Having a Genius

Good friend and partner in crime (and art) Katherine Garbera sent me a link to this brief lecture by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. In it, she discusses the creative process, and one observation really struck me. She was discussing how Greek and Roman cultures viewed the artist has having a genius rather than being a genius. The Renaissance idea of individuals being the geniuses (genii?) puts too much on a particular person, especially when you account for the “utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process.” As she says,

“Allowing somebody like one mere person to believe that he or she is like the vessel at the font, the essence, the source of all divine creative unknowable eternal mystery is just like a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche…it just warps and distorts egos and creates all these unmanageable expectations…”

There’s lots more. See here: