I know the reality is the real, the tiredness, the misery, but I prefer the unreality of imaginary bliss, I prefer the untrue, true, literary life.
And that`s before you`ve started on the absinthe!
Ha, ha - yes I am a screwed up individual - sometimes I talk such rubbish that even I don't know what I am saying!
Back to the topic I always think that in order to live the true literary life (or the untrue, true literary life) a person has to be totally financially independent, someone who does not
need to work to earn a living. Such people as artists or writers are able to live outside of the social system in some way and are allotted, therefore, some form of true individuality. I'm thinking of particular of the poets who had patrons as in Wordsworth and Coleridge or those of their own means like Byron and Shelley. It would have been very difficult for these people to write how they did if they had to contend with 50/60 hours labour a week at their particular time of living, in the harsh times of early 19th C Britain.
I am not saying that you can't be an artist with a day job, but it is a damn sight easier if you don't have to. I would also suggest that the pure artist is one who doesn't have to conform to any particular audience or public, the true artist produces for him/herself alone and is able to create what the hell they want free from outside influence.
All of this is just the stuff of "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" I suppose, Wilde again in most ways. Wilde was a fan of absinthe too of course.