Why heartbreak can be the making of you

For all its many inconveniences and

agonies, there is an incidental upside

to having a broken heart. The condition

seems very helpful indeed if one's

trying to get some serious work done.

The list of artistic masterpieces

primarily brought into being because

someone was left is long. La Vita Nuova,

Dante. The Sorrows of Young Werther,

Goethe. Either/Or, Kierkegaard. In

Search of Lost Time, Proust. Blood on

the Tracks, Bob Dylan. Rumours,

Fleetwood Mac. And last but not least,

Face Value, Phil Collins.

Why should abandonment have such a

salutary side effect? And what if

anything might we, who've got no plans

to cut an album or go into print, but

might recently have been ghosted on

Hinge, derive from the phenomenon?

Heartbreak's greatest gift is

indifference. We lose everything. No

one's come to our rescue. We don't mind

if we're alive or dead. And so now it

really doesn't matter what the neighbors

think or society expects. The beloved

with whom we'd imagined the rest of our

lives has gone. Everything settled and

happy has disappeared with them. And

truly nothing, but nothing, retains its

solidity. We could, for all we care,

throw our belongings out of the window,

shave our head, crawl naked across the

central square, eat mud, spray paint the

apartment, get run over, swim out into

the ocean, and declare ourselves a horse

or a lobster. It is a promising start.

Drastic conditions, far from presaging

chaos, offer precisely the setting in

which finally we can throw off

convention, timidity, and fear, and do

what we've always longed, but been

inhibited to do. Desperate, we speak in

authentic accents which decorum has kept

us from. Against a backdrop of despair,

we have the stomach for difficult

questions. Why are we living in this

city? Why are these our friends? We're

already in sufficient pain that

stringent reevaluation can't make

anything much worse. Peace was anyway

lost long ago. So we can risk saying

what we truly mean, we can push our

thoughts towards their most dangerous

conclusions, and we can articulate

ourselves with unfrightened sincerity.

The great essayist Emerson once wrote,

"In the minds of geniuses, we find our

own neglected thoughts." And one might

add, it might be grief that pushes us to

excavate the neglected thoughts and

place them eloquently front and center.

Another motive lurks behind artistic

greatness, a really strong wish for

revenge. The rascal-like ex-lover is

with a new partner they met at a singles

evening for people in tech, and the

sense of rejection and inferiority are

beyond endurance.

Why am I, with my quiet reserves of

brilliance, insight, and sensitivity,

not enough?

And from the ensuing shame and anger,

are born a new will to try yet harder to

make sure that the deserter is going to

regret their cowardice for eternity. I

may not be enough for you, you might

think me boring or routine, but people

not yet born will be stirred by the

lyricism of what I'm about to produce.

My work might not have satisfied you,

it's going to render your abandonment

absurd to the ages.

It may not matter in all this that we've

got no plans to make great art

ourselves. This is about the gifts of

loss. We should take a moment to

experience pride at ourselves in our

desperate state. There's little that's

fun about being abandoned. It's hard to

wake up crying every morning. But there

is recompense in the ashes. We've never

thought so clearly before. We've never

been so alert or so alive. We've never

before communicated such important

things with such directness. We've been

robbed, and we've been gifted.