{CHAPTER 8}

ABSINTHE,
COKE, AND BURNT
EASELS: CAN WE
FORCE CREATIVITY
THROUGH DOPING,
AND IS MADNESS
THE SAME AS
BRILLIANCE?

Most of us can list examples of creative individuals who spend periods of their lives in the shadows – or on the edge. In certain music scenes, there is a tradition for alcohol and drug abuse, and Søren Rasted has previously admitted that he sometimes writes his best songs on pot. When we began exploring this subject, we were surprised to learn the extent to which some of our great heroes within the worlds of literature, music, and art have used drugs or alcohol as vital tools for giving their creative processes that extra push.

The list is surprisingly long. Beethoven drank huge quantities of wine when he was composing, and authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Bukowski also imbibed alcohol when writing. Artists such as Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock – among the artists fetching the highest prices in the world today – similarly partook. Charlie Parker and William Burroughs preferred heroin, and Jack Kerouac spent his early years of writing on Benzedrine. Legend has it that this drug was the driving force behind the writing of Kerouac’s iconic work On the Road. Mind you, the editing process for that book took five years, so there was presumably a certain amount of coffee involved as well. Kerouac later changed habits and ended up dying of internal bleeding at the age of 47 on account of many years’ alcohol abuse.

Baudelaire used hash for many years before acquiring a fondness for opium and large quantities of alcohol, which likely contributed to his death as well. For him, intoxication had many sources. As Baudelaire put it, “Always be drunk. That is all: It is the question. You want to stop time crushing your shoulders, bending you double, so get drunk – militantly. How? Use wine, poetry, or virtue, use your imagination. Just get drunk.”

And then, of course, there is Hunter S. Thompson, whose 1972 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas involves a description by his alter ego of what he and his travelling companion had taken along on their road trip:

“Two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.”

Is there a downside? Of course. The singer Patti Smith expresses it quite simply: “I have seen a lot of people go down because they attach a harmful substance to their creative process.”

Research has shown an association between high creativity, abuse of stimulants, and the presence of psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. The title of an article by Dean Keith Simonton concerning these phenomena (in the book The Dark Side of Creativity) is striking: “You want to be a creative genius? You must be crazy!” Luckily, most of us do not need to develop into creative geniuses. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why we should avoid doing so. It could make us ill. Or perhaps the multitude of creative processes is in reality far more gradual and collective than can be borne by individuals alone.

This, at least, is the opinion given by innovation researcher Chris Bilton in his book Management and Creativity. Bilton shows that celebrating the myth of the creative loner can be outright dangerous for organizations that wish to live off creativity because the specific creative processes are in reality far more collective than this myth suggests. We will return to this thought at the close of the book. Examples from Noma, LEGO, hummel, DR, etc. show us that creativity arises when employees are involved, work together, and are subjected to clever management that sets a clear framework and clear demands without exercising actual control.

First, however, we shall explore whether our interview subjects abuse drugs in their own creative processes, and we shall study the association between external aids (of the more exotic variety) and creative processes.

I DON’T DRINK, I DON’T SMOKE,
I DON’T FUCK, BUT I CAN FUCKING THINK

These are song lyrics from the 1980s punk band Minor Threat, which laid the groundwork for a kind of abstinence movement in the creative music world – one that, nevertheless, must be regarded as a subculture. Yet what status does drugs and alcohol hold in our interview material? Our accounts have thus far focused on the bright or positive side of creativity. We have examined the light, the energy, the passion, and the joy of innovation connected with the phenomenon. But we must not forget the dark side of creativity. Nor should we ignore the question of whether one can force creativity with the help of external aids, whatever forms these may take. And it was, in fact, a creative breakthrough that tore us away from the rather overly positive and optimistic discourse on creativity. While we were writing the opening pages of this book, we were staying at Christian’s family home far out in the countryside.

We sat across from one another, drinking coffee from giant cups to keep our eyes open. It was late in the afternoon, and we were working on the chapter titles. After half an hour, we had come up with the titles you can read in the index.

Suddenly, the door to the kitchen opened, and Thor, Christian’s father, asked, “Would you like some wine with dinner, or are you working?”

