“Am I Just Fiddling While Rome Burns?”

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CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights

“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

-Louise Nevelson

In my work over the years treating creative patients, 2 somewhat related issues frequently emerge, specifically in regard to relevance and perspective.

For many contemporary artists, regardless of the level of success in their chosen field, doubts persist regarding how relevant or significant their work is, either culturally, creatively, or politically. Particularly in times of social upheaval or unrest, or during a severe national or international crisis, artists worry that unless what they are doing directly addresses or contributes to the pressing issues of the day, it has no value.

For example, I have vivid memories of a patient, a well-known comedian, in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, lamenting the irrelevance of what he did for a living. His very success making others laugh (by “telling stupid jokes”) caused him acute shame. A similar case involved a prominent Hollywood studio executive, whose fortunes were made by developing and releasing what she called “mindless action movies,” while her younger sibling toiled away in an Eastern rust-belt city as a union organizer. These shameful feelings were exacerbated by her parents’ pride in and regard for her sibling’s seemingly more important job, an opinion that was regularly relayed to her.

Aligned with a desire for relevance is a common, self-recriminating concern regarding perspective. Many creative patients, when exploring either personal or professional issues, frequently reproach themselves for even having these issues when others are dealing with so much worse. As one of my film composers put it, “It’s hard to complain that my agent doesn’t return my calls when people are getting bombed halfway around the world.” Or as another, quite successful screenwriter patient put it, “How can I bitch about being creatively unfulfilled when there are people starving every day?”

These twin issues of relevance and perspective were never more acute in my practice than in the past 3 weeks, in the wake of the devastating wildfires that consumed a great swath of Los Angeles. As I write this, the fires are essentially contained, though fears remain that another series of high winds could spark a new such event.

Along with everyone else, my patients are shocked, disheartened, and grief-stricken by the level of destruction caused by these fires, whether or not their lives were directly affected by the tragedy. (Although in my practice alone, 5 patients have had to evacuate their homes, while 1 regrettably lost her house to the Palisades fire). The psychic cost of this horrendous experience for the individuals of the county is incalculable. While government officials bemoan the financial cost of rebuilding these devastated parts of the city, as well as the length of time it will take to do so, there is little doubt that significant trauma will linger at least as long—if not forever, particularly in cases in which loved ones were lost.

Which brings me back to a unique concern troubling some of my creative patients during this difficult time. In the midst of such deep, all-consuming communal pain, how can they justify pursuing their work? If, in fact, they even have the will to do so? Most, I was not surprised to learn, cannot bear the thought of continuing to work, whether because of their own intense reaction to events or those aforementioned concerns about relevance and perspective. As one of my director patients, in prep for a new film, put it: “Am I just fiddling while Rome burns? Literally?”

For an artist in doubt about the importance and meaningfulness of their work, such catastrophic events like these wildfires bring them face to face with those doubts. They shine a light on their view of the value of what they strive to accomplish. Being an artist in a capitalist society, pursuing creative work in a brutally competitive marketplace, is difficult enough without concerns about one’s actual contribution to the lived experience in which they are inevitably embedded.

Moreover, such cataclysmic events often trigger core issues involving self-worth and entitlement, birthed in the creative patient’s family of origin. Many artists were raised in families that shamed and criticized them for even entertaining such inexplicable goals. A sizable number of my patients report having spent years (often far into adulthood) defending to skeptical or sometimes openly hostile family members the legitimacy (not to mention practicality) of their creative aspirations.

Is it any wonder then that as parts of the city are reduced to rubble, a TV writer finds his struggles with a particularly stubborn scene to be ludicrous on its face? That a painter could feel uneasy about readying her work for an upcoming gallery showing? That a nationally-known journalist on deadline to finish a celebrity profile would find his efforts suddenly distasteful? These 3 creative individuals—all current patients of mine—are perfect examples of how these wildfires have triggered concerns about both relevance and perspective.

Which suggests that the treatment of these patients involves an exploration of the meanings derived from familial expectations or rebukes, as well as the shameful self-recrimination that accompany such meanings. How does the patient’s personal mythology about how the world works, as well as their place in it, pertain when it comes to their artistic goals? And how is this mythology impacted (or, more likely, reinforced) when confronted by powerful external events, such as these wildfires? As always, it comes down to the intersection of subjectivity and context; without an understanding of how each reinforces the other, no real understanding of a patient’s core issues is possible.

Not that these concerns are new, of course; they stretch far beyond the confines of the consulting room. Since Ovid, poets and artists of all stripes have labored to find justification for their creative work by either using it to comment on the events of the day or presenting it as a helpful distraction from the burdens of life. Filmmakers in particular have noted and wrestled with this problem. In the film “Sullivan’s Travels,” writer/director Preston Sturges tells of a Hollywood filmmaker who fears his trifling comedies do not have much to contribute to society when contrasted with the real troubles individuals face. At the story’s end, he comes to understand the value of the pleasure, solace, and distraction his films provide for the audience. Many years later, in Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories,” when the lead character, another conflicted filmmaker, asks some alien visitors what he can do to help the world, they simply reply, “Write funnier jokes.”

Songwriters have always known the wisdom of this approach. From the lyric poets of the medieval era to the blues derived from slave songs to the folk laments of the Appalachian people, giving voice to anguish—whether of a general or specific kind—has been a balm in difficult times. This is never truer than in wartime. Every nation, in times of armed conflict, has developed songs reflecting both the personal heroism and/or governmental deceit revealed by war, from “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Johnny Comes Marching Home” to the protest songs of the Vietnam era.

So now, as the firestorm that enveloped much of Los Angeles seems to be ebbing, creative individuals of all stripes must confront the reality of being artists in what the familiar Chinese curse terms “interesting times.” Author James Baldwin wrote, in an admittedly different context, about “The Fire Next Time.” Well, for the creatives in my practice, that “fire” has literally come now, and with it sincere questions about the value of their artistic ambitions.

Any yet, in my view, the importance of the storyteller in difficult times—our writers, composers, painters, etc—has never been more obvious. Or relevant. Perhaps you are not Delacroix, whose painting, “Liberty Leading the People,” was meant to inspire and celebrate a revolution. Or Picasso, whose anti-war masterpiece “Guernica” is a stunning, resolute study in grief. Or John Hersey, whose novel Hiroshima tells the vivid story of 6 survivors of that city’s fateful bombing. Or Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring alerted readers to the threat of environmental disaster. But the job of the artist, even those who “merely” entertain, remains the same: to expose, to mirror, and to comment upon the events of history. To tell a truth that often cannot be told any other way. It has been the artist’s burden—and privilege—since the Greeks, and it persists to this day.

Even if this day is encircled by walls of flame. In fact, especially so…

Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.