Artists and writers have to deal with the element that makes the real real and the dream real while you are dreaming it. That's where stories and poems get their power.
Interpretation
The essence of creativity lies in balancing reality and imagination to create powerful stories.
In this quote, Ben Okri emphasizes the unique ability of artists and writers to navigate between the realms of reality and dreams. He suggests that the most compelling artistic expressions arise from this interplay, as it allows creators to infuse their work with authenticity while still embracing the imaginative aspects of storytelling, ultimately enhancing their emotional and conceptual power.
In practice
This quote is perfect for an artist's workshop to inspire creativity.
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity_x000D_ _x000D_ And be the stuff of future legends,_x000D_ _x000D_ If we but dare to be real,_x000D_ _x000D_ And have the courage to see_x000D_ _x000D_ That this is the time to dream_x000D_ _x000D_ The best dream of them all.
Fantasy isn't just a jolly escape: It's an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It's where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying. You move into a world of conflicting extremes.
And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.
Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.
Everything is art. Everything is politics.
Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
I bet you never heard of a playa with no game, Told the truth to get what I want, but shot it with no shame. Take this music dead serious while others entertain. I see they makin' they paper so I guess I can't complain...or can I? I feel they disrespectin' the whole thang. Them hooks like sellin' dope to black folks, And I choke when the food they serve ain't tastin' right, My stomach can't digest it even when I bless it.
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