“Putting a creation into the world is asking to be understood and loved. The answer is not always yes.” – Allison Moorer
Allison Moorer is a country singer and song writer, but she is also an amazing memoirist. Shelby Lynne, also a country singer, is her sister. I recently read Allison Moorer’s memoir, Blood, which describes the tragedy of her alcoholic father shooting the girls’ mother, and then himself, in their front yard, when both ladies were still teenagers. It was a hard, emotional read, but Moorer’s writing is so pure and fearless and insightful. I enjoyed the book, immensely, despite its devastating content.
In an interview, Moorer claims that she would have been an artist, even if she hadn’t come from such a dysfunctional background, but the art would have been different. She says this: “I don’t think my art would have had as many teeth as it does. I don’t think you have to necessarily suffer to make great art, but the truth is that most great art is born of it.”
It is Aldous Huxley, the author of A Brave New World, who is credited with the idea that all great art is born of suffering. And there are so many examples to support that idea. When I was in college, I took an Art History class. The professor kept us enticed, by promising the class, that if we first paid attention to the artists’ various styles, techniques and designs, she promised to give us the dish on their crazy, dramatic, and often depressing life stories. The stories which she told us, about the various artists’ lives were much more interesting, than any soap opera that we were hoping to hurry home to watch. As Mark Twain said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
I have given this idea of great art being tied to suffering, a lot of thought. There is no one whom I know, who has never suffered any heartache. There might be degrees of heartache, different levels of heaviness which we could put up for debate, but in the end, pain is pain. And pain is a part of living a life. It seems to me, that many artists, whether fearless or compulsive, have a drive to explore their pain, in order to make something beautiful and meaningful, come out of it. I don’t think that the great artists, and singers, and writers and other creatives necessarily suffer more than anyone else does. It’s just that they aren’t afraid to explore that suffering. When we open ourselves up to reach in and to pull out our deepest creativity, we also offer up to the world, our most profound vulnerability. And that is terrifying. What is more naked than the total baring of your soul?
I have painful experiences which have occurred in my life that I don’t choose to write about. They’re too hot to the touch. I may never write about certain elements of my life and that’s okay. But I’d be incredibly naive to think that my writing, my expressing, and my overall “being” doesn’t have any sparks and tears and echoes of all of my own life’s experiences, even the heaviest, heartbreaking ones.
I don’t think that all great artists can be lumped in as hypersensitive, addiction-riddled depressives, with wrecked up lives. I honestly think that our greatest artists are among the bravest people in the world. They aren’t afraid of the truth. They have nothing to prove to anyone. Oftentimes, great artists are alchemists who go full into their pain, with a strong desire to make something beautiful, enduring, and universally understood, out of their own deepest, inner turmoil. And we all benefit greatly from their courageous attempt to transform their pain into love, as a gift from themselves that they generously and boldly share with the world. We have museums, and libraries, and record charts, and theaters filled with people’s deepest expressions of their fullest selves, and we treasure these gifts. These treasures are reminders of the force of creativity, that is the true essence of all that is.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.