Does Neuroticism Give Rise To Creativity?
That's a very good link you gave us, Slobodan. I certainly recognize a lot of the symptoms within the self, even if I don't feel I'm actually that creative; more do I feel I have an ability to take something pretty from the moment, assuming always that the moment allows me that. It's why I was ever drawn to model work, and why I saw the huge importance of the right model from the very beginning of my photographic life. Success in making those kinds of pictures comes from (for me) the interplay of the two minds; having a third party present at a shoot is, again just for me, similar to what I imagine it must be like to go on honeymoon with friends. I'd rather pass! In contrast, standing alone before a scene means there is nothing human with which to interact, backing up again my feeling that all my landcape attempts have been nothing more than sets for absent models. A mindset, no doubt.
It seems to suggest to me why I now find, starting off at home with an idea to go out and shoot a specific thing, seldom brings any reward.
Happiness? My philosophy is this: life is a straigh-line graph, and the moments of up are happiness, and the dips sadness. I don't believe it's possibe to live normally, permanently, in one or the other of the blips: to do so would remove your ability to realise that you were, in fact, on either a crest or deep in a ditch; you would then, deprived of relativity, believe that what the majority enjoys as normal is, actually, one of the extremes. Perhaps that actually explains a lot of what goes on around one.
Beyond that, I also believe that a lot of the thing has to do with roots. Not for a moment do I believe that the very noticeable abundance of very talented Jews in the art world is accidental, any more than that it's as simple as a plot by the art world to keep the rest of us out. I think it stems from something to do with genes, from generations of life experiences and possible avenues of escape from some of the same. Adversity makes you feel.
Rob