Hell Hath No Fury: The Nexus of Artist and Anger – Prologue and Path

I’ve been puzzling a recent, somewhat paradoxical development about my mood and energy levels.  In the last year and a half, I have gradually emerged from the active mourning stage with the painful end of a 10 year relationship with my partner.  Heightening the sense of loss and bereavement was the excruciating ex-communication from her now four year-old granddaughter.  (And surely, I will have emotional echoes surrounding these losses, along with joyful moments and memories, till my end of time.)

In addition, my life in Columbia, MD, was being enriched with new friends/colleagues and new poetry writing along with a growing drive to publish e-books on a variety of topics, topics for which I have considerable passion.  Anyway, the initially curious phenomenon was a greater awareness of my generalized state of anger.  This charged emotional state occurred whether reacting to an aggressive driver or to my communicating with (at least in my mind) a rude, impatient, invasive, and/or all-knowing individual.

And, naturally, the old axiom came to mind:  depression is anger turned inward.  (Of course, biochemical or clinical depression is not just simply a product of emotional forces or communicational circumstances.  It involves genetic predisposition as well as chemical concoction.)  So feeling better, ironically, had me feeling worse or, at least, more agitated and on the aggressive edge.

Double-Edged Anger

Now this was not all bad.  I was working with greater energy and intensity, if not hyper-focus.  And I do believe that maturing emotionally and feeling more solid (as I was through my active grieving, healthier friendships, sharper career focus, financial support of Social Security, etc.) enables one to see and experience complex emotions and behaviors – especially one’s own – with a greater honesty and depth.  Or, to be less self-protective, my denial was perhaps diminishing!

So feeling less depressed helped me once again realize that, like my dad, I am “one angry man”…and I have been so for a long, long time.  Of course, our family history (with all the clan craziness going on, and my mother warning me, “You were not going to give me any trouble”…alas, I didn’t) had something to do with this temper-ament!  Not surprisingly, until entering therapy in my twenties, I had either bottled up my anger, repressed it, or acted out this anger, rage, and helplessness in a variety of escapist or dysfunctional activities, and some sublimations.  Such maladaptive-adaptive behaviors included mindless TV watching and compulsive masturbation to hours shooting baskets at the schoolyard.  Oh, and being too nice, being a bully target, along with my wearing that heavy, weighing me down, “everything’s fine” mask.  And, in general, bottling up emotions and smoldering stress definitely contributes to a lack of concentration, impaired memory recall, and significant academic underachievement.  Which only fuels thoughts and feelings of helplessness, rage, and shame.  And the vicious cycle is off and running!

Seeing the Obvious and Drawing on Feedback

Now, many decades later (with the aid of recent 12-Step group participation), it eventually became clear that the real problem was my being so quickly reactive in present day “hot button” situations.  (For years, proving I was no longer the childhood coward who, when confronted by tormentors, could not “fight back,” was a primary driver.  Hence, for example, being a “Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant” for the US Postal Service.)  These insights led to two obvious conclusions:  1) having and allowing too many trigger points and people and 2) needing to learn to defuse or distance myself from this immediate stimulus-reaction situation and sequence.

So perhaps not surprisingly, last week I woke up in the middle of the night with this phrase on my brain:  Hell hath no fury like a word artist scorned!  And suddenly I was off and writing-creating, if not a virtuous then, at least, a poetic cycle.

After basically sketching the poetic skeleton, I shared my effort with a spiritual brother and coffeehouse confidante.  Acknowledging the poem’s power, E observed that he doesn’t see this “angry side.”  I later wrote him saying he may not truly know my dreamscape mind.  And then I realized that my dreams often were like PTSD flashbacks or the lingering, still reverberating aftershocks from a traumatic, ground-shaking childhood.  In addition, this interaction and insight made me go back to the proverbial drawing board, adding images and ideas to the middle section of the poem.

