“
If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
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Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.
”
”
Patti Smith (Just Kids)
“
Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.
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Kevin Smith (Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good)
“
Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
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Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
During your struggle society is not a bunch of flowers, it is a bunch of cactus.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
If we citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality, and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
”
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Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It's the lack of a deadline. Give someone an enormous task, a supportive community, and a friendly-yet-firm due date, and miracles will happen.
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Chris Baty (No Plot? No Problem!)
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If we, citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice out imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
”
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Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
My family and I have always supported Asian and Asian Americans, especially our fellow authors and artists. I just found out my Crazy Rich Asian cousin bought out some theaters to support the Crazy Rich Asians film. Talk about crazy! - The Asian American Experience Anthology by Kailin Gow
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Kailin Gow
“
Every great athlete, artist and aspiring being has a great team to help them flourish and succeed - personally and professionally. Even the so-called 'solo star' has a strong supporting cast helping them shine, thrive and take flight.
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
“
Are you an artist?"
"I'm a mess is what I am," he says, holding on to the building for support. "A bloody mess. You 're the artist, mate." Then he's gone.
”
”
Jandy Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun)
“
People actually like supporting the artists whose work they like. It makes them feel happy. You don’t have to force them. And if you force them, they don’t feel as good.
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Cory Doctorow (Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age)
“
As an artist, I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it.
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Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
“
And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention, which is the invention maybe of the world itself, and of nature, becomes the actual world - with cities, factories, public buildings, railroads, armies, dams, prisons, and movies - becomes the actuality. That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version.
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Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March)
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Donald Trump's secrets are two. - He has mastered the art of persuasion. - He has absolutely no conscience.
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Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy (What Donald Trump Supporters Need to Know: But Are Too Infatuated to Figure Out)
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KEEP BOOKS DANGEROUS
Support small press
publishers, writers,
& artists.
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Hosho McCreesh
“
If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination o the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
”
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Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
Find the sustainable rituals that best support your work.
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Rick Rubin (The Creative Act: A Way of Being)
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External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can't get justice and he can't give justice, but he can live. And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe... That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real.
”
”
Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March)
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Those people who live in an Independent nation should know how important it is to support independence not only in the government but also in arts, literature, films, newspapers, and business. Innovation, growth, and self-motivation comes from independent artists, journalists, authors, and inventors; not from the Big What which has held 90% of the market since the 1900s. Encourage innovation by supporting the Indies. That's where new opportunities are found!
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
The Donald is not a master of the deal; he is a reckless, foolhardy craps dealer playing with house money. He doesn't care at all about the lives and fortunes of the human beings peopling this planet.
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Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy (What Donald Trump Supporters Need to Know: But Are Too Infatuated to Figure Out)
“
You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario which is both complicit and complex. It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film
”
”
Ryan Gosling
“
i was really into communal living and we were all /
such free spirits, crossing the country we were /
nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class....and it’s just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they’re all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i’d love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i’ve been cooking / for y’all but i’ve got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok?
”
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Michelle Tea (The Beautiful: Collected Poems)
“
Younger artists are seedlings. Their early work resembles thicket and underbrush, even weeds. The halls of academia, with their preference for lofty intellectual theorems, do little to support the life of the forest floor.
”
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Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
“
While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122)
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David N. Elkins
“
If we citizens do not support our artists then we sacrifice our immagination on the altar of cruel reality & we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." (ppXII)
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Yann Martel
“
Support for the arts—merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
”
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Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
All the products of one period have something in common; the artists who illustrate the poetry of their generation are the same artists who are employed by the big financial houses. And nothing reminds me so much of the monthly parts of Notre-Dame de Paris, and of various books by Gérard de Nerval, that used to hang outside the grocer's door at Combray, than does, in its rectangular and flowery border, supported by recumbent river-gods, a 'personal share' in the Water Company.
”
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Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
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The confidence game—the con—is an exercise in soft skills. Trust, sympathy, persuasion. The true con artist doesn’t force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn’t steal. We give. He doesn’t have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want—money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support—and we don’t realize what is happening until it is too late.
”
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Maria Konnikova (The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time)
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Shame often causes me to hide my mistakes from others. But really, when I make a mistake, I should make it loud and clear, so I can see that it didn’t work as a strategy, and be able to make a course correction, either by myself or with the help of others.
”
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Sharon Weil (ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change)
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I'll always pay you for your work. Artists should be paid, especially by friends.
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Isabel Ibañez (Together We Burn)
“
I can't imagine,' I said one afternoon after a long silence, 'how it would be possible for such a small island to support enough artists and stonecutters to build all these wonders. And I can't imagine how all these different people get along without quarreling.'
'Oh, it is possible,' said Nallab, sucking thoughtfully on a mango, 'but only if you DO imagine it...
”
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James Gurney (Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time)
“
I am friends with Kathleen Hanna and Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys. I can’t believe I am friends with them. I love Kathleen’s music and I am in awe of her social activism and general awesomeness. I asked her to interview me for Interview magazine when I was just a sketch performer whom nobody knew. She said yes because she supports young women. This is the artist who pulled women to the front at her rock shows. She shows up and does the work and is the real deal. Now she is my friend.
”
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Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
As Solomon himself had remarked, 'We can be sure of talent, we can only pray for genius.' But it was a reasonable hope that in such concentrated society some interesting reactions would take place.
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. So far, the conflict had produced worthwhile results in sculpture, music, literary criticism and film making. It was still too early to see if the group working on historical research would fulfil the hopes of its instigators, who were frankly hoping to restore mankind's pride in its own achievements.
Painting still languished which supported the views of those who considered that static, two dimensional forms of art had no further possibilities. It was noticeable, though a satisfactory explanation for this had not yet been produced that time played an essential part in the colony's achievements.
”
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Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood’s End)
“
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."
"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."
"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything- obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artists?”
“Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.”
“Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano); Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody. You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.
For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.
”
”
Terri Windling
“
Woolf worried about the childlessness from time to time, and suffered from the imposed anxiety that she was not, unlike her friend Vita Sackville-West, a real woman. I do not know what kind of woman one would have to be to stand unflinchingly in front of The Canon, but I would guess, a real one. There is something sadistic in the whip laid on women to prove themselves as mothers and wives at the same time as making their way as artists. The abnormal effort that can be diverted or divided. We all know the story of Coleridge and the Man from Porlock. What of the woman writer and a whole family of Porlocks?
For most of us the dilemma is rhetorical but those women who are driven with consummate energy through a single undeniable channel should be applauded and supported as vigorously as the men who have been setting themselves apart for centuries.
”
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Jeanette Winterson (Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery)
“
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 — 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Source: Wikipedia
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Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
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I escaped into daydreams as I did my piecework. I longed to enter the fraternity of the artist: the hunger, their manner of dress, their process and prayers. I’d brag that I was going to be an artist’s mistress one day. Nothing seemed more romantic to my young mind. I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.
”
”
Patti Smith (Just Kids)
“
All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal, and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity. Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and seeks no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue: it is mainspring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic; it adds fuel to the fire of the artist's desire for fame and is at once the support and the compensation of the honest man's integrity; it leers even cynically in the humility of the saint. You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up. You are defenseless against its onslaught because you know not on what unprotected side it will attack you. Sincerity cannot protect you from its snare nor humour from its mockery.
[His Excellency]
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham
“
Most of us have both ways that we are privileged and ways that we are discounted.
I am a woman, and women have historically not owned their own lives, having once been the property of fathers and husbands, the acclaim and remuneration for their finest work given to others, and still evolving from that reality.
As a white woman/mother/artist from a middle class family in the twentieth century?
I have lived a life of such privilege, with so much support provided me.
I have lived a life of such deprivation of opportunity and lack of recognition.
Sometimes my head spins from the contradictory co-existing reality of it...
How have you had privilege in your life?
How can you do better for those who have not?
”
”
Shellen Lubin
“
There are, however, at least two varieties of imagination in the reader's case. So let us see which one of the two is the right one to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature. ... This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use.
So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature)
“
There are no guarantees that if you work hard enough, or are talented enough, that you will be successful, be able to support yourself, or importantly, make a meaningful contribution to others. But in the meantime, if you are an artist, the art just comes—whether you like it or not—because you can’t stop it.
”
”
Jessica Todd Harper
“
But maybe I was more like Lena Dunham on her TV series Girls, which examined her own generation with a caustic, withering eye yet also remained supportive. And this is crucial: you can be both. In order to be an artist, to raise yourself above the overreacting fear-based din in which criticism is considered elitist, you need to be both.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (White)
“
Looking at God’s creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures.
”
”
Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
“
It hurts me to talk about Billy like he’s a normal artist, exhibiting in galleries and negotiating with buyers.
”
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Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group)
“
Isolation is at the heart of all disease, therefore healing requires community and the support of others.
”
”
Sharon Weil (ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change)
“
It is by continuing to put out good work that the artist best shows his gratitude.
”
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Criss Jami (Healology)
“
a sense of belonging to a community that understands and supports the true victim, set against the hostility of wider, bigoted society, is a powerful radicalizing cocktail.
”
”
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
“
government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
”
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Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
We must support all Artists, Poets, Writers, Musicians, Singers, Dancers. They make life beautiful and memorable.
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Avijeet Das
“
Try and support any kind of hard working artist in some special kind of way -- it might just make their day.
”
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Chris Mentillo (The Unhappy Heiress)
“
I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.
”
”
Patti Smith (Just Kids)
“
Nothing seemed more romantic to my young mind. I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.
”
”
Patti Smith (Just Kids)
“
There is something liberating about sketching on a support that you will not keep, like your paper place mat or on the paper covering the table. It will help you desacralize the drawing and make the moment you put the pen in contact with the paper less solemn. Part of why some of us are so daunted by the mere task of starting a drawing is because we turn it into a task
”
”
France Belleville-Van Stone (Sketch!: The Non-Artist's Guide to Inspiration, Technique, and Drawing Daily Life)
“
To be an artist in Austria means for most people being compliant to the state, whatever its political complexion, and letting oneself be supported by it for the term of one’s natural life.
”
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Thomas Bernhard (Woodcutters (Vintage International))
“
Coal mining is hard work. This is a nightmare....There's a tremendous uncertainty that's built into the profession, a sustained level of doubt that supports you in some way. A good doctor isn't in a battle with his work; a good writer is locked in a battle with his work. In most professions there's a beginning, middle, and an end. With writing, it's always beginning again. Temperamentally, we need that newness. There is a lot of repetition in the work. In fact, one skill that every writer needs is the ability to sit still in this deeply uneventful business. - Philip Roth
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”
Mason Currey (Daily Rituals: How Artists Work)
“
Many French people were difficult conversationalists. Asking them not only where they were originally from but what they did in life was considered rude—I suppose because many of them did nothing (many Parisians are rentiers, people who live off the rents of their properties) or because they weren’t proud of their jobs, which simultaneously supported and interfered with their intellectual and artistic passions.
”
”
Edmund White (Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris)
“
But this was not enough on its own to generate the kind of terror that Mao wanted. On 18 August, a mammoth rally was held in Tiananmen Square in the center of Peking, with over a million young participants. Lin Biao appeared in public as Mao's deputy and spokesman for the first time. He made a speech calling on the Red Guards to charge out of their schools and 'smash up the four olds' defined as 'old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits."
Following this obscure call, Red Guards all over China took to the streets, giving full vent to their vandalism, ignorance, and fanaticism. They raided people's houses, smashed their antiques, tore up paintings and works of calligraphy. Bonfires were lit to consume books. Very soon nearly all treasures in private collections were destroyed.
Many writers and artists committed suicide after being cruelly beaten and humiliated, and being forced to witness their work being burned to ashes. Museums were raided.
Palaces, temples, ancient tombs, statues, pagodas, city walls anything 'old' was pillaged. The few things that survived, such as the Forbidden City, did so only because Premier Zhou Enlai sent the army to guard them, and issued specific orders that they should be protected. The Red Guards only pressed on when they were encouraged.
Mao hailed the Red Guards' actions as "Very good indeed!" and ordered the nation to support them.
He encouraged the Red Guards to pick on a wider range of victims in order to increase the terror. Prominent writers, artists, scholars, and most other top professionals, who had been privileged under the Communist regime, were now categorically condemned as 'reactionary bourgeois authorities." With the help of some of these people's colleagues who hated them for various reasons, ranging from fanaticism to envy, the Red Guards began to abuse them. Then there were the old 'class enemies': former landlords and capitalists, people with Kuomintang connections, those condemned in previous political campaigns like the 'rightists' and their children.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
One note sounds nice on a piano, but when more than one note is pressed at the same time. It sounds more soothing and nicer . That is how life it is. You can do good on your own, but you always need the support of others to do even better.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
She’d once read a biography of the artist René Magritte that Agatha had edited. It claimed that during his early years, when critics had scoffed at his odd, unconventional paintings, he’d supported himself by forging works by Picasso and Braque.
”
”
Alexandra Andrews (Who Is Maud Dixon?)
“
...Magie was a writer and actor who supported her artistic pursuits with a career as a stenographer and typist, work that she hated. 'I wish to be constructive,' she once said, 'not a mere mechanical tool for transmitting a man's spoken thoughts to letter paper.
”
”
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
“
I don’t fundamentally understand why people give a shit about what other people put up their noses or what other people put in their veins or what other people breathe into their lungs. I mean I sort of care like if somebodies an addict it’s very destructive to people around that addict. It’s destructive to themselves. I’d like to get them help. I certainly support that which is to get that person help but, I don’t understand how people wake up and say I have to eradicate drug use across the land. “I gotta stick my nose into the business of what other people stick up their nose.”
I just find that incomprehensible. I mean, is your life so vacant and so hysterical, so empty, so void of love, care and affection? I can go play with my daughter or I can go and obsessively try and get politicians to throw people in jail for doing things I don’t like. I can’t imagine why people would be choosing option “B” but, only because they don’t have anyone who loves them or, anyone they care about. They don’t have any rich, significant, important, hobbies, relationships, artistic pursuits or anything rich enough to keep them from obsessing about what other people do or bossing and bulling what other people do. This “stick your nose in other people’s business” Is so compulsive and epidemic to human society.
”
”
Stefan Molyneux
“
Irenaeus argues that since these Gnostics could not support their bizarre teachings about the creation of the world or the identity of Christ simply by appealing to the texts, they reassembled them. In a memorable image, Irenaeus says the heretics are like someone who takes a gorgeous mosaic of a gallant king and rearranges the stones so they now portray a mangy dog, claiming this is what the artist intended all along. Even more, they insist this is a portrait of the king. For Irenaeus, this is no way to treat a book (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.8).
