Tortured Souls of Great Writers, Artists

UPDATE: Several typos fixed. Ugh.

---

To write about the range of human emotions, an exceptional writer must have been reduced to the ground in pain and soared among the clouds in ecstasy.

This has been my working theory for years, and I am sure it owes to some intellectual antecedents that I no longer recall. My apologies to those forgotten inspirations.

My case in point has always been Ernest Hemingway. The quintessential American author suffered from alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and eventually took his own life with both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun at age 61.

Writers -- indeed many great artists -- don't seem to be a happy-go-lucky sort. Tortured souls such as Vincent Van Gogh typify the extremely gifted far better than the ever-optimistic Bobby McFerrin.

I was reminded of my theory today as I read the headline "Harry Potter author: I considered suicide" on CNN.com.

[Although] the 42-year-old has spoken before of her battle with depression, it was the first time she had admitted that she contemplated suicide, the newspaper said.

It was then that [J. K.] Rowling began writing the first Harry Potter book, which was eventually published in 1996.

Sadly, it seems, the pain of mental illness drives the creative engine.

It is, I suppose, like method acting taken to the painful extreme. In order to write words that resonate with the lows experienced by the average reader, you must have spent a great deal of time exploring those low places. You must know the shadows of the low places. They must be a part of you. And they must haunt you.

The formula is familiar. Creativity. Greatness. Pain. Depression. Alcohol. Drugs. Rather than hippie indiscretions, these analgesics mask the pain. Creative minds often find a way to self-medicate in order to shut out the darkness.

Although the pain may be numbed, the underlying problem often is made only worse.

I hope that Rowling's days of depression are behind her. She sought proper help for her depression, and luckily the science that helped her has advanced beyond the electro-convulsive therapy that may have descended Hemingway into another circle of hell.

In the meantime, we warm ourselves in the greatness of pained souls only to lose them too soon.

Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Hutchence, Hunter S. Thompson, Spalding Gray, Virginia Woolf.

They either died by their own hands or an accidental overdose. The list is so much longer. The list includes people such as Paul Tilley, the DDB creative chief who fell to his death in February.

I've watched friends who are great talents and writers suffer with depression and mental illness. Sadly, at least one such friend died by his own hand. Another came dangerously close.

There is no cure to link between creativity and emotional pain. Indeed, I believe they are forever fused in a causal link. We can only try to recognize depression and mental illness and reach out to those about whom we care. We can try to reduce the stigma of mental illness and related treatment.

Most people who pick up a pen struggle to rise above mediocrity. Finding the right word is a difficult task, and my words here hardly do justice to the great names listed above. The ability to find the right word is an insight into the human condition. Sadly that insight too often comes from a great deal of pain.

Sopranos Fuss Highlights TV's Power

I don't watch the Sopranos. There's no good reason, really. When the series started, I had Showtime rather than HBO. And I was in graduate school, so there was not much spare time for television.

Having several obsessive-compulsive quirks, I usually get on a bandwagon early or I don't get on at all.

Sure, I've seen a few episodes. I understand why the show is both highly rated and critically acclaimed. I just haven't had the time.

Nonetheless, I have followed the saga of the show's ending closely and with great interest.

I have a high need for closure. As someone who did not watch the show, I think the open-ended ending was brilliant. If I had been a viewer, I probably would be angry.

But the debate (more than 80,000 people logged in to vote on an ESPN Radio poll) captures why I study television: stories fascinate me.

As I have indicated before, I never set out to study narrative. If I had continued my early methodology of showing television in 30-second clips, I might never have gotten it.

But I started showing entire episodes. For my dissertation (and subsequent work), participants watched an entire episode of ER. And I watched them watching.

The story draws you in. When participants find out that they will be watching ER, some are happy and some are annoyed. One young lady did a little dance.

Once the story starts, however, they get reeled in. We like stories. Homer figured this out several hundred years ago. And it fascinates me today that we're still so hooked on these stories.
Indeed, many old women call soap operas their "stories."