There it was. We had not discussed drugs and alcohol and creativity in the least. We knew that they were associated with one another in certain environments. That is when we decided that we also needed a chapter in the book on the importance of external aids – not just drugs and alcohol but also, say, the piano in the living room.

THE ABSENCE OF DRUGS

Maybe it is because we do not ask about it and because it is inappropriate to talk about, but none of our contributors directly or spontaneously discuss the importance of drugs or alcohol for their creativity. It is only Søren Rasted who feels that a bit of pot can encourage the moods he wishes to express in music. Andreas Golder says that he has previously painted while on cocaine – but that he has since stopped. The works he painted while under the influence were not worth keeping and since burned. They were simply too poor.

There are good grounds for being suspicious of the myth of the suffering creative individual who props himself up with drugs and is thus enabled to produce unique works. Pernille Aalund, Business Development Director at Aller Magasiner and known in Denmark as an editor of women’s magazines and for her role as a television host, says that the only things that work for her are sex and alcohol. Perhaps some readers recognize this in themselves? Jørgen Leth and Kenneth Bager say they are fortunate not to require drugs. “I’m crazy enough myself,” as they both put it. But let us take a brief excursion into the world of scientific research to reflect on the importance of drugs in creative processes.

SELLING ONE’S SOUL TO THE DEVIL

Simonton, who is professor at the University of California, Davis, speaks explicitly of the dilemma concerning the light and dark sides of creativity. This is because there is a documented relationship between creativity and abuse.

Simonton has spent his entire life working on psychological biographies of particularly creative individuals. His detailed assessments of these individuals’ personal characteristics and lifestyles show that, relative to the general population, they suffer disproportionately often from bipolar disorders, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Some of these conditions are inherited in the sense that families with highly creative members also involve a high incidence of psychological “cases”. As Simonton writes, “Even though I enjoy Van Gogh’s paintings, I would not wish his ruined soul upon my very worst enemy.”

That it is necessary to sell one’s soul to the Devil in return for unique creative abilities is a recurrent theme in major works of literature. This is reflected in the story of Faust, an old German legend of a learned man who grows bored despite his great knowledge and high standing. He makes a deal with the Devil (or, in Goethe’s version, the Devil’s representative, Mephistopheles), granting Faust access to all knowledge and worldly pleasure in exchange for his soul.

In the end, Faust is pardoned, in part on account of a prayer to God made by Gretchen (an innocent girl who Faust had seduced). The fundamental idea is that one can achieve greater accomplishments and satisfaction by giving up one’s moral judgment and integrity – but not without paying a price. The notion of the suffering artist bears much resemblance to this motif. We must nevertheless not exclude the possibility that a certain degree of loss of control or divergence from normality can be associated with enhanced creative impulses.

Very creative individuals often score highly on scales measuring sociopathic behaviour. They can be selfish, cold, arrogant, antisocial, impulsive, and sharp-elbowed. Their thoughts can be so grandiose as to be nearly crazy. They can be dismissive, sceptical, precise, critical, and introverted. In fact, few of us would want people like these as neighbours, friends, or partners. They can, on the other hand, also be highly intelligent and possess a high degree of self-knowledge and belief in their own abilities.

Simonton shows that those who are especially creative within the natural sciences are, however, rarely as dramatically affected as artists can be. The difference may be that researchers in the natural sciences (and perhaps researchers in general) are restricted by their field’s demand for logical thinking and “objective” argumentation. In other words, the much-discussed “ten-year rule” – in which one spends a minimum of ten years as an apprentice in one’s field, building up the basic knowledge that is a prerequisite for being able to discern dilemmas, breakthroughs, cracks, and holes in the existing knowledge – tames the wilder thoughts. These ailments, however, flourish among artists and others who express themselves more emotionally, subjectively, and intuitively.

CENSORSHIP

Despite the somewhat negative but also quite realistic presentation of particularly creative individuals provided earlier, many of these same individuals manage to capture the zeitgeist and produce new yet appropriate ideas. The explanation may be that they receive help from others who monitor and regulate, as it were, their thoughts and symptoms.

