Ode to pain: The romanticisation of toxicity

The drive for creation

Recently I’ve been doing a deep soul search into my art, and the transmutations in my consciousness that have been taking place these last years living in Europe, and I came to some critical conclusions I’d like to share with you today.

Mainly the reflections were directed to the motif of drive and what is the source and motivation for my creativity, not because I’m lacking it (I’m so happy that nothing is missing in that department) but because the events or surroundings that trigger or inspire it are so specific and have changed so much over the years that observing them has helped me have a better grasp of me and my healing process.

In Freudian theory, there is a proposed duality when it comes to drives. Freud said that drive can be erotic or thanatotic which means that the motivation behind our actions can be inspired by a life instinct or a death instinct, respectively. I don’t believe such a division exists per se but I do believe that no one creates an action without an unconscious or conscious multisensorial vision in mind, and that vision can be either inspired by fear, love or both.

What do I mean by vision?

I wouldn’t be surprised if by this point you are wondering what is a multisensorial vision, and I’ll be happy to explain it to you.

Being a witch in most cases implies that you are likely to have visions, an immersive allegorical figuration that, unlike Stevie Nicks, we don’t always keep for ourselves. But funny enough those visions are not always visual.

We tend to associate the ability to foresee (and even this last word alludes to it) with the Ajna chakra, the “third eye chakra”, there is something about the sight sense that makes our human species prioritize it above the other senses. But for those who’ve immersed themselves in the subtle richness that cognition provides, you might have noticed already that visions are not always or only pictorial. Visions can also be scent, sound, taste or tactile-based, but something that most teachers omit to add is that they are all past-based. To have a vision means you ought to have an experiential database to draw conclusions from since a vision without time awareness is not a vision, it’s only a meaningless event in the present.

The platonic problematic

Before arriving at the romanticization of toxicity, I want to talk about another romanticization that is connected to it: the romanticization of platonism.

Most people who have a predominant platonic view of the world do so (not always aware of it) because they are attached to an idea of eternity. Beyond the obvious reason of making use of it as a coping mechanism that helps them deal with the imminence of mortality; the platonic view which (to follow the Greek mythos) could be easily positioned in the more above Uranic male spectrum of awareness, represents one side of a wider spectrum of integral reality, and by claiming to be the only one with eternal or perfect characteristics generates a dichotomy that is almost capriciously overlooked by the vast majority. A dichotomy that wouldn’t be such if we learned to see both sides of integral reality for what they truly are, always changing and sometimes lost in time.

The reason why Platonism is so appealing to intellectuals is that Plato claims that in the Topos Hyperuranios plane ideas are perfect and eternal. But I’ll be delighted to refute those concepts and hopefully with a high level of success.

First, let's address the perfection platonic claim. Let's not forget that ideologies are ideas and I challenge any liberal freedom-loving person to state that an ideology like nazism is perfect. Theories are ideas and many times are disproven, and expectations are ideas and usually are inaccurate.

As for the inherent eternal nature of ideas destined to descend to human awareness when it’s their time. If we’re willing to believe without any proof that ideas can’t be destroyed, then we should, in all honesty, be willing to recognize that ideas can indeed change, shift and reformulate themselves and generate movements that make a certain reality die to give way to a different present.

Taking a closer inspection of the etherical space that holds ideas “forever”, I realized the concept is not that different from the Christian concept of heaven, and just like Christianity, believing such a place exists is an act of faith more than empiricism and so, just like people who die, can we really say an idea lives on if no one remembers it? Could it be then that a species with a collective principle of communication is more relevant to eternity than an imagined space? Even more so, are ideas relevant if nothing is there to express them? Do ideas have a purpose if they don’t penetrate the material spectrum to fecund a change or movement? Should every idea be used to fecund something?

The previous set of questions was designed to make you realize not only that ideas' raison d’etre is intrinsically related to materiality but also that some ideas shouldn’t have ‘progeny’ with the material world. This is not only evidence of imperfection but also proof of finitude since perpetuation is another characteristic of the pursuit of immortality.

The missing counterpart

We now arrived at my favourite part which is the other side of the spectrum of the mentioned integral reality and this is (again following the Greek mythos) the Gaianic female side. This spectrum is connected to the below and the material representation of reality. It’s the one that makes us perceive death and imperfection, or isn’t it?

Just like in the hyperuranion, matter changes but it’s not destroyed and parallelly the ideas we have about the matter change too.