”
”
Bart D. Ehrman (Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End)
“
They sat for a time listening to the music and then Bond turned to Vesper: ‘It’s wonderful sitting here with you and knowing the job’s finished. It’s a lovely end to the day – the prize-giving.’ He expected her to smile. She said: ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ in a rather brittle voice. She seemed to be listening carefully to the music. One elbow rested on the table and her hand supported her chin, but on the back of her hand and not on the palm, and Bond noticed that her knuckles showed white as if her fist was tightly clenched. Between the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand she held one of Bond’s cigarettes, as an artist holds a crayon, and though she smoked with composure, she tapped the cigarette occasionally into an ashtray when the cigarette had no ash. Bond noticed these small things because he felt intensely aware of her and because he wanted to draw her into his own feeling of warmth and relaxed sensuality. But he accepted her reserve. He thought it came from a desire to protect herself from him, or else it was her reaction to his coolness to her earlier in the evening, his deliberate coolness, which he knew had been taken as a rebuff.
”
”
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
“
2009: e-mails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act revealed that White House Associate Director of Public Engagement was arranging an NEA-hosted telephone conference with tax-supported artists to encourage the creation of propaganda art to generate public support for President Obama’s political agendas.
”
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Alexandra York (LYING AS A WAY OF LIFE: Corruption and Collectivism Come of Age in America)
“
It is unfeeling to speak of the people who cooperate in the production of art works as "personnel" or, worse yet, "support personnel", but that accurately reflects their importance in the conventional art world view. In that view, the person who does the "real work", making the choices that give the work its artistic importance and integrity, is the artist, who may be any of a number of people involved in its production, everyone else's job is to assist. I do not accept the view of the relative importance of the "personnel" involved that the term connotes, but i use it to emphasize that it is the common view in art worlds
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Howard S. Becker
“
A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. “The ritual scarification of light and shadow,” I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design.
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Carla Harryman (There Never Was a Rose Without a Thorn)
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Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness—that is, the absence of supportive feedback from their social environment. They are more willing to follow their vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored spaces do not frighten them—or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power—the great artists, scientists, inventors, industrialists. Is not the hallmark of entrepreneurship (in art or science no less than in business) the ability to see a possibility that no one else sees—and to actualize it? Actualizing one’s vision may of course require the collaboration of many people able to work together toward a common goal, and the innovator may need to be highly skillful at building bridges between one group and another. But this is a separate story and does not affect my basic point. That which we call “genius” has a great deal to do with independence, courage, and daring—a great deal to do with nerve. This is one reason we admire it. In the literal sense, such “nerve” cannot be taught; but we can support the process by which it is learned. If human happiness, well-being, and progress are our goals, it is a trait we must strive to nurture—in our child-rearing practices, in our schools, in our organizations, and first of all in ourselves.
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Nathaniel Branden (The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem)
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You can wear a variety of clothing. But you should have one designer you favor. I suggest Amano."
"Ooh," Noriko hums. "I love him."
Ichiko taps out something on her tablet and hands me photographs of his latest runway show. "I see it now. You are a small-town girl who supports the local artist. An up-and-comer like you. That's your brand." She winks at me. "Amano's pieces are flattering with a nod to classical elements, but with a certain modern flair."
Women strut down a white runway. One wears a black silk furisode with flowing kimono sleeves and a lotus flower motif. Another sports a red evening gown with a matching capelet. Another, a turquoise fitted dress with a square neckline and beaded belt. All so pretty. I like.
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Emiko Jean (Tokyo Dreaming (Tokyo Ever After, #2))
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In the twenty-first century the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk on which were phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. The brilliance of this new type of authoritarianism is that instead of simply oppressing opposition, as had been the case with twentieth-century strains, it climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd. One moment Surkov would fund civic forums and human rights NGOs, the next he would quietly support nationalist movements that accuse the NGOs of being tools of the West. With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime.
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Peter Pomerantsev (Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia)
“
Popularity at the box office did not translate into support from [director John Sturges'] peers in the Academy. In February, when Oscar nominations were announced, The Great Escape had to make do with one, for [Ferris] Webster’s editing. Paramount’s Hud and UA’s Tom Jones, which would bring Tony Richardson the best-director Oscar, dominated the field. Sturges’s rightful place in the best-picture category was taken by 20th Century Fox’s Cleopatra, a lavish flop.
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Glenn Lovell (Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges (Wisconsin Studies in Film))
“
If you can't tell from my rap lyrics already, yes I am a feminist. And when I'm saying "hoe" or "bitch" I am actually referring to men. ...That sounded bad, in someway. But at the end of the day, I'm sick of rappers using "bitches" and "hoes" as terms towards women. Feminists are NOT a hate group. Feminists are not all female. Nor has it got an anti-male agenda. It's about equality! I've had a weird, special bond with women since I was a kid. And it's just a shame really that I'm gay.
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scott mcgoldrick
“
After Kristallnacht, tight U.S. immigration laws were relaxed somewhat, allowing a trickle of people who wanted to leave Europe to enter the United States. Many of those given priority in a first wave of immigration were artists, writers, composers, and scientists, but even that very circumscribed immigration caused alarm. As late as 1939, 95 percent of Americans did not want any part of a European war.15 And, with the country’s economy still fragile, many people resented those fleeing it as needy hordes who would compete for scarce jobs and dwindling government support. Anti-immigration forces in Congress used fear as an excuse to deny foreigners entry. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was established in 1938 to investigate newcomers suspected of being communists or spies.16 Alarm and insecurity in some soon hardened into paranoia and hatred. In February 1939, twenty-two thousand people marched through Manhattan, giving fascist salutes and carrying U.S. flags as well as banners with swastikas, toward a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden.
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Mary Gabriel (Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (LITTLE, BROWN A))
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You can do everything right. You can cheer yourself on, have all the support you can find in place, and be 100 percent ready to go, and still fail. It happens to writers, artists, entrepreneurs, health professionals, teachers—you name it. But if you can look back during your rumble and see that you didn’t hold back—that you were all in—you will feel very different than someone who didn’t fully show up. You may have to deal with the failure, but you won’t have to wrestle with the same level of shame that we experience when our efforts were halfhearted.
”
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Brené Brown (Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.)
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El Greco and Van Gogh shared several passions beyond art. Both were religious and disliked the materialism of their respective ages. Neither artist found launching his career very easy, and both had to move away from the country of their birth to find the inspiration and support they needed. But when it came to expressionistic painting there was a difference that sets them apart. El Greco’s subjects tended to be mystical, aristocratic or religious, whereas Van Gogh was concerned with the more mundane aspects of modern life: cafés, trees, bedrooms and peasants.
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Anonymous
“
Mr. Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors.
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George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
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Our ability to detect and measure the passage of time is burdensome. The conception and sensation of time bears down upon all of us. It weighs us down; it compresses our souls. There is a variety of ways to escape the dull passage of time or the fearfulness of our accelerating march towards death. We must choose our mechanisms for dealing with the inexorability of time and our finiteness. We can fill our void with work or pleasure, laughter or pain, and fretfulness or courage. We can seek a sense of purposefulness or acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. We can seek to escape the drudgery and pain of life through alcohol, drugs, or pleasure seeking, or by working to support our families and create artistic testaments to our worldly existence.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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AI Con (The Sonnet)
Everybody is concerned about psychics conning people,
How 'bout the billionaires who con people using science!
Con artists come in all shapes and sizes,
Some use barnum statements, others artificial intelligence.
Most scientists speak up against only the little frauds,
But not the big frauds who support their livelihood.
Am I not afraid to be blacklisted by the big algorithms!
Is the sun afraid, its light will offend some puny hoods!
I come from the soil, I'll die struggling in the soil.
My needs are less, hence my integrity is dangerous.
I am here to show this infantile species how to grow up.
I can't be bothered by the fragility of a few spoiled brats.
Reason and fiction both are fundamental to build a civilization.
Neither is the problem, the problem is greed and self-absorption.
”
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Abhijit Naskar (Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None)
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Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and sees no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue : it is the main spring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic; it adds fuel to the fire of the artist's desire for fame and is at once the support and compensation of the honest man's integrity; it leers even cynically in the humility of the saint. You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up. You are defenceless against its onslaught because you know not on what unprotected side it will attack you. Sincerity cannot protect you from its snare nor humour from its mockery.
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W. Somerset Maugham (ASHENDEN: OR, THE BRITISH AGENT)
“
Richard Lovelace makes a compelling case that the best defense is a good offense. “The ultimate solution to cultural decay is not so much the repression of bad culture as the production of sound and healthy culture,” he writes. “We should direct most of our energy not to the censorship of decadent culture, but to the production and support of healthy expressions of Christian and non-Christian art.”10 Public protests and boycotts have their place. But even negative critiques are effective only when motivated by a genuine love for the arts. The long-term solution is to support Christian artists, musicians, authors, and screenwriters who can create humane and healthy alternatives that speak deeply to the human condition. Exploiting “Talent” The church must also stand against forces that suppress genuine creativity, both inside and outside its walls. In today’s consumer culture, one of the greatest dangers facing the arts is commodification. Art is treated as merchandise to market for the sake of making money. Paintings are bought not to exhibit, nor to grace someone’s home, but merely to resell. They are financial investments. As Seerveld points out, “Elite art of the New York school or by approved gurus such as Andy Warhol are as much a Big Business today as the music business or the sports industry.”11 Artists and writers have been reduced to “talent” to be plugged into the manufacturing process. That approach may increase sales, but it will suppress the best and highest forms of art. In the eighteenth century, the world nearly lost the best of Mozart’s music because the adults in the young man’s life treated him primarily as “talent” to exploit.
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Nancy R. Pearcey (Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning)
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It’s as if one should discuss the ideas expressed by St. Paul’s Cathedral without ever observing what the walls are built of or how the dome is supported. But it wasn’t Wren’s ideas that kept that dome standing through the bombings of 1940. It was the way he used the stone he built with. This is the artist’s, the artisan’s view; it is a meaner, humbler view than the philosopher’s or ideologue’s. But all the same, what makes a novel a novel is something nonintellectual, though not simple; something visceral, not cerebral… ; something that rises from touch not thought, from sounds, rests, rhythms… It involves ideas, of course, and ideas issue from it, the splendid affirmation of the dome rises above the terror and the rubble and the smoke… but all the thinking in the world won’t hold that dome up. Theory is not enough. There must be stones.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy)
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common sense observations of human behavior support a similar dissociation in reasoning abilities which cuts in both directions. We all know persons who are exceedingly clever in their social navigation, who have an unerring sense of how to seek advantage for themselves and for their group, but who can be remarkably inept when trusted with a nonpersonal, nonsocial problem. The reverse condition is just as dramatic: We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace, and who regularly harm themselves and others with their behavior. The absent-minded professor is the benign variety of the latter type. At work, in these different personality styles, are the presence or absence of what Howard Gardner has called “social intelligence,” or the presence or absence of one or the other of his multiple intelligences such as the “mathematical.
”
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António Damásio (Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain)
“
Bust magazine, back when it was a more outwardly feminist publication, used to ask each of their female interview subjects whether or not they identified as feminist. In 2005, the musician Björk said no, and that interview is still used in these online lists as of this year. Björk is a female artist often credited with being one of the most innovative and daring musicians of her generation, regardless of gender. She has collaborated with and supported women musicians, fashion designers, video directors. She has spoken frankly and openly in interviews about the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. She has proven herself to be an exemplary human being and creator, and she is a tremendous role model for young aspiring musicians. If we understand that the problem feminists have with Björk has nothing to do with her actions and is only about her language and way of identifying herself, then we can recognize that this is about a feminist marketing campaign and not a philosophy. Compare
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Jessa Crispin (Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto)
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Aryeh looked, and his head became light. How could he have not seen? The earth on which the Almighty created the plants and the animals—in each and every illumination, it was shown as an orb. That the earth was round, and not flat, was now the opinion of a majority of theologians. Interesting that this artist of a century earlier, when Christians were being sent to the stake for this belief, espoused it. But that, alone, would not condemn the book. The illuminator had ventured further into dangerous territory. In the top right corner of three of the paintings, above the earth, was a second gold-leafed orb, clearly meant to be the sun. Its placement was ambiguous. Aryeh looked up at Vistorini. “You believe this implies the heliocentric heresy?” “‘Implies’! Rabbi, don’t be disingenuous. This is clearly in support of the heresy of the Saracen astronomers, of Copernicus, whose book is on the Index, of that man in Padua, Galileo, who will soon enough be brought before the Inquisition to answer for his errors.
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Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book)
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We are learning that through striving for justice, tears and laughter, seem more dynamic and shared as each step is taken with communal courage together. Record a legacy, they truly lived, not once stepped back on the path that beckoned. I am proud of my partner, of my family, of our friends. We have learned to value the quiet patience of gentle support both, unspoken and felt, heard and embraced. And if we seem cryptic in message at times, we wish to lift to the world the cause as artists, using the language of our nature and craft, to address the twisted currents of current laws and corruption, where ears are dulled from light by agendas, that the beauty of Art may be expressed in the reclaiming of itself, from the wreckage of the court system mired with soiled attorney and tainted judge. Colors to where there is grey, to lift the hues cast in cast iron graves, stamped Summary Judgement, with no judgement applied. So together we formulate, and forge what is possible, while tear stains cheek, falling upon lighted smile, in thought of our loved ones, that keeps our current path clear.
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Tom Althouse (The Frowny Face Cow)
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Sometimes a spouse, in trying to relieve a partner’s distress, accomplishes just the opposite. Judy is an artist. One evening she was quite upset by her problems in getting ready for a show, and she started to tell her husband, Cliff, about them. She wanted his support, encouragement, and sympathy. But Cliff instead fired off a barrage of instructions: “One, you’ve got to get all the people together in the group. Two, you have to call anyone else who is involved. Three, you want to get your accountant in on it—check with the bank to see how much money you still have. Four, you could contact the PR people. Five, call the gallery and see about the time.” Judy felt rejected by Cliff and thought, “He doesn’t care about how I feel. He just wants to get me off his back.” But in his eyes, Cliff thought that he was filling the bill. He had given her his best advice—he thought that he was being supportive. To Judy, however, Cliff was being controlling, not supportive. She was seeking sympathy and emotional rapport, while he was tuned in to problem solving. How can you find the appropriate channel? One point
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Aaron T. Beck (Love Is Never Enough: How Couples Can Overcome Misunderstanding – A Psychiatrist's Guide to Saving Your Marriage Through Better Communication)
“
Okay, granted, there's a lot of willful blindness out there, more than enough to go around, and failures of imagination abound as well. One can be sympathetic to Trump voters without giving them a free pass. Feeling angry, undervalued, and ignored, they don't seem to grasp that these are not new feelings. They're just new to them. American blacks and Latinos and LGBT folks have been feeling the same way for a long time. And I want to be clear about the man himself. Donald Trump is a despicable human being - a full-blown narcissist, a pathological liar, a vulgarian, a groper of women and girls. He's completely unfit to be president of the United States. As regards the working class, however, he did what Dickens did. He held a mirror up to a whole class of people who were too often ignored. Because Dickens was both a good man and a great artist, what people saw in that mirror was their best selves. And because Trump is neither good nor great, his distorted mirror reflects little but his supporters' bigotry and anger. But give the man this much credit. To his supporters he was saying, I see you. I see your value. Which is more than can be said for the elites of either party.
