Why, In Order To Be A Writer, D'You Need To Be Drunk, Stoned Or Crazy?

[Seil]

Hemmingway, Marquis De Sade, Allen F***ing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50) Ginsberg!

Drunken, crazy layabouts, and they churn out (questionably) brilliant works! Even Leonard Cohen dropped off the map for a couple 'a years and sampled Budhism and toured Europe and did the "Bohemian" thing. Why are the crazy people the most (arguably) brilliant ones?

[Jagos]

The best intuitions usually come when you're high or you're that far in left field.

See also, Gospel of Mark.

[Amake]

You don't need to get high, it's just easier that way. Grant Morrison compared it to doping, which athletes tend to use in order to reach the maximal potential of their bodies, faster than they would otherwise but with debilitating long-term effects.

He also went on to point out writers aren't competing like sportsmen do, and doping yourself up therefore is much more morally defensible.

Meanwhile I haven't written anything in three days, and I also haven't had any caffeine in that time.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

See also, Gospel of Mark.

Huh?

[Azisien]

This seems like a really easy question to answer even on the Seil Spectrum of questions. You've been drunk before, haven't you Seil? You think about wacky shit when you're high, at least on anything I've ever been high on. The smartest of us just see fit to actually write it down and make it coherent in the morning.

[Seil]

You've been drunk before, haven't you Seil?

No.

But I manage to think of wacky shit when I'm sober. Then I get drunk and the juices flow. Also I become good at writing.

[Seil]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls...

.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

It's a trend among creative types in general. Best reasons I can think of:

*You're more likely to have ideas and do things that no one else thought to before, but as a result you have trouble relating those ideas or the thought processes that lead to them to anyone who isn't also a creative type, so you get stereotyped as crazy or some other outsider by the general public.

*A lot of artists might have been drawn to art to escape something traumatic in their pasts or to instruct others about tragedy in an effort to get them to do something about it. On the side, they might indulge in other common avenues of escape, including drugs and alcohol. Can't be that bad if it makes the bad feelings go away, plus the altered mental states might give you inspiration for your next work.

Keep in mind I'm typing this just after I woke up and haven't had my coffee yet, so if it sounds like a load of bull it probably is.

[Magus]

Those three are quite arguable as to their quality, though their impact on culture is undoubtedly high. I'm not a big fan of any of them. Also even if we consider them "brilliant", you cited three cases out of hundred of authors/poets who are also "brilliant" without being known for their alcoholism or drug use.

EDIT: Also is the Marquis de Sade supposed to be your "crazy" one, because from what I've read his "sadistic" tendencies were actually just consensual BDSM fetish shenanigans with numerous women. Quite radical for the time which is why he was given such a sinister reputation, but actually not really that out there by today's standards. He was more of a hedonist than a psychopath if I remember correctly.

[Seil]

Also is the Marquis de Sade supposed to be your "crazy" one,

Not really. Just picked him 'cause he was the first one to come to mind. (He probably came to a bunch of other things first, but...) The writers I listed aren't really supposed to apply strictly to the qualities in the title in that order.

[Aerozord]

For one thing being stoned or drunk wasn't the black mark it is today.100 years ago no one would think twice about you getting high. In the time periods of many great writers they were probably on something because everyone was probably on something. I am betting these same men also smoked, but doubt that contributed to the creative process.

As for being crazy or eccentric. These are terms given to anyone outside the norm. Frankly if you were normal you probably wouldn't make a career out of writing about your imaginary friends and their adventures

[Seil]

http://abstractart.20m.com/Picasso-self_portrait.jpg

[Jagos]

Huh?

Not to get too religious, but you have talking bushes, snakes to staffs, etc. That's some of the greatest fiction I've ever seen in a book.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

i haven't read Mark in a while but I don't remember any of that shit happening in there. If you're going to use the bible as an example at least pick one of the mental books.

[Lumenskir]

Not to get too religious, but you have talking bushes, snakes to staffs, etc. That's some of the greatest fiction I've ever seen in a book.
So, the Ten Commandments movie...which, not to get too religious, isn't even in the same Testament as the Gospels. And there are only two Testaments.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Also my buddy Marcion would have problems even putting them in the same religion.

[Overcast]

Back in the day I used to enjoy writing after long stints without sleep. Due to the fact that I now have to work for a living it has been a bit since I have been able to reach my insomniatic nirvana, kinda miss it, but have been trying to make up for it with things like starvation and forced emotional shifting.

Cause you know I like to get my high naturally.

[Magus]

Confusing Exodus and Mark, Jagos? Next you'll be saying Jesus killed 1,000 Romans with the jawbone of an ass before writing his epistle to the Ephesians and hanging a red thread outside his window so he wouldn't be harmed when he blew a trumpet to knock down the walls of Jerusalem.

[BloodyMage]

You forgot Samuel Taylor Coleridge...maybe...

