I read that Lou Reed will next star in Spain in the summer-Malaga, Madrid, San Sebastian Sant Feliu de Guixols, Benidorm (21-26 July), representing his "magnum opus" Berlin , surely one of the most painful music collections in the history of rock-indeed, a shift 180 ° with respect to its previous record, also mythical, exceptionally glamorous Transformer ... The dark nature of Berlin (1973) by Lou Reed, his bleak and oppressive atmosphere, are sublime, I moved and passion absolutely since I bought this record for the first time in 1975. It's fascinating as a work of such sadness can be so addictive, by the way, melancholia is addictive. Lou develops a musical and textual material extremely complex discloses the darkest of society: suicide, depression, addictions, paranoia and neurotic melancholy ... I totally agree with "smart Batista " when he says that it is "a dark and Gothic portrait of the most stark reality seen through the eyes of a bohemian , and also" the musical equivalent of putting a drug addict, depressed guy in the middle of a candy store narcotics while writing songs of loneliness, death, suicide, depression and abuse "... It is certainly a memorable work ... And I know first hand its meaning, personal and existential conditions that gave birth ... Berlin could only be created in Berlin , melancholic and depressed city like few ... As Last Tango in Paris has only a single stage ideal ... Interestingly, both works, disc and film were published in 1973-always has surprised me this coincidence, their shared melancholy, and I feel so both works (do not know how to say). Berlin is privileged for art and artistic creation, now and historically, "by writers, philosophers, musicians, actors, visual artists, etc. It was and is a city of art and great artists, ie psychological melancholy that I attribute group is not just a literary license, no, of course, I know Berlin very well have lived with the emotional intensity from my first trip in 1987 - great friends living there that I've confronted my opinion, complicit artists who have thought me about it: we all agree on melancholy
Berlin ... Since antiquity noted the relationship between creativity - or more precisely the genius, where the creative capacity reaches its maximum expression, with some degree of mental disease, but modern writers such as Rudolf and Margot Wittkower - Born under the sign of Saturn - have sufficiently argued otherwise. Aristotle expressed this view in a somewhat tricky question: "Why do all the extraordinary men are melancholy? (...) to such an extent that many of them suffer from pathological symptoms whose origin is in black bile. "Philosophers and writers of ancient Greece meant by" melancholy "the condition of those suffering from mood swings much to the euphoria (or mania) and to depression, what Kraepelin called in modern times "manic depressive", and later, almost at the end of the century, "bipolar disorder". What is interesting in our context is that Plato as Aristotle distinguished within the wide range of melancholy two different forms of euphoria and depression: the first separates the "divine mania" of the pathological-mania of "crazy excited" - while the second separates the melancholy genius of melancholy as a disease, not ignore the fact that there may be individuals in which the great sadness is transformed into illness itself. This distinction of the Greek philosophers was forgotten for centuries, being rescued as recently as 1961, German psychiatrist Hubertus Tellenbach, who based much of his revolutionary theory of depressive illness in these Greek distinctions and as well as in the descriptions made of the personality traits of the melancholic. Tellenbach was first described as the "typus melancholicus ", typical of unipolar forms of depression, and years later the "typus manicus " personality characteristic of bipolar forms.
But Tellenbach not confined only to the world of pathology, but investigated in the field of literature and philosophy to find in geniuses these altered states of mind in no way pathological, statements by the Greek philosophers. Discovered that many great characters in literature -And also many of the creators of the same characters, show significant signs of this kind of "melancholy without depression, as is the case of Hamlet between literary characters, and poets von Kleist, Grillparzer and Baudelaire, and philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, among other great artists ... For Tellenbach melancholy is the failure of the ability to transcend into the creative work: "Melancholy is be dominated by the agonizing feeling of not being able to release (of a sort of closure) own capacity to . " The difference between sadness and pathological depression seems to lie then the fact that the latter agrees much physicality and vital rhythms that. R. Kay Jamison, in a recent exhaustive study on the subject, says that much of the geniuses of both literature and painting and music have been manic depression or have suffered at least one major depression. Their study is based on the biographies of these geniuses, and in some genetic backgrounds. The cases are studied by Lord Byron, Robert Schumann, Hermann Melville, Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway. There is no doubt that these characters of universal culture suffered from severe mental illness, most likely a bipolar disorder also had a history all hereditary.