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Richard Russo (Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation)
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The social function of court life is to enlist the support and adherence of the public for the ruling house. The Renaissance princes want to delude not only the people, they also want to make an impression o the nobility and bind it to the court. But they are not dependent on either its services or its company; they can use anyone, of whatever descent, provided he is useful. Consequently, the Italian courts of Renaissance differ from the medieval courts in their very constitution; they accept into their circle upstart adventurers and merchants who have made money, plebeian humanists and ill-bred artists - entirely as if they had all the traditional social qualifications. In contrast to the exclusive moral community of court chivalry, a comparatively free, fundamentally intellectual type of salon life develops at these courts which is, on the one hand the continuation of the aesthetic social culture of middle-class circles, such as described in the Decamerone and in the Paradiso degli Alberti, and represents, on the other, the preparatory stage in the development of those literary salons which play such an important part in the intellectual life of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque)
“
out of informal learning communities if they fail to meet our needs; we enjoy no such mobility in our relations to formal education.
Affinity spaces are also highly generative environments from which new aesthetic experiments and innovations emerge. A 2005 report on The Future of Independent Media argued that this kind of grassroots creativity was an important engine of cultural transformation:
The media landscape will be reshaped by the bottom-up energy of media created by amateurs and hobbyists as a matter of course. This bottom-up energy will generate enormous creativity, but it will also tear apart some of the categories that organize the lives and work of media makers.... A new generation of media-makers and viewers are emerging which could lead to a sea change in how media is made and consumed.12
This report celebrates a world in which everyone has access to the means of creative expression and the networks supporting artistic distribution. The Pew study suggests something more:
young people who create and circulate their own media are more likely to respect the intellectual property rights of others because they feel a greater stake in the cultural economy.13 Both reports suggest we are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media toward one in which everyone has a
”
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Henry Jenkins (Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century)
“
Graceful? There’s a never-ending worldwide shortage. Graceful is artistic, elegant, subtle and effective. Graceful makes things happen and brings light but not heat. Graceful doesn’t mean invisible, hiding, fearful or by the book. And graceful certainly doesn’t include hectoring, lecturing or bullying. Audrey Hepburn was graceful. Wayne Gretzky too. A graceful person gets things done, but does it in a way you’d be happy to have repeated. A graceful person raises the game of everyone nearby, causing a race to the top, not the bottom. Graceful is the person we can’t live without, the one who makes a difference. The linchpin. Everywhere I turn, I see people bringing grace to their families, their communities and their work. The thing is, no one is born graceful. It’s not a gift, it’s a choice. Every day, we get a chance to give others the benefit of the doubt. Every day, we get the opportunity to give others our support, our confidence and our trust. And yet most days, we hesitate. There are so many things on our agenda, so many people who want a piece of us, so many things to do, so many obligations—of course it’s tempting to merely get it done, to phone it in. None of those shortcuts will make the impact you’re capable of making, and none of those approaches will bring you closer to those you’re here to serve. The industrial age is ending, and a new one is beginning. It produces art instead of stuff and it rewards gracefulness.
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Seth Godin (Graceful)
“
Nor is it only as a sign of greater gentleness or refinement of mind, but as a proof of the best possible direction of this refinement, that the tendency of the Gothic to the expression of vegetative life is to be admired. That sentence of Genesis, 'I have given thee every green herb for meat,' like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbolical as well as literal meaning. It is not merely the nourishment of the body, but the food of the soul, that is intended. The green herb is, of all nature, that which is most essential to the healthy spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need fine scenery; the precipice and the mountain peak are not intended to be seen by all men, — perhaps their power is greatest. over those who are unaccustomed to them. But trees and fields and flowers were made for all, and are necessary for all. God has connected the labour which is essential to the bodily sustenance with the pleasures which are healthiest for the heart; and while He made the ground stubborn, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms fair. The proudest architecture that man can build has no higher honour than to bear the image and recall the memory of that grass of the field which is, at once, the type and the support of his existence; the goodly building is then most glorious when it is sculptured into the likeness of the leaves of Paradise; and the great Gothic spirit, as we showed it to be noble in its disquietude, is also noble in its hold of nature; it is, indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she found no rest upon the face of the waters, — but like her in this also, 'Lo, in her mouth was an olive branch, plucked off.
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John Ruskin (On Art and Life (Penguin Great Ideas))
“
In 1932 Pravda published a short story by Ilf and Petrov, titled 'How Robinson Was Created,' about a magazine editor who commissions a Soviet Robinson Crusoe from a writer named Moldavantsev. The writer submits a manuscript about a Soviet young man triumphing over nature on a desert island. The editor likes the story, but says that a Soviet Robinson would be unthinkable without a trade union committee consisting of a chairman, two permanent members, and a female activist to collect membership dues. The committee, in its turn, would be unthinkable without a safe deposit box, a chairman's bell, a pitcher of water, and a tablecloth ('red or green, it doesn't matter; I don't want to limit your artistic imagination'), and broad masses of working people. The author objects by saying that so many people could not possible be washed ashore by a single ocean wave:
'Why a wave?' asked the editor, suddenly surprised.
'How else would the masses end up on the island? It is a a desert island, after all!'
'Who said it was a desert island? You're getting me confused. Okay, so there's an island, or, even better, a peninsula. It's safer that way. And that's where a series of amusing, original, and interesting adventures will take place. There'll be some trade union work going on, but not enough. The female activist will expose certain deficiencies - in the area of due collection, for example. She'll be supported by the broad masses. And then there be the repentant chairman. At the end you could have a general meeting. That would be quite effective artistically. I guess that's about it.'
'But - what about Robinson?' stammered Moldavantsev.
'Oh yeah ..., thank for reminding me. I'm not wild about Robinson. Just drop him. He's a silly, whiny, totally unnecessary character.
”
”
Yuri Slezkine (The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution)
“
Even at this point, say Ressler and others, these potential hosts of monsters can be turned around through the (often unintentional) intervention of people who show kindness, support, or even just interest. I can say from experience that it doesn’t take much. Ressler’s theories on the childhoods of the worst killers in America have an unlikely ideological supporter, psychiatrist and child-advocate Alice Miller. Her emotionally evocative books (including The Drama Of The Gifted Child and The Untouched Key) make clear that if a child has some effective human contact at particularly significant periods, some recognition of his worth and value, some “witness” to his experience, this can make an extraordinary difference. I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family’s problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. This value might be revealed through appreciation of a child’s artistic talent, physical ability, humor, courage, patience, curiosity, scholarly skills, creativity, resourcefulness, responsibility, energy, or any of the many attributes that children bring us in such abundance.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
“
Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement of man's understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.
The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before. It is richer than that of Pericles, for it includes all the Greek flowering that followed him; richer than Leonardo's, for it includes him and the Italian Renaissance; richer than Voltaire's, for it embraces all the French Enlightenment and its ecumenical dissemination. If progress is real despite our whining, it is not because we are
born any healthier, better, or wiser than infants were in the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage, born on a higher level of that pedestal which the accumulation of knowledge and art raises as the ground and support of our being. The heritage rises, and man rises in proportion as he receives it.
History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.
”
”
Will Durant (The Lessons of History)
“
Rebellion's demand is unity; historical revolution's demand is
totality. The former starts from a negative supported by an affirmative, the latter from absolute negation
and is condemned to every aspect of slavery in order to fabricate an affirmative that is dismissed until the
end of time. One is creative, the other nihilist. The first is dedicated to creation so as to exist more and
more completely; the second is forced to produce results in order to negate more and more completely.
The historical revolution is always obliged to act in the hope, which is invariably disappointed, of one day
really existing. Even unanimous consent will not suffice to create its existence. "Obey," said Frederick the
Great to his subjects; but when he died, his words were: "I am tired of ruling slaves." To escape this
absurd destiny, the revolution is and will be condemned to renounce, not only its own principles, but
nihilism as well as purely historical values in order to rediscover the creative source of rebellion.
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the
insanity of history. Undoubtedly, it has nothing but scorn for the formal and mystifying morality to be
found in bourgeois society. But its folly has been to extend this scorn to every moral demand. At the very
sources of its inspiration and in its most profound transports is to be found a rule that is not formal but
that nevertheless can serve as a guide. Rebellion, in fact, says— and will say more and more explicitly—
that revolution must try to act, not in order to come into existence at some future date in the eyes of a
world reduced to acquiescence, but in terms of the obscure existence that is already made manifest in the
act of insurrection. This rule is neither formal nor subject to history, it is what can be best described by
examining it in its pure state—in artistic creation. Before doing so, let us only note that to the "I rebel,
therefore we exist" and the "We are alone" of metaphysical rebellion, rebellion at grips with history adds
that instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live
in order to create what we are.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
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Magic,” Yennefer continued after a while, “is, in some people’s opinion, art. Great, elitist art, capable of creating beautiful and extraordinary things. Magic is a talent granted to only a chosen few. Others, deprived of talent, can only look at the results of the artists’ works with admiration and envy, can admire the finished work while feeling that without these creations and without this talent the world would be a poorer place. The fact that, following the Conjunction of the Spheres, some chosen few discovered talent and magic within themselves, the fact that they found Art within themselves, is the blessing of beauty. And that’s how it is. Those who believe that magic is art are also right.” On the long bare hill which protruded from the heath like the back of some lurking predator lay an enormous boulder supported by a few smaller stones. The magician guided her horse in its direction without pausing her lecture. “There are also those according to whom magic is a science. In order to master it, talent and innate ability alone are not enough. Years of keen study and arduous work are essential; endurance and self-discipline are necessary. Magic acquired like this is knowledge, learning, the limits of which are constantly stretched by enlightened and vigorous minds, by experience, experiments and practice. Magic acquired in such a way is progress. It is the plough, the loom, the watermill, the smelting furnace, the winch and the pulley. It is progress, evolution, change. It is constant movement. Upwards. Towards improvement. Towards the stars. The fact that following the Conjunction of the Spheres we discovered magic will, one day, allow us to reach the stars. Dismount, Ciri.” Yennefer approached the monolith, placed her palm on the coarse surface of the stone and carefully brushed away the dust and dry leaves. “Those who consider magic to be a science,” she continued, “are also right. Remember that, Ciri. And now come here, to me.” The girl swallowed and came closer. The enchantress put her arm around her. “Remember,” she repeated, “magic is Chaos, Art and Science. It is a curse, a blessing and progress. It all depends on who uses magic, how they use it, and to what purpose. And magic is everywhere. All around us. Easily accessible. It is enough to stretch out one’s hand. See? I’m stretching out my hand.
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Andrzej Sapkowski (Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1))
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Even at this point, say Ressler and others, these potential hosts of monsters can be turned around through the (often unintentional) intervention of people who show kindness, support, or even just interest. I can say from experience that it doesn’t take much. Ressler’s theories on the childhoods of the worst killers in America have an unlikely ideological supporter, psychiatrist and child-advocate Alice Miller. Her emotionally evocative books (including The Drama Of The Gifted Child and The Untouched Key) make clear that if a child has some effective human contact at particularly significant periods, some recognition of his worth and value, some “witness” to his experience, this can make an extraordinary difference. I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family’s problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. This value might be revealed through appreciation of a child’s artistic talent, physical ability, humor, courage, patience, curiosity, scholarly skills, creativity, resourcefulness, responsibility, energy, or any of the many attributes that children bring us in such abundance. I had a fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Conway, who fought monsters in me. He showed kindness and recognized some talent in me at just the period when violence was consuming my family. He gave me some alternative designs for self-image, not just the one children logically deduce from mistreatment (“If this is how I am treated, then this is the treatment I am worthy of”). It might literally be a matter of a few hours with a person whose kindness reconnects the child to an earlier experience of self, a self that was loved and valued and encouraged.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
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But there were problems. After the movie came out I couldn’t go to a tournament without being surrounded by fans asking for autographs. Instead of focusing on chess positions, I was pulled into the image of myself as a celebrity. Since childhood I had treasured the sublime study of chess, the swim through ever-deepening layers of complexity. I could spend hours at a chessboard and stand up from the experience on fire with insight about chess, basketball, the ocean, psychology, love, art. The game was exhilarating and also spiritually calming. It centered me. Chess was my friend. Then, suddenly, the game became alien and disquieting. I recall one tournament in Las Vegas: I was a young International Master in a field of a thousand competitors including twenty-six strong Grandmasters from around the world. As an up-and-coming player, I had huge respect for the great sages around me. I had studied their masterpieces for hundreds of hours and was awed by the artistry of these men. Before first-round play began I was seated at my board, deep in thought about my opening preparation, when the public address system announced that the subject of Searching for Bobby Fischer was at the event. A tournament director placed a poster of the movie next to my table, and immediately a sea of fans surged around the ropes separating the top boards from the audience. As the games progressed, when I rose to clear my mind young girls gave me their phone numbers and asked me to autograph their stomachs or legs. This might sound like a dream for a seventeen-year-old boy, and I won’t deny enjoying the attention, but professionally it was a nightmare. My game began to unravel. I caught myself thinking about how I looked thinking instead of losing myself in thought. The Grandmasters, my elders, were ignored and scowled at me. Some of them treated me like a pariah. I had won eight national championships and had more fans, public support and recognition than I could dream of, but none of this was helping my search for excellence, let alone for happiness. At a young age I came to know that there is something profoundly hollow about the nature of fame. I had spent my life devoted to artistic growth and was used to the sweaty-palmed sense of contentment one gets after many hours of intense reflection. This peaceful feeling had nothing to do with external adulation, and I yearned for a return to that innocent, fertile time. I missed just being a student of the game, but there was no escaping the spotlight. I found myself dreading chess, miserable before leaving for tournaments. I played without inspiration and was invited to appear on television shows. I smiled.
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Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance)
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ETHEREUM AND USDT RECOVERY EXPERT HIRE ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST
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Sam was about to travel to Asia with her boyfriend and she was fretting about what her backers would think if she released some of her new songs while she was 'on vacation'. She was worried that posting pictures of herself sipping a Mai Tai was going to make her look like an asshole.
What does it matter? I asked her, where you are whether you're drinking a coffee, a Mai Tai or a bottle of water? I mean, aren't they paying for your songs so that you can... live? Doesn't living include wandering and collecting emotions and drinking a Mai Tai, not just sitting in a room writing songs without ever leaving the house?
I told Sam about another songwriter friend of mine, Kim Boekbinder, who runs her own direct support website through which her fans pay her monthly at levels from $5 to $1,000. She also has a running online wishlist of musical gear and costumes kindof like a wedding registry, to which her fans can contribute money anytime they want.
Kim had told me a few days before that she doesn't mind charging her backers during what she calls her 'staring at the wall time'. She thinks this is essential before she can write a new batch of songs. And her fans don't complain, they trust her process.
