Intelligence, Creativity, and a Touch of Madness

[Rayaan]

I don't really know, but I do know that when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, I all of a sudden became very creative. I became a portrait painter, I wrote a book, started to play instruments and writing songs, and the best thing was havening a enlightenment experience, which the book I wrote was about. I have a few friends who are also schizo, and each one is also very switched on, well not all the time lol.

That's pretty cool, eh? You're a living proof of a 'tortured genius' ... like these greats of the past were ...

10 Great Painters Who Were Mentally Disturbed

That one's world is 'infected' with subjective reality does not also mean that one is incapable of simultaneous interaction with the intersubjective reality of their peers.

But what I was thinking is that when your mind is wandering/reflecting (i.e. "looking inwards"), don't you feel that your external attention becomes a little more subdued for a moment? Not completely but to a certain extent?

For example, if someone gave you a math problem to solve and you started working on it, then naturally it would somewhat interfere with your concentration on the task if you started to daydream or think about some other stuff at the same time. Can you really do both at the same time? Well okay, maybe you can, but for most people I think this would be a little difficult. So there seems to be a trade-off relationship between peoples' internal attention and their external attention. As one of them goes up, the other one goes down.

Maybe what the psychologists discovered is that creative people are able to maintain a greater amount of activity in terms of both internal and external attention, i.e. they can engage in both of them simultaneously with a greater intensity. I think this is still pretty controversial, but that's my understanding so far after having watched the video (the one that I posted in the OP). But I could be wrong.

Just a note The Edgar Allen Poe quote is beautiful... I may have to reconsider my estimation of his awful 'poetry'

Do you generally not like poetry much ... or is it just his poems that you find awful?