{"id":30,"date":"2007-04-18T12:22:38","date_gmt":"2007-04-18T19:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/2007\/04\/18\/thoughts-on-obsession-and-the-like\/"},"modified":"2007-04-22T11:42:53","modified_gmt":"2007-04-22T18:42:53","slug":"thoughts-on-obsession-and-the-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/2007\/04\/18\/thoughts-on-obsession-and-the-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Obsession and the Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talking about Hitchcock in class today got me thinking about obsessive people and the things which they obsess over. Most artists, I would argue, have something<\/em> that they obsess about. Actually, I would argue (and I think so would a lot of other people) that it is from this obsession that the artist creates. I mean, look at Eben in Portrait of Jennie<\/em> (I know, I know, why beat a dead horse, but stick with me for just a second), his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153masterpiece\u00e2\u20ac\u009d comes from his obsession with Jennie. She is, after all, the object of his painting. And then there is Hitchcock himself. Obviously, if he had had a different set of obsessions, Vertigo<\/em> would probably by a very different film.<\/font><\/p>\n

This actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day. I was joking with her that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153naturally all great artists are substance abusers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t written anything great because I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t found a substance to abuse yet!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then, seriously she replied to me: all great artists are mentally ill, you know. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I buy into that. But after today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s class it got me thinking: are obsessive people mentally ill? I would say no. I would argue that everyone has an obsession, whether or not they are cognizant of it is a different story. Does that mean everyone is mentally ill? Well if everyone suffered from the same mental illness, wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that make it a normal state of being?<\/font><\/p>\n

So, are artists crazy? Is obsessiveness crazy? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think<\/em> so.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talking about Hitchcock in class today got me thinking about obsessive people and the things which they obsess over. Most artists, I would argue, have something that they obsess about. Actually, I would argue (and I think so would a lot of other people) that it is from this obsession that the artist creates. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vertigo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}