You need to be mad to be creative

Here's a confession - I am afraid of creativity. Not beacuse I confer to mediocrity but because the ability to conjure up notions that no normal mind can ever perceive takes more than just guts, it takes eccentricity. Like me many of us are afraid to , if I may use the cliched term - 'think different'. It is not so much that one fears the unknown as one fears throwing oneself to an idea, to an abstarct expression, to the throes of melancholy in order to create a pure piece of genius. We are scared as hell of it. We try every possible second to stay happy, we listen to music, take refuge in art, watch sheer pieces of craftsmanship that in all possibility rose from the dark, depressive life of an artist. We acknowledge it, we sing laurels of him but we refuse to lead his life. Yes we appreciate art. There's irony for you right there.
Einstein, Warhol, Newton, Cézanne, Goya, Michelangelo, Turner and Berlioz the geniuses whose masterpieces are now thought to have been influenced by disease. Is that what creativity really is - a disease? Our race is a funny one, while on one hand we raise funds for diseases on the other we celebrate it. In some obnoxious, twisted sense it gives meaning to our life, we are inspired from some man throwing away his life to create that thing that hangs on our walls, plays on our ipods, or is burned, pirated and copied onto DVDs.
Perhaps we never really appreciate art, we just admire or romanticize, to be precise the artist who never lead a 'normal' life...