Mistake

This links the sickness to the genius, separated by a thin line of fact and reality, when at best, reality is an amalgam of perceptions threaded to form a consensus. Artists like Plath were ill. From a different perspective, consider if a cancer patient were to create one final powerful composition of music, we don't say that the cancer drove them to do so. We may allow that the cancer gave them incentive to use what was already within them. At some point, art must be separated from its evil twin, psychosis. The mental illness pervasis in many artists does not present art as a symptom. Rather, art is a conductor of emotions (which is why I believe we so often look at the conductor as the charge--no, they're two different things. A piece of metal isn't inherently electric, right?)

I understand that it's often very difficult to get away from this archaic belief in the artistic symptomology of psychosis. But, art must be viewed through a lens that observes all of life as inspiration. So Dark life inspires great works (because the audience has an inherent human attraction to the macabre.) But Great Work is not always the product of Dark Life.

At best, the misunderstanding holds no harm. But I think to be mindful of art, we must demarcate greatness from insanity. Not mutually exclusive, but certainly not automatically relative.