Not to get all "trend alert! OMG!" on anyone, but the Times published two fascinating articles about couples who, even though their long romantic relationships have ended, are still writing music together. The couples in question are Stew and Heidi Rodewald, who long before they created Passing Strange, were part of the collectives/bands Stew and The Negro Problem, and now are writing for a range of theatrical projects, and Philip Glass and JoAnne Akalaitis, who currently are working on a production of The Bacchae for Shakespeare in the Park in New York. I'm kind of amazed by the generosity that these couples show towards each other.
These are all people who really feel that their art is a vocation, who have been willing to make substantial financial sacrificies, and sacrificies in comfort, to work on their art. And they're also people who found, at one point, a romantic relationship that allowed them to pursue that vocation even further. And when those relationships fell apart on a personal level, both partners in each couple were somehow able to agree that the art was important enough to keep working together, despite any personal acrimony they might feel. I'd be curious to hear if and how their collaborations changed after they broke up, if they feel differently about art period, how their continuing creative relationships impact the romantic relationships they formed with other people. I've done some one-time projects in journalism and politics with the people I was dating at the time, and let me just say, I never found that kind of fusion between vocation and romance that these couples clearly have.
The world, both artistically and otherwise is better for the fact that Stew and Heidi and Glass and Akalaitis are able to keep working together. Whether they're all better off for it, personally, is for them to decide, and us to wonder, and marvel, about.