When he claims to be solitary, the artist lulls himself in a perhaps fruitful illusion, but the privilege he grants himself is not real. When he thinks he is expressing himself spontaneously, creating an original work, he is answering other past or present, actual or potential creators. Whether he knows it or not, one never walks alone along the path of creativity.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks
4 comments:
I love this - we need an awareness of the enormous debt to past and present artists and what they are giving us. Your twitter feed gives me daily thought nourishment. Thank you for it.
yep yep yep. Love this. respect for time and history.
And I like that we do give ourselves permission to be solitary, and that as a way to move creatively. That seems a part of the honor we can do to history past and future and anything else.
"Love & Theft"
I get it.
Best song: Mississippi
there is nothing new under the sun-
or perhaps, every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
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