It seems to me that great writers, with great stories to tell, often come to tragic ends. From Hemmingway to Spaulding Gray there seems to be a higher percentage of suicides and abusive death among writers, and other artists, than most other professions. "Writers who committed suicide" even has its own entry in Wikipedia, and that is just a list of the famous or infamous. There is no way to know how many took their own lives more slowly with drug abuse, alcoholism or some other self induced life style. Truman Capote comes to mind as the poster boy for those who abused themselves to death.

I've got this theory that I am working on. Writers are always in search of a story to tell. Like Hemmingway and Gray they sometimes call upon their own lives as the backdrop for these stories. At some point they identify with their story instead of who they really are. They unconsciously push the edge of their lives to experience the next grand story so they can write about it. When that unconsciousness takes over it is only a matter of time before they are destined to write the final act of their own lives in death. Sort of the "control freaks" ultimate control, be in charge of their own demise.

It begs the question, "Is the artist the art?" Most artists see themselves as just the tool for art to become expressed. They are driven by a muse they do not understand but need to obey. They are the lucky ones. They don't know why it comes to them, and rather than try to create they simply express.

But there are artists who become their art. They think their art comes out of some personal experience they have endured that gets expressed as either a laugh, a cry or on canvas. When the art does not flow they try and make themselves miserable so they can have something to express. Amy Weinhouse is right now going through a public experience trying to find that line. There is no doubt that her music and her life are too closely related to separate. Is her music only an expression of her abuse or does the abuse hinder the real expression of her gift? It is probably not a question that humans can answer.

When fame enters the picture it becomes very dysfunctional. If an artist is successful at expressing their unhappiness that unhealthy emotion becomes a part of their pallet. In essence they have achieved their goal, their true feelings have been expressed and we as the audience are drawn to it. It is somewhere in us trying to be expressed and we empathize. The artist may have exorcised that dysfunction in their art and are actually rid of the toxin. But the fame machine demands more of that which the public is drawn to. To keep their career at the same level of attraction the artist must experience more pain so as to express more of the same. If they are now happy, they unconsciously make themselves unhappy. It has been said that "Happy people don't make history."

Comedy is not exempt from this spiral. Freud once tried to find a single joke that was not based in anger or hostility. He could not find it, and in truth comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. So most comedian's routines come out of the expression of that hostility. We laugh at it because we are drawn unconsciously to the same hostility. Find a universal hostility and you can spin it into a great comedy routine. Why do comedians express their success in terms like, "I killed them" or "I was the bomb" or "I blew the roof off". An audience sometimes expresses their own comedy experience in the same violent terms, " I laughed till it hurt" or "laughed till I cried".

Spaulding Gray made me laugh very hard. His comedy was absolutely biographical. As I look back on his monologues, most of the time I was actually laughing at his misfortunes. I wanted to laugh more, so on some level I wanted him to experience more misfortunes for my amusement. He talked about his mother's suicide in may of his monologues. I remember thinking that this was a man who dealt with suicide from the point of view of those who are left behind to clean up the mess. Being so familiar with the affect it had on him, I never thought he was a candidate for killing himself.

I guess my theory is just an observation after all. But in the attempt to live a life as an artist it is a cautionary tale. Fame is never worth the barter, but most are willing to trade anything for that 15 minutes. For those who say to themselves, "I would do anything to be a famous _____"

(fill in the blank) start looking past the drooling fans. Those fans are perhaps unconsciously demanding your very life in trade for that adulation.

As you were,

Jay