We create art, not because it’s fun or because we’re sold on the notion of art for art’s sake, but because the activity of making art — the writing, the painting, the composing — changes our minds in some way.
That’s an old idea in the philosophy of art. I ran across it again in Patricia Highsmith’s diaries. She describes the change inside the creative person as psychological, a term that doesn’t help me. The best I can do is just say that I think creating is a way to reorganize your mind.
I look for a story when I see something perplexing, something I can’t deal with and certainly can’t explain. I think we make something new when we see something that doesn’t strike us as being quite right.
• Source: Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries and Notebooks: The New York Years, 1941-1950, edited by Anna von Planta; New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2023, p. 256.
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