After taking all of these observations about ideas into consideration we could effortlessly draw a parallelism between the realm of ideas and the material realm. They both change, they can disappear from our perception or be forgotten so they can die, they are both imperfect (although perfection is a debatable concept), they are time-dependent, and have an interdependency with each other (among others that probably escape me or I don’t find relevant for this discussion). Therefore, having an attachment to a Uranic perspective it’s just that, an attachment, and very well spread in a masculine-centred society I might add.

To show further proof of this statement I might direct your attention to the fact that intellectual jobs (excluding the multimillionaire industry of entertainment) are better paid than physical ones.

Dissolving dialectics, creating collaboration

But why is it relevant to talk about this duality within integral reality to understand the importance of time in visions? Because the platonic perspective might be one of the predominant philosophical approaches that encourage perceiving time as a demiurgic force that only affects the material realm, and from it, there is a prevalent conception in the spiritual and esoterical community that time is a lesser force of the Cosmos and a “less real” manifestation of it -let's remember that for Plato ideas were more real than their material manifestation because, once again, they were perfect, providing even further evidence that anything related to the Gaianic spectrum is highly underestimated-.

When we try to have a greater understanding of Nature we try to reach a state beyond time, a sterile perspective that excludes all subjective “contamination”. But, how can we interpret what we see if we don’t have a recollection of experiences, symbols or language that can help us comprehend it? Should we try to understand it?

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I’m not a very absolutist person. I don’t like disregarding an entire thinker just because I don’t agree with some points in their theory. I don’t believe it’s a sign of a great mind to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Of course, I have my limits though, I try to avoid at all costs fascists, nazis and totalitarian personalities (and I’m not entirely convinced that Plato, with his philosopher-king proposal, wasn’t the latter), but not because I don’t believe these people can have any valuable ideas but because I noticed that society can be a little undiscerning and I don’t want to encourage admiration toward people that don’t stand for what I believe in.

Within the aspects of the platonic theory there are a couple of features I find valuable, one of them being that after a person overcomes the daze of the lights outside the cavern, his responsibility is to go back inside to show others the way out. I can’t help to think Platos’ commitment to political causes was inspired by Socrates’ sacrifice and unwavering determination to immerse the polis in the necessary philosophical discomfort that enables new perspectives. But I’m not here to psychoanalyse Plato, I just find it beautiful and worth remarking how actions carried with integrity can have a bigger impact than the most flourished of words.

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Going back to the question about whether we should try to understand our visions; it’s for the same reason that I see value in the act of returning to the cavern that my answer is yes. Maybe time doesn’t work the way we think it does, but that doesn’t mean that its presence is obsolete and, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe the hyperuranion is above time either. I believe considering ideas as perfect and timeless is an act of faith, not very different from the concept of the Judeo-Christian god, and that’s why Greek philosophy and Christian theology got along so well in medieval times.

But visions are not rational. Just like dreams sometimes understanding a vision is not an easy endeavour and its symbolism is not always comfortable to unravel but that shouldn’t discourage us from trying to be as aware as we can of them because it’s through them that we’ll understand our spiritual calling.

What we also need to understand is that visions are ideas manifested through the physical senses and just like the action of returning to the cavern, daring to interpret our vision is an act of bringing light to a somehow obscured reality. Our rational abilities shouldn’t be estranged from our instinctual or intuitive visions, I believe the male and the female aspects of awareness should work together and are meant to have an interdependent relationship not pressuring one another into becoming what is comfortable for them for the other to be (which sadly is what society show in the misogynistic reality we’re immersed in these days) but by potentiating one another and helping them reach their highest expression. For this, we should allow ourselves to get completely immersed in our visions but also we should always try to understand them later and see how those visions make us feel and affect our drive.

The truth is that not only witches but all of us have visions. We all have a semi-conscious awareness of the consequences of our actions and those actions can be motivated to go towards encountering something or run away from something (and sometimes maybe both). And as long as the reasons are to escape from something we won’t know healing or freedom through that action because they will be motivated by fear.

