What Happening to the Artist? A Long View on Time, Technique, Addiction and Mental Collapse
- Scraper
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
The Muse Once Lived In Marble: On The Sacredness Of Creation
There was a time when creativity wasn't content, it was consecration. When the florentine sun hit the hands of michelangelo, or when Ludwig Beethoven or Claude Debussy composed celestial chants in the solitude of monasteries, creation was an act of divine communication. It wasn't fast. It wasn't constant. It certainly wasn't demanded on a schedule 3 times a day. Art was a calling, not a career. To be creative was to commune with the divine, to echo the cosmos through pigment chisel, and sound.
During the Renaissance, artists were revered not merely for their output, but for their dedication to a singular vision. They were not posting drafts for feedback. They were sculpting eternity. Michelangelo spent four years painting the SIstine Chapel celling, labouring under physical duress to fulfill a vision that spoke to both faith and humanity. Creation was not just what they did; it was who they became through suffering, solitude and study.
Compare that to today, Where creativity is a muscle we're expected to tear upon daily for social currency. The divine muse has become a content calendar. We do not wait for inspiration; we are told to produce through burnout. What once was sacred has become scheduled. The only thing common i'd say is the mental issues folks had and the less availability for morphine or cocaine or ketamine; as the "organized" list kept expanding.
Creativity as Muscle, Starved of Reps
I'd describe current state of creativity as a divine muscle, a skill starved of time to exercise for a full rep. The tragedy is not just losing the spark, it's in never giving it enough oxygen. In our modern hustle culture society, we are offered no space to allow the muse to fully arrive. Instead of incubation, we're told to ship it. Finish it. Move on. Next Piece, trend, scroll.
The consequence? Creativity suffers not from a lack of talent, but from malnourishment. It's not that people today aren't brillant, it's that the system we operate within don't allow them to fully realize that brilliance. At Alpha Healing Center, often see artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries arriving not just for addiction treatment, but for existential exhaustion. They're not broken; they're burnt out. Their creative muscles haven't atrophied, they've been overused without rest or reverence.
True creativity requires time to marinate, evolve, contradict itself. But when the algorithm favours frequency over depth, we're asked to serve half baked ideas at the speed of light. A divine muscle? Yeah, but one we're forced to sprint on before it can even stretch.
The Algorithm Is Not A Muse
What we call “creativity” today is often just chasing a trend, not crafting a truth. The algorithm isn’t a muse, it’s a master. And it’s fickle. Platforms encourage output without introspection, content without consequence. Virality has become validation. Creation is no longer about asking “what needs to be said?” but rather “what will get the most engagement?”
Renaissance artists were funded by patrons who wanted eternal beauty. Today, creators are bankrolled by brands who want short term clicks. The emotional toll is massive. Artists lose their compass. They begin to conflate relevance with worth. At Alpha Healing Center, many of our clients mention the feeling of being caught in a loop, producing endlessly, yet feeling increasingly disconnected from themselves. Creative burnout is not a vague concept, it’s an embodied, spiritual crisis.
And because we’ve linked our livelihoods to this creative labor, there’s no room to pause. If you stop, you disappear. And so, the cycle continues.
A History Of Mental Illness And Addiction: The Artist's Psyche
Mental illness has always walked beside creativity. From Van Gogh’s psychosis to Sylvia Plath’s depression, the link between the tortured artist and their output is well documented. But here’s the difference: while suffering has always existed, our cultural capacity for reverence has not. Modernity doesn’t hold space for artists to descend into the underworld and return. It demands they tweet while falling.
Aside from the mental illness and disorders which have remained consistent throughout history, everything else has gotten worse. That’s painfully accurate. Today, artists are expected to brand their pain, market their recovery, and remain publicly palatable while privately unraveling. The performative nature of healing on social media strips away the sanctity of creative struggle. Even suffering is monetized now.
At Alpha Healing Center, we advocate for holistic recovery that honors the complexity of the human spirit. For creatives, that means offering spaces where pain isn’t pathologized or packaged but processed, honored, and eventually transformed.
Accessibility & The Dilution Of Meaning
With accessibility comes democratization. And with democratization comes dilution. The internet has made creativity more accessible than ever. That’s a gift, but also a paradox. Because when everyone is a creator, creation itself becomes less valued.
It’s no longer rare to write a poem or make a video. The uniqueness of creative acts has been flattened by saturation. While it’s a triumph that more people can share their voice, it also means the sacred silence that once surrounded art is often missing. There’s no build up. No pilgrimage to a gallery. No sense of weight.
Creativity, once a temple, now feels like a marketplace.
The Distraction Economy & Creative Disillusionment
Creativity today demotivates anything real or genuine. And why wouldn’t it? The attention economy is designed to fragment focus. When our minds are constantly bombarded by pings, dings, and dopamine traps, the deeper self, the self that creates, goes silent.
It’s not just hard to create under these conditions; it’s hard to be. Even the idea of being fully present enough to feel inspiration is a challenge. It’s why clients at Alpha Healing Center often find that stepping away from their devices is the first radical act of reconnection. In our mental wellness programs, we re-teach silence. Stillness. The ability to listen to one’s inner world.
That’s where creation lives, not on screens, but in the still waters of the self.
Has Modernity Killed The Artist?
When asked if modern creative culture has cooked creativity, Honest feeling is like the past 6 years… it’s not even cooked, it’s burnt toast. It’s darkly funny but disturbingly accurate. In the rush to keep up, we’ve incinerated the core of what creativity once meant: exploration, mystery, transformation.
Today, even artists are becoming content managers. The sacred dance between inspiration and discipline has been replaced by analytics dashboards and SEO keywords. But if we measure worth by metrics alone, we miss the point entirely.
Maybe we need to burn down the algorithmic temple and build new ones, quiet ones. Communal ones. Ones that don't ask you to monetize your soul.
What We’ve Lost and What We Might Still Save
Creativity, is more about creation than imagination now. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s a return to the basics. Not fantasy, but formation. Not escape, but emergence.
At Alpha Healing Center, we’ve seen clients find renewal not through grandeur but through simplicity, journaling, painting without judgment, meditative breathwork. Creativity as self discovery, not self performance.
We might not return to Renaissance studios or Greek amphitheaters, but we can reclaim the spirit. We can treat creativity as ritual. We can create not to be seen but to see ourselves.
Because the muse isn’t dead. She’s just tired. And maybe all she needs is time. Space. And a little silence.
Button: The Future We Must Choose
Surely there must be real artists today but they’re not making content like the Renaissance did... But maybe they’re out there, quietly creating. Maybe they’re healing first. Maybe they’re refusing to share everything.
Creativity, like healing, must be reclaimed from performance. It must be slowed down, revered, and practiced with intention. At Alpha Healing Center, it's believed this isn’t just about recovery from addiction, it’s recovery of self, of soul, of art.
Let’s build a world where creativity isn’t exploited. Let’s make space for art that doesn’t ask to go viral. Let’s honor the sacred act of making, however small, however slow.
Let the muse rest. Let the artist be. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll remember what it means to create again.
Resources:
Blunt rotation session with ancient artists
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