Crazy. It is an easy word to throw around. It is a word that sticks to artists of all kinds: poets, musicians, painters and dancers. It is hard to come up with a famous example of a crazy accountant. One possibility is that artistic endeavors lead to mental instability. Another idea is that mentally unstable people are drawn to the arts. Perhaps, though, it is that the insanity of accountants has not had the human impact that the craziness of artists has had.
There has to be something to the fact that a poem written by a certified resident at Bedlam has inspired a musical genius of the 20th-century to set it to song. There has to be something to the fact that a picture swirled in oil by a man who mutilated himself for love inspired a soft rock hit. There has to be something to the fact that we can still understand the piano music of a man who suffered from multiple personality disorder and died incarcerated in a mental institution.
Art speaks to us beyond the place where rational conversation happens. Art reaches inside and touches something we may not even be able to name. Art moves us to feeling, and when we feel, we respond. Maybe we laugh, or yell. Maybe we rear back in pain, or lean in with care. Art, which shares another person's inner life, proves we are not alone, and confronts us with the idea that rational discourse is not the only way in which human beings speak to one another.
Great art, even when conceived in a person who is out of touch with reality, lives. It connects others with deep feelings and creates new ideas. It makes sense, and it challenges sense. Perhaps the most frightening part of the experience is knowing that someone who could not function in the day-to-day, still says more about what it means to be human than a host of sane bankers.
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