art and pain

must art be painful?

I think the answer is no, which is rather ironic coming from me because I am most driven to write when I am, in one form or another, in pain.

Yet I have come to believe that the archetype of the 'tortured artist' is overdone, and that not all art has to be painful.

Certainly, people can (and always have) created art based on happy feelings, neutral feelings, or no feelings at all. But the works that have the greatest impact on us are often those loaded with the agony of the creator.

Another interesting thing to think about is that writing fueled by sorrow has rarely been cathartic for me. You might imagine that transforming your bottled up anguish into a poem might provide some sort of relief. And yet, it's often the opposite. To write about pain requires you to truly immerse yourself in it.

Then why do it at all? At least for me, I feel almost obligated to do it. It seems to me that it is no use to sit there, inert and suffering. I might as well create something out of it, to immortalize it and use it as a chance to learn more about myself and how I relate to others.

Understanding is another thing altogether. I imagine that the feeling of having someone read your writing and completely resonate with must be the ultimate form of catharsis. Yet this feeling is so hard to come by...