These are new forms of patronage, there are no rules and it's messy, the artists and the patrons they are making the rules as they go along, but whether these artists are using crowdfunding (which is basically, front me some money so I can make a thing) or subscription services (which is more like pay me some money every month so that I can make things) or Patreon, which is like pay per piece of content pledge service (that basically means pay me some money every time I make a thing). It doesn't matter, the fundamental building block of all of these relationships boils down to the same simple thing: trust.
If you're asking your fans to support you, the artist, it shouldn't matter what your choices are, as long as you're delivering your side of the bargain. You may be spending the money on guitar picks, Mai Tais, baby formula, college loans, gas for the car or coffee to fuel your all-night writing sessions. As long as art is coming out the other side, and you're making your patrons happy, the money you need to live (and need to live is hard to define) is almost indistinguishable from the money you need to make art.
... (6:06:57) ...
When she posts a photo of herself in a vintage dress that she just bought, no one scolds her for spending money on something other than effects pedals. It's not like her fan's money is an allowance with nosy and critical strings attached, it's a gift in the form of money in exchange for her gift, in the form of music. The relative values are... messy. But if we accept the messiness we're all okay.
If Beck needs to moisturize his cuticles with truffle oil in order to play guitar tracks on his crowdfunded record, I don't care that the money I fronted him isn't going towards two turntables or a microphone; just as long as the art gets made, I get the album and Beck doesn't die in the process.
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Amanda Palmer (The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help)
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Off the record, I had envisioned a little more peer support, nothing overwhelming, perhaps a few organized protests, maybe some irate colleagues marching arms linked, a little rioting, perhaps a few burned cars. After all, I had been a member in good standing of the creative community and was certain my predicament would infuriate my union brethren and fellow artists.
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Woody Allen (Apropos of Nothing)
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Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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Madeleine L'Engle (The Fact of the Matter)
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We were out for drinks with composer Stephen Sondheim after a new review of his work and he coyly asked us for our impressions. We, young composers, were all too eager to proffer our criticisms and critiques, full of self-confidence and hubris. The legendary composer looked defeated and deflated. He took a moment to gather his thoughts and said simply, “when a friend asks you for your impression of a new work, you have one role and one role only. To offer unabashed praise and support. I was not looking for a review, I needed affirmation. I need to know that I’m vital and that I have intrinsic value as an artist and as a human being. I don’t care if you actually loved it, your obligation to me, as my friend, is to SAY you loved it.
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Dan Sklar (Sh*tshow: A Memoir and 2020 Mixtape: The Tales of a Reluctant Rabbi)
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Many of the members of the decolonial aestheSis collective are practicing artists, theoreticians, curators, and writers who arrive to the process as a result of understanding the way in which the axis of coloniality and modernity/rationality (as Anibal Quijano puts it in his inaugural article) still resonates and maintains the debates about art, art practice, and the institutions that support it.
Decolonial AestheSis at the 11th Havana Biennial
Social Text Periscope 2013
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Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet and Miguel Rojas-Sotelo
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Many of the members of the decolonial aestheSis collective are practicing artists, theoreticians, curators, and writers who arrive to the process as a result of understanding the way in which the axis of coloniality and modernity/rationality (as Anibal Quijano puts it in his inaugural article) still resonates and maintains the debates about art, art practice, and the institutions that support it.
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Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet and Miguel Rojas-Sotelo
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Similarly, despite the efforts by production houses, media, and fans to support local content, Kenyan music was not growing for many reasons including conmanship in the entertainment industry. We had Promoters (they still exist) who had decided to make money from the sweat and blood of artists. Then the Music Copyright Society of Kenya came and ruined everything despite having elected some artists to the management board hoping they would do something different. They ended up being the most prominent scam artists ever proposed in the history of Kenyan entertainment. (In the article "From Curiosity to Creation: The Birth of Kalpop")
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Don Santo
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These are the factors required for expert practice, paraphrased here from Ericsson’s work: • Sustained and intensive practice of a skill for several hours a day • Practice with the specific intention of improving, not just repeating • Practice that is sustained in this manner for a matter of years—in most cases as many as ten years • Practice that includes a particular mechanism by which the results of practice can be evaluated and improved upon in future sessions • The intentional development of sophisticated feedback loops—teachers and colleagues commenting on progress; other pairs of expert eyes on the work • Appropriate care paid to the essential ingredient of “recovery time” so that there is energy to engage in the same intense practice again the next day • A considerable amount of time spent within the so-called “domain of the task.” For Corot, for example, this meant hanging out with other painters—talking about his art, talking about trends in art, getting support for the lifestyle of the artist.
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Stephen Cope (The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling)
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People need to eat and pay the rent. “An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint,” said artist Ben Shahn. “A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.” Whether an artist makes money off his work or not, money has to come from somewhere, be it a day job, a wealthy spouse, a trust fund, an arts grant, or a patron.
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Austin Kleon (Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (Austin Kleon))
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What lot of people don’t know is that. It is possible for someone to choose to support and promote their favorite thing, person or artist, Without dragging, maundering, shaming, disrespecting , undermining, bashing other things, people or artists, and without using other people or artists names.
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D.J. Kyos
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Second, the warning against insatiable desires makes more sense with respect to some desires, less sense with respect to others. It seems most reasonable when the object of desire is something like territorial conquests, wealth, power, fame, glory, influence, sex, expensive art objects, fancy clothes, sports cars, and so on. But what if the object of desire is knowledge, understanding, artistic satisfaction, the eradication of a disease, or the elimination of injustice? Is the fact that these desires cannot be finally satisfied a reason for reining them in? Isaac Newton famously lamented that his quest for insight into the nature of things could be compared to the actions of a boy playing on the seashore “whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Would it have been better for him to have kept his desire for understanding in check so as to avoid this abiding feeling of disappointment? The accomplished and acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith offers this advice to fellow writers: “Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”28 Should she, instead, advise her readers never to even try? This argument can be taken in two ways. One way is to see it as supporting the previous objection: there are kinds of pleasure and happiness that are invariably tied to feelings of dissatisfaction, and the Epicurean guidelines fail to appreciate this. The other way is to see it as placing a question mark against the prioritizing of happiness. The insatiable desire of Newton for understanding, of Beethoven for adequate artistic expression, of Shackleton for adventure, or of Harriet Tubman for justice may not have brought them happiness; it may even have interfered with their capacity to be happy. But such examples remind us that happiness may not always be a rational person’s primary goal.
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Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
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The second main argument to support the idea that simple living enhances our capacity for pleasure is that it encourages us to attend to and appreciate the inexhaustible wealth of interesting, beautiful, marvelous, and thought-provoking phenomena continually presented to us by the everyday world that is close at hand. As Emerson says: “Things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. . . . This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.”47 Here, as elsewhere, Emerson elegantly articulates the theory, but it is his friend Thoreau who really puts it into practice. Walden is, among other things, a celebration of the unexotic and a demonstration that the overlooked wonders of the commonplace can be a source of profound pleasure readily available to all. This idea is hardly unique to Emerson and Thoreau, of course, and, like most of the ideas we are considering, it goes back to ancient times. Marcus Aurelius reflects that “anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure,” from the jaws of animals to the “distinct beauty of old age in men and women.”48 “Even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charms, its own attractiveness,” he observes, citing as an example the way loaves split open on top when baking.49 With respect to the natural world, celebrating the ordinary has been a staple of literature and art at least since the advent of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth wrote three separate poems in praise of the lesser celandine, a common wildflower; painters like van Gogh discover whole worlds of beauty and significance in a pair of peasant boots; many of the finest poems crafted by poets like Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Seamus Heaney take as their subject the most mundane objects, activities, or events and find in these something worth lingering over and commemorating in verse: a singing thrush, a snowy woods, a fish, some chilled plums, a patch of mint. Of course, artists have also celebrated the extraordinary, the exotic, and the magnificent. Homer gushes over the splendors of Menelaus’s palace; Gauguin left his home country to seek inspiration in the more exotic environment of Tahiti; Handel composed pieces to accompany momentous ceremonial occasions. Yet it is striking that a humble activity like picking blackberries—the subject of well-known poems by, among others, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Richard Wilbur—appears to be more inspirational to modern poets, more charged with interest and significance, than, say, the construction of the world’s tallest building, the Oscar ceremonies, the space program, or the discovery of DNA’s molecular structure. One might even say that it has now become an established function of art to help us discover the remarkable in the commonplace
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Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
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Beneath the compulsion to over-give is the wound of undervaluing our own worth.
When religion makes money the root of all evil, those of us who are spiritually inclined feel that it is greedy, selfish, or sinful to be prosperous. We may even feel like it is more spiritual or noble to shun material wealth completely.
But as physical safety and stability are root chakra concerns (the first energy center at the base of your spine), when you don’t feel financially secure, you can’t cultivate the higher chakra gifts of creativity, joy, service, and self-actualization.
Any “starving artist” or ascetic healer will tell you that worrying about their basic needs is far from conducive to their ability to work joyfully and effectively.
Ironically, the world’s religious organizations are themselves profoundly wealthy. One only needs to look at their monuments to see that massive amounts of money are required to construct their institutions. The ordained leaders are either paid salaries or have their material needs completely met so that they can live lives of service. Their ability to be charitable also depends on their ability to amass funding. And yet, even while they require money to thrive, they often condemn their followers from desiring and acquiring it.
Since Mother Earth as a Goddess represents living abundantly in Her physical paradise now, (rather than waiting to live in the spiritual paradise in the afterlife), condemning money is yet another way of minimizing and shaming all that is earthly and feminine.
But Pachamama is here to remind you that it is rightful and holy for you to be wealthy, beloved, because the Divine itself is infinite creativity, expansion, and abundance.
There is no shame in claiming your Divine inheritance, and there is no glory in denying yourself the Divine’s loving support in all ways—material and spiritual.
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Syma Kharal (Goddess Reclaimed: 13 Initiations to Unleash Your Sacred Feminine Power (Flourishing Goddess))
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The universe is prodigal in its support. We are miserly in what we accept. All gift horses are looked in the mouth and usually returned to sender. We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.
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Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
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On the one hand, the arts benefited from strong state support and from a state-sponsored mindset that promoted a high regard for cultural achievements as a core value of Soviet civilization. On the other hand, constraints were put on artistic development by the regime's ideologically driven attempt to control artistic creation.
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Christina Ezrahi (Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia (Russian and East European Studies Book 233))
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§417. The purpose of science is to be turned into technology, and the purpose of technology is to be used in the construction of the Overman. Any purpose other than this is false, at worst a challenge to our culture (since the Overman IS culture: its last and highest achievement), at best a mere misunderstanding. As for "pure science", this is as much of an absurdity as pure spirit: things we can't influence we have no interest in. And it is only because we can influence everything (because flux: either we can influence everything or nothing, since in a universe of flux changing one thing changes everything) that we are interested in everything. So if we help African children, it is only with a view to turning them into scientists and engineers to help construct the Overman. If we support the arts, we do so to inspire the Overman and help him to relax, or to use failed artists as waiters to serve the Overman his meals. Or McDonalds: to feed the subhumans who clean the toilets in the labs where the scientists and engineers are working on the Overman. Everything can be reduced to this. Every other conception of purpose is folly. Everything going the opposite way, e.g. environmentalism, artfaggotry, religions other than Overman worship, and so on, are threats to be suppressed, or better yet to be reinterpreted as opportunities for the Overman to challenge himself and exercise his powers. Only as intellectual exercises for the Overman are all these forms of decay justified, but once their workings have been fully grasped, as they will be by the time the present work is over, they are nothing but nuisances that serve no useful purpose and must be minimized or, if possible, completely eliminated.
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Alex Kirkegaard
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At the heart of this book is a belief best articulated by the artist Alan Gussow: “The catalyst that converts any physical location- any environment- into a place, is the process of experiencing deeply. A place is a piece of a whole environment that has been claimed by feelings. Viewed simply as a life-support system, the earth is an environment. Viewed as a resource that sustains our humanity, the earth is a collection of places.
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Julian Hoffman (The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World (AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction))
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WE ARE THE ARTISTS AS WELL AS THE ART As far-fetched as this idea may sound to many people, it is precisely at the crux of some of the greatest controversies among some of the most brilliant minds in recent history. In a quote from his autobiographical notes, for example, Albert Einstein shared his belief that we’re essentially passive observers living in a universe already in place, one in which we seem to have little influence: “Out yonder there was this huge world,” he said, “which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.”2 In contrast to Einstein’s perspective, which is still widely held by many scientists today, John Wheeler, a Princeton physicist and colleague of Einstein, offers a radically different view of our role in creation. In terms that are bold, clear, and graphic, Wheeler says, “We had this old idea, that there was a universe out there, [author’s emphasis] and here is man, the observer, safely protected from the universe by a six-inch slab of plate glass.” Referring to the late-20th-century experiments that show us how simply looking at something changes that something, Wheeler continues, “Now we learn from the quantum world that even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron we have to shatter that plate glass: we have to reach in there…. So the old word observer simply has to be crossed off the books, and we must put in the new word participator.”3 What a shift! In a radically different interpretation of our relationship to the world we live in, Wheeler states that it’s impossible for us to simply watch the universe happen around us. Experiments in quantum physics, in fact, do show that simply looking at something as tiny as an electron—just focusing our awareness upon what it’s doing for even an instant in time—changes its properties while we’re watching it. The experiments suggest that the very act of observation is an act of creation, and that consciousness is doing the creating. These findings seem to support Wheeler’s proposition that we can no longer consider ourselves merely onlookers who have no effect on the world that we’re observing.
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Gregg Braden (The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief)
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He had shattered into little pieces, each of which seemed to contain some aspect of his character. However, because they lacked the false support of the whole, none of the minister of God, the artist, the slave to his mother, or the man hungry for love were able to find purchase independently of one another.
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Armonía Somers (The Naked Woman)
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Peter Tosh came through a few months later, saying grudgingly that at least Bob’s death would make room for other artists to be noticed—a belligerent stance that cost him the support of many of his fans. But he had a very warm and humorous side to him too, and over the next seven years we grew close and I interviewed him several times for Reggae Beat
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Roger Steffens (So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley)
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For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel controls the population registry, leaving them at the mercy of Israeli occupation whims. Israel has controlled this registry since 1967 with absolute power over granting Palestinian passports and ID cards and impacting whether they’re allowed to enter or exit the territory.32 Because Israel no longer processes Palestinian family reunification requests, thousands of Palestinians live as noncitizens and can’t access jobs, healthcare, proper education, or the legal system. Indian officials fear a Palestinian-style insurgency against its rule in Kashmir, or at least claim that they do to justify harsh countermeasures. During the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, a mural in Srinagar with the words “We are Palestine” appeared and the local graffiti artist Mudasir Gul was forced to deface his own work before being arrested. Twenty Kashmiris were arrested for demonstrating in support of Palestine.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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He saw El Lagartijo—“The Lizard”—one of the most famous bullfighters in Spain, and he met Cara Ancha, the celebrated Andalusian matador. When he was only nine years old, Pablo completed his first painting, Le Picador, a portrait of a man riding a horse in the bullring. Two years later, Pablo’s family moved to a new town, La Coruña, on Spain’s Atlantic coast. Don José got a job as an art teacher at the local college. Even though he was much younger than the other students, Pablo enrolled in his father’s class. He also took courses in figure drawing and landscape painting. By the time he turned thirteen, Pablo’s skill level had surpassed his father’s. Don José was so impressed that he handed his son his brushes and vowed never to paint again. When Pablo was fourteen years old, his family moved again, this time to Barcelona, where Pablo enrolled in the prestigious School of Fine Arts. His teachers quickly noticed his skills and allowed him to skip two grades. But just as in Málaga, Pablo had trouble adhering to the school’s rules. Before long he was back to his old tricks, cutting class so that he could wander the city streets, sketching interesting scenes that he observed along the way. Pablo repeated this behavior at his next school, the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. This time, Pablo’s father refused to tolerate his son’s antics and stopped his allowance. At age sixteen, Pablo found himself on his own for the first time, forced to support himself on nothing but his artistic ability. It has been said that the older Pablo grew, the more childlike his art became. During some periods he painted almost entirely in blue or depicted only circus performers.
