Motivations of creativity and self-expression

In the Renaissance, melancholy was associated with creativity, with genius. And rightly so. Democritus may have been a laughing philosopher, but he was one of the exceptions. Intellectual endeavor is a form of creativity too, after all. And among the artists, the writers, so many were sad people, and led sad lives. Heraclitus is a famous example of melancholy among philosophers. It is not an observation unique to me, but melancholy among writers and artists is often a layer beneath hedonism, and a layer above dissatisfaction, and the self-questioning of self-doubt.

People inclined to sustained expression in a disciplined form, whether intellectual or aesthetic, tend to be unfulfilled, meaning-hungry. They make things that mean something because they are working through their sense of futility, meaninglessness- trying to make an elusive meaning manifest- or convince themselves that meaning is not elusive, by trumpeting the illusion that there is one that exists apart from our fallacies and inconsistences, objective and lasting.

But the question of meaning- of seeking it, or dissatisfaction with its fleeting moments, and its fleeting from moments formerly whole and satisfying in themselves- this is fundamental to the drive for expression, whether personal or epic, academic or transcendental. There is this sense of trying to hold onto time: what we love within it, what we want to remember (the two are not always the same), what we want others to remember through the lens of what we have made.