Just North of Something Important

I was going to say something about this, but mills does it much better than I would’ve.  Let me just add one thing on the supposed connection between mental illness and creativity.  For a long time, Tourette’s, which is almost always comorbid with either OCD or ADD, was also thought to be comorbid with depression.  In fact, there was no neurological link between the two.  It was just that people with Tourette’s tended to be pretty down about their lives.  The same thing happens with mental illness and creativity: being crazy does make it easier to be creative, but because it changes the way you live your life, not the way you think.  The awful truth about great artists is that almost all of them are bad people.  Total dedication to art leaves no room for family and friends.  There are exceptions, of course, and there are plenty of almost-great artists who also have happy personal lives.  But this is the only way in which untreated mental illness makes it easier to be creative: by making it much harder to be happy, it frees you to stop trying and dedicate yourself instead to the inhuman but transcendental comforts of art.  But you’re still unhappy, you know?