It is an old cliche that geniuses are tortured eccentrics. In her book "Spike Milligan: An Intimate Memoir" his long-time manager and publicist (add life-organiser, psychologist and general cleaner-up-afterer) paints a picture of a deeply troubled man, given both to bouts of unbearable depression and flurries of frantic anarchic creativity. While the world laughed at Spike's antics, Spike raged at the world, raged at his wives and girlfriends, publishers and broadcasters - and at Farnes. It's not as good a book as Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Spike - which is better written and more perceptive; but she knew the subject very closely.
Of the three Goons, Sellers is acknowledged to have been the greatest performer and also the most damaged individual; a man whose eccenticities crossed the line from malevolence to evil. A man of a thousand characters who professed to have no idea who he was. Milligan was the creative force behind the comic revolution of the 50s and 60s, and the surreal world of Goonnery flowed from his troubled mind. It was also Milligan who was the most troubled of the three, taking to his bed for a week when overwhelmed with gloom after seeing some vandalism; and lashing out at those he cared about - unable to maintain relationships with normal people. (Farnes it turns out manages him by herself being a person of unusual character). Then consider Harry Secombe. Farnes describes him as the least talented of the Goons. He was a genial TV host, a good singer and famous giggler; but not the explosive force of Milligan or an international star like Sellers.
However, both Sellers and Milligan said that they were jealous of Secombe. Why? Simply because of his happy home life with his wife to whom he was singly devoted for the entirety of their very long marriage. Sellers and Milligan with their strings of girlfriends and affairs, both during and in-between their marriages knew that he had something they didn't.
So, if it were the case that genius and self-destruction were linked, and that the less-talented are happier; which would I chose for my children (if I were able to do so)? Would I like them to have Milliganesque destructive brilliance, or Secombe's contended decency? Having chuckled to my Dad's Goons tapes as a kid, recited Milligan's poetry, loved his war memoirs and laughed at his novels, and having read Farnes' book about her life working for Milligan; I'd offer them Secombe's contentedness every time.
3 comments:
Well, that is all very well but what are you supposed to do if you have all the disadvantages of periodic depression & non of the advantages of genius?
And indeed (on a serious note) if genius and depression correlate why not draw the conclusion that since those with the sharpness of insight & wizardry to preceive the world most deeply seem to draw the conclusion that it is a mis-shapen tragedy, then perhaps it is. Being in a gloomy minority merely means very few people see the world as you. It does not imply you are wrong.
Depressed of Inverness
Well I wasn't seeking or recommending cures - merely passing on an observation.
This world is undeniably a mishapen tragedy. However individual reactions to that seem to vary massively - and not in direct proportion to exposure to it. I have friends who survived the WWII blitz with sorrow and loss (but not depression) and others who have suffered from depression with less obvious causes.
I'm not sure the gloomy are in fact such a minority - at least not in the West today.
Perhaps not being depressed doesn't mean you don't share the same view of this poor world - simply that (for a whole range of biological, sociological and psychological reasons) you react to it differently at that moment?
As you have suffered depreesion (and have at least a streak of genius I am sure), enlighten someone like me who has neither.
Well since you ask here is a poem which sums up what it is like, hopefully the formatting won't be lost.
At The Potter’s House
The first time my mind fell apart
It was almost unexpected.
The pieces fumbled through my hands
And I was left mumbling in circles
About failure and loss.
Pigeon brained.
Years later, I’ve found all the bits.
I gluelessly try to fit them back in place
Like rebuilding broken pottery.
But shards keep falling off
Leaving an imperfect past.
Timeless imperfection
That can surface anywhere in the present.
Sometimes at night I wander about the past.
Watching the people I’ve known
Tearful of the error of change
The drift and gap between our lives
And another shard falls off
Revealing the gaps in my adequacy
And a hollow inside.
I can only hold it all together
For so long at a time.
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