The ability to transform a bizarre idea into something usable can also be fostered by a degree of skill at censoring creative individuals’ expressions of creativity. Yet creative individuals are often quite literally on the edge of that which exists. Albert Einstein’s dissertation was initially rejected by his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He was rejected by the educational system and had to work in a full-time job with patents, sending out his articles as a private individual. His colleagues, in other words, basically forced him into a full-time job, and he was long regarded as a pariah who suffered from an excess of originality. Nevertheless, Einstein eventually succeeded in gaining recognition for his theory of relativity. There are, obviously, many people who have quite crazy ideas that are never realized – and for good reason.

Einstein probably could not have imagined that his theories would be used for the production of atomic energy, which has grave and negative implications, as has recently been demonstrated by the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in Japan. Immediately positive creativity can, in other words, have negative consequences.

It is quite interesting to ponder what is the chicken and what is the egg when it comes to the relationship between drugs and creativity. Do drugs and alcohol nourish lateral thinking, or are they used to relieve the stresses of lateral thinking? It is likely that both are correct. Few people wish to live a life encircled by critics and perhaps even by paparazzi, like a specimen in a fish bowl. As Simonton writes, “In order to give the world works that have meaning, creative geniuses must sell their souls to the Devil. Or to the media, which holds them in check. Going off the rails with drugs or alcohol can act as a sort of self-medication that keeps the world at a distance.”

INTERVIEW SUBJECTS

It is far from a majority of the interview subjects in this book who swear by psychedelic drugs as aids to creative processes. Let us return to Kenneth Bager and hear what he says about keeping away from drugs and alcohol in his own career:

“I’m sure drugs and alcohol work for some people. As a kind of fuel for creativity. Yeah, I’ve known people who’ve made albums where they’ve been totally paralytic, but I’ve found that if I drink two glasses of red wine, well, I just go over and sit quietly in the corner. I’ve been to after parties with giant bags of cocaine where people just go and stick their heads down into the bag and are then sent packing. People decide their own lives, but I’ve never felt the desire or the need for it. I have a responsibility to my family and my children and just want to promote music.”

Jørgen Leth is of the same opinion: “I don’t look for explanations everywhere. I just know that the words tumble out. It’s not really correctable. If I’m in a stream of poetry, I take my notebook along, and they’re there. It’s a kind of euphoria, but I’m not on Benzedrine, alcohol, or drugs. That’s no good to me, not even hash. I used amphetamines for a single poetry collection, but I don’t do it anymore.”

Jørgen says, however, that he used hash over long periods of his life but stopped when it began giving him hallucinations and delusions. He has also experimented with amphetamines to get additional energy and has even complemented this with Valium so he could still get a good night’s sleep – not a cocktail he recommends trying. But Jørgen does not distance himself from what he, in his book Gold at the Bottom of the Sea: The Imperfect Human 2, calls “performance enhancers” and is sceptical of the hysteria surrounding doping, for instance in professional cycling. At the elite level, doping is often controlled by doctors. As he writes, the primary problem is when performance enhancers are used in an uncontrolled manner. Our story is thus a confused one on this level, but there is a general lesson here that performance-enhancing substances can worsen creative stagnation: it is possible to be crazy enough already.

UNDER PRESSURE

One possible explanation for why people seek to encourage creativity through drugs and alcohol is because of the extreme pressure that some creative processes can exert. Anxiousness about having a breakthrough, about not being able to write, about the reactions one’s work will prompt when the result of one’s efforts finally reach the market – Kenneth Bager knows all about it.

“I’ve worked for years on ‘the album that can kick in doors’ so I could have a career. My international high point was in 1993, when I was named one of the world’s 100 best DJs and the next year as among the 25 best in Europe. It all peaked in 1997, and I felt I was repeating myself, so I took a year’s sabbatical to rethink my future. So I played a lounge-type job for a number of years, where it was about getting reactions from the public while they were seated instead of dancing. I experimented with how quickly you could switch genres and how much the public understood. In 2006, I released my debut album. I’m not and was not crazy about being recognized. In the early ’90s, people recognized me all the time, and I didn’t really want them to. I’d rather be known for the music than known personally. But I know, of course, that one’s indirectly asking for it by doing the things I do. So, better to be executive producer and be more invisible. ‘Better to be manager than to be football player’ was my motto for many years. I’ve been invisibly involved in hugely different Danish successes overseas, such as Cartoons, Fagget Fairys, and most recently Aura.”

