The grinding of light and dark throws off big sparks. Artists explore the territory where light and dark meet, where gods and demons dance. If they report back in a profound way, we (sometimes) pay them big bucks and, by and large, forgive them their trespasses. Hence Picasso, Miles Davis, Keith Richards, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, etc. Misfits one and all. Headstrong, ornery bastards. Tough-minded but highly sensitive. To break the kind of ground they broke, you need to live deep inside your own psyche and not care much what other people think. They change culture. But some self-destruct. Many great artists are profoundly troubled. But out of that disequilibrium can emerge new insights, new ways of seeing. Sometimes new beauty emerges out of the destructive darkness.

I’m not that bad a driver, and I get in a wreck almost every day.
- Kurt Cobain, lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana

Today I was expelled from the maths class because Mr Palafox said that I was too much of a troublemaker, and although they may tell you things about me, they are not true; that old man is very mean and it is true that I am a troublemaker, but not to the extent that I need to be expelled from class. Toledano will send you a letter at noon with my father, but do not pay attention to anything he tells you, because they are a bunch of lies.
- Frida Kahlo, aged 16, in a letter to her mother, 15th September 1923, with thanks to Letters Of Note.

If art is ever given the keys to the city, it will be because it’s been so watered down, rendered so impotent, that it’s not worth fighting for. . . every poet, every artist is an anti­social human being. He’s not that way because he wants to be; he can’t be any other way. Of course the state has the right to chase him away. . . and if he is really an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat—worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can’t be recognized. People just don’t have that much vision. So this business about defending and freeing culture is absurd. . . the right to free expression is some­thing that one seizes, not something one is given. There is absolute opposition between the creator and the state. If the idea of society is to dominate the individual, the individual must perish. Furthermore, there wouldn’t be such a thing as a seer if there weren’t a state trying to suppress him. People reach the status of artist only after crossing the maximum number of barriers. So the arts should be discouraged, not encouraged.

There has to be a rule even if it’s a bad one because the evidence of art’s power is in breaking down the barriers. But to do away with the obstacles—that serves no purpose other than to make things completely wishy-washy, spineless, shape­less, meaningless—zero.
- Pablo Picasso

The artist is always at the margin. Nothing creative ever happens at the center. The artist revels in the disequilibrium of things; art emerges out of a disequilibrium in search of a new equilibrium. . . Artists have something in them that is wild, something that is guided and inspired ultimately by imagination.
            - Thomas Berry, author, historian, Roman Catholic Priest (Issue 21, June 1999, Heron Dance interview)

John Lennon, the Beatle who wrote “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine” beat his wives and girlfriends. David Comfort in his book about the lives of prominent rock stars (The Rock and Roll Book of the Dead) talks about his dark side:

“I was just a weird, psychotic kid covering up my insecurity with a macho façade,” Lennon confessed. But even as an adult, the psycho kid inside often got the best of the Clever One, especially when he was under the influence of the devil’s dandruff and brandy Alexanders. During his “lost weekend” in LA, he heckled the Smothers Brothers onstage, crowing “Fuck a cow!” He called Yoko “a slant-eyed bitch,” and his in-laws “gooks.” When performing in Hamburg, wearing a toilet seat around his neck, he cackled, “Hey remember the war? We fuckin’ won!” then grabbed his crotch and goose-stepped the stage, crowing ‘Sieg Heil THIS!”

 Here’s another excerpt from the same book:

In addition to all the guitars and hotel suites he smashed up, Hendrix totaled six Corvettes in two years. . . . Janis’s Porsche Cabriolet Super C with its psychedelic paint job was her pride and joy, remembered her producer, Paul Rothschild.  “We both had Porches. We’d race along Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Canyon. She was a lot crazier than I was, and I was nuts. She’d go against traffic on blind curves, with the top down, laughing,  ‘Nothing can knock me down’.”

True poetry is what does not pretend to be poetry. It is in the dogged drafts of a few maniacs seeking the new encounter.                                                         
- Beth Archer, The Voice of Things.

Maniacs seeking the new encounter -- an interesting description of artists. True poetry is the rough notes of a few maniacs, not the refined work of the comfortable and settled.

In short, all good things are wild and free.
- Henry David Thoreau, in his journal. Thoreau And The Art Of Life.

For more on troublemaker artists, visit here.

Later today I’ll post links to pre-order the new Heron Dance Day Journals and Planners. One will be on the subject of creativity, one on journaling. I’ll send out an announcement email when I do.