Artist, Tortured?

I am in the midst of reading Warren Zevon's biography, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", and it's got me thinking about the tortured artist effect (coined by Todd Rundgren)...

It's also got me thinking about intelligence.

Warren and Frank Zappa are definitely two historical people I'd like to meet. With today's media allowing for instant gratification, and negativity entertaining us more and more, I'd be interested to see how they would be portrayed today.

When I was much younger, I totally believed that in order to be relevant, you had to be tortured. These lines from Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" were my mantra:

I was lyin' in a burned out basement
With a full moon in my eyes
I was hopin' for a replacement
When the sun burst through the skies
There was a band playin' in my head
And I felt like getting high
Thinkin' about what a friend had said,
I was hopin' it was a lie

In my eyes, this was as low as you could go. I yearned for it, yet too afraid to make it happen on my own.

In recent years, I have come to wonder, though...

Did I make it happen?

Looking back on my life, I remember thinking about things I didn't want. Two things in particular:
I didn't want huge scars on my head because they would be obvious when I got older and lost my hair;
I never wanted cancer.

Now, they say that if you want something bad enough, and think about it long enough, you will eventually work yourself into that occurrence.

But what if you DON'T want something to happen to you?

How many times did you say to yourself, "don't trip, don't screw this up, don't lose this", and it happened?

How is that different than "I don't want to get cancer"?

Warren Zevon was a tortured artist. He is an idol of mine. I love the way he put words together with music. From The French Inhaler:

You said you were an actress
Yes, I believe you are
I thought you'd be a star
So I drank up all the money,
Yes, I drank up all the money,
With these phonies in this Hollywood bar,
These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar

Mr. Bad Example:
Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, and fewer still are called

These days, Warren and Frank are dead. Cancer - the genius killer.
Ironic, eh?

I no longer want to be the tortured artist. In fact, I haven't wanted to be one in many, many years. I have been too close to despondence for my own comfort, and I am a cancer survivor. I've walked the roads that would leave some people in ruin.

Mr. Rundgren can keep the ever popular totured artist effect. It was a neat concept, but there are some street smarts I'd rather not have!