In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.
Interpretation
Art is subjective and personal, focusing on individual expression rather than comparisons of quality.
In this quote, Frank Ocean emphasizes the subjective nature of art, suggesting that rather than striving to be 'better' than others, artists should aim to express themselves authentically and deeply. The true value of art lies in the individual artist's journey and their hope that their work resonates with others, rather than competing for superiority.
In practice
This quote can be used at an art workshop to encourage students to focus on their personal artistic journey.
Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited - that has music and rhythm and time.
It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.
I think we all change each other's paths. I don't know which law idea that is in physics, but I don't think any of us can live without affecting one another.
Work hard in silence, let success be your noise.
We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor - got her master's with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.
Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.
If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay - in solid cash - the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
I've worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years, and we have this magnificent photographer, Tad Motoyama. He takes these wonderful, wonderful animal pictures. All through the years he's given me copies of these pictures. Well, I have all these gorgeous ones, so I said, 'Tad, I want to do a book with your picture on one side.'
The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.
Some of the most intense affairs are between actors and characters. There's a fire in the human heart and we jump into it with the same obsession as we have with our lovers.
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.