It's been barely a month since someone dared utter the R word out loud and already I'm bored of it.

Watching George Lee salivating on RTE's Six One every night about the impending doom and gloom is as much fun as negative equity or a 40-year mortgage.

It's time to turn your economic barometer to grim, and we should all -- sans Charvais shirts -- start tightening our belts. On this bleak landscape, there is a little blip of hope, a bubble of positivity even, which was pointed out to me recently by someone who runs a recording studio. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "So do you think work will slow down for you, with everything going on?"

Them: "God no. If anything I think I'll be busier."

Me: "Eh, what?"

Them: "In tough times, people get all creative. Musicians especially.

When they're broke, they start writing because they can't afford to do anything else."

His point echoed what has been frequently said before, that out of great suffering, comes great art. Look no further than pre-boom Ireland before the Celtic Tiger waltzed in swishing its tail. For many, the 1980s meant immigration, unemployment and household budgets that were tighter than a vintage corset. And yet, it was a decade that saw U2, a humble hometown outfit, become arguably the world's most successful band. Thatcher's Britain gave us the disaffected humour of The Smiths, Billy Bragg's songs supporting the striking miners and The Jam's Paul Weller founding Red Wedge, a group of artists who wanted a Labour government.

But none of this is new. If it wasn't for the US Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s, Robert Johnson would probably never have sold his soul to the devil to make great Blues music and Woody Guthrie's protest songs would have had very little source material. It goes beyond music, too. The same decades resulted in books like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Of Mice and Men (1937) and Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone With the Wind (1936).

When I think back over all the musicians I've known, many of them worked part-time or didn't have jobs. Sometimes -- and I can't stress that disclaimer enough -- it aided their art. When you can't get a job, you have time to write; when you have no money to go out, you stay home and focus on your music. Anyone I know with creative aspirations, wanting to write books, be an artist or play in a band, finds it very hard to do so after working full-time all week. Tapping into your knackered muse after a 40+ hour week in any job, even a crap one, is hard.

So, bring on the recession and the great art will follow.

- Sinead Gleeson