The first line is always the hardest...

it took me ten minutes to think up this one. I spent five minutes deciding whether to divide the two clauses with a comma or a semicolon. Or maybe it should have been two separate sentences? Quibbling over grammar isn't the kind of suffering I am talking about though. What is it about writing that makes it so painful? Ask any writer worth their salt how they feel when they write and invariably they will say something negative. Only one writer that I have read has stated different. Piers Anthony wrote that he sits down for six hours a day, and just writes, like he was going in to the office, or going to the graveyard shift at the greasy spoon to relieve the fry-cook. Not to be a critic but if you read his writing, although it is very nice and solid and grammatically correct, it doesn't really say anything. Hunter S. Thompson wrote:

"The paper in my notebook is limp and the blue and white tiles of my floor are so slick with humidity that not even white canvas, rubber-soled basketball shoes can provide enough real traction for me to pace back and forth in the classic, high-speed style of a man caving in to The Fear".

If you read Hunter S. Thompson you will find that his writing isn't very nice, it's not real solid, and he doesn't place much stock in being grammatically correct. However, you will walk away with more than you had when you sat down with his book; it speaks to you, as sure as he was in the same room telling you a story. Here are two more from Hunter S.:

"I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a writing desk".

"I don't like to write. I don't care what the fuck happens after I write. Once I've gotten the story in my mind, the rest is just pain".

At first glance, these two statements may seem in contradiction. Perhaps he wrote them on a good day, and a bad day. Reread them though, and really think about what he's saying, and you'll find that they both say the exact same thing.

Another one of my favorites is Carson McCullers. At age twenty-three she wrote a book called 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.' Most books need time and perspective to truly evaluate their value, but almost immediately this book was regarded as a classic of southern tragedy. To quote from the back cover:

". . .[the author] conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition".

Her second book, 'Reflections in a Golden Eye' surpassed her first in the level of senseless human suffering, and she used 150 less pages to do it. I often wondered how a twenty-three year old girl, who grew up in the United States; the 'best' and 'most advanced' country on this earth, could imagine up such pain and suffering and human frailty, such terrible existence. I only had to look within myself to find the answer: she didn't imagine it.

Why do writers have such unproportionate levels of alcoholism, insanity, neuroses, drug overdoses, and suicide? Hemingway was an incurable alcoholic, and drinking eventually caused his death. Poe was an alcoholic, and he died at an early age in a mental hospital raving about ''specters, and the disembodied head of his mother". Hermann Hesse wrote 'Siddhartha', one of the finest works on spiritual journey, and finding oneness in the universe. He couldn't keep his marriage together, and he spent his entire life in and out of mental facilities. He even had his head shrunk by Carl Jung himself. J.D. Salinger wrote numerous short stories, and arguably one of the best works in english literature (The Catcher in the Rye), then became so obsessed with his privacy that when journalists came to talk to him, he chased them off with a shotgun. He is still holed up on his Connecticut estate to this day.

We can extend this survey to other artists as well. Who can forget Van Gogh? He cut his ear off, and mailed it as a token of his love to the woman who jilted him. Of course this woman was his cousin. Van Gogh died penniless and alone, as he only sold one painting in his lifetime. Jackson Pollack battled most of his life with alcoholism and social behavior that bordered on insanity. His marriage was in shambles, and like Van Gogh, he barely sold enough paintings to make a living and his genius was not recognized till after his untimely death.

Musicians too, fall into our little trap. Every five years there is a big to-do about some rock star O.D.ing or committing suicide. Kurt Cobain had an overdose, and when that didn't work he blew his head off with a shotgun six months later. He had a wife, and a baby girl. Read his lyrics, and you will find they are full of so much pain and suffering that just listening to his music is a challenging mental accomplishment. Here's some rock-star deaths for you: Jimi Hendrix, drugs; Janis Joplin, drugs and alcohol; John Bonham, drugs and alcohol; Michael Hutchence, suicide; and Jim Morrison, heart attack (undoubtedly caused by drugs and alcohol).

