‍Disclaimer: the word "crazy" is occasionally used here for the purpose of the content, but is in no way intended as a demeaning term. For this reason we have added quotation marks when necessary.

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What awakens the madman within us when it comes to passion and obsession? Where is the fine line between the two? There is no better place to start looking for answers than art.

The following article will discuss:

• What crazy artists mean to me (a.k.a. Encountering the Lobster Telephone)
• The Purpose of Art in Frustration
• Roots of Obsession
• Passion and Obsession as Responses to our Dreams

What artists mean to me: Encountering the Lobster telephone

I remember the first time I saw a Dalí piece it was from our somewhat “crazy” ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Poetzinger. He had a poster-print of The Persistence of Memory pinned to the classroom wall, in the corner by his desk wherefrom he would always sit and occasionally look up to launch one of his perfectly sarcastic remarks.

Many years later, I was gifted a biography of Dalí by my brother, to whom, despite being younger than me, I look up for knowledge in the world of art. At the time I was living in Paris, and I had heard from a friend that there was a Dalí gallery in Sacré-Coeur. Some days later, we went there together.

This was during a period in my life in which I was obsessing over stupid thoughts and losing control of them. They would constantly be spiraling above my head, making a tornado of buzzing houseflies you want so dearly to kill but just can’t.

I entertained (or tried not to) a constant dialogue within me:

Stop, you are crazy! Stop, you are too much!

Dalí’s gallery lies slyly off the corner of the artists’ square of Sacré-Coeur, small and noble in size, but perfectly bold in its content. The day we chose to visit was perfect. There was no one out, it was not tourist season yet, and Paris was still sleeping. Its late morning fog whispered to me,

Yes, I am crazy! Yes, I am too much! And it is wonderful.

From all the works displayed in the gallery, I remember best catching sight of the Lobster Telephone [2]. There it was, in the flesh, an actual lobster on a telephone.

Who on earth would come up with the idea to do this?

I thought back to Mr. Poetzinger in ninth grade, and something else came back to me. We read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night out loud in that class. Each of us was assigned a character in the play, and when they spoke, we had to read their part. I do not know why, but I chose to read all of my character’s lines in a Russian accent.

For some reason, this is what I thought of looking at the Lobster Telephone, a memory of myself reading Twelfth Night out loud in class with a Russian accent.

Why do we express ourselves the way we do?

Walking out of the Dalí exhibition after about an hour or so, the sun came out on Paris. It was afternoon. I returned home to my apartment and began wondering,

Must have something to do with passion and obsession.

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The purpose of art in frustration

If you think about it, the greatest works of artists are almost always produced out of the greatest frustrations.

And, what is the fruit of frustration?

Almost always, passion or obsession. In fact, we depend on one of the two for any creative expression, and for feeling alive, for having a purpose in life. There’s a lot we can learn from seemingly strange art, such as the Lobster Telephone, or, if you want to call it art, my Russian accent reading Shakespeare. Instead of asking why?, the artist asks him/her/themself, why not?

Creative expression is one of the best outlets for passion and obsession, there is no question about it. Let’s switch from painting to singing-- another form of art, and hence, creative expression. Sarah Wilson, cognitive neuroscientist and professor at the University of Melbourne, ran people through a brain scanner while singing [3]. “What’s remarkable about singing is that in the act of doing it, we activate our reward network… singing is a form of natural therapy. It lifts our mood, and releases dopamine.”

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that songs, like stories, often have a central conflict, which the artist somehow works through in his/her/their song. Art, in any form, seems to calm our obsessive ways. Still, creative expression doesn’t answer the whole question.

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Roots of Obsession

Why do we even obsess over a thing, place, person, or idea in the first place? Is it to escape? Is it out of fear? Is it a delusion?

Yes, yes, and probably yes, but that doesn’t help us. What is behind this? Why do we want to escape? Are we ungrateful for what and who we currently have? Likely. Rarely are we satisfied.

Obsession is a plaguing pattern to enter into, but often we crave it. As philosopher Eckhart Tolle puts it, one of the greatest human addictions is thinking itself: critical to our identity, to our feeling of alive-ness, we have tricked ourselves into thinking that we must always be thinking [4].

In his panel discussion, “How do we break the habit of excessive thinking?”, he says, “A lot of the overactivity of the mind is an attempt to get away from the easiness and simplicity of the present moment”.

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Passion and obsession as response to our dreams

I find there to be such an interesting connection between passion and obsession in this way, because they seem to make the metaphorical yin-yang of the creative mind. In his TED-Talk, “How to stop your thoughts from controlling your life,” Albert Hobohm says: “From the very beginning of our lives, we are raised to crave stimulants” [5]. What stimulates an unsatisfied mind better than the distant thought of an ideal place, person, thing, or idea? Hence we welcome dreams to our door. When we have a dream, we become enchanted with its promise. Obsession pushes us to fixation, while passion pushes us to action, in pursuit of that promise. Here’s my way of visualizing this:

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Should we succeed in pursuing our dream, we begin to believe in our passion, driven forward by a clear purpose and understanding of what we’re doing. Should we fail, however, we become further entangled in the obsession which may have at first kept our thoughts entertained, now trapping them in a negative pattern of trying to understand what exactly got us here, and what went wrong.

I don’t mean to say that dreams are bad, but what we do with them once they come down to earth makes all the difference. Early in his career as an artist, Salvador Dalí met Gala, then wife of esteemed poet Paul Eduard. She was ten years older than Dalí, and in all realities, unattainable. Sexually frustrated and anxious in his pursuit, Dalí painted The Great Masturbator, pictured at the beginning of this article. It was a surrealist representation of his obsession with a woman he couldn’t yet have.

Dalí did what all great artists do when met with obsession: he expressed it through his passion.

This September, I encountered another obsessive phase, most likely the result of moving to a new country and being distant from the realities previously familiar to me. I wanted to hold on to certain unfinished business that I knew I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, finish because I was here now. I phoned a friend to tell her all about this, and, in doing so, I realized how stupidly irrational I sounded. I think it is virtually impossible to vocalize and justify our individual obsessions to someone else-- in the end, we just start sounding “crazy”.

And yet, I could never deny myself the pleasure-- as a writer, I enjoy it too much to sit around and explore my obsessions, ever since I went to Sacré-Coeur and saw that lobster telephone. Or perhaps ever since the ninth grade, improvising my Russian accent in English class. One of my favorite quotes comes to mind, “Why would I ever deny myself my precious mistakes?” It is by Richard Goodman, who spent a year of his life in a small village in the South of France with no other aim but to grow a vegetable garden. Is his quote not the motto of any artist, driven forward by passion in the face of obsession?

Instead of trying to make sense of everything with your mind, do it with your art-- whatever that might be. Acting with a beating heart is the best way to be present, and to calm the overactive logic-machine up there in your head. In other words, perhaps the Lobster Telephone does make sense -- the link that binds the yin-yang between passion and obsession… it must be utter, wonderful craziness.

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Additional Sources:

• Film: At Eternity’s Gate with Willem Dafoe Available on Netflix.

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References:

[1] Image: Salvador Dalí, The Great Masturbator. 1929, Oil on canvas.

[2] Image: Salvador Dalí, Aphrodisiac Telephone. Exposition internationale de surréalisme, Paris, 1938.

Learn more about the Lobster Telephone: Salvador Dalí and Edward James, Lobster Telephone

[3] Video: What happens to your brain when you sing?

[4] Video: Eckhart Tolle: How do we break the pattern of obsessive thinking?

[5] Video: How to stop your thoughts from controlling your life | Albert Hobohm | TEDxKTH

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