And since we were children, we were taught that stories have endings. We seem to get mad when that's violated, even though it's not so life-like.

There's no definitive answer about the Sopranos. The ESPN Radio vote was 50.8% in favor of the ending and 49.2% against. You cannot get much more split than that.

In the end, creator David Chase wrote the series ending that lets the story live on.

This seems more appropriate in a drama than a situation comedy, where we beg for closure. Just a few days ago, I asked my wife, "Did Ross and Rachel end up getting back together in the Friends finale?"

I Want to Write TVs Shows When I Grow Up

Last night, I was sitting here watching a TiVo'd episode of Desperate Housewives.

The episode was really telling four different stories in parallel:

1. Susan tried to pick between Ian and Mike

2. Edie attempted to keep Carlos via her kid

3. Lynette flirted with the chef, Rick

4. Gabrielle abused her new found mayoral power

Watching the show, I was impressed with the way the stories were advanced together and intersected and key moments. It was really cool, I thought.

You see, I study story-telling and the role of emotion. And as a former journalist, I once was a story teller. But I'm not now.

And the more I think about it, the more I am curious about the process that goes into writing a television drama. I hope, someday, to sit around one of those tables for a few weeks. I'd like to see what goes on. I'd like to see how they decide to weave plot lines together.

After measuring the effects of their handiwork for several years, I'd like to see what goes into the handiwork.

Watching Super Bowl Ads 'On Duty'

I watched the Super Bowl as an ad critic today. On Friday, a reporter from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal called and asked whether I would watch and give them a top 3, worst 3, and overall remarks. After getting over the shame of being their second choice, I agreed.

So I logged every ad. I paid attention to which ads made me laugh and which ads made my wife, Emily, laugh. She here are my Top 3 and Bottom 3.

Top 3
1. Bud Light: Rock, Paper, Scissors
2. Bud Light: Fist Bump
3. T Mobile: Charles Barkley as Dwayne Wade’s "dad"

Honorable Mention
CBS: David Letterman and Oprah

Bottom 3
1. Snickers: Two mechanics kissing
2. Sierra Mist Free: Beard comb over
3. Garmin Navigation: Maposaurus

Here are my concluding thoughts, which were primed by a great Super Bowl TV network post by my colleague Rob Potter:

CBS was another huge winner that will not occur to most people. I counted dozens of promotions for CBS shows, many of which already top the ratings. The promotional spot with David Letterman and Oprah in Colts and Bears jerseys was among my favorite spots of the night. CBS promos were everywhere. CBS came out of the halftime show promoting 5 straight CBS programs and specials.

Redenbacher Resurrection Ads Disturbing

I was watching television with the wife last night, when I was suddenly driven into a week of nightmares by the ghoulish Silly Putty-esque remake of poor Orville Redenbacher. The ad (by creative guru firm Crispin) is creepy and unrealistic.

Here's what Ken Wheaton had to say on Adage.com:

"When Crispin first won the account, I joked privately that they'd dig Orville Redenbacher from the grave. Well, that seems to be exactly what the agency did, presenting an unsuspecting audience with an iPod-wearing, dead-eyed zombie.

"Firstly, the Orville zombie sounds nothing like the original. More important, it is visually jarring ... my emotions ranged from "this is amateurish-looking crap" to "holy jeebum crow, this scares the hell out of me" -- especially near the end, when the Orville zombie's shoulder start hitching and it looks as if he's about to hack up a hairball."

I saw Mr. Redenbacher in person once at some sort of chili cookoff in Phoenix. Poor ol' Indiana guy never could have seen this one coming.

It's Your Year; Ad Age Says So, Too

In science, we attempt to build knowldge through programmatic steps (see Structure of Scientific Revolutions for more depth, here). We need to know about the work of others in our field.

However, when I am trying to do something creative, I never want to know what other people are thinking. When I used to write headlines for newspapers in New Mexico and California, I hated suggestions from other people.

