Melancholy

Maybe I should join the “cult of melancholia” -

winter trees

A friend of mine said he preferred winter over other seasons because it made him melancholy, like when you love someone and the feelings aren’t returned. “I love that feeling,” he said. “It makes me so creative.”

I keep thinking about this idea, of loving one’s own pain. I remember when I was a child, I was fascinated by my own tears – I’d sit in front of the mirror, weeping, watching my face contort and flush and spill. I had no problem confronting and enjoying my sadness then.

Now, my sadnesses can sometimes freeze me, instead of freeing me to create anything.

Perhaps the melancholy of winter – walking past the park, the mountains completely visible now, their shapes hard and blue – perhaps it exists as a kind of mirror, where I can see my own emptiness and sadness without flinching.

What spurs art in you? Suffering? Joy?

If we welcome pain with the same embrace as we offer love, then we have truly learned to accept life as it is.

And perhaps that’s the main source of the creativity my friend was talking about – biting the flesh of our reality at its most tender place, the vulnerable, undefended softness created by our passions and sorrows -

- and then, in the dispassionate times, when we are calm and cold, we learn to edit.