I’ve always been vaguely suspicious of happy people, or at least people who claim to be happy. I mean, is anyone really happy? Don’t they have bills to pay? Kids with runny noses and snotty attitudes? A wall in their house which they painted a slightly regrettable shade of green? And then there are those with happy marriages and relationships. What’s their deal? They talk about being married to their “soul mate” and best friend. They don’t complain about their mate’s bad habits, when everyone knows all men leave dirty socks lying around, little tiny hairs in the sink after shaving, and forget to feed the dog or take out the garbage, leaving you running the overflowing can to the curb in the freezing cold rain wearing pajamas and no bra, hoping it’s too dark for the garbage man to see unbrushed hair and threadbare socks?
Yes, I used to be suspicious of these people until I joined their ranks. I realized then that all those things still occur, all the time, but when you’re really happy with your life and your mate, they don’t bother you that much. You’re busy focusing on the way the sky is blue even when it‘s gray, how beautifully birds chirp- basically living in a forest straight out of a Disney movie. You still have bills to pay and snotty children and hairs in the sink but somehow though those things are minor and annoying, they don’t really touch the deeps of happiness.
This all makes me wonder about my favorite authors and artists, creators of the most inspiring, poignant, interesting, and dark works. They were not happy people- at least, I don’t suppose they were. No one thinks Sylvia Plath or Ernest Hemingway or Edgar Allan Poe were particularly happy and content with their lives. Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolfe, Mary Shelley…. They had angst beyond creditors and progeny. It’s doubtful that Charles Bukowski walks around writing sonnets to the sky. It’s doubtful Diane Arbus did, either.
There have got to be several talented artists out there who aren’t also clinically depressed alcoholics but as a group writers particularly seem to trend towards darkness. Does a sunny positive outlook cause writer’s block? Does it cause prose to come out flat, lifeless and dull on the page, full of clichés and inane drivel? I really hope not.
Sometimes though when I’m having a particularly happy, contented day-- which happens often-- my writing does seem to suffer. I’m not in the mood to explore my characters’ dark sides. I don’t want to kill people off in a tragically ironic way, leaving their loved ones baffled and grief stricken. I want everyone to be happy and in love and I want all my characters seem to wind up married to the man of their dreams living in a house with a white picket fence, having hugely successful careers that are satisfying and fulfilling while easily maintaining a meticulously clean house and vacationing in the Bahamas. Might be a fun way to live but it’s not very interesting to read about.
I feel like I may have found an artificial solution. I’m almost ashamed to say it because it sounds… well, wrong. Just wrong. But here it is-- stark honesty, feel free to judge at will. I was thinking the other day about acting, how some actors use a certain style of acting which isn’t very popular anymore. I can’t remember the term or find it on Wikipedia. But in drama we used to call it the Dead Puppies method. It basically involves focusing on something sad that makes you feel sad so you can cry during a scene. It’s an artificial way of conjuring up tears-- picture a dead puppy and you’ll be sad, for example. Hence the terminology attached to the method. It’s not exactly the same as method acting, because as I recall the dead puppy didn’t have to be your dead puppy, whereas method actors usually channel emotions and events from their own lives that make them sad.
There are plenty of ridiculously sad, ironic, awful stories out there--news, blogs, wherever-- which normally I avoid because I like to live ostrich land where ignoring the existence of sad and awful things makes them nonexistent. I admit it’s quite a cowardly approach to life but it also helps stave off clinical depression. I’m one of those annoyingly empathetic types who cries when I hear other people’s sad stories, though they are not about me. And walking around all day feeling other people’s pain and crying over it is something I’m actually fairly keen to avoid. It’s the reason I am not a therapist and the reason I dropped out of nursing school. I like that happiness, the boring contentment, to anchor me to solid ground and keep my mind from fixating on the sad and morbid aspects of life.
But I figure a little taste, a peek into Pandora’s box, can’t hurt from time to time. And that glimpse infuses a much truer layer of conflict and complex feelings into my characters that my own happiness can sometimes prevent me from delving into. It’s a win, really-- albeit a mighty strange way of channeling angst. Inspiration from real life makes characters more real, right? And there’s really no such thing as happily ever after, except in fairy tales. Maybe I should switch genres.
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