writers are special ok?

god, I am so sick of this shit. Writer Bridget Asher wonders what's up with all those writers & poets offing themselves. Yeah, what's up with that?

Or could it be that we are talking about famous people, and whatever famous people do, even when it's stuff you & I do everyday, seems that much more remarkable when they do? Suddenly, actors are more likely to die in plane crashes and rock stars are more likely to OD.* (Remember Darby Crash, by the way, how his plans to achieve immortality were rubbed out by John Lennon's murder? Oops.)

This obviously isn't the case. Such individuals' visibility makes it seem this way, but I'm sure any quick search of statistics will assure you that the likelihood of ODing is probably pegged more to factors like frequency of use than whether or not you've cut an album. (The drugs one is a weaker argument, maybe, because drugs are so inextricably linked to money.)

There are a few other factors that make Asher's question and the subsequent line of reasoning problematic. One is that creating this specialized group suggests that there is something inherently more important and more tragic about a writer/poet committing suicide than there is in a general suicide. A hierarchy of importance and worth in life and death is a dangerous road to go down. It implies one person has a more important potential than another, and there is really no way of knowing that.

Asher concedes that looking into this matter would be helpful in solving a more general problem of depression-related suicide, but the fact that she has identified that depression with creativity suggests that this is a highly specialized issue that "non-creative" types couldn't possibly grapple with. Writers love to think about things like this (to generalize, sorry.) Just see the glee with which everyone greeted the news that "writers" are more likely to be alcoholics (I'm trying to find the post to link to, but in general, the only people I saw mentioning this were writers or aspiring-to-be-published writers.) One point that should definitely give anyone pause is the method of reporting-- people who hero-worship Hemingway or Burroughs or the other hard-drinking members of the old boys club to the point of emulation are going to be striving for the label and will then be more willing to personally assume it as well as more willing to accept "alcoholism" as an acceptably defined term (according to drinks per night, for example.) The overly-simplistic part of me wants to say that it's just a bunch of people who haven't outgrown their vanilla upbringing/parents/homogenization in high school/whatever/wherever, and think being depressed/alcoholic/addicted to something is just so. gee. edgy, I guess-- there way of rebelling is still linked to a world that they should have long outgrown. In a world where alcoholism is actually a problem that destroys lives and families and people, it's not cute, no matter how much it shocks your parents. (Okay, none of that was fair, but it does apply to maybe a few people I know.)

But in the end, taking reports of writers committing suicide and using that to imply a monopoly on it is the same as watching the news and only seeing stories of good-looking white women killing their children. It must mean that they are the special ones, and the logical next step must be to assume that either other groups don't do it at all, or are so naturally inclined to it that it is not worth mentioning or, in the case of suicide, lamenting.

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* Musicians are also special:

Maybe it’s just us, but musicians seem to land themselves in a little bit more trouble than people of other professions. Maybe it’s because they’re living the high life, thinking they can get away with it all, or maybe they’re just negatively influenced by their surroundings, but we think it probably has something to do with the same personality trait that makes them want to be performers in the first place.

This says outright what Asher hints at, and can again be answered by the visibility of celebrity. I'm pretty sure at least one of you out there has an equal or higher ratio of acquaintances arrested:acquaintances than the sample of high-profile musicians arrested:musicians (wherever you can get that statistic.)