The great English poet and satirist John Donne called it a treasure. French impressionist painter Claude Monet considered it torture. American author Helen Keller said it was an inspiration. Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner claimed humankind could endure vast quantities of it, but that it resulted in greatness. Then there was philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s view of suffering.
“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” he said.
The notion that artists have to suffer to succeed has been around for a long time. It’s almost a cliché. But there is modern truth in it too. For example, the great Motown singer Marvin Gaye said that sharing one’s suffering makes us better people. And the popular TV actor Mary Tyler Moore, who had her share of suffering in life and on screen, said that if only wonderful things happen to you, how can you possibly be brave?
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the combination of creating art and coping with its challenges through the experiences of artists in my community. For example, I just re-read my colleague Roger Varley’s “A Cup of Coffee…” column from a couple of weeks ago in the Cosmos newspaper. He interviewed actor Jennifer Carroll, who contributes a monthly column “Far From Home” from Dublin, but who is currently performing in the summer-long run of “Maud of Leaskdale.” I’m sure Roger won’t mind my quoting from his interview when he asked Jennifer about performing a one-woman show.
“It’s a vocal and physical marathon,” she told Varley. “It takes a lot more commitment from yourself, but also from the audience.”
She’s not kidding. Jennifer has not been performing in a huge, professionally lit, acoustically sound, air-conditioned venue, such as the Music Hall in Uxbridge, for example. For effect (and I suggest to challenge herself) Jennifer and her producer/director Conrad Boyce felt the production ought to be nearer the spot where Lucy Maud Montgomery sat in her pew those Sunday mornings during her husband Rev. Ewan Macdonald’s sermons a hundred years ago. It ain’t the Royal Alex, but art isn’t always comfortable.
“We’re really trying to grow [the play] in an authentic way,” she explained to Roger.
Add to the trials of her performances – Thursday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 and Sunday afternoons at 3 – that neither she nor her producer expected transportation authorities to suddenly barricade the 7th Concession Road into Leaskdale in the middle of the summer when audiences are trying to make their way north to the Manse for the show. And, well, there’s more to Jennifer Carroll’s professional work ethic than dedication to art.
(For the record, if you go north on the 6th Concession instead, then go east on the Leaskdale Road, you should arrive in time for curtain up.)
Suffering no doubt also means loss. And we all felt empathy for another artist in our midst, Jennifer Neveu-Cook, as she and her family experienced the loss of her mother, Jeri Neveu. I remember her mom as Jeri Jae Jordan performing in some of the jazz clubs my father took me to (often when I was underage) in and around Toronto over 40 years ago. I also recall when Jeri and her husband Lou operated a music store in Agincourt where I grew up.
Getting through such setbacks as losing a parent and mentor, the experts will say, makes one stronger and wiser. Maybe so, but it certainly makes making art tougher too. Watching Jeri’s daughter Jennifer work with young people either on stage or in her Toronto Street studio, doesn’t suggest she needs to be much stronger and wiser.
No doubt, in some suffering, Jennifer will continue to inspire the Uxbridge Youth Choir, as she did last December when her choir added so much warmth to our staging of “A Christmas Carol” at Trinity United Church.
Not so long ago, someone asked me what it takes to be an artist. Even though I write non-fiction books, I’ve never considered myself an artist on the level of a Jennifer Carroll or a Jennifer Neveu-Cook. I consider their challenges tougher than mine this summer – grinding out a new manuscript for a book to be published sometime next year.
As I often do, this summer, I have squirreled myself away in my office. I have given myself a daily word quota from now until Labour Day. If it means anything, last Sunday proved to be my highest word-production day of the summer so far. Why? Earlier in the day, while cutting my lawn, I accidentally ran over an angry hive of wasps and got stung a number of times. When I returned to my keyboard later that day, I generated more pages of content than any day this summer. I guess L.M. Montgomery was right when she said:
“Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths. And the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.”