I don't know if I can maintain an interest in contagion either, really, it's just what I'm interested in at the moment (because I started seeing it as a connective thread in various horror movies). But the social outsider/failure and social order and compromise stuff is probably going to be a constant for me, and for that I guess I am more interested in the particularities. And yes, writing involves other things/motions, although you still wouldn't want to tell the same basic story over and over.

No, I don't think vengefulness as self-destruction is the point - although you can infer that, I don't think the artist meant that - I meant that the "unhealth" of the artist (mentally and physically) is the point. I think the artist would probably say that was society-imposed, though, not self-imposed.