It’s an image that’s probably familiar to everyone, art-lover or not. The pale, skull-shaped face, two white ovals with tiny dots for eyes, nostrils but no nose, and the mouth open in an extended “O.” The androgenous figure’s hands cup its face (or cover its ears), and the background is a swirl of orange, white, blue and green. There are two vague figures in the background of what appears to be a boardwalk with a guardrail. For me, the image is a portrayal of inner angst and anxiety, of feeling overwhelmed by the world.
Hopefully, it’s clear that I’m describing Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” It seems like most of the museums in Norway have at least a few Munch paintings in their collections, so I’ve found myself standing in front of most of his famous works throughout my time here. I wasn’t that familiar with Munch’s work (other than “The Scream”), and I found myself dramatically impacted by many of his paintings.
Perhaps it’s because Munch’s subject matter often deals with dark concepts and feelings. His paintings include titles like “Melancholy,” “Ashes,” “Separation,” “Jealousy,” and “By the Deathbed.” His mask-like faces have been said to express depersonalization, emotional numbness and social alienation, while his swirling backgrounds represent anxiety and internal psychic turbulence. Munch’s artistic vocabulary centers on solitude, longing, depression and pain.
I can relate. These emotions have been my trusty companions as I’ve gone through life. I’ve written about my feelings of alienation and isolation, and my depression is something I’ve tried to address honestly. To be clear, I’m not looking for pity; to the contrary, writing about my psyche and my history has been somewhat cathartic for me, and I’ve gotten a much clearer understanding of what makes me tick from writing these blog posts.
But exposing my feelings and emotions comes at a price. I call it an intimacy hangover, although others refer to it as a vulnerability hangover. What I’m trying to describe is the intense emotional, mental and sometimes physical reaction I experience after being deeply open, vulnerable or intimate with someone, or, in the case of these blog posts, everyone. It’s the backlash that hits after I feel that I’ve revealed too much of my inner self, or, in the case of some of the information I’ve shared in my posts, unspoken secrets or desires. My response to the intimacy hangover is to retreat or become distant; I try to rebuild my emotional walls to restore a sense of safety and stability.
Given how emotionally expressive Munch’s paintings are, I was curious as to whether he ever talked about the feelings that came from exposing his vulnerabilities and inner life to the public. Munch apparently viewed revealing his deepest feelings as the fundamental purpose of art, asserting that genuine art cannot exist without a complete, almost raw, opening of oneself. He wrote, “I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart. All art, literature and music must be born in your heart’s blood.” The corollary to that is that opening one’s heart leaves one with a bleeding wound; Munch acknowledged that after moments of deep emotional connection, he felt a sudden desire to build walls.
After years of heavy drinking, intense anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations and depression, Munch wound up in a private psychiatric clinic in Copenhagen in 1908, where he remained for eight months. His art became brighter and more vibrant after his treatment, yet, in his final years, he deliberately destroyed letters and notebook passages that he felt were too revealing, too raw, or too compromising regarding his private mental breakdowns and intimate relationships.
Some people have asked me why I don’t post more often, and, although I can attribute some of it to laziness or the “hey, I’m on vacation” mindset, if I’m being honest, it’s really more about the hangover I feel after writing about myself and my experiences. I’ve always been such a private person; I’m feeling things and seeing things about myself that I want to share, but I have trouble addressing the emotions that arise after each post. I often feel embarrassment or shame about what I’ve written, or that maybe I’ve gone too far. I fear that I have pushed people away by revealing unflattering things about myself or things that are unrelatable. Sometimes, I talk about things in a way that’s inconsistent with what I’ve told others who are close to me in the past. Even this post, talking about how I feel about posting, gives me anxiety.
I wish I could say that my fear of opening my heart is something I’ve gotten over. But my heart has been fragile – both physically and emotionally. For a long time after the angioplasties I had, I found myself full of fear about activities I’ve always loved. Scuba diving, for example. I had these paranoid fantasies about having a heart attack at 60 feet deep and sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. That’s metaphorically consistent with how I’ve felt in writing this blog. Will there be something I talk about, something I reveal, that will forever damage my heart and force me down, down, down. I look in the mirror and I can see “The Scream” superimposed over my reflection.
Intellectually, I want to follow Munch’s model and allow my art to come from the heart. However, in order to do that, I have to be able to sit with the disequilibrium that accompanies my revelations. As long as I feel the need to shy away from the intimacy hangover, I’ll never be able to create something truly meaningful, whether it be my writing or my music or anything else that requires exposure of my inner being.
Munch made me think about committing to make art even in the face of discomfort or shame. To live with the intimacy hangover and embrace it as part of the artistic process. I’m trying to stay open and accepting of the vulnerability that I feel after each post; after all, they say that the cure for a hangover is the hair of the dog that bit you.
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