For more than 25 years, Eric Maisel (the godfather of creativity training) has been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others.
In The Van Gogh Blues, Eric explores the idea that meaning is of vital importance to creative people.
Below is an excerpt from an interview with Eric in which he explains a bit more about what it means to “make meaning” and how students who are in despair may benefit from focusing on making meaning in their lives.
Maya: Eric, tell us the story behind this book.
Eric: Well, Maya, over the years I’ve worked with many, many artists, writers and other creative people. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are those who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize.
This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.
To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.
Maya: Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, they are experiencing this “meaning drain”? Or might that person be depressed in some other way?
Eric: When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play.
But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life. By reminding ourselves that it is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us.
Maya: There are a lot of students in high school who are struggling with meaning. Many just don’t feel that the high school experience resonates with them, and this leads to a crisis at a time when they are also very vulnerable and looking for validation. They may be passionate about their particular interests but don’t find support or encouragement from friends, teachers or even parents. How can students move through a meaning crisis when they feel their ideas are undervalued by those who are in a position to influence them? Eric: They need to be helped to understand that their own opinion MUST come first. A person’s core orientation must be that he or she is the sole and final arbiter of meaning in life. This is a very difficult orientation to maintain, especially if you don’t really feel very self-confident, and it is also a very tricky business to keep this orientation from inclining toward arrogance and grandiosity, which is where it wants to head. But despite these real difficulties, first that you won’t feel confident enough to adopt this position and second that it may go to your head, it is vital that you “go there,” because if you let the world’s opinions buffet you, you are likely to block and give up. The world has things to say to you; but you are the sole and final arbiter of meaning in your life. This is not a message that teachers are inclined to provide—but they really should.
Maya: Eric, you’ve received some great reviews for The Van Gogh Blues. What’s the most satisfying part of the process of offering this book? Eric: I’ve received countless emails from artists all over the world thanking me for identifying their “brand” of depression and for providing them with a clear and complete program for dealing with that depression. I hope that the new paperback version will reach even more creative folks—and the people who care about them.
Maya: How does The Van Gogh Blues tie in with other books you’ve written?
Eric: I’m interested in everything that makes a creative person creative and I’m also interested in every challenge that we creative people face. I believe that we have special anxiety issues and I spelled those out in Fearless Creating. I believe that we have a special relationship to addiction (and addictive tendencies) and with Dr. Susan Raeburn, an addiction professional, I’ve just finished a book called Creative Recovery, which spells out the first complete recovery program for creative people.
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You can learn more about The Van Gogh Blues and explore many free resources to enhance creativity on Eric’s excellent website at http://www.EricMaisel.com.
