Artistry Vs Domestication

David Lynch's passing has forced me to confront something I've long suspected but never fully articulated: there exists a common thread among all the artists whose work has profoundly resonated with me - Lynch, Houellebecq, David Foster Wallace, Nietzsche, even Future (rapper). At first glance, this might seem like an odd grouping. What could a surrealist filmmaker, a controversial French novelist, a postmodern author, a trap music pioneer, and a 19th-century philosopher possibly have in common? The answer, I've come to realize, lies not in their artistic output but in their fundamental relationship to society itself.

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Consider the statistical improbability that any of these figures would have emerged from lives of quiet suburban living, lives marked by 2.5 children and regularly scheduled childrens’ soccer practice. There exists a particular species of creator who appears, almost by definition, to resist what we call domestication, a system so pervasive and degrading that most people don't even recognize it as a choice but rather accept it as the natural progression of life itself.

Take Future, for instance, whose entire artistic persona is built around a rejection of conventional relationships and domestic stability. His music doesn't just describe a lifestyle; it embodies a philosophical stance against domestication that puts him in surprising alignment with someone like Lynch, whose surreal dreamscapes served as a similar kind of rebellion against the conventional narrative structures of Hollywood.

The thing about domestication is that it operates as both metaphor and literal description of the process by which wild things become tame things. The way a wolf becomes, through generations of selective breeding and environmental conditioning, a Golden Retriever who's afraid of thunder and needs special food for its sensitive stomach. The way an artist becomes, through years of societal pressure and financial necessity, a corporate drone who occasionally paints and keeps his supplies in the garage between the kids' bikes and the Christmas decorations.

Truly influential artists don't just accidentally avoid domestication; they actively flee from it with the same visceral terror that your average suburban dad flees toward it. They recognize that there exists an inverse relationship between comfort and creation. This isn't to romanticize suffering, but rather to acknowledge that something about the process of becoming comfortable, of becoming domesticated, seems to dull the edges that make great art possible.

Consider strip clubs, escort services, tawdry weekend escapes, these aren’t random indulgences. They’re the desperate acts of men clawing at the bars of the cage they built for themselves. It’s pure escapism, a brief reprieve from the grinding monotony of a life tailored to fit societal expectations. The men who frequent these places aren’t just running from their wives; they’re running from their own reflection, from the haunting specter of everything they could have been if they’d refused to settle. The married man who visits such establishments isn't necessarily seeking sex so much as he's seeking a momentary escape from the suffocating comfort of his domestic life.

Because the very things that society holds up as markers of success; the house, the marriage, the steady job with benefits, might actually be impediments to certain types of creative achievement. This isn't universally true, of course because there are plenty of successful artists who manage to balance domestic life with creative output, but there seems to be a particular breed of artist for whom domestication represents a kind of creative death.

Look at the pattern: Lynch with his transcendental meditation and unwavering commitment to his singular vision, Houellebecq with his provocative rejection of polite society's norms, Wallace with his brutal honesty about the human condition, Nietzsche with his solitary walks and radical philosophy. None of these men fit comfortably into the conventional narrative of success. They didn't accumulate the traditional tokens of achievement. They didn't "settle down" in the way society expects. Instead, they remained, in some fundamental way, wild.

The midlife crisis, that much-mocked but deeply significant phenomenon, might actually be better understood as a delayed rebellion against domestication. The sports car, the affair, the sudden interest in skydiving, aren't just clichés of male aging but rather desperate attempts to recapture something that was surrendered to the process of domestication. The tragedy isn't that these men try to break free; the tragedy is that they waited so long to realize they were caged.

It's not just about avoiding marriage or refusing to buy a house in the suburbs. It's about maintaining a certain kind of intellectual and creative wildness, a willingness to think thoughts that don't fit neatly into the prefabricated categories of acceptable discourse. It's about preserving the ability to see the world not as it's presented to us through the filter of social conditioning, but as it actually is, in all its strange and terrible beauty.

The evidence, however, is quite simple: many of history's most impactful artists chose paths that deliberately avoided conventional domestication. They remained, for better or worse, wolves. And while this choice often came with significant personal costs such as loneliness, financial instability, and social ostracism, it also allowed them to create work that continues to resonate with those of us who sense that there might be something more than the comfortable numbness of domestic life.

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The fact is, if these men had chosen the path of domestication, had "gotten the girl" and settled into comfortable suburban existences, their names would likely be unknown to us today. Their art, if it existed at all, would be safely contained within the bounds of what society deems acceptable. Lynch's passing reminds us that such undomesticated spirits are rare and precious. And while this path might have made their lives easier, it would have made our lives immeasurably poorer.

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