Maria Popova’s ‘The Marginalian’ has to be the best site on the web for inspiration and information on the topics of science and arts. In this post of her’s [_The Third Self: [[Mary Oliver]] on [[Time]], Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life_](https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/10/12/mary-oliver-upstream-creativity-power-time/) _she brilliantly brings together many sources to write and reflect on the paradoxes of concentration and [[Creativity]]. Our minds are inherently creative, thoughts seem to secrete [[spontaneously]] - Someone who is [[Madness|mad]] lives in the subconscious where [[Chaos]] and distraction reign. In some ways they have gone beyond the conscious realm, but likewise a person who lives too much within the conscientious also becomes mired in the mechanical, maniacal mayhem_ **_Echoing Keats’s notion of_** [**_“negative capability,”_**](https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/11/01/john-keats-on-negative-capability/) **_Dani Shapiro’s insistence that the artist’s task is_** [**_“to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it,”_**](https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/11/11/dani-shapiro-still-writing-2/) **_and Georgia O’Keeffe’s counsel that as an artist you ought to be_** [**_“keeping the unknown always beyond you,”_**](https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/12/08/georgia-okeeffe-sherwood-anderson-letters/) **_Oliver considers the central commitment of the creative life — that of making uncertainty and the unknown the raw material of [[Art]]:_** [[Blogs]] `Concepts:` `Knowledge Base:`