Prime
Covid-19, depression and the arts
The crowd goes wild with applause after a performance artist has delivered yet another brilliant performance.
Then, the performer takes a bow. He’s an artist to whom the roar of the crowd are as necessary as the air he breathes.
It is this validation complex which washes his creative juices, placing vanity over the vantage point of heightened introspection.
On the surface, creatives seem like free-spirited persons. They project themselves as fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants types who aren’t bothered by what bothers ordinary mortals. They’re the haute bourgeoisie: persons of substance.
But go beyond their clothes and buttons, as the writer Mark Twain would say, and you’ll see their trials. Picture an exceedingly cute child pulling the petals off a flower and counting them as this perfect picture is dissolved into the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.
In a very profound sense, creatives suffer spells of such inner explosions. After this, fragments of their broken spirits fall to the brooding depths of melancholia.
Creatives are depressives; lonely spirits in the hills of their mounting self-doubts. They know what the poet Dante knew: that hell is an endless, hopeless conversation with oneself.
Every day they painfully feel their way through time, praying for relief. This relief is found at events where applause and human contact are substitutes to love.
By this token, events are an escape from childhood traumas, psychological and physiological deficiencies. But, thanks to Covid-19, these events are no more.
So the creatives are turned inward upon themselves, sinking into a void.
The silence is deafening as torments from the darkness are amplified. And unless these demons are given an outlet found in creative expression, the artist will be consumed by them. The appetites of these demons create a deep reservoir of self-loathing, plunging the creative into a lingering sadness.
Some would say that this sadness balances a creative’s moods of omnipotence.
Feelings of dominance and despair are interchanged to leave a creative’s temperament unbalanced. The personality traits are unmistakable. The creative is conflicted. On the one hand, he wants to free himself of convention by invention. On the other, society demands that convention checks this longing when expressed by wayward behaviour born of the fraternal twins: individualism and individuality.
In such moments, a clash between creative and society implies rejection of the former by the latter. Feelings of hopelessness and thoughts of self-destruction then envelop the creative.
These reactions are relieved by a good performance. For such a performance leads to applause and societal acceptance, however temporary. That’s why a creative will always pursue acclaim. And thereby become dependent upon external sources of self-esteem. So when President Museveni shutdown public spaces which served as venues for events, he shutdown sources of self-esteem for the creative. This spelled doom. The doom of silenced applause, and a loss of “love” too.
Covid-19 is a threat to a creative’s mental health. Because, as long as there’s no applause, a creative is staring into the abyss. Predictably, the abyss returns the compliment by staring into the creative. Therein, a hollowness is revealed. For the adulation of others that a creative subsists on can never be a substitute to self-esteem.
That’s why, in this time of limited personal contact, a creative needs to reach out to family, friends and reconnect with the essence of self. Mies van der Rohe said, “God is in the details.” So, I ask creatives, what are your details? Are you the sum of your parts? Does social feedback define your person? What are your emotional anchors or moorings?
Creatives must forgive themselves, if forgiveness is sought. And forgive others, if forgiveness is to be found. It is essential that self-criticism replaces self-abuse. That way, creatives are not too hard on themselves.
As for making a living in this Covid-19 era: it helps to refocus. When Will Smith suffered a run of cinematic duds, he moved from making blockbuster movies to becoming a YouTube sensation. Creatives know how to create and so they must master the art of self-reinvention. Where a road is blocked, create a footpath. Better still, a new digital footprint. Creativity is about finding the road untraveled, away from the beaten path.
Suicide is not an option. For it will not bring back the love you found in doing what you love. It will merely defer your story to an endnote, at best. And when your creative flame is extinguished, who then shall help the rest of us fight against the dying of a light?
Mr Matogo is a digital marketing
manager with City Surprises Ltd
[email protected]
