You don't have to be bipolar to be a genius – but it helps - Science, News - The Independent
I find it pretty laughable that in the last bit of this article they list creative people who have claimed to be bipolar, and include Stephen Fry and Sting. Great Britain much be running out of creative geniuses.
When you make a study like that you probably leave yourself open to a peculiar difficulty - ie, a lot of what people create and claim as art these days is dross, either silly conceptual experiments, or modernist/postmodernist experimentalism. Hell, most of what any artist does is probably irrelevant anyway - a good portion of creativity consists of experiments, and sketches, and games, and so on that allow them to create more substantial works later.
ReplyDeleteI don't think scientific studies have any way of critically sorting the dross from the real art; in fact, the sort of critical outlook involved probably requires an entirely different ideology/philosophy from the scientific outlook.
Maybe it's comforting to those artists who do suffer from mental illness to read about studies like this; but folks like me who produce poems and stories and the like and don't have a mental illness are apt to feel a little excluded!
Re: Stephen Fry and Sting as 'geniuses'. Fry may qualify - he's pretty energetic and funny and on the ball. Sting, I'm not so sure.
Tim, I am sure there are things you could do to encourage the onset of mental illness so you can feel more of an artistic insider. I'd suggest: giving up sleep; smoking pot five times a day; meth-amphetamines (sp?); going to some therapist who still believes in repressed memories of satanic child abuse.
ReplyDeleteI'll come up with more ideas during the day I am sure...
Thank you, those offers are so, er, comforting...!
ReplyDeleteActually it sounds like a bit of a whinge, I wish I'd left that bit out now.