My feeling on the guy, is that, while he is a pretentious and sometimes insufferable ass, he's also complex and interesting and hard to write off. He says and does a lot of things that are very foolish, but I respect him as an artist because he also dares to do a lot of things other people would be scared to try.

So was Picasso. If you can't separate the artist from the art, you won't enjoy much.

This essay actually betrays a vulnerability; it reveals a Heiligenstadt Testament-like calling. I, for one, am impressed.

He does seem vulnerable, even tortured. Does this go hand in hand with great creativity?

I think it does. If you look at the lives of a lot of artists (and a lot of scientists throughout history!), it seems that a great many of them had miserable lives because of this tortured search for "something that could be better, something missing, something needed."

There's an old legend where I live, in the Czech Republic, of a fire bird. The hero sees the bird and his horse tells him, "If we turn around right now, you'll have a nice life, a quiet, happy life... but if you capture that bird, you'll cry and you'll suffer, and your life will be an amazing adventure." The horse begs him to chose the former, but of course, the hero's journey is the latter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebird_%28Slavic_folklore%29

He does seem vulnerable, even tortured. Does this go hand in hand with creativity?

Yes, but only for certain kinds of creativity. Hacking requires a lot of creativity, but there's not a tremendous amount of emotional content in it, so it doesn't really demand vulnerability. Even a lot of very creative musicians write from the head more than the heart (e.g., Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp, others).

A lot of artists, however, try to explore and express something about the human experience. That kind of creativity demands vulnerability, because you have to be sensitive and introspective enough to be able to channel that emotion into some kind of medium.

Does that make his work an less amazing, how many great artists really are nice guys ;) I think it comes with the territory, can't be an agnst artist and a super nice guy.

That makes you look an insufferable ass just the same.

Right on!