Dear Lycanthropes,
Have you ever felt like an idea is stalking you? Over the past month, I’ve heard Susan Cain on three different podcasts talking about her book Bittersweet. I’ve seen her and her book pop up in several articles, TikToks, and other types of media.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I have added it to my pile. I’m intrigued with her premise.
Cain argues that sorrow and longing allow us to better experience joy. Bittersweet emotions help make us whole. They heal us and enable us to live the human experience more fully.
This dovetails with my experience. We usually categorize people into two different camps—optimists and pessimists. But neither of these ever felt like home to me. I’m a melancholy optimist. I do more than hope for the best—I believe things will work out. But I also have a deep sadness, an unsatiable yearning for something lost that is deeper than mere nostalgia.
I joke with my family that I love dark chocolate desserts and semisweet chocolate chips because they satisfy my inner bitterness.
Sometimes we need to sit with our sadness. Crying is one of the most remarkable things our body does. It’s a literal act of healing and purification.
Cain also noted in several appearances that there is a link between melancholy and creativity. She is also careful to note that melancholy or the feeling of bittersweet is distinct from clinical depression. Depression is disabling and often prevents people from creating. But melancholy often spurs greater creativity.
This past week I wrote a melancholy poem. I also recorded myself reading it and posted the video on TikTok:
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Here is the text of the poem:
A Creeping Deadness
There’s a creeping deadness inside of me
It’s immune to compassion and unreactive
to tenderness. This creeping deadness is
how I know I’m still alive. You can’t tell
the dead from the living unless you are
still living. This creeping deadness is a sign
of life—right? A gradual deterioration that
signifies there is still something incorruptible
to corrupt. The deadness takes up a bigger part
of me now than it used to. I feel it spreading or
rather, I no longer feel things in places in my soul
where I used to feel things. That’s how I know
it’s growing—the not feeling. Someday the
creeping deadness will be all that’s left and then
I will sigh in relief because I can no longer feel. Then
I will rest, unable to tell the dead from the living
because the not feeling will no longer be
creeping, it will be encompassing. The deadness
is a corrosive rust on my spirit—some work of internal
oxidation. Slow, inexorable and beautiful, it spreads at
an irregular rate prescribed by the laws of the universe—
protecting me from all the hurt, anguish, unrequited
dreams, misplaced confidences, and forgotten mercies
that are the coin of this mortal realm. There’s a creeping
deadness inside of me—but today I’m still alive and today
I will sing and dance and love and hate and yell and weep.
What if empathy seems to have so little purchase in our society because we as a civilization have become happiness zealots? We no longer value sadness or melancholic reflection. We are so scared of death that we hide our chronically sick and elderly in institutions instead of valuing their humanity.
One of the things I strive for as an artist is to reflect the full range of human emotions in my work. I love to write and draw about wonder. But I’m also compelled to create art that centers longing, sadness, and angst.
For this week’s exercise, think about what you want to communicate with your art. There are no right or wrong answers. The goal is just to be mindful of what you are putting out into the world.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
Semisweet chocolate chips are my favorite illicit substance
This gets to the heart of perhaps one of the most important and fundamental human truths. If we do not welcome and let ourselves experience our full range of emotions (suppressing so called "negative emotion"), over time we deaden "positive" emotion. We spend our lives chasing a perpetual high that doesn't exist. I could literally write a book on this, but I'll just say that our view of what we "should" feel has been badly warped and shaped in ways that fill greedy corporate pockets as they promote and perpetuate a false narrative. And I'll point you to a poem you undoubtedly already know, Rumi's "The Guest House."
By the way, my poison of choice is dark chocolate chipits.
To sort of quote Dexter, If I didn't have my "Dark Passenger" inspiring my weird and twisted humor I'd be adrift on a sea of blandness.
Only by embracing the 360 of the human emotions can one be balanced enough to grow spiritually.