Letter Never SentTell me when to go.

I think the rule for rock stars is having babies. Liz Phair, Tori Amos, John Lennon–all of their shit started to blow and get all frowzy after having babies. Course, this theory might also confirm my own–that most actions to seem artistic and creative really are a convoluted attempt at getting laid.

That interesting about the ovulation thing…but what’s the deal with that “marriage tames geniuses, criminals” article?

This guy doesn’t seem to have a lot of evidence even for his theory that “creative output” correlates with youth (seems like his only examples are famous scientists, not less famous people or creative types from other fields), much less that the reason older guys aren’t as creative is because they’re married. That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? He says older criminals who don’t get married stay criminals–if that’s how it works, why don’t older unmarried scientists have “creative output” as high as younger unmarried guys?

But the assertion I really have trouble with is that the motivating factor behind high levels of creativity and criminal activity is the desire to impress women. I’ve worked with a lot of scientists and I have been dating a musician for years. Scientists don’t care about impressing women, they care about impressing the other scientists. Only other scientists can really understand their accomplishments, and like most people (and especially men, I think) they are competitive and want to do better than their peers.

Steve is one of the most creative people I know. I’ve seen him write three songs in one day–good ones. Although it’s hard work, the songs just kind of seem to come out whether he wants them to or not. His songwriting seems to come out of a desire to make sense of his thoughts and feelings and communicate them to others in a particular way. When he doesn’t write for a long time he can get tense and cranky, which makes me think he relies on the therapeutic quality of it. Where’s the desire to impress women in that? Even when he plays a show, and he’s out there at least in theory so people can see him perform his work, he doesn’t really care if there are women around, and mostly worries about what the other musicians in the crowd think. He’s been that way as long as I can remember. He’s not primarily motivated by a desire to impress anybody, but when he wants to impress anyone it’s always other musicians (of either gender), and he feels competitive with other musicians too.

Of course, competitiveness is something that doesn’t go away when you get married or get older. So why is it that older scientists aren’t responsible for as many major breakthroughs as younger ones? I think it’s a pretty simple, obvious thing. If you have a unique, new perspective on your field, you can provide really remarkable insights and go in directions no one had considered before. Once your perspective has been integrated into that field, though, nothing you’ve got to say is going to be nearly as interesting. If you’re really successful and famous, too, you might be tempted to rest on your laurels.

I wonder if these findings would hold if this guy had looked at people who are less famous or whose theories (or other kind of “output”) were less accepted–I kind of doubt it. Maybe the kind of people who come up with really exciting ideas early on are also more likely to burn out. Maybe people who get lots of awards when they’re young get complacent.

Of course, the absolute biggest flaw in this whole theory is that it doesn’t account for successful creative WOMEN. I know, he probably has some totally different theory for why women are creative for some equally unlikely reason. But I really think the creative process–and the impulse to be creative–is something that men and women experience in quite similar ways. Yeah, there are differences in the way creativity takes shape that might correlate with gender, but I think it’s due to other kinds of differences in the way we (because of nature or nurture) relate to other people.

About Sara’s point: I think all the musicians she mentioned, in addition to lots of others, start sucking after a while not because they’ve settled down but because they are rich and famous and complacent and no one will tell them honestly if their new stuff is any good. A prime example: Guided By Voices were really good when they weren’t famous, up until their late 30s, early 40s, and only started sucking really bad after they got a larger audience. Whereas other musicians that hit it big when they were young started sucking a lot younger.