposed to the former. My point is: how will people ever take you seriously as an author unless you’re found lying on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, rendered delirious by a combination of epilepsy, rabies and alcohol like Edgar Allan Poe? If you want to write like Poe, you had damn sure learn how to party like him. If being profoundly troubled isn’t your cup of tea, put down the opium pipe, go get a combover and join Dan Brown in writing Hardy Boys books for grown ups. I’m sure he’d be happy to have you.