The trivialization of happiness

This entire reflection started because a few days ago I was watching a lyric analysis YouTube video of Lana del Rey (you can watch it here if you understand Spanish) and the speaker in the video said (paraphrasing): “Undoubtedly Lana is very sensible, that transpires through her first albums but she also has things he enjoys in life”, referring to how her experiential confessional lyrics changed from the toxic and psychologically abusive relationship that she had in New York to lighter note and more feminist-oriented narratives in her late work like the song “Get free”; and when I heard that I thought that her statement presented a latent but common problematic: why do we think sensibility only transpires through pain and tragedy? Why are we able to see sensitivity in Kurt Cobain but not in lighter or stronger figures like Graham Norton, RuPaul or Kate Beckinsale? Isn’t smiling or laughing not impulsed by our sensitivity as much as crying? Why do we fail to see how much sensibility, maturity and commitment is required to choose happiness and true healing (the one that doesn’t exploit pain for artistic purposes)?

I don’t have an answer to these questions but I have a suspicion. I suspect the reason is that we don’t care to understand pleasure we only care to understand pain, and with the same prism, we can say that we don’t care to understand actions driven by love but we do want to understand the ones that are driven by fear. This is why most artists can’t make art without self-destroying, because we don’t create a metadiscursive action of reality like taking a picture, painting or writing a poem, while we are immersed in a pleasurable experience like having sex or bursting with laughter but when we long those moments or we want to allure people into having a specific perception.

A time ago I had a discussion with a psychologist friend who was trying to talk me out of a toxic infatuation, and the unsuccessful method he tried to use to make me let him go was to convince me that I wasn’t really in love I was projecting Oedipical reasons into him, which didn’t work as an argument because I don’t believe that rational reasons interfere with sensitivity but actually that they are indivisible. Of course, I have reasons for loving someone, and of course, there are reasons for why we feel attracted toward who we feel attracted to. I think the mistake lies in trying to use these reasons to manipulate people and invalidate someone's choice, and that’s why we find it more comfortable to think nature is deprived of rationality, to protect some communities, to defend their right to be beyond invalidating questioning, and very rightly so, but rationality is still present whether we like it or not, just like sensitivity is.

That experience with my friend made me also realize that if there are reasons then they could be examined and reformulated for healing myself. There were definitely Oedipical reasons for that toxic attraction but that meant that if I immersed in how those reasons made me feel to transmute them, I could make that need to find healthier ways of being satisfied and change how the traits that attract me should take form.

I ultimately realized that what attracted me to that person weren’t negative traits but that some other traits that came with him were, and I had the right not to choose them and to open the door to discover that the positive is not a condition sine qua non for the toxic. After all, most of the attributes that I liked about him were also present in myself, and if I exist and I don’t give myself a toxic relationship I’m sending the message to my subconscious that the attributes that I like can exist in someone else without toxicity too. For example, someone can be sensitive and not be so scared of intimacy and true openness that immerses everyone around him in a cruel impassable solitude and unfulfillment.

I finally understood that I needed to lead my drive-by example and that no true healing could come from indulging in my pain no matter how scared I might’ve been of losing my artistic inspiration because the truth is that not being able to be creative through happiness had more repercussions than I imagine.

Taking it beyond the individual

I always find that when a reflection is useful in multiple levels of reality the satisfaction that it provides is wholesome, and this reflection is no exception.

One of the most anguishing philosophical questions that I had to inhabit in my life is: Why do we need to destroy the planet to understand the importance of ecology? Why do we need to exploit to understand the value of freedom? Why does humanity need to learn from pain and suffering and not pleasure? And when I started with this reflection those questions started to be answered.

We don’t learn from pleasure and satisfaction, we don’t source our creativity from healthy experiences because we don’t take happiness and joy seriously and we don’t care to understand them. Can you imagine having that kind of relationship with anything else that is worth having?

Finally, I must add that artistically exploiting pain and making healing art with pain are two very different things. Exploiting pain is using art as a patch to justify your pain like saying “at least I’m doing something beautiful with it”. Doing healing art is using the art that comes from your pain as a vision to change your reality into a healthier one, to help you break with your toxicity.

However, most people don’t know how to do real healing art and instead make odes of pain and get attached to them without acknowledging the gigantic consequences that a chosen toxic personal reality has on everyone and how we perpetuate the idea that pain is an aim to have if we want to create art. Without caring even to recognize the horrible example and expectation we set to others near us, our inner child and the collective at large. Without even considering that embellishing toxicity through art without any intention of transmuting it into a healthier reality, not only adds to the vicious cycle of destruction humanity is immersed in, not very different from an over-consumerism encouraged through marketing, but actually leaves a horrible legacy to future generations that, just like us, they might feel attracted to be inspired by toxic examples until they awake into taking happiness seriously too. Let's hope is not too late by then.

Photo by Averie Woodard on Unsplash