The Edge of Madness

Often the edge of madness is where creativity is at its most potent. Here vulnerability coupled with fearlessness stalks the ever-changing landscape. Being on the edge means diving straight into the fire. There is no time for contemplation, only the type of spontaneity that lets you know what you have to do if you are to exist fully. Beyond there is purpose and meaning. It’s why we’re here. Indeed the immediacy of such moments captures the fundamental difference between art and science. The scientist will want to know how hot the flames are before saying yes or no, whereas the artist feels the heat and does it anyway. The artist has the confidence to step beyond the fear into the hope that lies on the other side. It’s where flow happens. Beyond the uncertainty is a greater certainty than you’ve ever felt, and if you’ve ever been there you already know it’s one of the safest places you’ll ever be.

The best thing about edgy places is that they are full of edgy people. New York. Berlin. Amsterdam. Dublin, Paris, and London are just a few. It doesn’t matter where. It can be rooms full of writers, musicians, hipsters, poets, artists, and filmmakers. Bars where the vagabonds and the dreamers go to touch reality. It is in these places that we step into ourselves and when we return we are different and often more troubled than before because now we know what’s possible. With that knowledge, we can never go back. I go to these places to feel the energy and the sense of belonging I’ve already felt there. I want to see the underworld in plain view again. To see it revealed in the early morning light as a new dawn rises, fresh and brazen for the day ahead. On the edge of madness, there’s no such thing as a safe bet. It’s all or nothing. It’s people too. They hold it before they let it go. They’re never static, always moving. Restless and untamed by the ordinariness all around. The mediocrity that dumbs us down. I’ve always loved standing on the elevator in Holborn Tube Station watching the wildness of the characters going the other way. Sometimes they’re leaving and on other days they heading into the darkness below as I climb towards the London sky.

I remember the first time I became aware of the potential of madness. It happened when I was introduced to Emily Dickinson’s poetry in English class. What interested me was that the teacher wasn’t able to explain it. There was no prescribed formula for understanding Emily. The freedom of her writing resonated with my curious spirit. Here was a poet I was allowed to make up my own mind about. She opened doors in my head that I wasn’t even aware existed. I also liked Dickinson because she confronted death head-on. I was used to and still am fascinated at how we sweep death under that carpet, although it has to be said we generally do death well in Ireland, making it all the more strange why we don’t talk about exactly what it means for us long before we go. It has certainly come back to bite us in the last two years. Perhaps it is by embracing the reality of death we can live a better and more fulfilling life.

I believe the angst expressed by the artists amongst us allows many of us to find a way through our own pain. People like Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and Mister Mojo Rising, to name only a few, had the ability and the bravery to go to those places many are afraid to visit. They gave us a window into the darkness that exists there, as well as shining a light on the joy there is also to be found. It’s often where our soul is at its brightest. It’s why Virginia Wolff, Sylvia Plath, and Charles Bukowski were prepared to risk it all. It’s a natural high and some will say it’s even better than great sex (okay - maybe not!). It’s who we are, right here, right now. The honesty and the joy that creativity brings allows us the opportunity to surf the treadmill of life, doing jobs that suck the goodness out of us, paying off the mortgage if we’re lucky enough to be able to afford one, and waiting for a retirement speech that’ll mean fuck all by the time you’ve made it home afterward and put the slippers on. We’ve learned to live a pretend life. It seems to be easier that way, except it isn’t because the sense of boredom is always there. It’s about being alone. It’s why people struggled when they found themselves alone during the lockdown. As Amy Winehouse said when she was in Dingle, you have to like yourself to spend time on your own and to be your own best friend, as well as your own worst enemy.

It’s the battle raging inside finding its way onto the empty page or into the words of a song yet to be sung for the first time, our guts splashed across the blank canvas of our consciousness. One day like this a year would do us right according to Elbow. What about the other 364? Don’t they deserve to be in with a shout? Maybe it’s because once we peer over the edge and see beyond the darkness to our brightest self, there’s no going back. It’ll either make us or break us because we’ve awakened to what lies within and once it’s been stirred up it can never settle again. Stir it up little darling, stir it up. Bob was right. It’s necessary. It’s relentless. It’s why we’re here. It’ll wake you in the middle of the night, begging for your attention and telling you that everything’s not all right, that life can be better, that it doesn’t have to be this way. It’ll nag away at you when you’re waiting for a bus or sitting down to have a relaxing coffee in Simon’s coffee shop. It challenges us and that’s what’s great about it. It grabs us, pushes and pulls us. This madness lies in us all. It makes us want more. It makes the world a better place. It’s that stubborn feeling that there’s definitely a better way.

