If You're Happy and You Know It...

Florence Margaret Smith, a poet from the mid-20th century, once said:

Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing.

It is so true. It's much easier to write when one is lonely, when one is troubled, when one feels anxious to unravel the feelings of isolation and distress...and it's not just the FREE TIME that makes writing easier; when one feels happy and content and exhaustively satisfied, it's hard to display the tension that is so important to a good piece of writing. Historically, the ideal rings true. Emily Dickinson became a crazy recluse with an incestuous lesbian lover. Sylvia Plath spent time in a psychiatric hospital and at 30 (speculatively) killed herself with gas from the oven. The list of cracked-out and tristful authors is quite extensive.

I recently read an article affirming that sad children perform tasks more effectively and with greater detail than happy children. "Happiness indicates that things are going well, which leads to a global, top-down style of information processing. Sadness indicates that something is amiss, triggering detail-orientated, analytical processing," said lead researcher Simone Schnall, PhD, of the University of Plymouth. The great thing about good writing, or good art in general, is that it offers something different, a unique viewpoint that hasn't already been produced. If happiness leads to conformity, well, conformity doesn't lead to good writing.

I've been really happy lately; I'm feeling healthy, I'm on a good path career-wise, my dating life is really hitting the spot (so to speak), and hence, it is becoming increasingly harder to pound out a good blog entry...but I am unwilling to let myself believe that you have to be unhappy to produce great art. (Is it too narcissistic to assume that a blog about lesbian sex is art?) I think that there's a way to get productivity and happiness on board together; that there's a way to be happy and content and to be the kind of writer that creates tension and unique perspectives...I think that it's just about finding that see-saw balance...what-ever that might be.