Tellenbech introduces a very interesting concept, the German word " Schwermut " a term that defines a peculiar state of melancholy ... An example of this might be the philosopher Kierkegaard, who describes her depression with these words: "I'm so dejected and devoid of joy that not only I have nothing that can satisfy my soul, but I can not even imagine what might satisfy ", while another of his books and tells the output from these states of melancholy:" I woke up one morning and felt extremely well, this well was increased around noon and just one in the afternoon had reached the top ... every thought is presented festive ... all existence was like in love with me ... . " Nietzsche also uses many times the German term " schwermütig " (melancholy), derived from the adjective "Schewe " which means heavy. It is interesting to link the issue so-called "spirit of gravity" that plagues Zarathustra, the spirit of gravity would be the genius of the values \u200b\u200bof others, while Zarathustra invites "endured" self, "love yourself." German also called melancholia is used the word " melancholie " which is also used by Nietzsche in his work many times. Thus establishing a difference between melancholy - " melancholie " - no more, as a passing mood, and " Schwermut ", meaning that it is almost a religious correspondence ... In the works of Baudelaire, the "spleen " - "Quand le ciel bas et lourd comme un couvercle despite " - will play a central role, and in many ways resembles the " Schwermut " German and Nietzsche: " Spleen" is unwillingness to be vital that affects the inhabitants of large cities, the disease of modernity ... As there
depression as an illness and depression as a particular state of "creative genius", or melancholy, we must also refer to the "anguish" and anxiety ... There distress and anxiety necessary for creativity? How could anyone create such a state? A positive interpretation of the creative angst is pointing M. Heidegger, German philosopher for the emotional distress is a provision essential because, despite the discomfort involved, is capable of putting a man both against nudity in the world (which is what really "anguish anguish") as compared to his loneliness and from there to rescue the possibility of authentic existence. The experience of anxiety, according to Heidegger, is what saves man from his natural tendency to "fall." The Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the great "melancholy" art, contemporary poetry ... In his extensive correspondence with Lou Andreas-Salome and the Princess Marie von Thun und Taxis can continue their periodic relapses melancholy, anguish and creative anxiety, his thoughts on the subject. A state in which the most significant was his inability and lack of inspiration, downtime, anxiety is also present during a state of melancholy, but that does not leave when it goes away and time seems to flow again, maybe a melancholy inherited, or "cultural", which accompanied him from childhood until his death.
The poet clearly recognized illness, or at least the permanent state of discomfort, distress and disability that was, but at the same time expected out of it and regain the creative flow, even more admired this strange peculiarity of his nature reborn over and over again from the abyss of anguish and melancholy, "moving of salvation in salvation. " Rilke seemed almost mechanical a relationship between his illness and his creative work, since for him the most important in the artist's life is his work and if so admired his own existence, despite the sufferings she went through- is that the only way, in that state of "spiritual and existential suffering" had been possible to create your work. Following Rilke's reflections, it seems that human beings and especially the artist is not master of his destiny and therefore has no right to arbitrarily change the nature of that nature has given, because that change could jeopardize the work of art, and this shown to have a sense that transcends everything, even the artist himself. Rilke wrote a phrase that comes to represent a necessary conclusion intimate in his thinking about " still seems to me that my own work (creative) is in fact nothing but a self-treatment " ... No other therapy for the artist to stop flow of creativity, the artist needs the polarities and contradictions to his creative work, which the poet expresses brilliantly in his second letter to von Gebsattel: "Perhaps they exaggerated I recently expressed reservations, with respect to psychoanalysis, but as I know it seems certain that if I expel my demons, my angels would also (say) and understand them a little scare you, that is precisely what can not happen "...
Berlin is for me in many ways these ideas more or less disorderly, impulsive, I have been bringing about the blues, both in its meanings as " melancholie " and, above all, as " Schwermut " ... And not only for its historical and current city a haven for artists and conducive to creativity, but for his consistent and accurate correspondence with many of the conditions I have previously pointed melancholy. City of depression and elation almost seamless successive, a city that looks to the past romantically to recreate and find the thread of hope, phoenix rising from its ashes "and the Sisyphus time allegory - city of ruins and try to fill gaps in history, culture, art, almost archeological restorations, melancholy images ... lazy and not very productive city from the point of view of German industrial tradition, a city of great parks and walks melancholy, charming city, gentle, self-absorbed ... -as I write, walk through the Berlin Mitte anchored to your waist: is my wish, we have no shared memories ...
Photos: Series Berliness ", June 2004
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