Reference: Eccentric pianist left behind a mystery, Bangkok Post, September 25, 2007

The line between genius and insanity is a thin one. Glen Gould, the great Canadian pianist, was not only agoraphobic but a hypochondriac and unable to form personal relationships or express emotion except in music. Another famous agoraphobic was Charles Darwin whose panic disorders left him a socially crippled recluse and it was in fact this particular condition that made it possible for the origin of species to become his all consuming passion. Sir Isaac Newton was also a paranoid anti-social recluse who spent most of his 35 years at Trinity College alone in his study even refusing to have dinner in the great hall. It was in that study that Principia Mathematica sat and collected dust for 20 years until Sir Edmund Halley caused it to be published. Famous author Charles Dodgson, a gaunt and pale loner watched from his window as his neighbor's 10-year-old daughter Alice Liddell played in her garden and became obsessed with her. The timeless work now known as "Alice in Wonderland" is his ode to the object of his obsession. What geniuses and the insane have in common is that they are not normal. What the rest of us have in common is that we are.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand