They are surprised that we linger so long after Meeting for worship to talk to each other. A friend I brought to a Swarthmore lecture was absolutely astounded by its prelude of five or six hundred people all chattering excitedly. She said she had never been so astonished since she first heard the similar phenomenon with starlings at Trafalgar Square. So QFA gatherings have this basis. But there is more to it than that.
Artists are a minority in most societies and often feel a little solitary.
Their art absorbs them. In its practice they feel most themselves, and they look out on life from this angle. But in communion with others the door to this vital part of themselves tends to keep shut. From the other side too, artists seem rather strange folk. An artistic orientation makes people simple, for their reactions tend to be natural, unsophisticated, unconventional and quite unpredictable.