Article voiceover
In depression, you lay your head in the mouth of a tiger. In mania, you run the streets with twelve of those unpredictable carnivores. In between, in that calm space called euthymia, the tigers pace outside your house and stare at you through the windows. They're waiting for the version of you that'll eventually open the door and invite them inside. All the while, you hope the difficult medicine returns the tigers to the wild. But the tigers stay with you. All the meds can do is make the tigers less fire, less cold stare, less claw, less fang, less dark lair.
How can one live in this culture honestly without depression? Especially as an artist who isn't content with glibness and surface? I don't think that is possible... it's the duration and whether it descends to despair that is crippling. I have lived there too.
But ... truly.... without the tigers, if there were only gentleness, just stoic sheep or mild lambs, wouldn't you be missing something? Don't you require the predatory passion of those tigers?