Monomaniacal: A Confession

.



Twice in the past month someone has called me monomaniacal. I believe it was the first two times I ever even heard the word. I barely noticed the first time, it was only the repetition that caught my attention. Basically, what I think they both meant is that I’m completely focused on my artistic work, that my relation to it is a kind of tunnel vision (which isn’t necessarily the technical definition of the word monomaniacal.) Others have certainly complained about this to me in the past, and I’m sure it’s something I admit to from time to time, but for the most part it’s an aspect of my life I do my best to hide. I definitely feel there’s something shameful about it, that it doesn’t reflect especially well on me as a human being. I also feel I must somehow be admitting to it more frequently these days. Maybe it’s even becoming more true over time. Part of this is a particularly intense feeling that I will die soon, and I should finish up these last few projects before I go. (I don’t have a fatal disease or anything. It’s just a feeling that I’m getting closer to the end. Perhaps only wishful thinking.) (Even more often I have the feeling that I’ve already died. A ghost wandering through a world that no longer concerns it.) As I get older, it also becomes harder to pretend that I’m interested in things when I’m actually not. I still feel an enormous curiosity about art and the world, but at the same time it does seem that certain matters in my life are more or less settled (i.e. I’m not suddenly going to develop some great interest in basketball, or cooking, or other people, or religion, or have a desire to own a car, or want children.) Then I shift to another register, since the word ‘monomaniacal’ reminds me of other recent, prominent dilemmas. This feeling that I would like to be doing less, but actually can’t stop, keep doing more. I’ve started saying I’m semi-retired and yet, at the same time, it seems to be less true than ever. (I just finished one book and already I’m half way through the first draft of another.) I wonder if being over-productive is only a bad habit. In this sense, this word ‘monomaniacal’ hits me like a punch. As I’ve frequently written: I have this overwhelming feeling of failure, and often wonder if this feeling of failure is the main engine driving me. Over-production, failure, bad habits, ongoing personal and artistic history. Ambition and the desire for success. Hunger for praise. Talent or the inability to do anything else. Full of questions and doubts but nonetheless going with things that seem to work. Full of doubts but doing things anyway. A need for money, living hand-to-mouth. Not knowing how to do anything else and realizing that now, in the time that’s left, I will most likely never learn. Is this what it means to be an artist?



.