Crazy rhythms A look at schizophrenia and the creative impulse in musicians By Erin Barnes ebarnes@mscd.edu

   The best tricks to boost a music career are dying, heroin and mental illness. Our music collections are packed with the by-products of mental illness: rock’s bible Pet Sounds, by the Beach Boys, was created by a man with a vibrant history of schizophrenia. The most recent example of this, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, is a documentary that heartbreakingly illustrates R.D. Lang’s saying “Mystics and schizophrenics fi nd themselves in the same ocean, but the mystics swim whereas the schizophrenics drown.”

   Musicians, scientists, painters, writers and spiritual leaders all have brilliantly mad predecessors. Literary characters like Faust, Frankenstein and the Byronic hero all romanticize eccentrics who throw relationships and sanity to the wind for the passion of their work.

   Such stereotypes lend to thinking that creative careers are the only ones worth going mad for, but it’s possible the arts are a magnet for those who are already mentally ill. It’s curious, however, that it always seems to be the artists who are mad while the rest of society seems arguably fine.

   “My patients are in too much pain to communicate,” said Dr. Maria Lasaga, who has worked at Kaiser’s schizophrenia inpatient facility for 10 years. Instead of slaving endlessly over brilliant projects, her patients are catatonic, delusional and speaking in “word salad.”    And music therapy is “too simplistic. It’s like playing music for diabetics; it might calm them down, but it’s not related.

   Schizophrenia might not automatically lead to brilliant art, but mental illness—specifi cally bipolar disease, depression and schizotypal personality disorder—has been linked to creativity and brilliance in multiple studies.

    Edgar Allen Poe, known for his questionable mental stability, wondered, “whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” But schizophrenia, even in Lasaga’s
patients, is an artistic disease

   According to Lasaga, schizophrenia is a symbolic way of expressing past trauma. A person might experience something so painful their mind creates an alternate existence, usually involving delusions symbolic of their torment

   Artist and musician Daniel Johnston was constantly told to be “normal” and go to church, and manifesting through his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, he became a devout Christian bent on slaying the devil.

   Johnston—known for his clever songwriting, appearances on MTV and friendship with members of the band Sonic Youth—grew up in a healthy middle class family.
   Johnston didn’t suffer any childhood abuse or trauma; infact, he was also a child prodigy in school.

    The one painful thing for Johnston was that he felt different. He funneled his passion exclusively into art and music, while his family held jobs and went to church. The loneliness and persecution he felt are fused into most of his songs.
   Following Lasaga’s theory, this pain alone was enough for Johnston to collapse into the most debilitating of mental illnesses.
   Excluding your Sunday morning painting with Bob Ross, being an artist is a depressing gig. A good artist is imagining what it feels like to die while others do their taxes. Artists are usually isolated because of their eccentricity

   Even more depressing, an artist slaves away for a cause many see as trivial among our families and our capitalistic society.

    Ralph Berton wrote, “When the artist ceased to have any essential function in our society, he has lived not so much in it as in spite of it.” Hence, art as a revolutionary vehicle, a guide for introspection and objective social criticism. It’s a life of mental and physical isolation that allows artists to do what they do.

   Psychologists John Baer and James Kaufman coined the “Sylvia Plath” effect, which says female poets, who are the least successful and accepted of all artists, have the highest incidence of mental illness. Furthermore, the more an artist cares about external factors (i.e. family, friends, and society), the more likely psychological problems will occur. They theorize this is because an artist’s“job” is to go against the grain, and those who can’t
handle it can be traumatized.

   So it’s not necessarily about monetary success. Most artists, whether successful or not, work under the hope that their work will move the world. A relationship with one person can be stressful enough; imagine the stress of an immortal relationship with the world. Daniel Johnston
wrote about his lifelong unrequited love for a girl he barely knew. Friends said it was simply symbolic and that his lyrics suggest his feelings were directed toward a
world that didn’t love him back

   Johnston was brilliant in his childlike way before he became mentally ill, and it was his brilliance in the face of an unappreciative society that turned him ill. Who knows whether Johnston would have made the great music he did if he were sane. Writer Albert Rothenburg
said he would have, as the artists he’s studied did better work during treatment. But it’s clear Johnston wouldn’t have had such a hard life if he were able to meld that creative mind into that of a businessman’s.

   “Mystics and schizophrenics fi nd themselves in the same ocean, but the mystics swim whereas the schizophrenics drown.”

R.D. Lang