In the act of creation our logical, prove-it-to-me minds relax; we begin to understand anew all that we understood as children, when we saw wee folk under the leaves or walked down the stairs without touching. But this understanding is—or should be—greater than the child’s because we understand in the light of all that we have learned and experienced in growing up.
George Eliot says, “If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.”
Despite this wadding, the artist in the moment of creation does hear the tiny beating of the squirrel heart and does indeed die to self on the other side of silence, where he retains the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns. The great artists never lose this quality which the world would limit to children.