[Blarg]

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If I am feeling depressed, I cannot do anything but think on a base level.


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This is very much the case with me. If I am not functioning at what I consider my higher levels, I find I lose a lot of what I think of as my essential identity.

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My life, and especially my artistic motivation, is hugely effected by my moods.


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My artistic motivation isn't affected directly by my moods, but indirectly, because my work is darker when my mood isn't right and its marketability/general interest therefore plunges. It becomes "drawer art," just between me and the nightstand. At the same time I think it is often my better stuff and I feel more compelled to write it.

Still, a real artist, at least one who is a real enough artist to want to make a life of creating the art he loves and is willing to do whatever it takes to do so and bear the consequences, learns to work through all that and produce regardless. It's either that or get a regular job or have family money. I was like that when younger, for quite a while, and it was appallingly miserable and desperate. Then I got a regular job. So while art has been a passion and something I deeply admire and enjoy, I wouldn't call myself an artist. I'm not sure how willing I am to live without art, but I wasn't willing to die or live in eternal degraded misery for it. I'll simply say where my sympathies and empathies lie and what I enjoy most.