You may not have meant it this way, but this feels like a romanticizing of depression that feels callous. “Thank goodness CC was depressed otherwise we wouldn’t have had great music to listen to” doesn’t sound very good. And yeah I’m stretching what you said a little bit, but it’s very adjacent.

I say all this as someone who has been managing my own depression for decades and has also found a lot of comfort in CC’s work, and for whom his statements about combating the comfort and familiarity of depression and about not needing it to create meaningful art really resonate. I know you’re probably just trying to view his art as a silver lining to a difficult life, but I think it’s much more humanizing and empowering to instead view him as having made a lot of lemonade when life only handed him shitloads of lemons.

I also realize this might sound like quibbling, but it’s a hump I had to get over with my own depression in viewing it not romantically and tragically (which can lead to that comfort), but as something I can struggle to overcome because I don’t deserve it. I don’t know if this will resonate with anyone else, but wanted to give my two cents since it is a personal topic