The Uses of Travail

Image by Robert Marchessault

The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography — Federico Fellini

Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead, beyond death. If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God.”― GIORDANO BRUNO

“Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?” — Eugene O’Neill

As a young man, I remember being puzzled by the idea that an artist must suffer. But why, I asked. Why can’t we just express the beauty we see. It seemed an unnecessary punishment for choosing a worthy life.

I still think it’s a simplistic view of artists and how they function.

Artists are trying to grow more human by growing their vision of life. The more deeply they perceive, the more deeply they question, the more human they become and the more they can offer the world. We need people like that in all fields who have depth and vision.