The Tortured Artist
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| Untitled (2023), by my friend, Amez. |
A tale, as old as time itself. The most romanticized picture of an artist is one who sit in their dimly lit workplace and work on whatever piece of art they have in progress. I, as Hoshmand Samir Murshid, a classical double bass player, having played in a number of orchestras and ensembles, an aspiring classical composer and having worked in the world of alternative music as an electric bassist and guitarist and just a curious-minded individual, would like to show you what artists of all kinds go through in their lives, based on personal experience or those that I have witnessed around myself. You might be a musician, composer, painter, sculptor, director, actor or anything regarding the many fields of arts yourself, or you might not be! All in all, I hope to shine some light on the topic.
I became interested with this depiction and many questions arose to me. When did this start? Why did it start? Are artists (of all kinds) really more likely to suffer from mental health issues? Short answer, partially, yes, long answer is that in this case I’ll try to mostly discuss musicians and we need to differentiate between the different styles of music as they can have very different industry standards. For example, musicians who work in the alternative music scene have been more prone to substance addiction, the pressure of strict record label contracts, pressure of constant touring, the pressure needing to put something out as soon as possible or you’ll fall out of relevancy and many other things that didn’t cross my mind now. However, classical musicians suffer on a different side with strong competition, feelings of insecurity and unfortunately, many people have considered quitting their academic studies of music for these reasons and I, know people like that personally whom I study with and have considered quitting their studies, quitted, or consider quitting music entirely after they finish their studies. One thing that unites us all is that we, as artists, are sensitive people. We are sensitive because we have a sensitive and rich world inside of us that can be shattered by anything horrific, for example, walking down the street and being horrified by the amount of traffic noise as it can really disrupt this world we have for ourselves. Any other reasons personal to the artist can disrupt their world because if anything, most of us just want to be able to focus on what we wanna create. This topic is rarely discussed and as one who works in both worlds (although, mostly classical now) I have suffered from feelings of pressure from having to always put something out as soon as possible, I have suffered from insecurity and not feeling like anything I do will ever get anywhere, but I have never thought of quitting, as music is all I have.
The human brain works in mysterious ways, and the "reasons" I mentioned in the paragraph above is barely scratching the surface. I strongly believe that musicians (and other artists alike) go through much more pressure because of many different factors, some personal, some general and not unique to most of us. However, one of them is not related to any of the ones I mentioned previously and this one applies to almost all kinds of artists, and it is the fact that we will never be appreciated for what we are fully, by the masses that is. Unless you are very lucky and happened to be a figure like Johann Sebastian Bach or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or any other figure like those we’ve had, but even still! And in the case of J.S. Bach, he barely got any appreciation during his lifetime, he once was even considered an “amateur” composer and all of his genius we have realized today only happened a century after he had died. And to quote Gustav Mahler; “My time will come!” Often attributed to that people will notice his works in the future but it was actually in a letter to his fiancé and it was regarding something related to Richard Strauss. My point is, no matter what you do in this world regarding your art, there will always be people who think of your field as something less, parents where I live will forever favor a medical degree at the cost of a child who has lost all wills to live due to constant pressure to get into medical school over a child majoring whatever they like that potentially, has a "useless" degree but we know about our degrees, we just take music as a major for the sake of learning. I personally know people who have great potential in music or art but choose to study in different fields because their families didn't want them to study art or music, and I hesitate to repeat myself, but at what cost? I truly believe an academic study of arts opens doors to many opportunities in your life. Doesn't help the fact that people will think more doctors and engineers is what helps our society, but in truth, musicians, artists, authors and philosophers are who the intellectuals really are. The more of those then the more intellect a society would be, the more sensitive artists you have the less wars will be fought. So now, we understand that a group of artists struggle with being able to bloom in their world due to lack of support of the people around, another factor that plays a major role is constant criticism. Now, I believe there are two kinds of criticism, the one where the critic will inform about the details of the work so the creator can improve upon their works in the future. While the other kind of “criticism” is one where your work gets insulted by a critic who most likely is only criticizing to bring you down or even insult you personally, as a person, which is a thing we see a lot in here unfortunately...
The story of the Tortured Artist is one that has existed in history and will continue on as the pressure of society will forever exist.
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