A few words on melancholy….

22 Apr A few words on melancholy….

I have recently read an excellent piece about the creativity of melancholia. This is something I understand. There is such a tender beauty in melancholy, in that unfathomable moment of dusk, in the otherworld of transition. It is a place of letting go, there is nothing to hold here, of feeling, of only feeling. Is it sadness? Perhaps, but for me it is more an exquisite grief, soft and full with what is lost and what is yet to come.

Melancholia is not depression, it is not stuck, it is not despair, it is not sourness with life; rather it is sweet, unbearably so, and it flows, it flows, it cannot be held. Like the end of the rainbow it is forever fading away. There is grace to it and something of gratitude, not in an extravagant way, it whispers of the blessings of life, however ephemeral. And in this place of unknowing, deep in its silence, is the wellspring of creativity. For me this is only visited by taking the risk of leaving the quest for superficial happiness to one side, if only for a moment. And the paradox is that within it lies a far deeper happiness, the eternal creative moment.