So what causes this? Some will be quick to respond with lifestyle. "All rock-stars start doing lots of drugs". Although this is true, it is not caused by lifestyle. Here's something to think about; some artists will try to tell you that they create their art for art's sake. This is a bald-faced lie. If someone tells you this then say 'bullshit'. Everybody wants to be accepted, and to receive praise for what they have accomplished. This is true for Van Gogh, for J.D. Salinger, and for that poor starving Soho artist who tells you that he suffers for his art and then shoots himself full of heroin to take away the sting of constant rejection.

The only person whom I can think of that may have truly created art for art's sake was the writer Kate Chopin. During her lifetime everyone knew her as a simple housewife in Louisiana. After her death, her entire oeuvre was discovered in a box, and she was recognized as one of the pioneers of classic erotic fiction. I'm not talking Harlequin romance; her work had much style and substance. So why had she not submitted it for publication? Some will say that she knew it would be too risqu�in those Victorian times, but then again, this was New Orleans. Some will say that it was because she was a woman, but this is around the time that Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolfe, and Pearl S. Buck all had all successfully gotten there work in the public eye. Some will say that she was simply afraid of rejection, and this may be the closest to the truth. Maybe though, she was unsatisfied with her lot in life, and created these stories to add some spice to an otherwise mundane existence of cleaning the house, raising the children, and cooking meals.

Suffering for art is a common theme in the human condition, much more reasonable than the answer of 'lifestyle'. Think about a junkie or an alcoholic living on the streets, do you think that their lifestyle caused that situation, or did their situation cause that lifestyle? Maybe the junkie who succumbs to his habit everyday is an artist that has not yet found an appropriate outlet for his talent. Maybe his talent cannot live up to his ambition. The next time a junkie asks you for some change, before you hand over your money, or ignore them and hurry away, ask them for a poem, or a story. If they give you one, tell them 'thanks', and let them know that it was good, whether it was or not.

Writing is pain because it comes from within yourself, and you have to tap something that you may not feel you have. Think back to school, and when you had to write a three-page essay on the Soviet Union. Think back to college when you had to write a ten-page essay comparing the works of Keats and Shelley. Think back to Grad school, when you had to write a one hundred page doctoral dissertion on a topic that you had to pull out of your own head. Didn't you just hate staring at that blank sheet of paper, or computer screen, trying to find a beginning and an end? Didn't you hate staring out the window and watching life go by, while you're inside supposedly doing something that will make you a better person? This is understandable pain and suffering, because being forced to do something against your will with no obvious benefit rarely makes for a good frame of mind.

But a writer. A writer feels as much pain as you do in front of that computer or with that blank paper, but they love it. A writer's relationship with his art is much stormier than any relationship between a man and woman. It is a hot and cold relationship with love and hate, and mutual abuse. And the writer will always crawl back to the computer no matter how much pain his or her art causes, like a sick dog coming forward to lick the toes of the master who beats him. It is the perfect abusive relationship because no one sees the abuse, and there are no support groups to allow writers to vent their suffering and torment. It gets funneled back into the relationship and the cycle continues like the proverbial snake swallowing his own tail.

The next time you read a book, or look at a painting, or listen to your favorite music I would like you to take a moment to think about the writer in front of that blank screen, the artist in front of a blank canvass, and a musician with yards of blank tape waiting to be recorded on. Imagine the suffering, and the struggle they go through to create something from within themselves to fill that empty void. And although there may be many copies of their art in a million different homes, always know that it was created just for you, because truly it was. There are no people without one person.

I used to wonder if I would follow down the same road as some of my idols. You know, take the turnoff to alcohol abuse, change planes at insanity, and finally arrive home at suicide. I don't believe I will. For one thing, I have already beaten alcohol because I never think about it, but I do still think about insanity and suicide. Not very often, but more often than I feel comfortable with. If I can beat one though, then I think I can beat them all. When I feel that I have no support then I remember that I have the ground beneath me, and the chair that I sit on now, and sometimes that's all the support I need. I am tired of fighting for today, so I will retire, but be assured that before too long I will be back to do battle with my cruel mistress, and maybe someday soon I will win.