As far as Ginsburg goes, all of the Beat generation and especially Howl were seen as experimental rebellions against society at the time. How On the Road was written, and Howl's basic outcry against the lack of free thinking. You call them crazy, but they were writing in a crazy time, and trying to reflect in their writing that America had to change with the times; the west couldn't fortress itself in if it wanted to continue.

That said, the Beats generally weren't stoned or drunk, although I think they did experiment with drugs, but William Burroughs is quoted as stating quite plainly that drugs had nothing to do with their creative output:

The visions of drugs and the visions of art don't mix?

BURROUGHS:

Never. The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts, and feelings. They are painkillers, pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers - the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. As for visions and heroin, I had a hallucinatory period at the very beginning of addiction, for instance, a sense of moving at high speed through space. But as soon as addiction was established, I had no visions - vision - at all and very few dreams.

[Seil]

Cah-ray-zee.

[Krylo]

Next you'll be saying Jesus killed 1,000 Romans with the jawbone of an ass

Holy shit, I think I just got converted guys.

[Seil]

You're all messed up, says this observer.

[phil_]

What am I doing wrong? I've been trying to write something for, like, three years now, and I can't come up with anything I don't hate. I'm drunk every night; I should at least have a haiku by now. Help me out.

vvEdit: That doesn't help at all; what the hell?

[Seil]

There's this totally strict restaurant manager, see? And alla his employees are self righteous teenagers who think they're gonna get back at him by quitting all at once. Then they totally do that. The manager hires on career staff, but they want better pay. So the manager tries to juggle the needs of his new staff while playing everything down to the old staff that's coming in to eat.

...Why is color=poetry green?

[Jagos]

Confusing Exodus and Mark, Jagos? Next you'll be saying Jesus killed 1,000 Romans with the jawbone of an ass before writing his epistle to the Ephesians and hanging a red thread outside his window so he wouldn't be harmed when he blew a trumpet to knock down the walls of Jerusalem.

And he was saved by Jay and Silent Bob!

From Ninjas!

With Pirate hats!

[Magus]

You forgot Samuel Taylor Coleridge...maybe...

It is well-known that Coleridge was high off his ass on opium when he thought up Kubla Khan, but only managed to write down 50 lines before getting distracted by something. He subsequently had forgotten the other 500 lines or whatever by the time he thought to write them down again.

Not sure if he was high or not when writing Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

[BloodyMage]

It's also well known that people focus far too much on Coleridge's opium addition and tend not to see anything in his work other than attempting to recreate the effect of being high. According to some critics it has nothing at all to do with opium, but rather the creative process in which an idea erupts into the mind, seemingly from nothing, and seems to decay almost instantly from the moment of conception, unless it written down. Although, it generally depends on who you ask.

[Magus]

I'm sure Coleridge wrote lots of stuff when he wasn't high on opium. Kubla Khan just wasn't one of them. Besides which because he was so deliriously stoned he forgot to write down the rest of it, robbing us of it now, so I wasn't defending his use of opiates as "good" for his writing.

[BloodyMage]

I didn't say you were. I was saying that the idea that Kubla Khan is all to do with grasping on to a dying opium dream is widely panned by literary critics.

[Bells]

Stephanie Meyers and J. K. Rollings

There. I just Broke your Logic.

...wait... oh.

[Fifthfiend]

Why, In Order To Be A Writer, D'You Need To Be Drunk, Stoned Or Crazy?

It's not like this exactly eliminates some hugely significant percentage of humankind.

[Fifthfiend]

Most people, one way or another: basically out of their goddamn minds.

[Magus]

I didn't say you were. I was saying that the idea that Kubla Khan is all to do with grasping on to a dying opium dream is widely panned by literary critics.

Kubla Khan is about a hot chick having an orgasm if you ask me. I shall now proceed to write a 7-page essay on this thesis.

Oh, college. We had so much fun.

[BloodyMage]

Yeah, all literary criticism is unfounded and forced upon college attendees. It's not like it is a profitable market or anything.

I mean, really, where do you think any of this comes from? Even the earliest ideas from analysing Gilgamesh is literary criticism, and even if you're basing your analysis on Coleridge life and times, it's still biographical criticism. Literary Criticism is just criticism of literature, which is exactly what you were doing even before I weighed in, so that's really just stupid.

[Magus]

I had good times with it, is all I'm saying. Professors went googoo over my ability to write ten page essays on homosexuality in Othello. English professors are so easy to please. Literary criticism is quite enjoyable if you aren't too serious about it.

[Satan's Onion]

homosexuality in Othello

Roderigo + Iago = OTP 4 EVAH

[Magus]

"Forget women, put 'money' in thy 'purse'...sweetcheeks."

[Satan's Onion]

What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.
...
It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man!

ohmigod literary criticism is so much fun :dance:

[Seil]

Hee.