Posted by dj on July 5, 2000, at 11:48:17
In reply to Cracks, posted by claire 7 on July 4, 2000, at 18:09:08
>
> That reminded me of a much better quote. Leonard Cohen. "There is a crack in everything----that's how the light gets in." (More effective when he sings it.)
>Hurray for Leonard, whose struggle with and contemplation of depression and our societies has led to much beauty.
Here are some other examples of high performers who make beauty from their lives on the edge of the crack...
From "Artists, Craftsmen & Technocrats: The Dreams Realities and Illusions of Leadership" by Patricia Pitcher, published by Stoddart (Canadian press so not available on Amazon though is on http://www.indogo.com, 1996.
The Artist
"He walks into the room and everyone smiles. Everyone, that is, except the
Technocrats. They remain impassive. Sometimes, slight scowls of irritation
cross their faces to disappear rapidly as they came. The resume their
serious conversations...He is tall, strong, with the flashing eyes that betray the intelligence and
vivacity behind them...His bearing, his silvery grey hair lend him an air of
wisdom and class. Truly a fine example of the male of the species, an
aristocrat....entrepreneurial, bold, daring, unpredictable, exciting. Unpredictable,
because the design is only in their heads - not on paper...To the outside
world, this may look at best, opportunism, and at worst, madness, but in all
cases it is unpredictable. It will also seem bold and daring because it is
very apt to defy conventional wisdom of the day...Then there are what you might call qualities of the mind or thought
processes: imaginative, visionary, intuitive, open-minded....People-oriented, easygoing, warm, generous, funny, emotional and volatile...
...Like Lincoln, Churchill, Dickens and Monet...
...No one is clear about the relationship between depression and
creativity...Arieti, a psychiatrist who has made a serious study of the
thought processes characteristic of Artists speculates that the creative
person senses a defect, or incompleteness, in the usual way of looking at
the world and finds them suffocating. He needs to break with conventional
wisdom....The word "depression" is encrusted with all kinds of connotations and
superstitions...depression is normal...But depression can wear many faces. It can show itself as a certain lassitude, fatigue or withdrawal, as opposed to sadness. It can show itself as giddiness or a so-called "smiling depression". Or as an alcohol dependency.It can show itself as hyperactivity, the person is unable to rest or even sit down for fear that in doing so, the "black dog" will attack. The artistic personality, the cyclothymic, simply has an intensification of these normal cycles...All five of my Artists show up hyperthmic, manic and/or cyclothymic. One of them told me:
"Oh sure. I've had bouts of depression all my life. Serious depression. But then I just went out and bought another company. It worked every time."
They have richer fantasy lives, which they allow themselves to experience...
...."healthy ego" ...means strong character, a character capable of living
with ambiguity, ambivalence and doubt, neither succumbing to dogmatism nor
flying off in an unreal world. According to their psychological profiles based on the MMPI, artists are typically and paradoxically both sicker and healthier than ordinary mortals. They are sicker in the sense of being bombarded by ideas and fantasies; healthier in the sense of being able to control the process and shape something new and useful out of it...Two of these men showed significant degrees of autism in their MMPI profiles. Fantasy. Living in a world of one's own. Thus the frequent solitariness of these men...
...They are nonconformist in the deeper sense, in the sense of skepticism of
all conventional and popular ways of thinking, modern or ancient. They take
almost nothing for granted. They are, therefore, radically open to new
thought, to new association..."The Technocrat
"...a technocrat is someone who emphasizes the technical conceptions of a
problem to the detriment of their social and human consequences..."As the lyrical Irish (note how those two words fit, hand in glove ; ), greeting of wishes for a good day goes: "May the crack be with you."
Sante!
dj
poster:dj
thread:37688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000630/msgs/39436.html