Prefabricated Life Experiences

The other day as I was walking back from the bursars, I happened to overhear a conversation between several gentlemen about a friend of theirs who, in an effort to become a great songwriter, was doing everything he possibly could to destroy his life so that he could suffer and then be able to write songs about it. I suppose this is an inevitable consequence of the manufacturing age, the idea that we can control and manufacture anything we want including our art and our lives. This young man has, in effect, completely planned out his life in order to be inspired to produce great art. Perhaps a noble goal, but certainly an untenable one. Certainly suffering has been a great inspiration for many musicians, but I can't help but feel this suffering was not deliberately caused in order to inspire them to write better songs. First of all, a musical experience of suffering only works well because our natural human inclination is that we do not want to suffer and therefore both the songwriter wants to relieve his suffering and the listener, if he is wise, would do well to learn from the songwriters experience and act accordingly. However, if the songwriter has deliberately sought out the suffering he is in effect lying to the audience. Besides I can't help but feel that someone who writes about prefabricated suffering that he inflicted upon himself would sound a little whiny, in much the same way that songwriters who haven't really suffered (you know those emo bands that complain all the time about the most insignificant things because that is the worst they have suffered in their lives) sound like they are complaining. Lets face it you can't manufacture inspiration or life experience and honestly you probably wouldn't want to live in a life where they could be manufactured, think of how dead and soulless that life would be.