Great Artists are Great Invalids

Thomas Mann is the guy who came up the title of this entry. His reasoning was pretty simple. Art is not capable without suffering. The artist is not teh creator of big-eyed child paintings and happy frog mugs. The artist is someone who takes their pain AND their joy and makes you feel it. I mean really fucking feel it. Art is also created by those whose perspective is not that of the mainstream, often because of debilitating mental and physical conditions. Anyone else is just a craftsan. Great art requires the artist to be capable of feeling something more than just the hunger that precedes meal times. A great artist has to know what it feels like to be unlike everyone else, to hurt, to bleed, to have one's mind turned inside out.

You take all that ... roll it up in a fluffy tortilla and serve it up and that's art, baby!