Artists create their most passionate and raw work when they’re in the midst of an emotional crisis. It’s not their most refined work or their most sophisticated work. It’s angry and rough-hewn, sharp-tongued and forceful. It’s their attempts to claw their way out of whatever pit of despair they happen to be in. It’s their foolish understanding  of the world that they can live through their words. This typically happens to young artists. For those who find themselves locked into their suffering and despair, who understand their illness, artistic work becomes refined, controlled, and well-thought out. It becomes playful or prosaic. It is long and drawn out; the artist knows that s/he can no longer live through their words but that the longer the writing occurs, the longer the artist will be alive. This typically happens  to older artists and, as a result, the output is generally memoirs or facsimiles of real novels. The output is usually something approximating Ulysses. Control is key. The young and desperate artist is defined by their illness, their sadness, their intense and virile slipping grip on reality and civility. The older, sadder artist has resigned their hold on their minds and instead focuses on controlling their work. They pump more sadness and fecundity into their work than the young artist because they’ve lost the will to pound out the words into their fist. This means that the saddest people on the earth are those who write technical manuals, ACT guides for Dummies, and textbooks on Organizational Mechanics. Or those who make advertisements without joy. What control, what anger, what sadness in a page number.