As soon as an idea is out there, it cannot be retracted. It is like an anchor in space (indeed there are some cognitive theories that use this notion of anchoring), and you cannot avoid it. Now you must either embrace the new idea or avoid it altogether.

And this is true even if you would have arrived at a very similar idea independently. Imagine your friend buying a new blue Honda civic hybrid. Even if you were going to buy a silver version of the exact same car, you cannot now do so without looking as if you copied the idea.

This is OK in many aspects of life (e.g., I hope physicians copy clever ways to diagnose disease), but it's no good for creativity (see thoughts on creativity here).

Rewind a few weeks, and Time magazine names you the person of the year for the growth of Youtube, etc. (see my thoughts here).

OK, I thought the idea was lame. But it seemed original. Until this week. Now you are ALSO the advertising agency of the year.

Come on, people! Really! Can I also be the Motor Trend car of the year?

The voters at Advertising Age noted, they thought about changing their minds when they saw the Time magazine selection ... but they did not.

I get their point. But still. They come off as cheap and duplicative.

"We threw around more agency names but kept coming back to that idea of consumer as agency. The arguments piled up: Lonelygirl15; the Mentos/Coke experiments; TBWA London asking the public for ideas; recognition of the importance of consumer-to-consumer communication; marketers' oft-stated belief that the consumer is in control. Of course, consumers aren't agencies, but they have become arguably the most effective creators and distributors of commercial content. If we were ever going to do something different with our selection, this was the year to do it."

I agree with all of this. However, it still could not be you. They should have made Lonelygirl15 the agency. Or any of the others. But not you. This is advertising, people. We teach positioning. If some other brand takes the position first, you lost it. Sorry. Burger King does flame-broiled.

You may make some pretty-good flame-broiled burgers. But you cannot own this position. Sorry.

If you want to see some good consumer-created content, look at the Doritos ads here. Just don't name me anything of the year anymore.

P.S. For example, I had the smart alleck thought about listing the "Person of the year" thing on my resume (called a CV in academe). But my former colleague Matt Nisbet beat me to it, so all I can do is give him props.

Teaching Creativity

When I teach writing classes, I try to talk about and foster creativity. This is a subject that is more a part of the art of communication rather than the science of communication in which I am trained. I am not sure whether creativity can even be taught. Perhaps it is only enhanced.

During an advertising class at Kansas State, Charles Pearce talked about his views on creativity. He expressed a view shared by many others that we are creative as children, but society forces its normal mold upon us and we lose this creativity. At the time, I was skeptical.

Photo by Isabel Bradley.

In the five years since this classroom discussion, I have learned a lot about the brain and neural networks, and I have watched my own children grow. When you train an artificial neural network, interesting things happen. It begins to learn. It begins to get things right. The more it learns, the better it gets. However, this learning has an unintended consequence. The more the net learns, the less likely it is to do something off-the-wall. Does off-the-wall have anything to do with creativity? I will let you be the judge. Yet I will argue that creativity has something to do with seeing the same facts in a new light. And as a neural network (and presumably a human brain) learns more about its world, the less able it is to see that world in a new light. This results in a smarter network that makes better decisions but happens to be less creative. No one has to force it to be less creative. It just happens. When the network really learns the "box," it can no longer thing outside of it.

As evidence of this, I offer this photo taken by my 7-year-old, Isabel. This photo is not cropped or altered in any way. It is simply how Isabel saw the canopy of the food court at the Columbus Zoo. Most adults would have not have noticed this. Even though I have had professional training as a photojournalist, I would not have seen this. Yet she did. I owe this creativity to Isabel's grandfather Roger, who turned her loose with his camera. Isabel came up with at least 4 very cool photos from perspectives that would not have occurred to me ... creativity.

Thus, it looks as if Charles Pearce had it right. However, I don't think there is a conspiracy. There is no plot by middle school teachers to drive the creativity out of our minds. It seems merely to happen as we learn more about the regularities of our world.