On damage & creativity ft. Diane Nguyen storyline
This episode is one of my favorites. I already identified with Diane a lot, and I think it’s easy to do so. She is the most well-rounded character in the series, and while others are more polarizing in one way or another, she really does feel the most (no pun intended) “human”; in the sense that we are imperfect beings who, with the words of Diane, sometimes do good stuff and sometimes bad stuff. She’s imperfect, and she embraces it. She’s kind and empathetic. She can also be egoistic and judgmental at times. But she means well, which, I think, is the most important and relatable thing about her character.
This episode in particular explores the famous, almost sacred tradition that bounds art and misery, and in a cool way, it shows another path of thinking about creativity. I write, and when people usually ask me what I write, I always say, “Sad and autobiographical stuff”, which is for the most part true. Like Diane, I have damage; we all do. Each piece of baggage we carry is maybe different in size and impact, and most importantly, in the way we think of it throughout various times in our lives, but if we’re artists or creative people, it’s more complicated to detach our sadness from the work we produce. As humans, we are moved by deep instincts and emotions. We feel things, sometimes very intensely. That was actually one of the first reasons I started to write. It felt so overwhelming in my body and mind that I needed to pour it out and make sense of it. Which is exactly one of the points of Diane’s speech to Princess Carolyn, when she desperately asks, “What was it all for?” referring to her life history and her pain and how she isn’t able to use that as a source of creativity anymore.
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