Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Anne LamottRead
But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the profound emotional impact of music and art on the human experience.
Anne Lamott expresses how the act of singing can evoke deep emotional responses, allowing one to feel more intensely and authentically. This experience of being 'split wide open' suggests a vulnerability and openness to the transformative power of art, highlighting its ability to touch our hearts and change our perspectives.
In practice
In a discussion about the healing power of art, this quote can highlight how music can open us up emotionally.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.
I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
Come clean with a child heart Laugh as peaches in the summer wind Let rain on a house roof be a song Let the writing on your face be a smell of apple orchards on late June.
I'm not about either entertaining or instructing. The entertaining and instructing are secondary fallout from the fundamental thing, which is basically to create an aesthetic object.
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