Thank You for Your Service

I recently endured a nine-hour flight home from Italy. It would have been torture had I not been able to watch old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the brilliant TV show by Larry David, creator of Seinfeld. Thanks to him, I laughed my way across the Atlantic with a few hours off for napping. Without that option I surely would have jumped out a window, or at least tried, which would have gotten me into a boatload of trouble with the authorities once we landed. But I was saved from the loony bin, or at least a very long interrogation by angry people in uniforms, by the creative mind of a comic genius.

Just this morning another very creative (and often depressed) genius, and personal friend, posted an article on Facebook about yet another study with the same results as all the other studies on the subject, claiming creative types have a much higher incidence of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression than regular folks who go off to their jobs each day and push papers, make copies of things, answer phone calls, give speeches, write reports, hawk wares, deliver mail, drive trucks, catalog library books and more like that.

Being a creative person myself, naturally reading that hit a nerve. In between my own recurring periods of depression I write funny stories and make beautiful things. When I'm in a funk, like today, I often read my old blog posts -- they go back to 2007 -- and they always make me laugh. My paintings cover the walls of our house, and in fact I would have bought many of them if I hadn't made them myself. These are the perks.

However, it's been documented that non-creatives are much happier than all of the painters, writers, actors, dancers, musicians, photographers, comics, circus performers, cartoonists, designers, chefs, scientists and just plain visionaries who make the world's monumental suffering tolerable in what little time they have between drunken binges, drug overdoses, shrink sessions, hospitalizations and failed suicide attempts. So the next time you meet an artist, thank them for their service.