“Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why are so many artists insane, drug addled, philandering messes? Does the peculiar trait of being a gifted artist infect the artist with so much angst and emotion, they have no choice but to resort to a life of disarray? Or does the same propensity for anarchy in reality, bring an anarchy to the soul which enriches the talent for art?

I think the greatest art comes from insatiable curiosity before anything else. This is the root of the innovation which is at the heart of genius. It is why we remember Mozart and not Salieri. Those people with an intensely curious nature are going to eschew the banality of life that many of us simply accept grudgingly. Unfortunately, they find that the truest opposite of banality is not excitement, but chaos. Great for art, bad for the artist.

I also think the greatest artists have succeeded because they offer us a glimpse into a world unlike our own. In its highest form, art is transformative not just experientially, but personally. It can be a lasting imprint in our minds and hearts that there are still pages to turn and rocks to turn over. It can remind us candidly that our realistic potential may be as limitless as our imagination.

There is a quote from Sir Isaac Newton which reads:

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

So then maybe the greatest artistic discoveries and the greatest scientific discoveries share the common trait of being the surest enticements for our continued curiosity in the world. Are the artists and scientific geniuses who are tormented by the power of their own minds, simply sacrificial offerings? Jimi Hendrix died so young, but what would be the alternative? Should we trade his lasting and immeasurable musical influence for 40 more years of one man’s life? What about Van Gogh? Do we trade one the most significant collections of art in human history for one man’s sobriety and mental health?

As we lament the untimely deaths of artists, and the chaotic nature of their lives, it leaves a difficult idea to be faced: Perhaps some individual self-destruction is necessary for our general advancement. The real difficulty comes when we begin venerating people in our society who are not great artists, great thinkers, or great scientists. Our collective Schadenfreude allows random people, elevated to obscenely high peaks of popularity, to spiral downward into our greedy hands. They leave us with nothing to show for their calamity. If we admit that to a certain extent, it is always a sacrifice, then it must be what is rendered that is important.

We used to cry at the deaths of these figures, when they were sacrificed for the greater good of humanity. Will we cry if we find out tomorrow that some booze soaked reality TV star has crashed their car and died? What will have been left behind will not be innovation, not something to further a cause, not a revelation, barely even a cautionary tale. If these living objects of our collective fascination must die, then we should choose those worthy of veneration. The real tragedy will be the legacy of nothing rendered, and nothing gained. A sacrifice for nothing is not a sacrifice.