Welcome. I recommend you check out this book: https://adyashanti.opengatesangha.org/store/publications/books/falling-into-grace-535 (don’t let the title get in the way, it’s more Zen Buddhist). I imagine you can find it from a library.
It was helpful for me during some really rough times.
Of course, ‘everyone can be artist’. But wouldn’t the lack of the dramatic lead to a lesser chance of ‘making it big’?
Depends, because you’re not going to be conveying your experience perfectly anyway. It first goes through your own interpretative lens to the art, and then the art goes through the viewer’s lens. Big and dramatic emotions are easier… yes and as such may be more predictably marketable. But it’s a fickle business. Of course this is a concern only if marketability is how you measure “making it big”. We have a lot of art these days that’s easy to get into… and easy to drop. If you want world to remember you (Gogh wasn’t appreciated until after his death), you can try to convey something deeper and more complex.
I am having a hard time recalling positive experiences right now, especially ones that are “vibrant” in any way.
There’s vibrancy in deepest depression and the most boring line in the blandest grocery store. That’s for an artist to discover. But I’m not saying you should or should not take meds. But depression tends to lead to bad outcomes, and the world is full of depressed artists who didn’t make it.
Taking antidepressants does not have to reduce your creativity. Artists express their experience with their art. Sometimes it does it so well that people observing the art (through the lens of their conditioning) get moved. More damatic emotions get noticed more. But art can capture subtler experiences too. Antidepressants won’t remove your capacity to experience, it just changes the quality of the experience. Pay attention to all the qualities of your experience and you’ll notice it’s not just the intense ones that have vibrancy. You can convey that in art beautifully as well.
The suffering artist is a known trope but don’t think it’s a prophecy.
You’d have to settle for close enough here.
This is my point. We can’t do it exactly, we just approximate. With every single experience we have, we can only approximately communicate it to other people. But here’s the kicker: does thinking about the taste of water feel like you’re actually drinking water? If you were parched in a desert, would thinking about water really hard actually bring the experience of water? Obviously not.
Once you have experienced something, thinking back to it, you are already kind of approximating it to yourself. You can’t manifest the exact experience even for yourself. Let alone to others.
I’m just highlighting this because it’s a pretty significant thing to get in this world where we are communicating by text a lot, and being very quick to judge other people’s experiences. Not saying you’re doing that though.
But how would I know if our experience of the taste of water is the same?
What does water taste like?
That’s a pretty tall order. How do you confirm that you objectively share the same experience if you can only ever access your own subjective experience?
No, but it seems unusually aggressive for very little reason.
Lots of psychoanalysis in this thread.
There was a good podcast on the political activism part recently: https://shows.acast.com/tantra-illuminated-with-dr-christopher-wallis/episodes/finding-freedom-in-troubled-times-with-tina-rasmussen