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David Stabler (Kid Legends: True Tales of Childhood from the Books Kid Artists, Kid Athletes, Kid Presidents, and Kid Authors)
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clothinglowprice
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Thousands of left-wing volunteers from all over Europe, along with many Americans and Canadians, answered the Spanish Republic’s call for help and were supported by arms shipments, military advisers, and air force pilots from the Soviet Union. The governments of England, France, and the United States maintained a hypocritical neutrality, embargoing arms shipments and volunteers to both sides.
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Paul Robeson Jr. (The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey, 1898-1939)
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Catherine was named the ‘moral heir’, responsible for preserving Christian Dior’s artistic heritage; a task that she took on with her characteristic loyalty, ensuring that his autobiography remained in print, and that his couture creations would be preserved in various archives, as well as supporting the establishment of the Dior museum in Granville.
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Justine Picardie (Miss Dior: A Wartime Story of Courage and Couture)
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2012 ad-supported services such as Spotify paid artists $0.0048 per track. One hundred thousand people listen to your track, and you make less than $500.
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Jonathan Taplin (Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy)
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Of course, these are genetic/historical generalizations which do not precisely match any specific family. The gracious goddess/hostile giant archetypes are not activated in cases where the mother is cold, rejecting, embittered etc. and the father is the warm, supportive figure. The imprints on the first and second circuits are statistically deviant in such families and anything may result — a shaman, a schizophrenic, a genius, a homosexual, an artist, a psychologist, etc.
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Robert Anton Wilson (Prometheus Rising)
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Support all singers, musicians, photographers, dancers, painters, poets and writers. We don't fight wars. We spread love in the world.
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Avijeet Das
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When artists choose to support rather than compete, they forge bonds of artistic kinship that transcend envy, laying the foundation for a legacy of collective brilliance.
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Henry Johnson Jr
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Fiona McCrae at Graywolf Press. The artistic freedom and support offered by her and all the folks at Graywolf have been a gift. My agent, Melanie Jackson, is my guide, keeper and first reader. She and Fiona are family to me.
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Percival Everett (James)
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207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018
Call – +91 7022122121
Veeraloka Books is a notable Kannada publishing house that has been at the front of advancing Kannada writing and culture. Laid out with the vision of carrying Kannada scholarly works to a more extensive crowd, it has cut a specialty for itself in the hearts of perusers who are energetic about Kannada language, writing, and legacy. Veeraloka Books has contributed essentially to saving the etymological variety and scholarly lavishness of Karnataka by distributing a great many books that take care of perusers of any age and interests.
Background and History Veeraloka Books was established with the intention of promoting Kannada literature through the publication of high-quality works across a variety of genres. Throughout the long term, it has become inseparable from Kannada writing, on account of its obligation to bringing both work of art and contemporary scholarly works to perusers. Veeraloka Books has been an important part of the Kannada literary community by fostering new talent and providing a platform for established authors.
Extensive variety of Distributions
One of the vital qualities of Veeraloka Books is its different inventory. The distributing house has a broad assortment of works, including books, brief tales, verse, papers, plays, kids' writing, interpretations, and scholastic books. It has published works by both established and upcoming Kannada authors, giving readers a glimpse into a variety of Kannada culture, history, and contemporary life.
Through its translation series, Veeraloka Books is proud to introduce readers to literary masterpieces in other languages. These interpretations improve the Kannada artistic scene as well as advance multifaceted comprehension. Also, they distribute scholastic and exploration situated books that add to the review and comprehension of Kannada writing, language, and history.
Advancing Kannada Writing
As well as distributing books, Veeraloka Books effectively advances Kannada publishing through different occasions, book fairs, artistic celebrations, and studios. These occasions give a stage to writers to interface with perusers, examine scholarly patterns, and move sprouting essayists. The distributing house's contribution in such exercises mirrors its devotion to cultivating a dynamic scholarly culture in Karnataka.
Supporting New Authors
Veeraloka Books is known for its endeavors to empower and uphold new essayists. By giving them chances to distribute their works, it sustains new ability and guarantees that the Kannada abstract practice keeps on prospering. The distributing house offers direction and publication backing to maturing creators, assisting them with refining their specialty and contact a more extensive crowd.
Quality and Stylish Allure
One more sign of Veeraloka Books is the quality and stylish allure of its distributions. The books are known for their top notch printing, rich cover plans, and careful altering, which make them a delight to peruse and gather. This emphasis on quality improves the perusing experience as well as builds up the distributing house's standing for greatness.
In conclusion, Veeraloka Books has had a significant influence on the literature of Kannada. Its obligation to advancing Kannada writing, supporting new journalists, and distributing different, top notch works has made it a darling name among perusers and writers the same. Veeraloka Books is at the forefront of preserving and fostering Karnataka's rich linguistic and literary heritage as Kannada publishing continues to evolve.
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Kannada Publishing
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SHADOW ARTISTS ONE OF OUR CHIEF needs as creative beings is support. Unfortunately, this can be hard to come by. Ideally, we would be nurtured and encouraged first by our nuclear family and then by ever-widening circles of friends, teachers, well-wishers. As young artists, we need and want to be acknowledged for our attempts and efforts as well as for our achievements and triumphs. Unfortunately, many artists never receive this critical early encouragement. As a result, they may not know they are artists at all. Parents seldom respond, “Try it and see what happens” to artistic urges issuing from their offspring. They offer cautionary advice where support might be more to the point. Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets. There, caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, shadow artists are born. I am thinking here of Edwin, a miserable millionaire trader whose joy in life comes from his art collection. Strongly gifted in the visual arts, he was urged as a child to go into finance. His father bought him a seat on the stock exchange for his twenty-first birthday. He has been a trader ever since. Now in his mid-thirties, he is very rich and very poor. Money cannot buy him creative fulfillment. Surrounding himself with artists and artifacts, he is like the kid with his nose pressed to the candy-store window. He would love to be more creative but believes that is the prerogative of others, nothing he can aspire to for himself. A generous man, he recently gifted an artist with a year’s living expenses so she could pursue her dreams. Raised to believe that the term artist could not apply to him, he cannot make that same gift for himself.
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Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
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Veeraloka Book House - A Center point of Kannada Writing
207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018
Call – +91 7022122121
Veeraloka kannada bookshop is a famous objective for admirers of Kannada writing, known for its rich assortment and commitment to advancing territorial works. Arranged in the core of Karnataka, this notable bookshop fills in as a social guide, offering perusers admittance to probably the best works in Kannada writing. Whether you're an enthusiastic peruser, an understudy, or a specialist, Veeraloka Book House has turned into the go-to put for anybody looking for quality Kannada books.
A Tradition of Kannada Writing
Veeraloka Book House was established with the mission of safeguarding and advancing Kannada writing. Throughout the long term, it has become something other than a bookshop — it has transformed into a social establishment. The book shop invests heavily in being one of only a handful of exceptional spots where one can track down uncommon and exemplary works, contemporary books, and instructive materials across the board place. It has contributed altogether to supporting the Kannada language by making writing open to perusers of any age and foundations.
A Tremendous Assortment
One of the greatest draws of Veeraloka Book House is its broad assortment of books. The shop brags a wide cluster types, including verse, books, verifiable works, life stories, expositions, and examination materials. From the compositions of antiquated Kannada artists like Pampa and Ranna to current creators like Kuvempu, U.R. Ananthamurthy, and Girish Karnad, Veeraloka Book House takes care of a wide range of scholarly preferences.
Other than writing, the shop additionally offers reading material, scholarly works, youngsters' writing, and books on way of thinking, otherworldliness, and self-advancement. This guarantees that the bookshop isn't just for easygoing perusers yet in addition for researchers and understudies looking for information on a large number of subjects.
Support for Arising Scholars
Veeraloka Book House has likewise turned into a stage for maturing writers. The book shop frequently has book dispatches, verse readings, and scholarly conversations, offering new essayists a chance to introduce their work to a more extensive crowd. This has made the bookshop a huge piece of Karnataka's scholarly biological system. By supporting arising creators, it guarantees that the fate of Kannada writing keeps on thriving.
Local area Commitment and Occasions
Aside from being a spot for purchasing books, Veeraloka kannada bookshop assumes a vital part in drawing in with the neighborhood local area. The book shop oftentimes arranges scholarly occasions, studios, and conversations, welcoming perusers, authors, and learned people to share their adoration for Kannada writing. These occasions advance perusing as well as encourage a feeling of social character and pride among Kannada speakers.
Online Presence
With regards to present day patterns, Veeraloka kannada bookshop has embraced the computerized world by making its assortment accessible on the web. This permits Kannada perusers from across the globe to get to their number one books with only a couple of snaps. The web-based entry is easy to understand and gives definite portrayals of each book, guaranteeing that clients have a simple and consistent shopping experience.
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Veeraloka Book House is something other than a book shop; it is an image of Karnataka's rich scholarly legacy. With its wide assortment, support for arising essayists, and profound commitment with the local area, the shop keeps on being a treasured spot for anybody energetic about Kannada writing. Whether you visit face to face or peruse its broad web-based assortment, Veeraloka Book House offers an advancing encounter for all book sweethearts.
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veeralokabooks
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Lindsay Massaro, based in New Jersey, is celebrated as an adept art teacher known for her mastery in classroom management and private art instruction. Her extensive experience has refined her knack for cultivating a supportive and inspiring environment, enabling students to explore and enhance their artistic abilities under her expert guidance.
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Lindsay Massaro NJ
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Entertainment industry doesn’t need someone who is truthful, speaks their mind and has right moral compass. Because the industry is build, sponsored and supported by corporates. The corporates that exploit, extort, bully, human traffic, money laundering ,promotes prostitution and drug use. The corporates that are into dark, evil, abnormally, scary, shameful, disgusting, cults, shady , bad things. If you are talented and good person . They clip your winds, block your shine, destroy you before you rise. That is why there is gate keepers. It is never about art , skill or talent. It is about the person.
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De philosopher DJ Kyos
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207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018
Call – +91 7022122121
History and Mission
Veeralokabooks is an eminent web-based book shop that takes care of the necessities of Kannada book devotees, offering a wide choice of scholarly works in the Kannada language. With a rich history and a mission to advance Kannada writing and culture, Veeralokabooks has turned into a go-to objective for perusers looking to submerge themselves in the different universe of Kannada books. In this article, we investigate the meaning of Buy Kannada books, the range of types accessible at Veeralokabooks, and the advantages of supporting neighborhood book shops like this one.
1. Prologue to Veeralokabooks
About Veeralokabooks
On the off chance that you're a book lover with an adoration for everything Kannada, Veeralokabooks is your one-stop objective for scholarly fortunes. Envision a comfortable shelter loaded up with pages murmuring stories of Karnataka's rich culture and legacy — that is Veeralokabooks for you.
History and Mission
Veeralokabooks isn't simply one more book shop; it's a purposeful venture committed to praising and advancing the excellence of Kannada language and writing. Established with a mission to make Kannada books effectively open and to protect the pith of the language, Veeralokabooks is a safe house for book fans and culture devotees the same.
2. The Significance of Buy Kannada books
Advancing Kannada Language and Culture
Buy Kannada books , you assume a crucial part in advancing and saving the rich embroidery of Karnataka's language and culture. Each book is a little step towards guaranteeing that Kannada proceeds to flourish and develop for people in the future to love.
Safeguarding Abstract Legacy
Kannada writing has a set of experiences as lively as the actual state. Purchasing Kannada books helps in protecting this artistic legacy, guaranteeing that the voices of Kannada writers, writers, and narrators reverberate into the indefinite future. Each page turned is a sign of approval for the tradition of Kannada writing.
3. Different Scope of Kannada Books Accessible
Writing and Fiction
Veeralokabooks offers a different assortment of Kannada writing and fiction, from immortal works of art to contemporary jewels. Plunge into the supernatural universe of Kannada narrating and let your creative mind take off through the expressions of gifted creators.
True to life and Instructive Books
Extend your insight with Veeralokabooks' scope of genuine and instructive Kannada books. Whether you're keen on history, science, or expressions, there's something for everybody to learn and investigate in the immense assortment of instructive Kannada books.
4. Advantages of Supporting Neighborhood Book shops like Veeralokabooks
Local area Effect
By supporting neighborhood book shops like Veeralokabooks, you're adding to the energetic artistic local area of Kannada devotees. Your buys support the store as well as help in encouraging an adoration for Kannada writing inside the local area.
Customized Administration and Suggestions
At Veeralokabooks, you can expect customized administration and suggestions custom-made to your scholarly inclinations. The enthusiastic group behind the book shop is consistently prepared to direct you through the racks and assist you with finding your next most loved Kannada read.
5. The most effective method to Buy Kannada Books from Veeralokabooks
Internet Requesting Interaction
Prepared to jump into the universe of Kannada writing? Purchasing books from Veeralokabooks is pretty much as simple as partaking in a hot cup of channel espresso on a stormy day. Essentially visit their site, peruse the broad assortment of Kannada books, add your top picks to your truck, and continue to checkout. Presto! Your scholarly fortunes will before long be en route to your doorstep.
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veeralokabooks
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Preamble
The Klassik Era was a cultural and musical revolution that swept through Kenya and East Africa in the early 2010s. It was a time of bold experimentation, fearless expression, and unapologetic individuality that challenged the norms of mainstream music and culture. For the first time, young people from the ghettos and slums of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu could see themselves represented and celebrated in the music and arts scene, and their voices and stories were given a platform like never before.
The Klassik Era was characterized by a fusion of different musical genres and styles, from hip-hop and reggae to dancehall and afro-pop, to create a sound that was uniquely Kenyan and African. It was a time when young artists and producers like Blame It On Don (DON SANTO), Kingpheezle, Jilly Beatz, Tonnie Tosh, Kenny Rush, and many others came together under Klassik Nation, a record label that would change the face of Kenyan music forever.
The Klassik Era was also marked by a sense of community and camaraderie, with young people from all walks of life coming together to support each other's art and creativity. It was a time when collaborations and features were the norm, and when artists and producers worked together to create something new and exciting.
