Art's task is to save the soul of mankind.. anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.
Interpretation
Art is essential for the preservation of human spirit and identity amid chaos.
This quote by Terence McKenna emphasizes the importance of art in sustaining the human soul during times of turmoil and crisis. It suggests that if art fails in its mission, it is akin to being ineffective while significant threats or disasters unfold, drawing a parallel to the historical notion of ignoring grave issues while civilization faces decline.
In practice
This quote could inspire artists at a gallery event to reflect on the deeper purpose of their work.
We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.
A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.
Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.
Write as you like, use the rhythms that come out, try different instruments, sit at the piano, destroy the metric, shout instead of singing, blow your guitar and ring the horn. Hate mathematics, and love eddies. Creation is a bird without a flight plan, that will never fly in a straight line.
...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.
People haven't always been there for me, but music always has.
I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.
I have no interest in ever coming out. Iβm just trying to make the pictures look good; Iβm not into trying to make myself look good. And besides, itβs a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.
Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin....Writing as a lesser form of dance.
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