Creating drama!

I have wondered why anybody would enjoy reading a Dystopia diary.
Why waste hours on words only describing the darkest moments?
The things we don‘t really want to go through?
Is it creating drama? Repeating negative emotions and causing them in others? Is it all just displaying the big mess I am making in my head?

It is kind of obvious that people have always had the tendency to read sad poems and novels without happy endings. Ancient Greek’s tragedies have incorporated into their formal structure that the main character needs a life fulfilled enough to really have him lose everything in the end to really matter, after all. Aristotle gives us reasons for this to be necessary, and before I get started on this, let us all together mourn that his reasons for comedy have been lost somewhere in history. When I was younger, I often thought that this might have been knowledge to change the world! And I still wonder, if I he could have convinced the depressive goth girl I was to laugh! We will never know. And the mystery of lost books is haunting. Don‘t get me started on the library of Alexandria!
But back to the reasons for tragedies! Their reason simply was to teach us and to keep our morals up. Observing the highest fall of another person was supposed to motivate us to give our best in life. At least in theory. Reality in ancient theater was actually a much more entertaining and wine drinking practice.
Whenever I watched one of those tragedies (and since I spent years at the theater, I have watched many), I wondered if that would ever really work out. Actually, many of us have watched this ancient structure a lot of times. Six parts, right before the ending a moment where you assume it won‘t come that bad, and then the most darkest ending of endings right afterwards. Hollywood worked with this ancient idea.
But back to the reason for enjoying tragedies,again!
I can‘t imagine the fear described as one to work on me.
When I found myself watching one version of Hamlet over and over again, or reading a novel like „Never let me go“ once more again, I felt the need to throw all of myself right into these emotions that I had been meant to fear so much. So, it was not much of a learning process, but more of emotional relief.

Even if the reasons might differ from person to person, many of us are often so willing to expose ourselves to this kind of aesthetic experiences.

I could also ask you to think of a sad song that you caught yourself listening to over and over again. Found yourself laying on your bed and staring into the distance while full of this one emotion?
Does that count as being voluntarily unhappy?
Making a big mess in your head?

I think there is more to this.
There is a need to see these emotions processed.

Earlier in the pandemic, when my whole life had collapsed and I was missing everything and everyone, I came across books that worked as an instruction how to live now.
Those were not happy books.
They were full of moments no one wanted to live through, but were in the end (more or less) survived.
They were about survival. About how to feel skin without the sun shining on it, without laughter and without being touched.
The most important ones were probably Emilie Autumn‘s „The Asylum for wayward Victorian girls“ (yes, I won‘t ever stop referring to this one), and „The yellow wallpaper“ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Art as any form of creating has the unique opportunity to process any kind of reality to provide perspective.
It can frame those moments of incredible loss and incomprehensible pain and help understanding them.
Put them into an oil painting.
Frame them on the hungry white wall of a photo exhibition.
Put them into a poem.
Between the curious pages of a novel.
Is this a cry for attention?
No, in my opinion, it is providing a context and making survival possible.

If the one or the other reader of this does not need this context, this is also fine. Although it‘s never wrong to think about your life from another angle!
But there are some among us who need to deal with these aspects of life.
Who cannot just put them aside.
Who are aware of it, and sometimes even a little bit too thin skinned.

I am convinced that anything that was written or created to survive will provide a certain value to other people. It will give context and perspective on carrying on, even with or maybe just because of the darkness within!

So, yes! As a writer I create a lot of drama and make a mess in my head. And I think it‘s my right, as I‘m trying to survive this world for just a little longer.

And the next time this world gets you right in the heart and you end up being accused of creating drama for not stoically ignoring it, just know that there are enough of us out there who value your perspective on this mess a lot!