People might bring up Vincent van Gogh as an example of a painter who did great work in spite of, or because of, his suffering. I like to think that van Gogh would have been even more prolific and even greater if he wasn't so restricted by the things tormenting him. I don't think it was pain that made him so great, I think painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

Without solitude, without the test of time, without the passion for silence, without the excitation and retention of the whole body, without a frightened stumbling, without wandering into a region of shade and invisibility, without memory of animality, without melancholy, without isolation in melancholy, there is no joy.

“Mary Magdalene is the madwoman - angry mad - in Christianity’s attic. She was hidden there because of an open and not fully appreciated secret, and its implications, at Christianity’s core: that the male disciples fled and the women did not.”

1990. Female Corrective Labour Colony No. 12