Broken or of a Creative Bent?

Tea: Chocolate Cinnamon.

Music: Squeeze, "Up the Junction"

Time: Night.

I've been thinking a great deal lately about the links between creativity and some sort of "offness," as it were.

Edward Hopper, one of my favorite painters, once proclaimed, "I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house."

I can relate to that, sometimes. It's easy to hide behind a notebook and/or a camera, and not engage the world as anything but material.

I'm doing my best to strike a balance. But isn't imbalance -- the kind of imbalance that fuels creative tension -- what I'm after, too?

Maybe that's the paradox. Creative sorts have to be human, to understand the range of human emotions, strengths and frailties. But we (at least I hope to be listed on that roster) also have to be able to disengage, to switch to a purely observational mode.

Human, more than, less than.

Is it any wonder that we wonder?