But the Klassik Era was not without its challenges and controversies. It was a time when the Kenyan music industry was dominated by a few powerful players who controlled the airwaves and the mainstream narrative, and who were resistant to change and innovation. It was a time when artists and producers had to fight tooth and nail to get their music played on the radio and to gain recognition and respect from their peers.
Despite these challenges, the Klassik Era left an indelible mark on the Kenyan music industry and on the cultural landscape of Africa. It was a time of creativity, passion, and rebellion that inspired a generation of young people to dream big and to believe that anything was possible. This book is a tribute to that era and to the artists and producers who made it all possible.
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Don Santo (Klassik Era: The Genesis)
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I learned that the Canadian government is very supportive of their native artists. As a rule, at least half of the play list played on Canadian radio stations must be of national origin and any non-Canadian headlining artists must include at least one national act on their bill. This kind of support has established Canada as a creatively fertile ground for some of music’s greatest artists. The
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Rudy Sarzo (Off the Rails: Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz)
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When he shifted a few minutes later and lifted her against his chest, she did not protest but looped her arms around his neck, and that was a kind of trust too. He carried her to her porch swing and sat at one end so her back was supported by the pillows banking the arm of the swing. He set the swing in motion and gathered her close until she drifted away into sleep. Val stayed on that swing long after the woman in his arms had fallen asleep, knowing he was stealing a pleasure from her he should not. He’d never been in her cottage, though, and was reluctant to invade her privacy. Or so he told himself. In truth, the warm, trusting weight of Ellen FitzEngle in his arms anchored him on a night when he’d been at risk of wandering off, of putting just a little more space between his body and his soul; his intellect and his emotions. Darius had delivered a telling blow when he’d characterized music, and the piano, as an imaginary friend. And it was enough, Val realized, to admit no creative art could meet the artist’s every need or fulfill every wish. Ellen FitzEngle wasn’t going to be able to do that either, of course; that wasn’t the point. The point, Val mused as he carefully lifted Ellen against his chest and made his way into her cottage, was that life yet held pleasures and mysteries and interest for him. He would get through the weekend at Belmont’s on the strength of that insight. As he tucked a sleeping Ellen into her bed and left a good-night kiss on her cheek, Val silently sent up a prayer of thanks. By trusting him with her grief, Ellen had relieved a little of his own.
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Grace Burrowes (The Virtuoso (Duke's Obsession, #3; Windham, #3))
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When Galileo made his astonishing discovery of mountains on the moon, his telescope didn’t actually have enough magnifying power to support that finding. Instead, he recognized the zigzag pattern separating the light and dark areas of the moon. Other astronomers were looking through similar telescopes, but only Galileo “was able to appreciate the implications of the dark and light regions,” Simonton notes. He had the necessary depth of experience in physics and astronomy, but also breadth of experience in painting and drawing. Thanks to artistic training in a technique called chiaroscuro, which focuses on representations of light and shade, Galileo was able to detect mountains where others did not.
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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For he has faith enough, he feels, if he were really to delve into himself, faith enough to move mountains, but he cannot manage to put his back into it. Once in a while the need to create wells up in him, the longing to see a part of himself set free in a work by him, and for days at a time his being can be tensed with joyous, titanic efforts to mold the clay into his Adam. But he is never able to shape him into a semblance of his image, he does not have enough stamina to maintain the self-discipline that it demands. It make take weeks for him to give up the work, but he does give it up, and irritably asks himself why he should keep on: what more does he have to gain? He has enjoyed the pleasure of creation, the tedium of upbringing remains, to nurse, nurture, and support entirely - why? for whom? He is no pelican, he says. But whatever he says, he is still ill at ease and feels that he has not done justice to the expectations he has of himself. It doesn’t help him to confront these expectations and try to doubt that their demands on him are justified. He is faced with a choice, and he must choose; for life is such that when the first youth is gone, sooner or later - depending on the natural disposition of the person - sooner or later a day dawns when resignation comes to you like a seducer and tempts you, and you have to say farewell to the impossible and accept it.
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Jens Peter Jacobsen
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We’ll need to speak to Irene, and your mother,” I asserted. “If either one of them rejects this idea, there is no way we will succeed. Any potential heirs to either throne--hawk or cobra--must be raised in the same mixed-blood land, or people will feel they can still choose to be apart.”
Danica nodded, so I continued.
“Then I suppose we seek the approval of our respective courts, and allow the information into the markets. Once we are sure we have support, we can consult with architects, artists, whoever we need to try to bring this place we are imagining to life.”
After that, we ate breakfast in silence, sifting through our thoughts like children going through colored stones--optimistic, because although some were too dark and some were too sharp, many glittered like precious gems.
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Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (Snakecharm (The Kiesha'ra, #2))
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Even though it is made up of a for-profit and a non-profit sector, the world of art is an industry just like any other. All of its supporting institutions, including philanthropy, contribute to its perpetuation and growth as such, and all those who contribute to its economy by facilitating the production and distribution of art products, including and especially artists, are wholly unexceptional in their support for and exploitation by it. The role of art and artists within this multibillion-dollar industry is to serve capital—just like everyone else.
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Lise Soskolne
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When John Grisham finished A Time to Kill, he pitched it to forty different publishers who all rejected the book. Unfazed, he started working on a new novel. At this point, he’d had three years of practice and was beginning to understand that the creative life is a series of small steps more than any single giant leap. While working on his second book, Grisham published his first book with a short run of five thousand copies. When the publisher didn’t offer much support, he bought one thousand copies to market the book on his own. While promoting A Time to Kill, Grisham finished The Firm, which ended up with a major publisher and catapulted his career.
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Jeff Goins (Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age)
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My mother supported my every artistic ambition. I don't wonder why. I'm beyond grateful. But when I think of my grandparents barely surviving the war, I feel so pampered. What an indulgence to be an artist. So this is it, this is all I can offer, to the living and to the dead.
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Leela Corman (We All Wish For Deadly Force)
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But by the late twentieth century, with more Americans going to college, making more money, and, thanks to more affordable airfares, traveling to Europe and Asia, the market for art was expanding, as were the number of artists.18 A growing educated middle class had the money to support the ballooning number of galleries. David Brooks had noticed the blending of bohemian and bourgeois—or “bobo”—sensibilities in 2000.19 Gentrified neighborhoods are the urban habitus of the bobo, and art galleries are about as good a signifier of gentrification as wine and coffee bars. In fact, many wine and coffee bars in gentrified areas are art galleries where a revolving cast of local artists display their work. By the mid-2000s, “a new kind of ambition was taking hold,” writes Ann Fensterstock of Williamsburg in Art on the Block, a history of the turn-of-the-millennium New York art scene. There was “a thirst for critical attention in the wider, increasingly international art world. The notion of producing art for profit was no longer anathema.
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Kay S. Hymowitz (The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back)
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Once I’m finished writing a song, my job is done and my only input is: please perform it often and loudly and sell many, many copies. If I want to do an artist thing, then I’ll go write a song for myself and go perform it the way I want to. But if you buy it, you can do what you want to and I’ll be happy. I don’t want to be a producer or a performer, I want to be a writer. And letting it go after you’re done writing it is a big part of being a writer. I’ve never had any problems with the way any of my songs have been recorded and I’m not sure I’d tell you even if I did. My mama says, “Don’t shit where you eat.” I’m pretty hopeful and confident about the future. I think I’ll continue to make a good living at this and have lots of fun. Unlike performing, this is a field you can grow old in. The performers have to put up with the youth culture bullshit more and more lately which is one reason MTV looks so good and sounds so bad. But the writers can be old and ugly ’cause no one ever sees them. A lot of writers are in their fifties or sixties. I see myself like that one day. But whether I’m successful or unsuccessful, this is something I have to do. I mean that. If I don’t spend a certain part of most days with the music, I get very unhappy and cranky. I’d do it even if I weren’t getting paid for it. So right now, I am very grateful that I don’t have to have a day job to support my songwriting habit.
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Marisa Bowe (Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs)
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This necessitated each village be self-supporting and self-sustaining. And, if you looked at 1100’s Europe, you would see that the types of jobs and professions the villagers took on reflected this fact. You had the butcher, the farmer, the blacksmith, the clothier, the knight, the baker, the goldsmith and of course the all-important grog maker. Everybody had a job or a task that carried their weight in the village. What you did NOT have was the professional activist, the social worker, the starving artist, the trophy wife, the socialite or the village welfare bum. Everybody had a job and everybody’s job provided vital and required services and products to the village. Now, the reason we understand this is because a village is a small enough entity for us to wrap our brains around. We see the little village with the little cows and the village people walking in the muddy streets. But ask yourself this question: How is a country any different than a village?
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Aaron Clarey (Worthless)
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The art stream is filled with snags and has no volume so it has no support. If you finally choose art, no amount of reason or common sense can discourage you. You must selfishly carry on.
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Theresa Sjoquist (Yvonne Rust: Maverick Spirit)
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Washingtonians are a bunch of cultured, egotistical, lumpen-elitist snobs who live in their own dream world completely divorced from the rest of the country. Everything they do had to show that they The Bureaucrats are superior to the poor miserable souls in the rest of the country who only exist to pay for their masters’ existence. To ensure this, the government provides cultural events galore for its workers. One need only visit the city and see all the galleries, theaters, orchestras, ballets, and other centers of artistic creation, happily supported by government grants, to discover how true this is.
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Bryan Taylor (The Three Sisters)
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When she’s in a courtroom, Wendy Patrick, a deputy district attorney for San Diego, uses some of the roughest words in the English language. She has to, given that she prosecutes sex crimes. Yet just repeating the words is a challenge for a woman who not only holds a law degree but also degrees in theology and is an ordained Baptist minister. “I have to say (a particularly vulgar expletive) in court when I’m quoting other people, usually the defendants,” she admitted.
There’s an important reason Patrick has to repeat vile language in court. “My job is to prove a case, to prove that a crime occurred,” she explained. “There’s often an element of coercion, of threat, (and) of fear. Colorful language and context is very relevant to proving the kind of emotional persuasion, the menacing, a flavor of how scary these guys are. The jury has to be made aware of how bad the situation was. Those words are disgusting.”
It’s so bad, Patrick said, that on occasion a judge will ask her to tone things down, fearing a jury’s emotions will be improperly swayed.
And yet Patrick continues to be surprised when she heads over to San Diego State University for her part-time work of teaching business ethics. “My students have no qualms about dropping the ‘F-bomb’ in class,” she said. “The culture in college campuses is that unless they’re disruptive or violating the rules, that’s (just) the way kids talk.”
Experts say people swear for impact, but the widespread use of strong language may in fact lessen that impact, as well as lessen society’s ability to set apart certain ideas and words as sacred. . . .
[C]onsider the now-conversational use of the texting abbreviation “OMG,” for “Oh, My God,” and how the full phrase often shows up in settings as benign as home-design shows without any recognition of its meaning by the speakers. . . .
Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert in San Antonio, in a blog about workers cleaning up their language, cited a 2012 Career Builder survey in which 57 percent of employers say they wouldn’t hire a candidate who used profanity. . . .
She added, “It all comes down to respect: if you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, you shouldn’t say it to your client, your boss, your girlfriend or your wife.”
And what about Hollywood, which is often blamed for coarsening the language?
According to Barbara Nicolosi, a Hollywood script consultant and film professor at Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian school, lazy script writing is part of the explanation for the blue tide on television and in the movies. . . .
By contrast, she said, “Bad writers go for the emotional punch of crass language,” hence the fire-hose spray of obscenities [in] some modern films, almost regardless of whether or not the subject demands it. . . . Nicolosi, who noted that “nobody misses the bad language” when it’s omitted from a script, said any change in the industry has to come from among its ranks: “Writers need to have a conversation among themselves and in the industry where we popularize much more responsible methods in storytelling,” she said. . . .
That change can’t come quickly enough for Melissa Henson, director of grass-roots education and advocacy for the Parents Television Council, a pro-decency group. While conceding there is a market for “adult-themed” films and language, Henson said it may be smaller than some in the industry want to admit.
“The volume of R-rated stuff that we’re seeing probably far outpaces what the market would support,” she said. By contrast, she added, “the rate of G-rated stuff is hardly sufficient to meet market demands.” . . .
Henson believes arguments about an “artistic need” for profanity are disingenuous. “You often hear people try to make the argument that art reflects life,” Henson said. “I don’t hold to that. More often than not, ‘art’ shapes the way we live our lives, and it skews our perceptions of the kind of life we're supposed to live."
[DN, Apr. 13, 2014]
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Mark A. Kellner
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Nudity in art was rarely contested by the church until recently. It was not explicitly condemned until the anti-Protestant Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, and even after the Reformation, the Protestant church continued to support artistic uses of nudity, especially when depicting biblical scenes that might demand it for accuracy.
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Douglas M. Beaumont (The Message Behind the Movie: How to Engage with a Film Without Disengaging Your Faith)
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May 19: At 2:00 p.m., Marilyn arrives at Madison Square Garden for a brief rehearsal. She departs to have her hair styled by Kenneth Battelle at a cost of $150. Then she returns to her New York apartment for a $125 makeup session with Marie Irvine. Finally, her maid, Hazel Washington, helps hook Marilyn into her Jean Louis gown, and she arrives at Madison Square Garden approximately three hours before she is to perform. Introduced to an audience of fifteen thousand as the “late Marilyn Monroe” after she delays her entrance (all part of the carefully rehearsed show), Marilyn performs flawlessly as the last of twenty-three entertainers and is clearly the highlight of the evening. Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen describes Marilyn as “making love to the president of the United States.” Marilyn also attends a party at the home of Arthur Krim, president of United Artists. She is photographed in a group of Kennedy supporters watching Diahann Carroll sing. To her right is Maria Callas and Arthur Miller’s father, Isidore. She is also photographed with both Robert and John Kennedy, as well as presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Schlesinger and Robert Kennedy playfully compete to dance with Marilyn. Contrary to sensationalistic reports, Marilyn spends the rest of the evening in her New York apartment with her friend Ralph Roberts and James Haspiel, one of her devoted fans.
”
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Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
“
In the well reported Kubizek period from late 1904 through mid-1908, with its additiona data from the circumstances of failure at school, lung ailment, and tragic episode of his mother’s death, the picture remains the same. Hitler’s character is one of bold license for a youngster, but not directed toward dissolute behavior or activity that gives a hint of evil. Hitler devoured grand opera and classical music, painted, sketched, planned a great new Linz; he wrote sonnets, communed with nature, and exuded politeness and reserve. These are activities and qualities that suggest potential, although overblown, aspirations to artistic genius. What we see, like it or not, is morally laudable behavior and aspiration on the part of a young man in his teens. But is there a dark side somewhere in this picture?
If there were a dark side, it probably would have been the light gray of the contempt that he had for many of his school teachers and his resistance to formal education. Hitler’s comments in Mein Kampf support such contempt and are buoyed by his indelible comment, about his tour of the customs office where his father worked, that the clerks and officials squatted about as monkeys in cages.
-- Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 101
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Russel H.S. Stolfi (Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny (German Studies))
“
The pervert is the clumsy artist trying desperately for a counter-illusion that preserves his individuality-but from within a limited talent and power: hence the fear of the sexual role, of being gobbled up by the woman, carried away by one's own body, and so on. As F. H. Allen-an earlier follower of Rank-pointed out, the homosexual is often one who chooses a body like his own because of his terror of the difference of the woman, his lack of strength to support such a difference. In fact, we might say that the pervert represents a striving for individuality precisely because he does not feel individual at all and has little power to sustain an identity. Perversions represent an impoverished and ludicrous claim for a sharply defined personality by those least equipped by their early developmental training to exercise such a claim. If, as Rank says, perversions are a striving for freedom, we must add that they usually represent such a striving by those least equipped to be able to stand freedom. They flee the species slavery not out of strength but out of weakness, an inability to support the purely animal side of their nature. As we saw above, the childhood experience is crucial in developing a secure sense of one's body, firm identification with the father, strong ego control over oneself, and dependable interpersonal skills. Only if one achieves these can he "do the species role" in a self-forgetful way, a way that does not threaten to submerge him with annihilation anxiety.
”
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Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)
“
Wieland hosted a “quilt-in” at her New York City loft and invited friends, including Canadian expatriates, to help sew La raison avant la passion as a gift for Trudeau.58 The following year, she hosted a huge party attended by Canadian expatriates, various New York artists and writers, and Trudeau himself. Throughout the late 1960s, Wieland had both an artistic and personal relationship with Trudeau. This was unusual because very few artists, if any, had such a close relationship with the prime minister and because what appears to be Wieland’s fascination with Trudeau was, I would argue, far more complex than simple adoration. It seems clear that Wieland had initially been both fascinated by Trudeau-the-person and supportive of his campaign for Liberal leader. She formed a group in New York City, for example, called Canadians Abroad for Trudeau, and, in a 1986 interview, she told Barbara Stevenson that she had initially supported his leadership campaign.59 After Trudeau became prime minister in 1968, however, Wieland’s opinion shifted as she increasingly expressed skepticism towards him and his governing philosophy to the point that, by 1986, she referred to him as a “psychopath.”60 Wieland
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Lynda Jessup (Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Book 14) (Volume 14))
“
what are we to say about the Catholic military chaplain who administered mass to the Catholic bomber pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki in 1945? Father George Zabelka, chaplain for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb squadrons, later came to repent of his complicity in the bombing of civilians, but his account of that time is a stunning judgment on the church’s acquiescence in violence. To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as 1 see it…. I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best—at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…. Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t. I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, “The Great Artiste,” was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, and prerogative violence, all in the name of our Lord. I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching and destroyed his world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process that began with Constantine reached its lowest point—so far.4 It is difficult to read such accounts without recalling the story of Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem, because “the things that make for peace” were hidden from their eyes (Luke 19:41
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Richard B. Hays (The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics)
“
This might sound like a dream for a seventeen-year-old boy, and I won’t deny enjoying the attention, but professionally it was a nightmare. My game began to unravel. I caught myself thinking about how I looked thinking instead of losing myself in thought. The Grandmasters, my elders, were ignored and scowled at me. Some of them treated me like a pariah. I had won eight national championships and had more fans, public support and recognition than I could dream of, but none of this was helping my search for excellence, let alone for happiness. At a young age I came to know that there is something profoundly hollow about the nature of fame. I had spent my life devoted to artistic growth and was used to the sweaty-palmed sense of contentment one gets after many hours of intense reflection. This peaceful feeling had nothing to do with external adulation, and I yearned for a return to that innocent, fertile time. I missed just being a student of the game,
”
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Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance)
“
In 2011, I interviewed a skilful young manga artist who asked me not to reveal his name because he still needs to defer to his seniors in the industry. He has had some considerable publishing success, and explained that, although the competitions are in theory open, in practice he now feels he needs to work first for the company that has supported him, and this also influences his choice of subject matter.
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Joy Hendry (Understanding Japanese Society (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies))
“
True Fans are, loyal & unconditional
(Support deserves acknowledging)
Never let your success get the best of you!!! T.B
”
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Tawana Beecham
“
All this is quite dangerous. ISIS is no more absurd a movement than was National Socialism in 1932. How many Germans, versed in their Goethe and Schiller, ever believed that a paint-by-numbers artist like Hitler, a former chicken farmer such as Himmler, or a failed academic like Goebbels would soon be turning Weimar Germany into a rogue state that would murder its own sick, disabled, and non-Aryan? Radical Islamists of all stripes support ISIS, if occasionally uneasy about its methodologies. Soon, if ISIS consolidates a caliphate of sorts, it will win over more adherents, who appreciate that it has flummoxed the West and restored pride to millions who either hated the West or were forced to move to the West in humiliation. ISIS is nursed by Western diffidence at best and at worst by the sort of contextualization and rationalization embraced by Obama. Every time he fails to note that Coptic Egyptians are beheaded precisely because they are Christians, or that Jews are killed by reason of being Jews, ISIS takes note. Each time he remonstrates with Christians for their moral high horses, or cites poverty as the root cause of “violent extremism,” or retreats into the distant past in desperate efforts to remind Westerners of their own comparable sins, ISIS takes note. Each time Obama hesitates, issues and then forgets about threats, or slashes defense, ISIS takes note. And if Obama continues, soon a 400-million-person Middle East will take note as well. Millions may not like ISIS, just as millions once were somewhat bothered by Hitler. They may prefer that its beheadings remain untelevised, or may frown on burning someone alive when the firing squad would do. But they most certainly will like the power, territory, and fear that ISIS commands — and the utter helplessness that follows in the once haughty West.
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Anonymous
“
Once upon a time, taking photos using rolls of photographic film was the done thing, as were using keypads that took up 40 percent of the front of your mobile phone and having to return a rented DVD by 6 p.m. the following day. What’s meaningful today can become meaningless tomorrow, not because it no longer works but because what people believe and how they think, act and feel change. The context surrounding what works is in sync with the beliefs and behaviours of the people who support it. As businesspeople, innovators, artists and creators, we have two choices. We can simply keep giving customers what works today, or we can make it our business to understand where those people we serve want to go and take them there.
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Bernadette Jiwa (Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly)
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No matter how good you are at self-evaluating, asking your peers for help and criticism is incredibly important. Setting up a good productivity-enabling support network around you will motivate you more than you could ever imagine, and constructive criticism along with self-awareness is the pathway to personal growth.
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Jessica Hische (In Progress: See Inside a Lettering Artist's Sketchbook and Process, from Pencil to Vector)
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Banks listed the conventional-wisdom explanations for the Renaissance: Prosperity, which provided money and markets to support art Peace, which provided the stability to seek artistic and philosophical progress Freedom, which liberated artists from state or religious control Social mobility, which allowed talented poor people to enter the arts The paradigm thing, which brought new perspectives and mediums that created a wave of originality and expression.
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Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else)
“
It was fair to say almost everyone was burned out by now. Morale was so low that the team, as a whole, didn’t crunch. The artists didn’t need to review their work in meetings anymore because everyone had the Warcraft look-and-feel down; they just moved from one art task to the next. Programming inched forward, mole-like, worrying only about the task immediately in front of them. Releasing the game in February didn’t look likely anymore. That meant more time crunching and bug hunting, and few were happy at the prospect. The game designers had the functionality they needed, but wowedit’s tools weren’t streamlined because David Ray had been reassigned to working on the god tool, an application that would be used by our GMs for in-game customer support. Most of the designers were too busy to socialize. The classes and combat were getting overhauled again, and the item system was getting revisited by adding procedurally created items to keep the loot tables feeling fresh. This meant possible delays for the friends-and-family alpha test, and everyone was tired of telling their nearest and dearest that our game wasn’t ready to play yet (and that they’d be the first to know when it was). Even the producers had resigned themselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be shipping in the first quarter of 2004. They were seeing stability problems, and we were having a hard time getting a playable build. This made things especially hard for the game designers, who needed to test their data, but no one was really coming down on the programmers, as they were already haggard. Nevertheless, when the game crashed, people were getting visibly upset. Our shipping date was pushed to June, although some people doubted even that was possible.
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John Staats (The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development)
“
When defensiveness starts, learning stops. The Critical Response Process emphasizes the benefits of getting artists to think about their work in a fresh way, as opposed to telling them how to improve their work or asking them to defend it. This aim is supported by the discipline of the neutral question.
”
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Liz Lerman (Critical Response Process: a method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert)
“
A work is shaped not only by the artist, but by everyone who interacts with it; it belongs a little to everyone. This, too, is how a life is made: with the support of many hands.
”
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Zeyn Joukhadar (The Thirty Names of Night)
“
For that particular session, everyone said they picked it because of the word entitled in the descriptor. They’d all encountered people who acted entitled at Pixar—people who insisted on having their own piece of equipment, even if it could be shared, or who groused that they couldn’t bring their dogs to work. “This is a job,” one animator said. “A great job. We are well paid. These people need to wake up.” What was most striking to those in attendance at the “Great Workplace” session was how much they had in common. The Systems guy told a story about answering a frantic call for tech support. He rushed over to assess the problem, only to be told by the aggrieved artist that the machine should be fixed during lunch—because that’s when it would be most convenient for her. “I need to eat lunch, too,” he told the group, as everyone nodded their heads. The chef told a similar story about a last-minute request to cater a working lunch that came without any acknowledgement of the hassle (and hustle) it would require of her staff.
”
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
To Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois, Bigger Thomas was more stereotype than sociology; to White Chicago, he just inspired fear. The deepest impact of Wright’s success, though, was that he’d achieved it without the Rosenwald Fund, the NAACP, or any of the other institutional sources that usually supported black artists.
”
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Thomas Dyja (The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream)
“
For many centuries, nobles and magnates supported artists, musicians and authors so that their creative works would be dedicated to them.
”
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Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)
“
Find Your Art Family. That means that there is space for everyone's art in this big beautiful world, you just need to find members of your Art Family - artists and art lovers who are interested in work that resonates with your own and who will support what you need for your individual process. These folks might be found in large cities, or down small country lanes. They might be produced in Los Angeles, California or Austin, Texas or Omaha, Nebraska. Once you find a creative home with them, then you will be able to do your best work because you will be valued and you will lift each other up. As Paula Vogel says, Circles Rise Together. Once you find the right family circle for you, you will do your best work.
”
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Jacqueline Goldfinger
“
I asked her why she didn’t pursue her love for writing full-time and how she managed to find time to write her book with her nine-to-five job. “Right now, I’m a better artist when I know how I’m going to pay my rent and buy my bus pass and all that,” Janet told me. “I also know some people who feel like better artists when their income is dependent on their art because it forces them into action, and maybe one day I’ll feel like that. For me, it’s really great right now to not worry about where my income is coming from, because I’ve gotten really stressed about that in the past when I was having trouble supporting myself. Right now, I feel like I have the best of both worlds. I’m learning what I’m supposed to be learning from my paid work, while I also pursue my creative goals on a concurrent track.
”
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Adam Smiley Poswolsky (The Quarter-Life Breakthrough: Invent Your Own Path, Find Meaningful Work, and Build a Life That Matters)
“
review some fundamentals: 1. We must continue doing our best to control expenses. Every dollar we save on expenses goes directly to the bottom line. That is what all of us should be concerned about, or you are at the wrong firm. Expenses should be watched at all times, but especially when business is good. 2. We must continue to be alert for scams and con artists. We must watch for unusual behavior by the people we work with. What is unusual behavior? Something subtle like somebody who drives a Rolls-Royce on a salary that can barely support roller skates. 3. Do the people you work with answer phone calls in a courteous manner? Are all phone calls returned? I couldn’t care less what a person does in his own home, but I am a nut about returning phone calls that are made to our personnel during the workday. I do not care if the caller is selling malaria. Calls must be returned! 4. Are the receptionists and telephone operators in all of our offices warm and courteous, and if they are, are they thanked appropriately? Remember that in most cases the first contact a client has with us is through a telephone operator or receptionist. 5. Do you and your associates leave word where you are at all times so that finding you is not like hunting for the Andrea Doria? 6.
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Alan C. Greenberg (Memos from the Chairman)
“
I close my eyes. I hear the voices of the past in the wind and in the beating of my heart. My two mothers, my two fathers, and my dear uncle all tried to tell me I was wrong about the People's Republic of China. In the beginning, going all the way back to the University of Chicago, I thought socialism and communism were good, that people should share equally, that it wasn't fair that my family had suffered in America when others drove fancy cars, lived in big houses, and shopped in Beverly Hills. I ran away and came here in hopes of finding an ideal world, to find my birth father, to avoid my mother and aunt, and to crush my guilt. None of that worked the way I expected. The ideal world was filled with hypocrisy and with people like Z.G., who went to parties while the masses suffered. In finding my birth father, I only remembered how wonderful my father Sam was. He loved me unconditionally, while Z.G. wanted me as a muse, as a pretty daughter to show off, as a physical manifestation of his love for Auntie May, as an artist who would reflect how great an artist he is. I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.
As I gaze into my daughter's face, everything becomes very clear. My mother and aunt loved me, stood by me, and supported me, no matter what. They were both good mothers. My greatest misery and grief is that I have not been a good mother and I can't save my daughter. I pray that in our final days and hours Samantha will know how much I love her.
”
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Lisa See (Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls, #2))
“
A study from the American Communities Project at the Michigan State University School of Journalism on rural counties published in 2019 found that the counties that are doing the best economically are those that welcome new immigrants. Immigrants open new businesses and inject local economies with much-needed energy. Counties that encourage artists to move in and build artistic communities also thrive. But Arkansans—and denizens of rural counties across the United States—vote and respond to national events in ways that are hostile to immigration, hostile to anyone from outside their own communities. They support presidents and senators and policies that would close the borders, cut taxes to nothing, and pass initiatives preventing schools from teaching about racism accurately.
”
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Monica Potts
“
Yet even years after 3Ball’s breakthrough, no other tribal groups have signed record deals. The industry only supports the trio, treating them as a singularity rather than as artists in an active genre. Who wouldn’t want to see neo-Aztec rave music nights in Las Vegas and Berlin? For this to happen 3Ball needs competition, peers.
”
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Jace Clayton (Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture)
“
If you work on your creativity, you will grow spiritually. If you work on your spirituality, you will grow creatively. Creativity and spirituality are so close they are intertwined. We call God ‘the Creator’ without realizing it is another word for ‘artist.’ The Creator is the consummate artist. As we explore and express our artistry, we are imitating God. Is it any wonder we begin to find spiritual support?
”
”
Julia Cameron (The Miracle of Morning Pages: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Most Important Artist's Way Tool)
“
Intellectual Fascism – 1/3
If fascism is defined as the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are white, Aryan, or male) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are black, Jewish, or female), and that therefore the "superior" individuals should have distinct politico-social privileges, then the vast majority of (American) liberals and so called antifascists are actually intellectual fascists. In fact, the more politico-economically liberal our citizens are, the more intellectually fascistic they often tend to be.
