“For each ecstatic instant, we must an anguish pay…”

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“For each ecstatic instant, we must an anguish pay…”

by DRM

For each ecstatic instant

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

–Emily Dickinson

Sit someday and watch the lightning crack over a deep swamp. The flat water, seeping along the silty bottom, wipers to tin, turgidity turning to viscosity; the dogged swamp tufts and shallow-rooted trees become spectral in the sudden flashes of light.

That is our brain: the swamp waters are the spinal fluids that pulse through our ventricles, the lightning the electric shocks that course through the neurons and synapses, the organic swamp matter our cortexes, fed and warmed by the close, fetid liquids.

When you create, you set off a grand storm in your brain. You light the swamp up with electricity, churn up the waters, push winds against the loosely-set roots, yank at the entangled grasses and dirts and bushes.

The swamp is afire.

Science can see it. Brain scans show that electrical disturbances intensify along the ventricles in patients with psychiatric disorders and in artists.

Artists can tell of it, in abstract and awed tones, the transformation that comes when they are captured in their work. It is the nourishment and the starvation of the creative soul.

Published: August 6, 2010

Filed Under: art, creativity, ideas, science & data, urgency

Tags: Bipolar disorder : Central nervous system : Cerebrum : creativity : depression : Emily Dickinson : Emily Dickinson Sit : Neuroanatomy : swamp : Ventricular system : writing

http://www.drmstream.com/ drm

Your interpretation was invited by the text; I wasn’t explicit and the way that the line was worded suggested that I was saying artists had to suffer mental illness. I don’t believe that — although I do think some people will use a creative spirit to justify ill behavior.
http://twitter.com/SoulFireMage SoulFireMage

I do know that a series of small, negative events is the easiest way I know to get a bit down. So I can see the sense of that posit.

Perhaps I interpreted what you said wrong. Didn’t like the idea that folks who are creative are likely to be disturbed etc.
http://twitter.com/Holly59 Holly Friesen

What a beautiful description and comparison of the swamp and the brain. When fully immersed in the process of painting, there is a point where I surrender completely and feel as though I am a wild wolf galloping across a field of wild grasses…I am transported and transformed. This is a difficult state to articulate, very nonverbal, visceral and intense. My body feels charged and energized but I often find it a struggle to return and resume “normal” activities. It truly feels as though I have gone a “little trip”.
http://www.drmstream.com/ drm

That’s a good point. Funny, I don’t mean to suggest that this is always debilitating. I personally don’t feel tortured or unstable, nor do I desire to be, and I think I am reasonably creative. But I know that there’s a change I experience — a physical and emotional and psychic change — when I immerse myself in the creative process. I love it and crave it. And I’m fascinated by what must be causing it. And, I’m struck that it is similar to the magnetic resonance images of mental disturbance.

But that doesn’t mean you are mentally disturbed, because you can take the brains of people who exhibit “normal” behavior and find some of the same patterns. In fact, scientists posit that mental disorders are the byproduct of incremental and iterative stresses that the brain is subjected to at a very young age, as the mentally disturbed are pushed off the rails by a sequence of events.
http://twitter.com/SoulFireMage SoulFireMage

Very nice.

However, what about the many, many creative folks who do not suffer these consequences? These things are not inevitable, except to those that have the vulnerability.

We may hear of the tortured creative, do we hear so many tales of the folks who are stable, yet still wildly creative?

I make the comment, because all too easily, people can be given a suggestion that they end up believing and following. Someone who defines themselves and behaves in a creative fashion, is often of the character that would find it easy to take on board this idea.

I don’t see proof of this inevitability. It’s not inevitable. It is merely something that has been, and perhaps is true for a small number.
http://www.drmstream.com/ drm

Walt, thanks for sharing that. I marvel at the transporting that accompanies complete immersion in the work, and then the hangover afterwards. Something has physically changed, and it’s hard to shake it off when you drop back into the real world.
http://twitter.com/WaltPascoe Walt Pascoe

Beautifully said. Although its a bit unsettling… the extent to which you nailed me w/this. It resonates deeply w/my experience as an artist the past 30 years. You’d think I would be ready for the waves of pain by now! But they still seem to blindside me once in awhile…as if I’d forgotten that we had an appointment!
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