Almost everyone has heard about J.M.W. Turner getting himself strapped to a ship's mast and taken out to sea in a wild storm. His rationale was the need for "authentic fear." Evidence of painting naked and eating raw beets just prior to creative activity have also been reported, but are a little more difficult to analyze. New research into historical muse-hunting suggests we ought to indulge and embrace our oddest inclinations.
Dame Edith Sitwell liked to lie in a coffin before starting her day's writing. Was it the feeling of privilege to be still above the grass, or was it something to do with the musky smell? The poet Friedrich Schiller kept rotten apples in his desk and inhaled them when he needed a shot of inspiration. In 1985, researchers at Yale University found that the smell of spiced apples empowered panicky people to stave off their panic attacks.
Amy Lowell and George Sand both smoked cigars in excess.
The latter was also noted for going directly to her writing desk after making love. Coleridge without opium would have been a minor poet. No one can calculate the number of nicotine cigarettes that have been sucked into service. Balzac drank more than 50 cups of coffee a day, eventually dying unpleasantly from caffeine poisoning. Dr. Johnson, the dictionary writer, believed in drinking 25 cups of tea at a time. Voltaire used his lover's bare back as a desk. Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain and Truman Capote claimed they wrote best while lying down.
I might try the 'eating raw beets', shaved thin with a bit of goat cheese on some arugula. Yum.
1 comment :
Showing tarot cards to the driver in the lane to your left at a stop light is provocative. Could get you shot here in the south.
And here I was thinking you were going to talk about stomping beets into the cloth for the color.
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