Kenneth says that he has experienced considerable resistance during his career but that it has not, thankfully, broken him and pushed him out into expensive life experiments. This resistance has, in fact, helped drive him. He explains: “I was at a meeting in Germany concerning an advertisement for Renault. I’ve got a guy from L.A., who they’re saying is the new Stevie Wonder – Aloe Blacc who has sold more than two million records since the time of our interview – to sing. All the reviewers in Denmark were critical, and the Germans are saying, ‘Hey, cool.’ It’s like you need to be made of armour.”

THE RESISTANCE

No wonder that many do not manage to take up the vanguard or be different. Kenneth explains how he found his own armour while at school:

“In fourth grade, I had to go through the forest every day to get home, and there were three boys who’d laid the evil eye on me. For three, four months, they beat me up every day after school. I thought: They can just hit, and I’m the cool one – and eventually, they just couldn’t be bothered. Something got established then. They liked sports and cocoa, and I liked disco. I got spit in my face, kicked in the crotch, threatened with punches, but you learn it. Then I started going into the city in Aalborg, Aarhus, and Copenhagen, and there were lots of people who also went around in funny clothes, and so I wasn’t alone.”

This is a can-do spirit. And Kenneth manages to experience quite a lot. He built up a reputation in Jutland and is contacted by bookers in Copenhagen:

“I wanted to play at what was then Denmark’s hippest disco, Daddy’s. My booker made a bet with the place’s owner on whether I’d be able to make it on the cutting edge. The owner said, ‘Kenneth talks like he’s from way out in the country.’ But I played my cards right on the opening night and got a steady job. After that, I got jobs in the biggest clubs on the party island Ibiza, which is the world’s biggest club market today, played Europe through, and could ask for much better pay in Copenhagen because I’d made a name for myself overseas.”

Armour, can-do spirit, energy, wilfulness, and a bit of countryside stubbornness – perhaps precisely the combination that ensures that everything does not end in performance anxiety, that one does not feel the need to stick one’s head into a sack of cocaine, that one can instead be constructive in the face of the resistance that inevitably confronts creative efforts. Even Kenneth says his strength lies in his ability to read a dance floor in a matter of minutes:

“I’ve always been the man on the ground and actually think along commercial lines, but I’d like to challenge and nurture originality. That’s why I often mix my DJ sets so that they’re simultaneously entertaining and educational. It’s a DJ’s noblest duty. I often see things happen before they happen. I’m good at finding the needle or the artist in the haystack – for example, I was the first in Denmark to play the musician James Blake on the P3 radio station, a year before they playlisted him. My gut feeling told me that he was a unique talent, but the people around me had no reaction. Resistance is always there, especially when you’re looking for originality. Today, I’ve learned to live with it. I use the resistance creatively as a kind of fuel for the fire.”

Everyone might be able to learn to be more creative, but there are, perhaps, some characteristics that are common to the most creative individuals. The individuals we interview in this book seem to be characterized by a large amount of physical energy, a mix of playfulness and discipline, and a combination of great insight and appropriate naivety. These people with significant experience of creative processes are often very open to new stimulus. They do not filter out external stimulus to as great a degree as others and often see familiar things or events from new perspectives. We have also seen a potential for and an interesting association between a number of psychological problems on the one hand and increased creativity on the other.

In this chapter, we have considered the curious association between drugs and alcohol and creativity. Luckily, we can say that our interviews do not suggest that it would be wise to take drugs to encourage creativity. Perhaps this is because one’s judgment is affected in an unfortunate way. Or perhaps it is because drugs are, in fact, used as a kind of self-medication and do not have anything to do with creative processes per se.

The only drug that our interview subjects do not completely reject is alcohol. As we shall see in our interview of Business Development Director Pernille Aalund, creativity can come at a great cost. This can make it necessary for one to relax occasionally, and sex and alcohol represent her means of relinquishing control.

In the next section of the book, we will leave this issue behind and take a look at the relationship between creativity and business. We shall also consider analogies between creativity, orgasms, and French psychoanalysis.