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| Sarah Jung, pic filched here |
There exist many stereotypes about creative types. Just the typifying of people as creative types is itself a corralling of certain
individuals who exhibit certain traits into a certain group. A commenting along
the lines of: “Oh, you’re a one of those…”
or a: “Yes, I’m an it…”
However, I’d counter that the boundaries—separating creative
people from ordinary people, of inventive persons versus unimaginative ones, of
visionaries versus practical popes—are not so easily definable and mostly,
probably, the result of bunkish adjective-labelling and name-calling. Of an
erroneous, and ultimately unethical, desire to dump people into group
identities.
In any regards, there persists one particular stereotype
about artists I want to talk about: That they’re all nuts.
Loonies. Bananas. Hearing voices. Impractical. Addicted to
drugs. Never going to find a real job. Overly
sensitive. Neurotic. Liberal. Introverted. INFP. LMNOP. And, yes,
the whole starving artist, and other stereotypes, which persist on and on,
decade after decade, because even those individuals yearning to join the elite
club of “being an artist” will themselves adopt and exaggerate
these traits to substantiate their own asserted identity and group-belonging.
But let’s focus on the bananas part…
I delved into the subject of hearing
voices in a prior post, discussing the connection between a narrated
voice and the voice a reader hears in their head and engages with when reading.
This is a common enough occurrence to not
be indicative of mental illness. Every ordinary person hears that narrative
voice in their head—accent, tone, style, all of it—when reading. This is not an example of schizophrenia or other
psychotic disorder, but of ordinary imaginative processes.
That said, many artists have claimed to have heard voices or
seen hallucinations (writers listed here):
Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Philip K. Dick, William Blake, and more. And
their mental experiences have affected their writing—indeed, even been
instrumental to their fictional endeavors.
However, the listing above is far from comprehensive.
Indeed, I’d venture to guess, that there exists far, far more everyday individuals who hear voices and see things than
any that put pen to page and made some money and fame doing so.
What I’m beating around the bush at is: “hearing voices”
isn’t so special. It sounds mysterious. It sounds even a little threatening, as
though the hearer is possessed by an unknown power. But it’s hardly unique. In
fact, it’s fairly common…
This article
suggests that:
5-13% of adults will hear voices at some point during their lives
And another
from the Mental Health Foundation, explains that:
Most people have had at least one experience of hearing a voice when there was no one around them. One study found that only around 25% of persons who hear voices also have a psychotic disorder. While children below the age of 12 have reported hearing voices, in 75% of cases, the voices stopped by the age of 13.
So, what conversations or exchanges have you imagined taking
place but never did? What eerie dreams of a deceased relative speaking to you?
What things heard you can’t explain?
Why not write them down? You might just become a famous,
visionary, voice-hearing, cut-your-ear-off artist…