All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
Interpretation
Our creations are influenced by our surroundings and circumstances.
Lewis Hyde's quote emphasizes that the work of artists and scientists is deeply intertwined with their communities, traditions, and the socio-political contexts they inhabit. Even when individuals believe they are isolated in their creative processes, they are still influenced by a complex array of factors including money, power, and luck, highlighting the interconnectedness of creativity and societal influences.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of community in artistic expression, a speaker might reference this quote to emphasize how environment shapes creativity.
Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.
Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.
America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle.
Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.
Angels speak. They appear and reappear. They feel with apt sense of emotion. While Angels may become visible by choice, our eyes are not conducted to see them ordinarily any more than we can see the dimensions of a nuclear field, the structure of atoms, or the electricity that flows through copper wiring.
Charity is the cement that unites communities to God and individuals to each other_x000D_ so that he who contributes to the union of hearts in a community_x000D_ binds it indissolubly to God.
The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favor of the immortality of the soul.
Where is the Life we lost in living?
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