Stephen M. Jolly, Director, Business Development
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| Courtesy of yahoo.com |
A profile of Bruce Springsteen in
the latest New Yorker magazine reveales how the world-renowned
rock star has battled depression for most of his life, to the point of
considering suicide on several occasions. It should hardly be surprising that
many musicians (and other kinds of artists, for that matter) use the stage as a means to
purge themselves of the loneliness or the
feelings of inadequacy (the “paralyzing depression”
in Springsteen’s case) that many of them may feel, despite their rock-god status.
Springsteen goes on in the
article about how he wrestles with and expresses his difficult relationship
with his father. “My parents’ struggles,
it’s [sic] the subject of my life,” Springsteen says. “It’s the thing that eats at
me and always will.”
Later,
Springsteen expresses what many musicians sympathize
with, myself included: that their
performance on the stage is often the scene of an emotional catharsis –
the exposure of and the purging of many feelings, good and bad, while performing; a
real sense of self-medication. Springsteen: “You
are free of yourself for those hours: all the voices in your head are gone…
there’s no room for them.” Self-medicating
can ultimately take on many forms: alcohol, eating, drug use, overwork, as well
as rock concerts.
Such efforts to bring about catharsis
or to escape the feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness are not unique
to rock stars or other famous individuals. Regular people everywhere who deal
with mental illness can struggle daily to manage their lives, trying to keep
body and soul together through medication, relaxation, individual therapy and a
myriad of other tools and techniques.
For those who have felt the rush,
the thrill and the intensity of performing in front of hundreds or thousands of
people, there can be such a sweet release from the inner demons that many of us
carry – at least for a little while.
References:
http://www.newyorker.com/
Standing room only, my band walked on stage, the crowd jumped to their feet screaming and clapping, and stayed like that for the next hour and a half. No drug can match it. Thank God I realized that as a teenager and did not try to create it artificially like many of my friends at the time. I wish I had enough talent to pursue that passion. Those were the days.
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