Does mental illness cause creativity or does the association stem from an independent cause? A few researchers have proposed that there are more mentally ill people in the arts because the creative work is particularly stressful and drives artists over the edge. Other researchers have suggesteed that there are so many mentally ill people in the creative arts simply because it is difficult for them to hold other kinds of jobs. What accounting firm would hire someone like Byron, who kept a pet bear in his college rooms? (Byron did so in response to a Cambridge regulation specifying that he could not keep a dog.) What hospital would hire someone like Joseph Beys, who regularly wrapped himself in felt and rancid fat? (Beys explained his obsession with these substances as having started after a plane crash in the Crimea from which he was rescueed by Tartars, who rubbed him with fat and wrapped him with felt to heal and warm him. His story is most likely entirely false.)---Alice Flaherty, The Midnight Disease
(Note: I'm away in Italy until Aug. 21. Until then, I'll probably be posting very little to either of my blogs.)
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."
-Edgar Bergen (1903 - 1978) (Charlie McCarthy)
"Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others."
-Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
"Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy."
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
(Oh, Gandhi: I'm indolent because I'm distressed -- and, unable to do anything, find myself hoping that every moment is composed of Doing.)
"After certain nights we should change names for we are no longer the same man."
- Antonin Artaud