NERVES, WORK

Any artistic work I do while neurotically stable, balanced, typically comes as merely satisfying. However, I noticed---while looking at my work as objectively as possible---that during a nervous breakdown, great or small, my artistic work (usually poems or songs) are best. I've noted this personally for the past few years and related it today with a statement by William Carlos Williams:

"The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost."

In retrospect of a nervous breakdown I noticed a formula or condition of events which occur to cause the breakdown: I exert much intellectual and/or physical effort towards a positive outcome or goal which results negatively or the opposite happens to what I strove for. I experienced at least one nervous breakdown each quarter during college. For example, I would study for hours,---all weekend perhaps---cover all material and facts thoroughly only to fail or earn an above average grade point on an exam. The end result being opposite of which I could control would cause a nervous system break down and therefore tilt or skew my perception or conscious of the world. It was during these times I wrote best.

The drab or mundane in which I live the majority of my life(with a de-industrializing Midwest as backdrop) requires greater effort, perhaps the energy required to tilt my perception or conscious, causes any, if lucky, work to be elevated to a height as that of breakdown work. Even now, as I write, the work is drab. Scholarship-writing at best. Who will read it? The "elevated height" which I just spoke of needs a metaphor which is at this time inaccessible as I type comfortably on a day off, coffee, with a fire in the corner. However, W.C.W. further writes:

"Composition is in no essential an escape from life. In fact if it is so it is negligible to the point of insignificance. Whatever 'life' the artist may be forced to lead has no relation to the vitality of his compositions. Such names as Homer, the blind; Scheherzade, who lived under threat---Their compositions have as their excellence an identity with life since they are as actual, as sappy as the leaf of the tree which never moves from one spot."

Williams is talking about living in one spot while still making interesting work. He lived his entire life in Rutherford, New Jersey, and had a proliferate while significant career both as a poet and medical doctor. I relate to him by living in suburban Akron, Ohio, working as a engineering technician and poet. However, Williams took several sabbaticals to Europe, while the extent of my cultural exposure has been the Cleveland Museum of Art and the local library (both of which have been excellent, and most importantly, accessible). But Williams' major point of this second passage is that one doesn't necessarily have to be world traveler or one who "tries everything once" to make good art. It could be all right under your nose and accessible through the imagination.

T.S.