And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the profound impact of writing and the fear that comes with the vulnerability of creative expression.
Helene Cixous articulates the fear and awe associated with writing, describing it as both an act of courage and an act of vulnerability. Writing is portrayed as a miraculous endeavor that involves navigating through silence and emptiness, akin to a bird that must leap into the void without wings, gaining them only through the act of flying. This metaphor highlights the transformative power of words and the inherent risks of expressing oneself creatively.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I shared this quote to encourage participants to embrace their fears.
By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. _x000D_ Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.
Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.
You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.
Only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way.
We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing.
If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently.
You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.
My work is not about paint. It's about paint at the service of something else. It is not about gooey, chest-beating, macho '50s abstraction that allows paint to sit up on the surface as subject matter about paint.
The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed
Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.
Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.
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