From “The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity” by Carey Wallace
But after running a residency for ten years, those concerns weren’t my fundamental objection to the big machinery of residencies and retreats. My fundamental objection is that retreats are based on what I believe is a dangerous lie: that to create at our best, we have to leave our lives behind.
It’s an idea that divorces artists from the wellspring of the communities that shape and support, frustrate and challenge us, communities that we need, and communities that need us. And the more deeply artists embrace the idea that we need to be separate or distant from our daily lives to create, the higher the chance that we will not create anything at all.