For me, it's about making art that's not good but phenomenal. James Baldwin didn't want to just stay above the fray. Prince didn't think, 'I wonder what the industry is gonna think about 'Purple Rain.'' It's just, is this honest? Is this real? Does this move me? The rest is icing.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of creating art that is genuine and impactful rather than conforming to industry standards.
Lena Waithe's quote reflects a commitment to authenticity in the arts, stressing that true art should evoke genuine emotion and honesty. By referencing the works of James Baldwin and Prince, she illustrates that great artists often disregard outside opinions and focus on their personal truth and the emotional connection their work brings. The idea is that once you've created something that resonates deeply, any external validation becomes secondary.
In practice
In a motivational speech on creativity, one could say, 'As Lena Waithe quoted, it's about making art that's honest and real.'
As a black woman in the industry, you really do have to hold your head higher, stick your chest out, be kind and polite and generous even when you don't want to be sometimes. I learned that and, also, just to never take no for an answer.
Being a black lesbian myself, I roll my eyes a little bit when I see black lesbian characters on shows where it's purely there for decoration. You can just hear it in the writers room... 'What if we make her a lesbian?'
It's weird because I see black gay characters on television all the time, but do I relate to them? Not always, because they're set pieces.
The cool thing about dope black style becoming in style is that the industry has no choice but to try and reduplicate that.
Being born gay, black, and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay black female is.
I don't want to be white. I don't want to be straight. I don't want to blend in.
Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.
Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it' s a tool; "I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw". I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?
I like simplicity. I like using natural sources. I like images to look natural - as though somebody sitting in a room by a lamp is being lit by that lamp.
I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him.
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