[Video on Substack](https://substack.com/@tjwtjwtjw/note/c-72635471?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=99ka) > In the instant of getting an idea, I go act it out on paper. I don't put it away. I don't delay. I don't put off to tomorrow doing what I must do, right now, to find out what my secret self needs, wants, desires, wants, with all its heart. And then it speaks and I have enough brains to get out of the way and listen. And two hours later, sitting at the typewriter, you look at the paper and you say, ah, so that's what I think about the death of Hemingway. Is that how much I was hurt? > > So we act out these tensions continually. We keep cleansing the stream, just as any impurity running downhill in a river, by the time it travels nine miles, is purified. So the life of a man traveling to the sea, which is our inevitable death someday, purifies itself. It must. Because if you do not purify, these tensions remain in and turn in on yourself and destroy you. > > The man who cannot laugh freely is a sick man. The man who cannot cry, release his tears in that direction, is a sick man. The man who cannot be violent through exercise, through sports, through acting out his violence in paper or painting or acting on a stage is a sick man.