The Intersection of Anger and Art, Mastery and Mirth

So hopefully this introduction provides some psychological, historical, and artistic context.  Speaking of which, the poem traces not just my anger but, also, how this emotional state fuels and fires my creative obsession and engine.  Targets range from overcoming past humiliations and labeled (or self-) limitations to proving one’s worth and challenging outmoded conventions and rigid rules and regulations.  And a harnessed anger that promotes daring – from successful performance risk-taking to candid interpersonal encounters – is often a wellspring for humor.  As psychoanalyst and humor scholar, Ernst Kris, observed:  What was once feared and is now mastered is laughed at.  And as the Stress Doc countered:  What was once feared and is now laughed at is no longer a master!  Now, what we’ve all been waiting for…Enjoy!  Mark

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Hell Hath No Fury:  The Nexus of Artist and Anger

Prologue

From dawn to dusk...From dusk to dawn

Hell hath no fury like a word artist scorned.

The human stain tattoo…forever mourned

Invisible yet everywhere adorned:

Wanted…Posted:  Forearmed is forewarned:

Look for the halo with a crown of thorns.

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The Path

A river of pain roars through those damned veins…

Don’t ask, Don’t feel, and Do Not complain!

Red sky virus script corrupting the dreams:

Why just me on the bridge of Edvard Munch SCREAMS?  **

The smiling sun mask sets on a night ocean

Morphing black nether world’s deep REM obsession:

A father’s withdrawal, more toxic than drinking

An ex-lover’s bailout; just tired of doubting.

You’re an artist, a word artist

Holding on a moon thread of sane

An artist, a pro and con artist

Alas, too late to trade in that brain!

Beneath the iceberg façade and frame

A frozen block – silent screams of shame

That over time – drip…drip…drip…starts to thaw

Revealing colors of “My Hundred Years War”:

From black and blue to shame-faced blood red

Still worse… when “brainbow” *** trauma’s “all in your head!”

But for that scarlet mark:  Damaged Goods

A muted puppet strung out on moods.

You’re an artist, by the hardest

Whose mantra pledge is “Never again!”

A stubborn foxhole atheist

Cries quietly…now and then to way back when.

Juggling rhythm and rhyme as is my will

Playing “the fool” on the cutting edge hill.

To most I keep pulling the scab off a wound

But I’m grafting your flesh; I will take my pound.

How do family Furies **** ignite blazing minds?

By choking a self in culture-myth binds.

My blind mind shaft drills down to strata subconscious

Freeing memory ores for sculpting and polish.

You’re an artist, a word artist

Spinning yarn to solid gold thread

A poetic alchemist

Bringing to light that which was dead!

The screen is the sanctum where I must confess

And root out my own and others’ b.s.

The pen as a sword carves the prophetic path…

A voice to escape the echo chamber of wrath.

Forget finding that Garden of Serenity

Hiding in shadows baring false modesty.

But an artistic psyche striated with lashes…

A force field ***** Phoenix may rise from the ashes:

As an artist, a word artist

Surfing the wave of human sin

A conceptual polygamist

Strange bedfellows for a pragmatist

Doubling as quixotic synthesist or

Still down-to-earth illusionist…okay                    

Hypnotic psychohumorist ™

And the spirit world’s great exorcist

One who lives to lose as much as win

For s/he has climbed the mountain

And knows the Buddha’s grin!

©  Mark Gorkin   2016
"Shrink Rap" Productions

** Edvard Munch SCREAMS? -- Late 19th c. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's famous autobiographical picture, The Scream, is an expressionistic construction based on Munch's actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his two companions, seen in the background, had left him.

*** “brainbow” – a neologism coined by

**** The Furies – In Greek and Roman mythology, the Furies were female spirits of justice and vengeance. They were also called the Erinyes (angry ones). Known especially for pursuing people who had murdered family members, the Furies punished their victims by driving them mad. When not punishing wrongdoers on earth, they lived in the underworld and tortured the damned.

***** force field – the space around a radiating body within which its electromagnetic oscillations can exert force on another similar body not in contact with it; a special charm, aura, or spirit that can influence anyone in its presence

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative.  A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army.  The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High Tech World.  Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  For more info, email:  stressdoc@aol.com.