The world sucks. That's why it needs us.

We are the damned, it seems.

I've been talking about this a lot. I've become a lot more pessimistic lately. Among the great philosophers, you won't find any greater pessimist than Schopenhauer.

It turns out he had a lot of say about aesthetics(see also here). His writings on the arts were read by Wagner,  He was also an influence on Nietzsche, who once said that without music, life would be a mistake.

To summarize the points Schopenhauer made, and I make:

• Life is a prison of suffering. It is so because of will: urges, desires, passions. We always want something. We want too much. We want what we cannot or should not have. Wealth, power, pleasure, it's never enough. And it's all irrational. There are things better for us, and better, but they don't attract us.
• Life is also full of illusion and delusion. It's all a big lie. Nothing is ever as it seems. People and things get judged too much by their outward appearances. We're always deceiving ourselves about something. Those we love and trust betray us. We get sick and our bodies and minds betray us. The world, which we hope will have good things for us, betrays us. Our faith and hope betrays us. Our perceptions definitely betray us.
• Yet we choose to live, most of us. We don't want to die. So what makes life bearable? Beauty. Art. Sometime from beyond this world. And among the forms of art, music is the highest, since it is the most abstract. It is an idea in its purest form, the most mathematical.

I think of a quote by Frank Zappa, from the Joe's Garage album: "Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best…"

I also think of the great musical geniuses, and how miserable their lives were. Most of all, Beethoven, who suffered long bouts of depression and was at least once suicidal. He suffered a host of painful health problems, especially later in life. He had little success in romance and never married; his family relationships were always chaotic, and he could be a bit paranoid. His father was an abusive, tyrannical drunk. He had frightening fits of rage and drank a bit himself. Worst of all, he went deaf. A composer, never able to hear his greatest works.

I could name many other composers from days past, and modern musical geniuses who had their own problems. It seems a disproportionate number of them may have had bipolar disorder (manic depression), when your own moods, the ways you feel about the world and yourself, betray you. Sometimes your thoughts and perceptions betray you (you find that in another mental illness, schizophrenia).

I can speak for myself, at least, when I say that the main reason I make music is because it's a healthy distraction. It's a lot better than drinking myself stupid all the time, I guess. And I'm sure I'm not alone. It seems to help people who listen to music, and that's almost everyone. I just want to do it better than even Beethoven did.