All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
Interpretation
Our creations are influenced by our surroundings and circumstances.
Lewis Hyde's quote emphasizes that the work of artists and scientists is deeply intertwined with their communities, traditions, and the socio-political contexts they inhabit. Even when individuals believe they are isolated in their creative processes, they are still influenced by a complex array of factors including money, power, and luck, highlighting the interconnectedness of creativity and societal influences.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of community in artistic expression, a speaker might reference this quote to emphasize how environment shapes creativity.
Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.
Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.
If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.
Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."
You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.
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