depression...

Before you get all worried and jump into conclusions, let me explain...
I read a poem today...my fren's poem...it sparked off a conversation I had with her about poetry and how to me, it just seems fascinating yet complex...exactly like rocket science. Hence my conclusion that literature is rocket science. We talked about Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. Both known to be extrodinary writers in their own way yet both very depressed and eventually...suicidal. According to my friend, Sylvia killed herself by sticking her head into a microwave...Virginia on the other hand, stuffed her coat with rocks one fair afternoon and decided to drown herself...
Theses are two of the many many artists who are well known for their crafts and also depression and insanity...Van Gogh is another.
What I started to wonder, was why. Why did they feel such a dire urgency to leave this world? What was it that drove them into insanity? Into depression? Into death? Is being creative a double-edge sword?
My fren thought that maybe they wanted sooo much to excel in their craft that they drove themselves into insanity. Somehow I think not...
I think these people loved what they do because it gave them a place to relieve their thoughts...via songs, poems, stories, diaries..etc... They needed soo much to voice out what they had to say and they loved it. They loved writing or song writing or writing poems. The more they loved it, the more they did it. The more they did it, the more it made them tap into their deepest minds and subconscious and feelings. The more they opened their eyes even to the smallest details in the world. It made them see more things than a normal person. It made them feel more than a normal person...but the stuff that they saw more...was more depressing than happy.
I agree with my fren that the times we are more creative...is when we are sad or down ...anything that is negative. It always seems then that we are more intouch with ourselves... I write my best songs when im in my darkest moments! Not surprisingly, all or most of my work are melancholy...sad...slow...but...that touch the heart. Its the sadness and the sorrow that seems to connect hearts more. Ask yourself, whats your favourite song? Maybe most of you will name a song that contains sorrow, breakups, I still love yous, You're gone, some of you will name hotel california, fade to black, nothingelse matters, right here waiting, ode to my family, nirvana's songs, etc, stairway to heaven...etc...
Another thing Im wondering , is about Virginia Woolf in particular...she had a very complex way of writing. According to my fren, she wrote words as they came out of her mind. Simply taking what she's thinking and pasting it on a book. No rephrasing, no further explanation n stuff. That's why it's so hard to read her books. I know that i write like that as well...I know that because att he end of the day, my diary entries always seem messed up, choppy and only i can understand it...But isnt that wat a diary is for? to write down what you feel and think rite? Yet...this makes me only more intruiged by her...and I'm even thinking about reading some of her works more intensely...Makes me wish I cud meet her...Find out what she's thinking...
Whatever is it, literature will always seem like rocket science.
As for myself...im doing fine..although not as well as last week. Some things I wish I cud settle fast but I cant...Anyway, more of that next time.

LOVE