Mental illness has been romanticized as part of the artist's experience for centuries. Whether it is Jeff Buckley drowning in his clothes or the poet John Berryman jumping to his death and being memorialized in song, we are taught this is all par for the course, that artists must suffer for their art, and that emotional and mental anguish is necessary to create it.

Speaker Bret Rodysill provides a different angle on this perspective and encourages listeners to consider the mental and emotional toll that having an "artistic temperament" has on the artist.

Rodysill provides his own story of near death, darkness and redemption, its relationship to making music, and the romanticization and martyrdom of mental illness applied to musicians.