Maybe that’s why we like to see our heroes self-destruct. In some funny sort of way, it justifies our inability to step into that place. It’s as if they embrace the darkness so that we can see the light. In lots of ways, the light is even scarier than the darkness because it shows us what’s possible. We’ve all felt those moments when life seems to make perfect sense. Those moments when we ask ourselves why it can’t be like this all the time, the one day a year that makes it possible to live with the other 364. Seeing Amy falling apart or Kurt wrestling with his inner demons somehow validates our reticence to step into what we know to be our real selves, the purity we were born with before external forces started to chip away at our spirit. We know it because we’ve felt it before and I believe it’s what many of us spend our lives trying to get back to. Maybe that’s why we can accept death in the end. It’s the part of us that will always be restless, the unexplored landscape of the Burren that pleads with us to walk amongst the rocks and the stones so that we can find the precious beauty that lies within. It’s the real self as opposed to the false self, even though both are intertwined, never separate. The edge exists between the two, and sometimes they flip over, the boundary blurred by the things society demands of us. That freedom of spirit we would die for.  

There’s something special and unique about the edge of madness. It’s dark and dangerous and it can be destructive, but the reason why artists, musicians, writers, poets, and actors are prepared to go there and risk it all is that they know the beauty that exists on the other side. For some it’s conducive to great art, it’s where our spirit lives fully; it’s where the flame is strongest. It happens, rather than being planned. It’s a peripheral place that many of us never get to visit. Sadly many don’t even know the magic that exists there. Some find other ways to reach it whether it is the realisation just before the sun sets for the final time, the needle thrill, or the ecstasy of love made real. Our education system has never allowed for it because it’s dangerous to the status quo. It makes people question why. It makes us want more than just a poke in the eye from the powers that be. It clashes with authority. It makes us rise up. The schools and universities that prioritize productivity over creativity hold that frequency meaning the way to academic success is to give them back what they want to hear and what’s been said before. They only want to hear themselves again. It’s so ingrained. Many of them don’t want your ideas or the spirit within. Surrender to the system is hardwired into us. A good teacher is one who gives us the freedom and helps us to explore ourselves through a subject.

But even though lots give in, thankfully many remain who are prepared to push on through to the place where greatness can occur. In doing so they risk the most. They are always on the so-called frontline. They push our consciousness forward. I believe the ability is in all of us; it’s just that it comes out in different ways. This greatness, it’s unique. It’s been dumbed down, cast aside for the so-called greater good. But it won’t come out unless we go searching for it. This should be the purpose of our education system, to explore who we are as an individual and a collective and to use that knowledge and understanding to build a life that allows ours and others’ spirit to breathe. Something really special happens when we reach the edge of madness. It exists on the edge of the world. It’s flat and there’s every chance you might fall off. The wind rushing through your hair as you fall into the dark depths below until you learn how to fly and soar into the light above. Artists seek out this place that lies at the edge of consciousness. It’s here that they slip into their real self. That’s why they’re different. They go to the edge so that they can bring back what they find there and release it out into the world.  

It’s why we go to music festivals, theatres, movies, poetry readings, and sports events. It’s why we walk in nature. It’s why we laugh and cry. These experiences awaken us for a brief moment before we return to the everyday and fall back into numbness. It ties in with the suffering artist falling out of a space where something is not right and it’s that struggle to find meaning, to find freedom, and to realise that death comes to us all in the end. It’s the struggle of suffering on the extremities of madness, that moment when you have to make the choice to go there or not. Often we step back from the edge right at the last moment, just prior to the creative breakthrough, knowing we will go back when the time is right. It’s where great art comes from and the more we go there the more we learn to dip in and dip out safely so that the destructiveness is lessened and the brightness is allowed to shine through.

It’s tied in with what the Reverend Máirt Hanley said on the Arena programme about Amy Winehouse’s trip to Dingle to perform on Other Voices. Hanley believes that great art comes out of the resolution of being on the edge and the artist then coming to a comfortable or safe place, a more whole place for the person. As with Amy, it can be a place tinged with great sadness, but perhaps the hope is that some kind of peace, even if it’s only temporary can be found there. That’s why we need to make it safe for our young people to go there. They already know how to because like us all they’ve already been there, but they are closer than we’ll ever be so we should be removing the obstacles to their greatness, not imposing even more in a rush to measure everything in an education system that promotes uniformity and conformity to protect the status quo. We bang on about wellbeing, but surely the greatest form of wellbeing is the understanding and acceptance of self and others. It’s where understanding, purpose, meaning, and ultimate freedom lie.

Surely that is something worth fighting for?