The Big Empty

In addition to doing lots of nothing today, I watched a biography of Bette Davis, one of my very favorite actresses from Hollywood's heydays. I learned much that I didn't know before, but as with many of my favorite artists and authors, the thing that struck me most about her life was the singular alone-ness of it.

Certainly, she was married four times, and certainly she had a life filled with men and friends, but it always seemed to me that something kept her separated from finding that true kindred spirit that could have made her deeply satisfied. In the end, even her own daughter was mean-spirited and cruel. I cannot imagine how deeply that cut hurt, especially since she herself gave up so much of her own life to be a daughter who cared for a demanding mother.

Why is it that the ones who are most talented seem to wind up being the ones who are most isolated and alone? That seems so unjust. Is there no happiness for the people who are just that little bit different, who refuse to walk down the most common path? Why do they wind up so often standing in the heart of the Big Empty, smiling for all they're worth, but really miles away from everybody else?

Granted, frequently these authors or actors, these artists of all kinds are trying to reach out into the stars and pull down worlds that this one just isn't quite ready for yet, or they're making destructive decisions, but I still can't help but be so sad when I think over the lives of the ones who have brought me so much happiness and how much sadness they had themselves. Do they have to be isolated just because they aren't quite like everybody else? Unfair, unfair, so very unfair....

Does creativity require heart's blood to make its gaudy blossoms bloom? This isn't the first time I've had this little philosophical conversation with myself. I've read all kinds of quotes about what makes great art, and about half of them seem to agree that it comes from some kind of willing emotional self-immolation, that those who create have to be willing to become masochists of a kind, that people who create are in some way fundamentally broken right from the very start. Maybe this is what causes that isolation and ultimate and lingering sadness.

As I watched the biography today I was seized with the desire to write a letter or take the hand of a very strong lady who would never have needed such compassion from me anyway, and tell her how wonderful I thought she was. Just a note or the quick squeeze of the fingers in a gesture of support, the way you would do with a friend who was having a particularly bad day, looking a little worn or a little lost. I often feel this stupid urge whenever I watch one or read about my favorite people, and sometimes I just wish I could be there to hug whomever it is tightly to me and tell them that they are loved and cherished. It's a silly desire, I know, and dangerously full of poetry and imagination. But because I know just the tiniest bit about standing around in the gray edges of the Big Empty (I haven't the talent to ever get to the heart of it), my heart breaks for them.