"Is getting well ever an art, Or art a way to get well?" (Lowell 116)

"The creative, the carrier of this virus or antibiotic, is threatened both by the nature of the gift and by the response of society. For while creativity may be a natural condition, perhaps the most natural of all, according to Rossseau, Blake, and others, it is far from being a normal one, in the sense of "not deviating from the standard." (117)

Creatives are "abnormal" in their personalities but also in the way society sees the. Just like the Shamans way of being, to society they are seen as epileptics or mad people who like a painter or writer or a creative they too carry this "virus or antibiotics". From the reading we know that physical illness can start or speed the creative into his or her work. Some illnesses that evoke creativity are fever, delirium and depression. By using these illnesses the creative can explore multiple meaning and inner worlds. Marcerl Proust wrote," To kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey." (118) I remember one episode in the tv show HOUSE; Dr. Gregory House said, " Pain lets you know you are still alive". Hughes says the same thing. He states, "...pain warns the organism of damage...". Many people who have suffered great illness can encounter great creativity for example sensory deprivation. Sight is by far the most important of all sense but if lost in its absence the senses develop in unusual ways. A Spanish guitarist, Jose Feliciano, who is blind can play the guitar like no other guitarist that I have heard. His hands move violently up and down the strings and chords and he sways back and forth as he plays ( I guess because he can feel the music from deep within. Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "gradual blindness is not a tragedy. It's like a slow summer twilight...but then I think of letters and roses." (120)

Creativity is something generally seen as a positive nature but illness is something that needs to be cured not something that need developing. I would have to agree to a certain extent with Artaud when he says, "... A mad man is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths." (126) This reminds me a lot of the shamanic ways and how (we) the Westerners describe the shaman ways like those of a "mad" person; something out of this world to crazy to believe.