I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke EllingtonRead
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
Interpretation
Be authentic and trust your own creative instincts.
Duke Ellington emphasizes the importance of self-expression and authenticity in the creative process. He suggests that artists should remain true to their own visions and rely on their personal tastes rather than conforming to external expectations or trends.
In practice
In an art class, to inspire students to find their own style.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
There is no art without intention.
There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.
Art is a spirit seeking flesh but finding words.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.
When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.
In the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you're a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you're short wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you're a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you're a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
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