” . . . creating not only allows you to live . . . but the life that it offers you is a wonderful one, of an intensity, a fullness, and a richness without equal.”

Over the weekend, I finished a book that completely surprised me: The Danger to Be Sane: Creativity and the Eccentric Mind by Rosa Montero. The review in the New York Times called it, “an ebullient examination of madness, mortality and suicide.” What’s not to love, I thought. So I ordered it, anticipating insights from psychology, neuroscience and literature on the connection between creativity and mental vulnerability. I got that, of course, but what I wasn’t expecting was an ending focused on what Montero calls, the “Great Dance.”

There is no possible way for me to paraphrase what Montero means by the “Great Dance,” so following are two excerpts. They are very beautiful and very wise. The first excerpt:

In my best moments . . . I am able to escape from the blind, agonizing prison of my individuality and perceive that plural breath, the first cadence, the music of the spheres, the palpitation of the world. I am a small fish in an immense shoal, I am a goldfish and I know how to dance the greatest dance which is simultaneously the most intimate. We must persevere at this, our dancing; we must learn to move faster and faster, like dervishes in order to join the vibrating, breathing whole. Listen carefully to what I am telling you and have hope: maybe in reality that final journey will be as simple as this, as easy as this; all that is needed is to keep death in step with the collective rhythm. I want to die dancing, just as I write.

The second excerpt:

No one remembers the millions and million of individuals who came before us, that immense legion of tiny existences. If you listen closely enough, you may be able to hear the rumble of their footsteps on the Earth, the rhythm of their feet dancing the Great Dance. Life is a tiny dream, a mirage of light in an eternity of darkness. And that is nothing, and it is everything.

Listen carefully, listen closely and keep dancing.