Lost Souls Are Hothouse Flowers

The Lost Soul Companion: A Book of Comfort and Constructive Advice for Black Sheep, Square Pegs, Struggling Artists, and Other Free Spirits
by Susan M. Brackney

The ultimate survival guide for starving artists, writers, performers - and anyone whose dreams can't be contained by an office cubicle.

Filled with down-to-earth advice and sustenance for your most far-flung dreams, The Lost Soul Companion is the perfect guide for anyone grappling with the darker side of creativity.

A source of support when your day job gets you down, a refreshing reservoir of humor when you're knee-deep in rejection slips, this remarkable little book offers both inspiration and compassion, plus surefire strategies for surviving in what can sometimes seem like "a world of meanies."

From the anti-procrastination "chopstick plan," to the importance of staying well nourished (toaster-oven-snack recipes included), The Lost Soul Companion will speak to anyone with big dreams and creative spirit who nonetheless finds it tough some days just to get out of bed.

Lost Souls are hothouse flowers - delicate, beautiful, fragile, and rare. Some require special attention. Some like to be left alone. Some thrive with lots of light while others prefer darkness. They are all very different and spectacular in their own ways.

There are droopy, weeping plants prone to fits of trembling (Dangley biticus-tremulus).

Some are afraid to grow at all (Timidus minitus) and others just can't get properly motivated despite their best intentions to flower (Perhapsus laterum).

Some plants are continually sick with some fungus or another (Ickacus neglectum).

There is the Supra egosimo, which grows in uneven, angry bursts. If conditions are not exactly to its specifications, it releases a very foul odor.

There are self-destructive plants whose thorns turn inward, piercing the plants' very stems (I. Destructus).

Some of the plants can only grow when throngs of people coo appreciatively at them. If they are not properly admired very regularly, they will die (Externita needeveria).

I have been all of these flowers at one time or another. Most often I am the Shaded melancholanata, which grows as best as it can inside a dark, zippered bag. Very few people have actually seen its flowers although they are rumored to be breathtaking. No one knows why it has become accustomed to the darkness; perhaps it was just always so.

It is important to note that all of these unusual plants do cross-pollinate. As a result, there are hothouses full of incomprehensible variations. Truly, there are too many to describe. They are challenging to tend to, but their potential for beauty is unlimited. With proper care, some of the most hopeless varieties offer velvety leaves, ethereal perfumes, and blossoms so rich with color they very nearly hum.

Which kind are you?

Lost Souls and Suicide

I've thought about killing myself many times. Maybe you have too. Hopefully I can convince us both that it's not such a good idea.

For years, so-called "experts" have said that even the mention of suicide to someone who is himself suicidal is tantamount to pushing him off a ledge or helping him pull the trigger. I don't believe that.

Having suicidal feelings from time to time is common. It's crucial to talk about our feelings of hopelessness and desperation because there is no reason we have to go on feeling this way. If you share your darkest thoughts with other Lost Souls, you'll find comfort in your similarities.

I've known for years that I'm not all here. Many creative types aren't. According to Science News (May 1994), a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist conducted a study which concluded that "Artists suffer more than their share of depression, a tendency that may fuel their creativity while it shatters their personal lives."

Many of our most cherished writers, artists, musicians, and poets have fallen victim to what has been called "excessive sensitivity." In his work The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, A. Alvarez writes, "The casualty rate among the gifted seems all out of proportion, as though the nature of the artistic undertaking itself and the demands it makes had altered radically [during the twentieth century]." When Lost Souls suffer enough emotional pain, suicide becomes a tempting - and permanent - solution to every problem. Every Lost Soul on pages 16 and 17 chose to "solve" their problems this way. Add in the tendency to glorify and romanticize the act, and suicide's appeal grows again.

In 1955 actor James Dean was only twenty-four when he slammed his Porsche into another car and died instantly. It's widely believed that his "accident" was intentional, and I used to think this crash was just another garden-variety suicide. I may have been wrong about that, though.

Wrong because James Dean's mechanic was with him in the car that day. If this was a suicide attempt, wouldn't that mean Dean had no regard for the life of his mechanic? It's possible, I guess, since suicidal people often lack regard for the lives they leave behind, but we'll never really know.

Let's say James Dean had lived through his car accident (and some people actually believe this, by the way), I suspect that it wouldn't have been long before Death collected him in a bar fight, a drug overdose, or something else. Rather than suggesting this was an outright suicide, it is safer to say that James Dean was a "chronic suicide" instead. Chronic suicides are people who live very reckless lives because they actually want to die.

In death, Dean is glamorized, but in life he was, not to put too fine a point on it, something of an asshole. He abused alcohol and other drugs and had an explosive temper. It has been over forty-five years since his death and James Dean still gets fan mail.

If you ask me, those fans are wasting their stamps and their time. Dead is forever and, as far as I know, James Dean isn't reading his mail. Right now he's just a pile of bones in a box in a hole in Fairmont, Indiana. How glamorous.

Copyright © 2000 by Susan M. Brackney. Excerpted by permission of Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Susan Brackney lives in Indiana with her rescued cockatoo, Puckitt.