TORTURED ARTISTS
Kiwi stars suffering for their art
Although the notion of musicians and actors suffering for their art persists, rising Kiwi pop singer Josie Moon says her depression actually got in the way of writing and creating. However, much is being done in the New Zealand entertainment industry to safeguard mental health. George Fenwick reports.
While she pieced together the Basement Theatre’s spring season, programming director Gabrielle Vincent noticed something unusual. “More than 50 per cent of the submissions that were handed into us were addressing mental health. That’s enormous.”
The theatre turns over 20-30 shows each season, with roughly two shows a week. Vincent, 31, who has worked in the arts for 10 years and at Basement for four, found the rise of mental health work weighing on her mind. Was it a reflection of an industry in crisis?
“Part of me says yes,” she says, “but it could also be the fact that I think New Zealand has been trying to empower people to discuss mental health for quite a few years.”
Vincent’s observation extends to other arts. Kiwi singer Mitch James recently wrote about his struggle with depression and anxiety, slamming New Zealand’s “toxic culture of silence and shame”. Broods’ Caleb Nott has said he found himself in a dark hole: “I didn’t even notice until I came out of it”.
Each artist has described a different journey, but all have returned to the same thread: their work provided a tool to process internal pain.
Personal storytelling is nothing new to creative people, but the rise of conversations about mental health is something Kiwis are observing nationwide. Our mental health is reaching a crisis point: The number of suicides is at a record level and Lifeline is receiving six calls a day from people in severe distress – twice the number it received three years ago. Meanwhile, the expert panel heading the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction is preparing to deliver its recommendations.
Globally, conversations about mental health have been elevated within popular culture this year. The second season of controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why arrived, accompanied by research that suggested the first had prompted discussions about mental health among teens. Pop star Ariana Grande spoke candidly about her battles with anxiety and how those experiences shaped her new album Sweetener; similarly, Lady Gaga has used theA Star is Born press tour to talk about her struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after revealing she was sexually assaulted at 19.
The list of actors and musicians whose lives ended too soon after struggles with mental health is endless (think Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington and INXS’ Michael Hutchence).
In September, Lifeline appealed for donations to help cover running costs by releasing a remake of Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart for its campaign The 72 Club, a play on the 27 Club of famous artists who died too young, including Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse.
MusicHelps, a charity of which Kiwi singers Lorde and Neil Finn are patrons that assists music people experiencing hardship and illness, has started crunching the results of its 2018 bi-annual survey which measures wellbeing in the music industry.
Preliminary findings indicate the diagnosed incidence of depression, bi-polar and anxiety disorder is “several orders of magnitude higher than in the general population”, says general manager Peter Dickens.
Almost a fifth of respondents admitted to “hardly ever” visiting a health professional when they experienced health and wellbeing issues. The same proportion said one reason was they don't have confidence in, or feel they will be understood by them.
Dickens says creative people are expected to be “able to take in everything that’s going on around them, and then synthesise it into a product that the rest of us find really compelling or new or innovative”.
“There’s an increasing amount of literature that’s showing that the more creative a person you are, the more vulnerable you are to mental health and wellbeing issues,” says
Dickens.
“It’s that quality of skinlessness which, though helpful for songwriting, can leave them too open and raw; [they] don’t have the layers of armour they need to resist some of the challenges that you face as you go through life.”
It’s a common refrain to hear that “music is my therapy” — but the journey to wellbeing is dependent on the individual, and must be done with care, says Dickens.
“I have heard before from music people that the music that’s made when they’re at their lowest end isn’t their best work — that it comes from a moment of realisation about where they were. There has to be a way that you can visit the places you need to visit, and then come back from them successfully and healthily.”
The notion that artists should suffer for their art was challenged by a study from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 2015, which looked at the works of great painters such as Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. It found a correlation between events of emotional turmoil in their lives and the artists’ less recognisable, less enduring, lowest-selling works; in conclusion, suffering wasn’t conducive to creativity.
Rising pop singer Josie Moon, 21, says she once heard a manager say people with depression were better musicians.
“That made me so angry, because it actually really hinders so much of your creativity. When you’re in a really dark place, whether it’s depression or anxiety or mental health where it’s at the point where it debilitates you, it’s not a romantic thing that makes your songs better. It actually gets in the way of writing and creating.
“If I get stuck, then I only end up writing really sad songs all the time and I can’t be objectively creative with certain stuff. You should definitely put your health first. Music should be part of the healing process, but it should come from a positive place, or a place of growth.” While in a dark place, Moon taught herself to record and produce electronic music on her own, which offered a clear path of achievable goals and selfimprovement. “It gave me something to latch on to. When you have that slope of learning, it can be really encouraging — you feel so much less useless.” Actor and writer Saraid Cameron, 27, found a solo show she debuted this year seemed only to reopen wounds. Drowning in Milk was a confessional piece about her experience growing up as a mixed-race, first-generation South Asian woman in New Zealand. After Cameron found herself performing in front of predominantly white crowds, the show eventually took a toll.
“There were lots of great conversations that I had with people from communities similar to my own but often I felt like a bit of a freak and highly aware of my differences,” she says. “Because the show was literally just me recounting mostly quite upsetting stories or experiences from my life, I often ended up mulling them over more than I would have liked to after performing.
“I loved what the show opened up for some of the audience members, but I’ll be thinking very long and hard before I make anything like Milk again. Drowning in your own traumatic experiences in front of people who look like those who perpetuated them isn’t easy.”
Industry leaders are establishing new modes of protection. Director Eleanor Bishop and actress Karin McCracken’s shows Jane Doe and Yes Yes Yes reflected on consent and rape culture in New Zealand. Part of their budget was allocated to clinical supervision in the form of a therapist.
McCracken encountered the concept while working for Wellington Rape Crisis and the Sexual Abuse Prevention Network, where all employees are offered supervision paid for by the employer.
They introduced it to their work after taking Jane Doe to Edinburgh in 2017 — a month-long run that affected