I was on a downer last week. Very negative. But it was almost the most creative I’d felt in a long time, I was drawing again, receptive to music, and had an all round necessity for art. And I already feel it slipping away the further removed I become from the moment I broke. Time heals. But I’d rather suffer than lose the creativity. What to do?
And what’s the connection?
more drugs
“Live and let live” can apply to aspects of yourself such as your moods, as much as to your relationship to others. You can appreciate and even enjoy your sadness as much as your happiness (or vice versa). Each is fleeting.
Didn’t you read the OP? I do appreciate the ‘negative,’ I’ve been more creative because of it. The problem is, time will slowly extinguish it. I don’t want to slip back into some contented coma…I want to keep it. Not detachment. Immersion. Consumption.
destroy something you love
If you have suffered it is because you have experienced… I say your creativity is not necessarily due to your suffering but due to your experiences in general (of which pain is perhaps the most poignant for you at the moment). The more you continue to take up new opportunities for experience, the more you open yourself to new stimuli, the more, not less, creative you’ll be. Dwelling or ruminating on the same things for too long at the expense of new experience will stifle creativity. If you are genuinely trying to engage the world, not under the plastered facade of inane contentedness, and whether pain or pleasure comes of it, I think you can only be more creative for it.
Normally sound advice, but I’ve already destroyed myself once this week. There’s not much left at the moment. 
I don’t know. Who cares for introspection when they’re happy? Happiness is all green trees and chirpy birds. I’d say the last week has been an awakening, and maybe it’s the case that such a degree of suffering was the only thing capable of waking me from such a dull slumber. We’ll see. But, in the past this suffering is something I would have flown from, but not now, now it’s worth savouring. Can I still paint and draw the way I do whilst happy? I’m not confident I can.
I did read the OP. I said “or vice versa” and “each is fleeting”.
You don’t have to be introspective to be creative. Thinking like that is rather limiting in itself.
That’s pretty shallow imo.
But I do agree that suffering can be worth savoring.
Do you speak from experience? Personally, I need the impetus to start creating, and it comes most strongly when I’ve reflected and touched upon something raw inside. We could dillute this conversation and try to encompass all areas of creativity, but that doesn’t appeal to me. Dillution. Concern of everything everywhere. Not limited enough. Maybe that’s the point. Limit yourself to yourself.
I’ll pass on the shallow comment.
I’m just saying you don’t have to feel like shit, or perpetuate your own shittiness, to be creative. You can be genuinely happy and be creative. You can show creativity in social situations, too, not just during introspection. And social experience can provide more impetus for creativity during introspection. Yes, I speak from experience. I’m sure you have gotten the creative impetus from sources other than pain in your life… maybe it’s just been awhile.
The tortured artist - all good artists have been tortured by events that have occurred throughout their lives… it seems to fuel creativity… which is said to be a bi-product of evolutionary fall-out, hence the creatives being misunderstood but revered at the same time.