Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Wondering about creativity

 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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