9.

I sometimes wonder why psychosis in visual art is thought good, and psychosis in literary art is thought bad. I paint as well as write, but I don’t paint very much. My painting is as psychotic as my writing, and it is quite conventional in the world of painting at large. So conventional, in fact, that it cannot be very important work. But when I bring my writing to a creative writing workshop at the university, I get reactions like, "This isn’t fiction—there are no scenes or story," and, "This is just disjointed." Psychosis in literary art does not make for conventional art. I think part of the reason why the visual art world has become accepting of psychosis, is that painting itself is not a psychotic symptom. But writing is. Since so many schizophrenics write psychotic things, it is hard for the literary art world to accept and absorb it. When a schizophrenic is a painter, he is probably not a psychotic who paints as a psychotic symptom, but an artist who happens to be psychotic. When a schizophrenic is a writer, he is a writer because of psychosis. He need not actually have an artist’s mindset or personality, on top of his psychosis. But what if a schizophrenic does have the mindset of an artist, is an artist on top of being psychotic, but happens to be a writer instead of a painter? I do not know what will happen to him, but I would not like to be him.