The watcher at the gate of the mind

Something Nina Conti's mentor and lover, Ken Campbell, said really landed with me a lot and I wanted it to have it's own space as an idea here:

"Here's what schiller said. There is a watcher at the gate of the mind. and it's the watcher which stops you being creative. Because creation and insanity are almost the same thing."

I researched the origin of the quotation, here's its full version:

"It does not seem beneficial, and it is harmful for the creative work of the mind, if the intelligence inspects too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded by itself, an idea may be very trifling and very adventurous, but it perhaps becomes important on account of one which follows it; perhaps in a certain connection with others, which may seem equally absurd, it is capable of forming a very useful construction. The intelligence cannot judge all these things if it does not hold them steadily long enough to see them in connection with the others. In the case of a creative mind, however, the intelligence has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, the ideas rush in pell-mell, and it is only then that the great heap is looked over and critically examined. Critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, you are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and transitory madness which is found in all creators, and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints about [your own] barrenness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely."

—Friedrich Schiller, in a letter to Christian Gottfried Körner.

Schiller, who lived between 1755 and 1809, is considered one of Germany most important classical playwrights. He was also a poet, a philosopher, a historian and a collaborator of the polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: most famous for his play Faust. Both were hugely influential and went on to co-found the Weimar theatre, Germanys most prestigious theatre.

They are a historical example of the richness that can happen at the intersection of disciplines as well as proof positive of the value of creative collaboration.