CATCHING THE BIG FISH
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Pengiun Publisher
Chapter called SUFFERING page 93
"It's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won't be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don't have to live in it...
In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there's suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there's all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn't have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don't have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you're not in it. Let your characters do the suffering...
It's common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It's less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work..." DAVID LYNCH