Intellectual fascism - in accordance with the above definition - is the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are intelligent, cultured, artistic, creative, or achieving) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are stupid, uncultured, unartistic, uncreative, or unachieving). The reason why the belief of the intellectual fascist, like that of the politico-social fascist, is arbitrary is simple: there is no objective evidence to support it. At bottom, it is based on value judgements or prejudices which are definitional in character and are not empirically validatable, nor is it falsifiable. It is a value chosen by a group of prejudiced people - and not necessarily by a majority.
This is not to deny that verifiable differences exist among various individuals. They certainly do. Blacks, in some ways, are different from whites; short people do differ from tall ones; stupid individuals can be separated from bright ones. Anyone who denies this, whatever his or her good intentions, is simply not accepting reality.
Human differences, moreover, usually have their distinct advantages. Under tropical conditions, the darkly pigmented blacks seem to fare better than do the lightly pigmented whites. At the same time, many blacks and fewer whites become afflicted with sickle-cell anaemia. When it comes to playing basketball, tall men are generally superior to short ones. But as jockeys and coxswains, the undersized have their day. For designing and operating electric computers, a plethora of gray matter is a vital necessity; for driving a car for long distances, it is likely to prove a real handicap.
Let us face the fact, then, that under certain conditions some human traits are more advantageous - or "better" - than some other traits. Whether we approve the fact or not, they are. All people, in today's world, may be created free, but they certainly are not created equal.
Granting that this is so, the important question is: Does the possession of a specific advantageous endowment make an individual a better human? Or more concretely: Does the fact that someone is an excellent athlete, artist, author, or achiever make him or her a better person? Consciously or unconsciously, both the "politico-social" and the "intellectual fascist" say yes to these questions.
This is gruesomely clear when we consider politico-social or lower-order fascists. For they honestly and openly not only tell themselves and the world that being white, Aryan, or male, or a member of the state-supported party is a grand and glorious thing; but, simultaneously, they just as honestly and openly admit that they despise, loathe, consider as scum of the earth individuals who are not so fortunate as to be in these select categories. Lower-order fascists at least have the conscious courage of their own convictions.
Not so, alas, intellectual or higher-order fascists. For they almost invariably pride themselves on their liberality, humanitarianism, and lack of arbitrary prejudice against certain classes of people. But underneath, just because they have no insight into their fascistic beliefs, they are often more vicious, in their social effects, than their lower-order counterparts.
”
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Albert Ellis
“
When the condottiere Francesco Sforza suddenly became Duke of Milan and struck the Peace of Lodi (1454), the golden age of the Renaissance started in earnest. Francesco offered military protection to his longtime friend Cosimo de’ Medici in exchange for financial support. The solid alliance between Milan and the Medici formed an axis of relative stability within the restless Italian peninsula and enhanced patronage of the arts and letters, sparking an explosion of artistic creativity and humanistic culture.
”
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Marcello Simonetta (The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded)
“
It is as if the sky were full of odd and even people, tastes of most diverse colors, life and a peripheral artistic scene that finds support in the tradition called kite time.
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Jean Mello (Exhaling Hope (Kindle Edition))
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Arranged marriages were like this. You move from your father’s home to your husband's house, trusting that the system has your back. Like the net that trapeze artists don’t see but know will catch them if they fall, the tradition and the community that endorses this practice is supposed to be the invisible net that supports every couple embarking on such a marriage purely based on their faith in their family’s good intentions.
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Ranjani Rao (Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery)
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WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE TO YOU? Success has a different meaning for each person. Most of the artists I work with say that they will consider themselves successful once they can support their family with their art. Some will only consider themselves successful when they have reached a desired achievement or have impacted the world in a positive way with their art. Only you can decide what success means to you. Below are examples of what success looks like to some people: Earning a healthy income to support a family Living a lifestyle that enables you to do the things you love Developing a reputation for creating meaningful art Making a true difference in the world with art Developing a technique that becomes a new standard in the art world Becoming known as the best in your genre
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Maria Brophy (Art Money & Success: A complete and easy-to-follow system for the artist who wasn't born with a business mind.)
“
I think it improper to talk about evil all during a meal. It spoils the digestion."
"Oh, but come," the Witch said, "is it only in youth that we can have the nerve to as, ourselves such serious questions?'
"Well, I stick with my suggestion," said Avaric. "Evil isn't doing bad things, it's feeling bad about them afterward. There's no absolute value to behavior. First of all -"
"Institutional inertia," claimed the Witch. "But whatever is the great attraction of absolute power anyway?"
"That's why I say it's merely an affliction of the psyche, like vanity or greed," said a copper magnate. "And we all know vanity and greed can produce some pretty astounding results in human affairs, not all of them reprehensible."
"It's an absence of good, that's all," said his paramour, an agony aunt for the Shiz informer. "The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace."
"Pigspittle," said Avaric. "Evil is an early or primitive stage of moral development. All children are fiends by nature. The criminals among us are only those who didn't progress..."
"I think it's a presence, not an absence," said an artist. "Evil's an incarnated character, an incubus or a succubus. It's an other. It's not us."
"Not even me?" said the Witch, playing the part more vigorously than she expected. "A self-confessed murderer?"
"Oh go on with you," said the artist, "we all of us show ourselves in our best light. That's just normal vanity."
"Evil isn't a thing, it's not a person, it's an attribute like beauty..."
"It's a power, like wind..."
"It's an infection..."
"It's metaphysical, essentially: the corruptibility of creation -"
"Blame it on the Unnamed God, then."
"But did the Unnamed God create evil intentionally, or was it just a mistake in creation?"
"it's not of air and eternity, evil isn't; it's of earth; it's physical, a disjointedness between our bodies and our souls. Evil is inanely corporeal, humans causing on another pain, no more no less -"
"I like pain, if I'm wearing calfskin chaps and have my wrists tied behind me -"
"No, you're all wrong, our childhood religion had it right: Evil is moral at its heart - the selection of vice over virtue; you can pretend no to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your conscience -"
"Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.
”
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Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
“
There is nothing more celebrated in the hood than the downfall of another person. How can you choose to be happy, because other people are failing to make it? We even have a saying that says another man’s loss is another man’s gain. Why can’t we all choose to gain and share? Choose to support everyone you know who is doing something. Even if they failed. By lifting others, we lift ourselves.
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D.J. Kyos
“
People are undermined and underestimating the hood, township, or projects.
But all these businesses are sustainable, booming, and flourishing because of the support from the hood.
If we can support each other the same way we support this business. Then we all can be rich in the hood.
We won’t have people giving back to the community if the community didn’t give them anything like support.
”
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D.J. Kyos
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This notion of the artist as better than other people is irritating, I admit. I remember how annoyed I was with myself, as a young man, when I first came across it, I think in connection with pronouncements by and about Goethe, Proust, and Ezra Pound. I felt, I think rightly that the people I know -my parents and friends- were as high-minded and decent as any poet. The poet's business, it seemed to me, is to celebrate or at least understand those people, not arrogantly raise himself above them, pompously proclaim himself the Romantic "great man" who imposes on the rest of poor miserable humanity the duty of groping through darkness, hunting out his footsteps. I would not now take that opinion back, but I might temper it a little. A thousand times since then I've been in conversations where no one seemed to care about the truth, where people argued merely to win, refused to listen or try to understand, threw in irrelevancies -some anecdote without conceivable bearing, some mere ego-flower. A thousand times I have heard some person -some casual acquaintance about whom I had no strong feeling- cruelly vilified, and have found that to rise in defense of mere fairness is to become, suddenly, the enemy. I have witnessed repeatedly, university battles in which no one on any side would stoop to plain truth. I have seen repeatedly, how positions which at first glance seem stirringly noble and idealistic, for example, the battle led by Cesar Chavez in California -can in an instant turn cunning and dishonest, seizing whatever means seem necessary, imagining the hoped-for end can remained untainted. I need not speak of the Republican and Democratic parties, mockers of the ordinary citizen's ideal, of America's support of tyranny and corruption, or of the astonishing greed and moral indifference of both public officials and some members of public, whether the payoff be bribery and preferment or those welfare checks drawn by the affluent in Florida on vacation. And sitting in rooms with other artists -sculptors, painters, composers, writers, people whose work I believe to be serious and authentic- I have noticed how frequently, if not infallibly, they react to all these varieties of falsity with stammering, fist-banging rage. In the redness of their faces, the pitch of their voices (not all, of course, shout; some speak quietly, a few make bitter jokes), these artists are not different from the typical Milwaukee banker speaking angrily of the Jews, or the racial fanatic speaking angrily of niggers or honkies; but what these artists care about -what they rave or mourn or bitterly joke about- is the forms of truth: justice, fairness, accuracy.
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John Gardner (On Moral Fiction)
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Soul Engraving (Rare) Those who utilise Soul Magic understand that the soul and the body are inextricably linked. This Skill utilises that fact to engrave spells, powers or skills onto the soul, enhancing them beyond the norm or allowing them to utilise abilities from other paths. The number of Engravings a soul can support is equal to the number of Classes unlocked. The Soulshade can support one additional engraving per ten Skill Levels. Mana cost varies based on Engraving. Engraving lasts for a number of Days equal to Willpower / 3.
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Ellake (Painted Path (The Runic Artist #2))
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Bianca Amato
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This boy wanted to know why he should go out of his way to support a woman who had just been sexually assaulted, because his first assumption was that she was probably lying. And it wasn’t just any hypothetical woman.
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Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
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The problem with this conspicuous support and subsequent mass-media coverage of manosphere ideology is that it legitimizes, and even sympathizes with, what is actually extreme misogyny.
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Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
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What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin.
One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit.
(28 January 1956)
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Frithjof Schuon
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A vision of sustainability acknowledges the damage incurred by the sole pursuit of wealth while trying to build an equitable system that can enable the production of socially valuable goods. The proliferation of crowdfunding Web sites, which allow people to back creative projects without expectation of financial return, are an encouraging development and a critical source of support to artists and tinkerers—yet they are no panacea.
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Astra Taylor (The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age)
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If anything, things are even more difficult for Christian artists. Some churches do not consider art a serious way to serve God. Others deny that Christians in the arts have a legitimate calling. As a result, Christian artists often feel like they have to justify their existence. Rather than providing a community of support, some churches surround them with a climate of suspicion.
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Philip Graham Ryken (Art for God's Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts)
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Supporting a creative artist can mean buying their books, music, art, movie, and photographs or just shouting out their name.
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Chris Mentillo (Obliterated: Everything is About To Change)
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AN ANSWER TO OUR QUESTION
Places of worship embody the aspirations of their architects, and the communities they represent, to ideal beauty. Their chosen means of expression feature color, geometry, and symmetry. Consider, in particular. the magnificent plate HH. Here the local geometry of the ambient surfaces and the local patterns of their color change as our gaze surveys them. It is a vibrant embodiment of anamorphy and anachromy-the very themes that our unveiling of Nature's deep design finds embodied at Nature's core.
Does the world embody beautiful ideas? There is our answer, before our eyes: Yes.
Color and geometry, symmetry, anachromy, and anamorphy, as ends in themselves, are only one branch of artistic beauty. Islam's injunction against representational art played an important part in bringing these forms of beauty to the fore, as did the physical constraint of structural stability (we need columns to support the weight of ceilings, and the arches and domes to distribute tension). Depictions of human faces, bodies, emotions, landscapes, historic scenes, and the like, when they are allowed, are far more common subjects for art than those austere beauties.
The world does not, in its deep design, embody all forms of beauty, nor the ones that people without special study, or very unusual taste, find most appealing. But the world does, in its deep design, embody some forms of beauty that have been highly prized for their own sake, and have been intuitively associated with the divine.
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Frank Wilczek (A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design)
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Having a kid, or supplying the sperm to fertilize an egg, and then not being around to offer support or guidance, doesn’t give you the right to say, “I’m your father.” You can say, “I’m the guy who made you,” but that’s about it.
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Terry Gross (All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists)
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The notion, popularized by classicist and romanticist critics alike, of the Attic theatre as the perfect example of a national theatre, and of its audiences as realizing the ideal of a whole people united in support of art, is a falsification of historical truth.33 The festival theatre of Athenian democracy was certainly no ‘people’s theatre’ —the German classical and romantic theorists could only represent it as such, because they conceived the theatre to be an educational institution. The true ‘people’s theatre’ of ancient times was the mime, which received no subvention from the state, in consequence did not have to take instructions from above, and so worked out its artistic principles simply and solely from its own immediate experience with the audiences. It offered its public not artistically constructed dramas of tragi-heroic manners and noble or even sublime personages, but short, sketchy, naturalistic scenes with subjects and persons drawn from the most trivial, everyday life. Here at last we have to do with an art which has been created not merely for the people but also in a sense by the people. Mimers may have been professional actors, but they remained popular and had nothing to do with the educated élite, at least until the mime came into fashion. They came from the people, shared their taste and drew upon their common sense. They wanted neither to educate nor to instruct, but to entertain their audience. This unpretentious, naturalistic, popular theatre was the product of a much longer and more continuous development, and had to its credit a much richer and more varied output than the official classical theatre; unfortunately, this output has been almost completely lost to us. Had these plays been preserved, we should certainly take quite a different view of Greek literature and probably of the whole of Greek culture from that taken now. The mime is not merely much older than tragedy; it is probably prehistoric in origin and directly connected with the symbolic-magical dances, vegetation rites, hunting magic, and the cult of the dead. Tragedy originates in the dithyramb, an undramatic art form, and to all appearances it got its dramatic form—involving the transformation of the performers into fictitious personages and the transposition of the epic past into present —from the mime. In tragedy, the dramatic element certainly always remained subordinate to the lyrical and didactic element; the fact that the chorus was able to survive shows that tragedy was not exclusively concerned to get dramatic effect and so was intended to serve other ends than mere entertainment.
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Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
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David Hockney, among other historians and advocates of the Hockney–Falco thesis, has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects. The often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer’s paintings have been linked to this possible use of a camera obscura, the primitive lens of which would produce halation. Exaggerated perspective can be seen in Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (London, Royal Collection). Vermeer’s interest in optics is also attested in this work by the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals. However, the extent of Vermeer’s dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians. There is no historical evidence. The detailed inventory of the artist’s belongings drawn up after his death does not include a camera obscura or any similar device. Scientific evidence is limited to inference. Philip Steadman has found six Vermeer paintings that are precisely the right size if they were inside a camera obscura where the back wall of his studio was where the images were projected.
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Johannes Vermeer (Masters of Art: Johannes Vermeer)
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It is significant to realize that the most creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing ones. The artist's studio, the researcher's laboratory, the scholar's library are each deliberately kept simple so as to support the complexities of the work-in-progress. They are deliberately kept predictable so the unpredictable can happen.
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Debbie Miller (Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades)