What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of creating art for a meaningful purpose instead of merely for financial gain.
Leonard Cohen emphasizes that true creative contributions stem from a genuine desire to express oneself and connect with others, rather than from a selfish pursuit of profit. This perspective elevates the role of artists, suggesting that their motivations should align with meaningful expression and a commitment to enriching the human experience.
In practice
During a gallery opening, you might share this quote to inspire budding artists to focus on their passion rather than financial success.
What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.
I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.
I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.
I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker, and I wait for the day when the modifier can be a moot point.
I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
I look back on those early days in the theater like the beginning of a love affair, when you're totally in love with the work, and that's all there is.
It needs great art, learning to play with one's own life, to play on one's own life. Meditation is the art to create music from your heart. Meditation is simply the method to transform noise into harmony, the method to shift your consciousness from the head to the heart. The head is noisy, it is all noise - a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.
I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
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