Art & Creativity Quote by Leo Ornstein

It is not a romantic ode to inspiration so much as a practical prescription for survival: write it down so it stops writing you. Ornstein frames composition as an exorcism, a way to drain the pressure of an idea until it loosens its grip. The key phrase is "out of your system somewhat" - modest, unsentimental, almost medical. He is describing creativity as a bodily condition: a buildup, a fever, a compulsion that needs release. That understatement matters. It refuses the myth of the composer as a mystic channeling genius and replaces it with the image of a working artist managing symptoms.

The subtext is double-edged. Writing something down is both liberation and proof of captivity. If you have to "get it out", it was never optional; the music demanded a form. And "somewhat" admits the uncomfortable truth every writer and composer knows: the act of making rarely purges the obsession completely. It just turns it into an object you can live beside. The page becomes a containment unit.

Context sharpens the intent. Ornstein was a radical modernist early on, famous for explosive, dissonant piano works, then he largely withdrew from the public avant-garde. Coming from a life that spanned the entire turbulent arc of 20th-century music, his line reads like hard-earned wisdom from someone who saw movements, manifestos, and reputations flare and fade. The quote quietly demotes fame and even "expression" as motives; the real driver is psychic hygiene. Make the thing, pin it down, and get on with living.