But now it's just another show, you leave em laughing when you go. And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the performative nature of life and the importance of keeping one's true feelings concealed.
In this quote, Joni Mitchell captures the essence of life's performances, suggesting that even in moments of joy and laughter, there exists a deeper struggle or complexity that remains hidden. The idea of leaving an audience with laughter while concealing one's true self illustrates the duality of human experience, where personal authenticity often clashes with social expectations.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a speech about the importance of authenticity in the arts.
There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free
Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.
I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
But, in each case, as a filmmaker who's been given sizable budgets with which to work, I feel a responsibility to the audience to be shooting with the absolute highest quality technology that I can and make the film in a way that I want.
More and more people are seeing the films on computers - lousy sound, lousy picture - and they think they've seen the film, but they really haven't.
In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as a language.
Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.
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