More on My Two Favorites: Walter Benjamin and Patti Smith

All great art has a secret: patience. This patience is often a result of fevers and excused absences, red cheeks and hot foreheads. In other words: sickness. The solitude of sickness is not a waste of time but rather a compression of it, a bundle the size of a pill bottle. Only by unscrewing the top and examining the virus inside do we discover what effects patience and chemistry have had on creativity. There are instances in which time wasted undergoes a magical metamorphosis. The result—art—is on the market, new and improved, there for the world to consume. But again, patience is a must. And sickness demands it.