It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
Artists are the antennae of the race.
Interpretation
Artists are sensitive to the emotions and experiences of humanity, capturing and reflecting them through their work.
Ezra Pound's quote suggests that artists play a crucial role in society by being attuned to the collective consciousness and feelings of humanity. They act as receptors, picking up on the underlying sentiments and truths of the world around them, and translating these into their creative expressions. This sensitivity allows them to communicate profound ideas and emotions, serving as a voice for both individual and shared experiences.
In practice
During a gallery opening, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of the artist's role in society.
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.
Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.
Stories helped me unite parts of my existence that might otherwise have seemed irrevocably split by geography and time. And stories helped me find a future in which I, such a mongrel, could be comfortable.
The secret to film is that it's an illusion.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.
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