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Listen Closely
“Poems do not endure as objects but as presences. When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit. I read poems to hear that voice. And I write to speak to those I have heard.”
— Louise Glück
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“Our training is the DSM and categorizing and being a good clinician means being able to spot. Now, I have nothing against that. You should have a good sense of spotting, of listening acutely, looking for peculiarities and strange little keys. But that’s almost secondary. You wouldn’t look at your child that way, would you?” — James Hillman:
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What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and above all, it eats creativity. — William S. Burroughs
You learn very quickly as a student artist of any kind that the rules can only take you so far. Acute seeing and listening are basic to creating. Children do this naturally, but soon learn to force themselves not to pay attention to what they love. They learn to adapt themselves to a system that has no use for sensitivity. Great emphasis is put on comparison and success. Grades replace hearing the birds sing or watching the bees visiting the roses. They learn not to see or hear the world.
