Messages from Trouble

The blog category I least like checking is “angst,” yet angst has always been one of the chief motives behind my writing.

I’m not proud to say so. If I’m absolutely honest, I’d much rather read work that—at least sometime—promises mild weather instead of future storms, earthquakes, and suffering. The writer who relies on angst takes considerable risks—people will say he or she is whiny, over-earnest, or self-absorbed. I feel that way when I check that box. But I check the box.

In German, I understand, the term is a mixture of fear, anxiety, guilt, remorse…a host of emotions that are bad enough singly, worse in combination. What I can find online suggests the word shares an Old Norse root with “anger,” but anger seems only a part of angst, which extends beyond your own psyche to a grave concern for the world and your power to operate meaningfully in it. People use the word “angst” to describe anxiety you can’t trace, a motiveless world-wariness and weariness, a nearly unbearable sense of futility.

And, if you describe your feelings as angst, you are almost automatically making some grander claim for your emotions. The philosophical associations are part of what makes angst suspect—it’s German, for chrissake, not American—and, by the way, why won’t “depressed” do?

Some of us will always look for just the right word, will search the menu for the perfect choice and then ask the chef to alter it especially for us. We will look fussy and self-important. We will balk. We will “Yes, but” until the last moment. We will sound as though what’s good enough for others is never, ever good enough for us.

At least that’s one way to see it. To me angst seems real. If I were depressed, I might be inert, but angst is active, a desperate desire to taketh arms against a sea of troubles or, at least, a sea of unaccountable crap.

Which is why it motivates writing. Feeling uncertain of any answer doesn’t stop anyone from searching. What do they call madness, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result? At times, that can describe reality as well. If anything, the anxiety makes you more frantic…for the problem isn’t just you but a bigger sort of hell where will is the one thing that won’t expire.

Unfortunately, angst can also be inarticulate and lead to the sort of flailing I might be doing now. I know how hard it is to listen to. What feels to me like a trouble with the world, sounds to you like a trouble with me.

In one of my classes, we’ve been reading Edward Albee, a singularly angsty writer. In an interview, someone asked him how he answers the charge that he is a nihilistic, pessimistic writer. His answer:

If I were a pessimist I wouldn’t bother to write. Writing itself, taking the trouble, communicating with your fellow human being is valuable, that’s an act of optimism. There’s a positive force within the struggle. Serious plays are unpleasant in one way or another, and my plays examine people who are not living their lives fully, dangerously, properly.

Oddly, reading his answer makes my angst abate, makes me hope for milder weather. In his statement I find a defense for all the grim and bitter posts and poems I have written and will write. You may be sorry because angsty writers often have more confidence in themselves than their readers do. No wonder they have a hard time winning an audience. Yet I choose to believe I’m seeking the positive force in the struggle. I’m living fully by being full of angst.