Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimate relation. There is the mistake of Homer, of Shakespeare — which is perhaps, for both, the fact of not existing. Every art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, every work is the implementation of this original fault, from which come to us a new light and a risky conception of plenitude.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that mistakes are integral to the artistic process and can lead to profound creativity.
Maurice Blanchot emphasizes the idea that every artist has a deep connection to their mistakes, which can often serve as the source of their creative work. He argues that art emerges from these 'original faults,' suggesting that rather than seeing mistakes as setbacks, they should be recognized as essential components that contribute to the development of new ideas and artistic expressions. This perspective invites a re-evaluation of failure and imperfection as vital to the richness of artistic creation.
In practice
An artist could use this quote to express how their creative process involves learning from past errors.
I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity.
To see was terrifying, and to stop seeing tore me apart from my forehead to my throat.
If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.
A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.
I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.
Music is love searching for a word.
I've never been one for keeping a journal, so my songs were my journals. They allowed me to express my feelings and let people know what was going on with me. I knew that somebody would relate.
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
When I am dancing, it feels like my prayer. It's like an offering. I offer my head back to the dance, I offer my shoulders back to the dance, my elbows, my hands, my spine, my knees, my feet, my whole self, my bones, my blood, my experience, my suffering... I offer it all back to the dance and I say: take it, do whatever you want with me. Release me.
Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.
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